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Old 10-17-2008, 08:21 PM
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bibleprotector bibleprotector is offline
 
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The story about Shakespeare being in Spanish needs a bit of revision:

1. In English, there is not one "text" of Shakespeare. We do not have Shakespeare's autographs, but we have some early notes taken by people at the playhouse, and early printings, both unauthorised and authorised. These all contain varying readings between them. Therefore, editors have worked the text through history, and most importantly the best printed text in English is the Globe Edition (called the "Cambridge Standard Edition"), edited by W. Aldis Wright and some others.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespearean_Editors

2. If we take "Cambridge Standard Edition" of 1864, and translate that to Spanish, we would certainly have the best textual basis for a Spanish Shakespeare. But the translation would have to be done properly. It would have to balance:
a. following the very literal meaning of the English words into like Spanish words;
b. convey the sense (what would strike an English reader's mind, would also have to likewise strike a Spaniard's); and
c. the feeling, felicities, grace and various stylistic rhythms and metres found in the English would have to be conveyed into the Spanish.

3. On this basis, even if a new text was formed superior to the "Cambridge Standard Edition" and this translated into Spanish with all poetic force, etc., it would just be impossible for it to be "right", in that there is no perfect edition of Shakespeare in English, and translation can never exactly convey a literary work in another tongue. (Conclusion: the best Shakespeare is in the Cambridge Standard Edition.)

4. To apply these textual critical phenomena of Shakespeare to the Scriptures is entirely wrong, because the Scripture directly speaks upon these topics.

A. TEXT
i. The promise of preservation (Psalm 12) ensures that in the original languages the true Scripture would yet exist, though scattered;
ii. The promise of preservation also allows for the utilisation of other witnesses and sources, e.g. lectionaries, other ancient translations, etc.
iii. The promise of preservation also allows, even requires, seven forms of textual gathering, as may be observed in the seven English Bibles of the Reformation.
iv. While the King James Bible has been identified as an independent form of the Received Text (the Textus Receptus editions all differ slightly), it is also, by virtue of the outworking of the promise of preservation, the final pure text.

B. TRANSLATION
i. The promise of world evangelisation (e.g. the Great Commission, etc.) does not require that the Scripture should stay in the original language to retain the power and message of truth.
ii. The Scripture has gone forth in many tongues.
iii. The Scripture actually is required to be in "another tongue" (see Isaiah 28:11), which is singular and particular, for the purpose of world evangelisation.
iv. There is power therefore to render the Scripture perfectly by translation that it might be in this other language, the Scripture therefore being made to be in a pure language (see Zephaniah 3:9).

C. PRESENTATION
i. The promise that not one jot nor tittle would fail (see Matthew 5:18), and of the inability of the Scripture to pass away, etc., all require that the entire Scripture, the entire Canon, to be present in one text and translation as a perfect standard, being the Book of the Lord, with nothing added or missing: This cannot and does not exist anywhere in one extant form in the original languages today, nor is any Bible Version in the world, including Reformation English ones, equal to the King James Bible in these regards, and other matters, such as its scope, influence, majesty and, very importantly, its being in a language which is conversant to the world's global language.
ii. That the text (or readings) of 1611, (being the text, not the margins) has not altered to this very day in the proper line of editions;
iii. And that the translation likewise has not been altered;
iv. But that we have in one standard form (for the correction of any and all printing errors, the standardisation of the language and the editorial regularisation) the very Scripture perfectly, utterly accurate and matching to the lost Autographs, being their very representative on Earth.

To conclude, we ask, where would we seek the Word of God? By running to and fro? By yet attempting to divine the original languages? By relying upon Aland or Strong? By being content with the "imperfect best", contradicting Deuteronomy 32:4? Or rather by having faith in God, that by His Divine Providence He has afforded to the world by His superintendence the Holy Scripture perfectly, exactly and totally in one standard form for all? (That "all" is coming to pass to include Spaniards, see Isaiah 18:3, Matt. 24:14, Rom. 16:26, Col. 1:5, 6, 23 and Revelation 14:6).

Last edited by bibleprotector; 10-17-2008 at 08:27 PM.