|
Bible v2.0 Released to Correct for "Embarrassing Inaccuracies" Of KJV
|
View this Thread in Original format
| occrider |
Any bets as to whether the fundies will start up an old fashioned book burning?
| quote: |
Getting the Bible back to its roots
New Pentateuch translation from original Hebrew meanings
Thursday, November 18, 2004 Posted: 1449 GMT (2249 HKT)
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- It is considered the most magisterial opening in English literature: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
But now a major revisionist translation of the Bible would have the cosmos begin with a more conversational clause: "When God began to create heaven and earth ... "
And where the King James translation of Genesis had the earth begin "without form and void," the new translation of the Hebrew Bible says that the earth was "welter and waste."
Biblical scholar Robert Alter's major new English translation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible -- alternately called the Five Books of Moses, the Torah or Pentateuch -- has some critics manning the barricades while others are applauding his efforts to return the work to its original Hebrew meanings and majestic repetitions.
A professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Alter says since he has never found a biblical translation that he liked or could recommend to his comparative literature students, he decided to do his own, starting with the story of Genesis and ending with the death of Moses.
His argument is that past translations either get the Hebrew wrong or mangle the Bible's syntax or lose the power of the work or even are so up-to-the-minute that they become too conversational to be accurate or interesting.
He was also determined to get back into the book every single "and" that other translators left out, saying that part of book's majesty is built by its use of repetitions.
The 1611 King James version, perhaps the most famous book ever written by a committee, may reach poetic heights, but Alter says it is fraught with "embarrassing inaccuracies" and often substitutes Greek or Latin words and Renaissance English tonalities and rhythms for biblical ones.
'Concrete images'
"Reading through this book is a wearying, disorientating and at times revelatory experience," said noted author John Updike in a review of Alter's 1,063-page translation of "The Five Books of Moses" (Norton) for the New Yorker magazine in which he complained about page after page of footnotes that often explain obscure points.
Updike also took exception to some of the translation. For example, he is a lot happier with the King James version in which "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water" than with Alter's version of the same sentence: "God's breath hovering over the waters."
Biblical scholar Robert Alter decided to translate the Torah himself after he couldn't find a translation that satisfied him.
But Alter, in an interview with Reuters, said he used the phrase "God's breath" rather than the "spirit of God" for a simple reason: "The Hebrew word means life's breath, a constant moving of oxygen in and out. The body-soul split of early Christianity is something not imagined in the early Hebrew."
Alter said his task was to find the English equivalents of the Hebrew. "Hebrew is filled with concrete images. For example, the King James translates the famous lines of Ecclesiastes as 'vanity of vanities ... all is vanity' but the closest word in English to the Hebrew is 'vapor, vapor, all is mere vapor.' "
Washington Post reviewer Michael Dirda said that some Bible translations are so simple-minded that Adam and Eve might as well be called Dick and Jane, but "Alter will have nothing to do with (such) dumbing-down.
"This makes reading his version of the Torah ... thrilling and constantly illuminating: After the still, small voices of so many tepid modern translations, here is a whirlwind."
Alter said he was especially pleased with restoring all the "ands" back in a passage where Abraham's servant is sent on a mission to find a wife for Isaac and encounters Rebekah:
"And she came down to the spring and filled her jug and came back up. And the servant ran toward her and said, 'Pray, let me sip a bit of water from your jug.' And she said, 'Drink, my lord,' and she hurried and tipped down her jug on one hand and let him drink. And she let him drink his fill and said, 'For your camels, too, I shall draw water until they drink their fill.' And she hurried and emptied her jug into the trough, and she ran again to the well to draw water and drew water for all his camels."
The 15 "ands" manage to build a picture of what Alter calls "the closest anyone comes in Genesis to a feat of 'Homeric' heroism" -- especially when one considers how much a camel drinks.
Alter added: "I began this translation as a kind of dubious experiment asking, 'Is there some (method) of getting Biblical Hebrew into modern English in a way that would be readable but not be too contemporary sounding and reproduce many of the stylish effects of the Hebrew?' "
Some critics think he found the way. And how.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ...reut/index.html
|
|
|
|
| MisterOpus1 |
This should actually be reasurring - having a very close translation to the Hebrew meanings should be exactly what Bible literalists would want.
Of course I'm sure they would beg to differ... |
|
|
| töbias |
| Shouldn't make too much difference to its single only meaningful use, ie being a door stop. |
|
|
| ierxium |
| How much money is God getting from the sales of this book? |
|
|
| ogvh5150 |
Colossians 3:8
But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. NIV
But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. KJV
Proverbs 13:2-3
From the fruit of his lips a man enjoys good things, but the unfaithful have a craving for violence.
He who guards his lips guards his soul, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin. NIV
A man shall eat good by the fruit of [his] mouth: but the soul of the transgressors [shall eat] violence.
He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: [but] he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction. KJV |
|
|
| Izzy |
| quote: | Originally posted by ierxium
How much money is God getting from the sales of this book? |
15% of the gross profit for each book sold |
|
|
| ::TranceVanDyk:: |
are there any inconsistancies or contradictions??
whats with the bible bashing?:conf: :conf: |
|
|
| Yoepus |
I've always pointed out this error in translation of the bible (this being important, as its one of the commandments)"
"Thou shall not kill" should actually translate to "Thou shall not murder" if we were to translate the meaning from a hebrew. |
|
|
| Seventil |
I have this on order...
I would love to hear some reviews, if anyone has read it yet.
As for the KJV onlyists, I have to say that it's quite sad to be put in the same barrel as those guys.
I hope this translation helps people understand the Bible better, believer or non-believer. It should be interesting in any case. |
|
|
| ::TranceVanDyk:: |
| quote: | Originally posted by D.Edge
well, the original texts were written in Hebrew and Greek. they were translated into English in the 15th century, so it is inevitable that mistranslations and misinterpretations have occurred. unfortunately, many people are now familiar with the King James version, which carries these errors.
and that's not including the books which had been dropped from the original Bible. |
of course there may be some indiscrepencies betweem translations. its inevitable. it happens with most languages. translate an english rap song into spanish or german, and it wont rhyme, the words may not even exist in the other language, etc. but the same meaning, the the message has not changed. the difficulties in translating ancient hebrew and greek has not taken away from the text at all.
after the closing of the canon in 397a.d., there were and could never be any book taken away or added to the bible, but there are disputed books, which are called the lost books. u can find them at www.carm.com ... it lists them and has them there to read. these books considered not to contradict the bible, but for other reasons were not added to the bible.
| quote: | I've always pointed out this error in translation of the bible (this being important, as its one of the commandments)"
"Thou shall not kill" should actually translate to "Thou shall not murder" if we were to translate the meaning from a hebrew. |
they mean the same thing, in just different words.
to kill, is to murder? is that right?
--------------------
of course there is the question of war and self-defence. the bible does state, there is a time for war, and a time for peace. but to explain killing in war and true murder would be this.
when u murder, you just arent thinking blindly with nothing on your mind. u are murdering for a reason. and that reason itself has to be breaking another commandment. such as jealousy, envy, adultery, etc. these are all reasons why someone might murder. but in war, u are not killing because of these sins. u are killing so that you and your fellow comrades may survive. god, being a rational and just god, understands this, hence, unless a sin is being committed to meditate a killing, its not considered murder. |
|
|
|
|
