View Single Post
  #69  
Old 10-17-2008, 12:11 PM
tlewis3348
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default

First, I would like to thank those of you who have pointed out my error in logic of saying that the KJV is "as close as we can get to the originals." Please let me clarify myself.

Stick with me on this.

If we take Shakespeare's Hamlet and translate it into Spanish, is this not still Shakespeare's work? I would submit to you that it is if and only if the translator did not add any of his own opinions to it. We had to do something like this in high school English. We were to take a quote from a famous work and paraphrase it without adding any of own ideas. I found this to be surprisingly difficult. Is it possible? Yes, of course. It especially is when one is very good at understanding language. Now when someone is translating a work of literature the idea is to translate it word for word and then rearrange those words into a reasonable thought (since the grammar of different languages call for different sentence structure). I believe that the KJV translators accomplished this when they translated the Bible. Now as we continue with this train of thought, we consider what happens when a translator comes to a word in the original that simply does not exist into which he is translating. What does he do in this situation? He chooses the word in the translation that most closely represents the original word. These are simple facts that must happen when something is being translated. I believe that the KJV translators did a superb job at this. Now some say that these men were unknowingly divinely empowered to choose exactly the right word in the English language. Since we know that there are some words in the original languages for which there exists no English word to fully describe, we must conclude that either one or the other is a fuller description of what was meant. Therefore, if the English is the fuller description then that must mean that the originals were not as good of a description. Now God did inspire the original writers of the Bible (I think we can all agree on at least that); therefore, what they wrote is exactly the inspired word of God. Now as scribes copied the Bible there were differences that appeared (there are differences in the Greek manuscripts that exist, though very few). Does this mean that God has not preserved His Word? NO! Historians say that we still have Homer when we only have a few copies of his work. We have several thousand copies of the scripture, as well as billions of Bibles in circulation. Yes God most definitely does preserve His Word. So although the Greek and Hebrew manuscript do contain differences they are very small and very few and we therefore conclude that they differ very little from the original manuscripts written by the original authors that were most definitely inspired by God. As we have already said, when translating a language there are some words in the original that have no exact translation in the new language. So therefore we see that there is a logical succession here. First there were the original autographs, then scribes copied those autographs, then translators translated from those copies into what we have today. We have many of those copies and we know that they differ slightly from each other and therefore they must differ slightly from the originals. We also know that any time something is translated into a different language there is a slight loss of meaning. Therefore, is it not logical to say that the closer we can get in that succession to the original autographs the more accurate representation we will have of what the originals said? I believe that this is a logical statement. I also believe that this does not remove any of the foundations of my Christian faith. Let me restate something here. I do believe that the KJV is God's inspired Word (just like a Spanish translation of Hamlet is still Shakespeare); however, I believe that the study of a compilation of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts can give a fuller understanding of what is being said in a certain passage. So while it is not necessary to have knowledge of what the Greek or Hebrew says it certainly is helpful. This knowledge can be had by anyone through the use of a Strong's Concordance.