Preferred Bible translation

[Retrobyter]

On 6/7/2023 at 12:15 AM, phreSXicthaxlor said:

Yes,   THIS IS THE FACTS -  

this is the evidence for a Greek Old Testament B.C. Septuagint

Click here    -     http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak/earlylxx/earlypaplist.html#chronol

this is the only physical evidence existing for a Greek Old Testament B.C. Septuagint,  of  that which is pretended to be the Greek Septuagint.

These -  fragments make up less than   1%   of the Old Testament, tiny tiny little shards and pieces of fragments ranging from a human thumbnail to the size of a playing card.

The B.C. Septuagint can not be shown to have existed as a completed OT Greek Translation that was duplicated and copied and widely spread and transmitted, distributed to the major cities and churches throughout Egypt and nearby areas.

There are no Septuagint manuscripts - only tiny, teeny shards and shreds of crumbled rotten and flakes of abandoned, lost and thrown away fragments that no one wanted or cared about,  to even preserve a single page of the Bible -

 not even a single page was preserved -   no evidence shows that a Greek Septuagint existed  before  Jesus.

The Septuagint however - is built upon a flake fantasy consisting of several Vatican and Egyptian - produced rough drafts, undergoing editing and textual criticism and are being  WORKED  UPON  and  BUILT  and re - edited   -   that were not even completed until   500 - 1200   years years after Yahashua.

 
There is absolutely no physical proof of a Pre-Christian Septuagint.

What is referred to as the Septuagint today is nothing more than compilations of the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, and these manuscript versions do not even agree with each other and were never completed within the A. D era   -  the Septuagint had to be reconstructed    -  what does this mean  ?

 these fragments are not even enough to reconstruct even a single complete verse of the Old Testament, this is not even enough to reconstruct even a verse, and they are telling you that they have reconstructed The Greek completed Septuagint.

it was not until the  12th  to  16th century  - that we begin to finally see the SEPTUAGINT Chapters and partial books - suddenly appearing in completed books for sale.

The SEPTUAGINT is  fake  because the only  B.C.  evidence  for  its  existance are fragments, peices of Itty, bitty bits, tiny little shards and pieces of fragments that do not even make up  1%  of the Old Testament,  not even a single page can be reconstructed using these  B.C.  fragments.

Furthermore, even if there was a  B.C.  Greek  Old  Testament  produced   there is no evidence or proof  as  to  which  of  these  B.C.  fragments  are  pertaining to the  The GREEK SEPTUAGINT.

Shalom, phreSXicthaxlor (what does that mean or stand for?),

The Codex Sinaiticus is a copy of the LXX:

Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus, also called S, the earliest known manuscript of the Christian Bible, compiled in the 4th century CE.

In 1844, 43 leaves of a 4th-century biblical codex(a collection of single pages bound together along one side) were discovered at St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai (hence the name Sinaiticus). The German biblical scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf (1815–74) found several hundred additional leaves, constituting the majority of the present manuscript, at the monastery in 1859. Tischendorf persuaded the monks to give the precious manuscript to Tsar Alexander II of Russia in exchange for needed protection of their abbey. Tischendorf subsequently published the Codex Sinaiticus at Leipzig and then presented it to the tsar. The manuscript remained in the Russian National Library until 1933, when the Soviet government sold it to the British Museum for £100,000. Additional fragments of the manuscript were subsequently discovered at St. Catherine’s. In July 2009 the reunified Codex Sinaiticus was digitized and placed online.

Codex Sinaiticus consists mostly of the text of the Septuagint, the Greek-language Bible. Some 800 of the original 1,400 handwritten vellum pages remain. Though about half of the Hebrew Bible is missing, a complete 4th-century New Testament is preserved, along with the Letter of Barnabas (c. mid-2nd century) and most of the Shepherd of Hermas, a 2nd-century Christian writer. There were probably four scribes who contributed to the original text. Later corrections representing attempts to alter the text to a different standard probably were made about the 6th or 7th century at Caesarea.

See Britannica on Codex-Sinaiticus for more.

Sometimes, history must be gathered before it can be announced.

All the Septuagint discoveries were AFTER the writing of the KJV.

[Vine Abider]

On 5/18/2023 at 9:27 AM, JimmyB said:

I read several translations of the Bible.  Each has their assets and their shortcomings, but in general I prefer the NRSVue, the NIV, the NET and the NLT. I find them to be a good balance between translating the ancient languages into modern English and still retaining the "flavor" of the source languages. They are all the results of excellent scholarship and sensitivity to the nuances of both the source and destination languages.

I am interested in which translations others prefer, and why.  -> KJVOs please desist from claiming that the KJV is the word of God <-  If that is your preferred translation, fine, but please state your reason.

Why of course, I read the one they use in heaven - the KJV!  

My go to is usually the NASB for it's (supposed) more literal translation, but I still find a lot of things they don't get right when also looking at a Greek interlinear. And I find NASB also adds a fair amount of words needlessly (the italicized words).

With a Greek interlinear on my phone (Hagios Tech), it makes accessing that easy.

[JimmyB]

1 hour ago, Vine Abider said:

Why of course, I read the one they use in heaven - the KJV!  

My go to is usually the NASB for it's (supposed) more literal translation, but I still find a lot of things they don't get right when also looking at a Greek interlinear. And I find NASB also adds a fair amount of words needlessly (the italicized words).

With a Greek interlinear on my phone (Hagios Tech), it makes accessing that easy.

Okay, if that's what works for you.  Translation is as much an art as it is a science.  It isn't a good methodology to compare the NASB (or any translation) to a Greek interlinear.  And the italicized words are there for two good reasons: readability and comprehension.

[Vine Abider]

52 minutes ago, JimmyB said:

Okay, if that's what works for you.  Translation is as much an art as it is a science.  It isn't a good methodology to compare the NASB (or any translation) to a Greek interlinear.  And the italicized words are there for two good reasons: readability and comprehension.

Sure, I get that they're adding for "readability and comprehension," but I find some to be unnecessary. Next time I run across such an example, I'll share it on here.

[Retrobyter]

On 5/20/2023 at 1:44 PM, JimmyB said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "formal".  The KJV was written in the common language of the early 17th Century.  Other translations such as the NIV and the NRSVue are written in the common language of our era.

Two of the things that I dislike about the KJV are a) the text being broken up into individual verses and b) the change in meaning of some of the words in the past four centuries.

Shalom, JimmyB.

The KJV was indeed written in the common language of the 17th C., but most couldn't read at that time. This is why it was so important for the use in the pulpits in that day. Through the reading of God's Word from the pulpits in a language the common people could understand (rather than Latin or High German), they could better understand what the Bible was actually saying!

You said that the two things that you disliked about the KJV were ...

a) the text [was] broken up into individual verses.

According to the Bible Gateway Blog,

The person credited with dividing the Bible into chapters is Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1207-1228. While Langton’s isn’t the only organizational scheme that was devised, it is his chapter breakdown that has survived.

But while chapters are a useful organizational tool, the ability to refer to specific phrases within those chapters would make the system even more usable. Robert Stephanus (aka Robert Estienne) created a verse numbering system in the mid-16th century and was the first person to print a Bible with verse numbers in each chapter.

For more information, see Where do verse and chapter numbers come from.

Both of these systems were introduced into Bibles prior to the printing of the KJV.

I can understand your dislike, however; it makes for uncharacteristic breaks in thought where the Greek text would continue on. The chapter and verse divisions are NOT inspired; so, they are the arbitrary breaks that human beings have put into God's Word.

In my quotes, I intentionally put verses together that do not belong apart. However, I keep the numbering purely for reference. Two cases where they do damage to the understanding of the text are 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and Matthew 16:1-4.

So, I tend to agree with you on this point.

b) the change in meaning of some of the words in the past four centuries.

When you think about it, that's NOT the fault of the KJV; that's the fault of the English language being a LIVING language, susceptible to change over time. Ideally, someone should have been put in charge of updating the language of the KJV as English changed. But, of course, "coulda shoulda woulda" is moot now. It's already a problem for many.

This is the reason for such works as the Oxford English Dictionary. In this MASSIVE dictionary, one can find the obscure words and their meanings, words like "wit," "wot," and "trow." Sometimes, the spelling differences are significant; sometimes, they only reflect the British spelling of words we are more accustomed to seeing in American English.

But again, remember that the KJV was static while it was the English LANGUAGE that was dynamic and fluid over time.

[JimmyB]

11 hours ago, Retrobyter said:

Shalom, JimmyB.

The KJV was indeed written in the common language of the 17th C., but most couldn't read at that time. This is why it was so important for the use in the pulpits in that day. Through the reading of God's Word from the pulpits in a language the common people could understand (rather than Latin or High German), they could better understand what the Bible was actually saying!

You said that the two things that you disliked about the KJV were ...

a) the text [was] broken up into individual verses.

According to the Bible Gateway Blog,

The person credited with dividing the Bible into chapters is Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1207-1228. While Langton’s isn’t the only organizational scheme that was devised, it is his chapter breakdown that has survived.

But while chapters are a useful organizational tool, the ability to refer to specific phrases within those chapters would make the system even more usable. Robert Stephanus (aka Robert Estienne) created a verse numbering system in the mid-16th century and was the first person to print a Bible with verse numbers in each chapter.

For more information, see Where do verse and chapter numbers come from.

Both of these systems were introduced into Bibles prior to the printing of the KJV.

I can understand your dislike, however; it makes for uncharacteristic breaks in thought where the Greek text would continue on. The chapter and verse divisions are NOT inspired; so, they are the arbitrary breaks that human beings have put into God's Word.

In my quotes, I intentionally put verses together that do not belong apart. However, I keep the numbering purely for reference. Two cases where they do damage to the understanding of the text are 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and Matthew 16:1-4.

So, I tend to agree with you on this point.

b) the change in meaning of some of the words in the past four centuries.

When you think about it, that's NOT the fault of the KJV; that's the fault of the English language being a LIVING language, susceptible to change over time. Ideally, someone should have been put in charge of updating the language of the KJV as English changed. But, of course, "coulda shoulda woulda" is moot now. It's already a problem for many.

This is the reason for such works as the Oxford English Dictionary. In this MASSIVE dictionary, one can find the obscure words and their meanings, words like "wit," "wot," and "trow." Sometimes, the spelling differences are significant; sometimes, they only reflect the British spelling of words we are more accustomed to seeing in American English.

But again, remember that the KJV was static while it was the English LANGUAGE that was dynamic and fluid over time.

Depending on whom you believe, the original King James translation has undergone three or four major revisions. (Not just misspellings, etc.)  So the KJV has not been "static".

[JimmyB]

On 6/5/2023 at 3:08 PM, farouk said:

@NConly I think there are strong reasons for the King James; and if some others don't appreciate them then ppl will likely be talking at cross-purposes to some extent....

Such as ..?

[JimmyB]

On 6/6/2023 at 10:15 PM, phreSXicthaxlor said:

Yes,   THIS IS THE FACTS -  

this is the evidence for a Greek Old Testament B.C. Septuagint

Click here    -     http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak/earlylxx/earlypaplist.html#chronol

this is the only physical evidence existing for a Greek Old Testament B.C. Septuagint,  of  that which is pretended to be the Greek Septuagint.

These -  fragments make up less than   1%   of the Old Testament, tiny tiny little shards and pieces of fragments ranging from a human thumbnail to the size of a playing card.

The B.C. Septuagint can not be shown to have existed as a completed OT Greek Translation that was duplicated and copied and widely spread and transmitted, distributed to the major cities and churches throughout Egypt and nearby areas.

There are no Septuagint manuscripts - only tiny, teeny shards and shreds of crumbled rotten and flakes of abandoned, lost and thrown away fragments that no one wanted or cared about,  to even preserve a single page of the Bible -

 not even a single page was preserved -   no evidence shows that a Greek Septuagint existed  before  Jesus.

The Septuagint however - is built upon a flake fantasy consisting of several Vatican and Egyptian - produced rough drafts, undergoing editing and textual criticism and are being  WORKED  UPON  and  BUILT  and re - edited   -   that were not even completed until   500 - 1200   years years after Yahashua.

 
There is absolutely no physical proof of a Pre-Christian Septuagint.

What is referred to as the Septuagint today is nothing more than compilations of the Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus, and these manuscript versions do not even agree with each other and were never completed within the A. D era   -  the Septuagint had to be reconstructed    -  what does this mean  ?

 these fragments are not even enough to reconstruct even a single complete verse of the Old Testament, this is not even enough to reconstruct even a verse, and they are telling you that they have reconstructed The Greek completed Septuagint.

it was not until the  12th  to  16th century  - that we begin to finally see the SEPTUAGINT Chapters and partial books - suddenly appearing in completed books for sale.

The SEPTUAGINT is  fake  because the only  B.C.  evidence  for  its  existance are fragments, peices of Itty, bitty bits, tiny little shards and pieces of fragments that do not even make up  1%  of the Old Testament,  not even a single page can be reconstructed using these  B.C.  fragments.

Furthermore, even if there was a  B.C.  Greek  Old  Testament  produced   there is no evidence or proof  as  to  which  of  these  B.C.  fragments  are  pertaining to the  The GREEK SEPTUAGINT.

You sure like to exaggerate, don't you?

From various sources...

The Septuagint is quite possibly the most important translation of the Bible. It is the oldest translation of the OT into another language. It was considered by Philo and Josephus to be on an equal footing with the Hebrew Bible. It was preferred to the Hebrew by the Early Christian Church. And it sheds much-needed light on the development of the New Testament.

The Septuagint, abbreviation LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew. The Septuagint was presumably made for the Jewish community in Egypt when Greek was the common language throughout the region. Analysis of the language has established that the Torah, or Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), was translated near the middle of the 3rd century BCE and that the rest of the Old Testament was translated in the 2nd century BCE.

It’s called the Septuagint after the Latin word for “seventy” (septuaginta). According to an old tradition (recounted in the Letter of Aristeas), the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch, were translated into Greek by about seventy elders sent to Egypt by the high priest Eleazar in Jerusalem at the request of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Alexandria, who wanted to add the Jewish Scriptures to his library. Although the story originally applied only to the Pentateuch, the tradition expanded to include the other books as well. In time, the entire Greek version came to be known as the Septuagint, or the version of “the Seventy,” and is abbreviated with the Roman numeral LXX (70).

The Septuagint matters for many reasons. Its translators faced many of the same challenges and issues that today’s Bible translators do, so it forms an important resource for translation studies. It also helps us to understand how the Jews interpreted their Scriptures at an early stage. It translates a very early form of the Hebrew text and preserves important differences from surviving Hebrew manuscripts (notably the Masoretic Text). Furthermore, New Testament authors often quoted Old Testament passages from the Septuagint version, and their theological vocabulary—which via Latin became the vocabulary of Christian theology—often stems from the Septuagint. The Septuagint plus the New Testament became the Bible of Christianity and remains the version used in the Greek Orthodox Church. Its daughter versions have likewise been used over the centuries in the churches that used those languages. The Septuagint has fondly been called “Egypt’s greatest gift to Western civilization.”

The Christian Church, at first largely speaking Greek, adopted the Septuagint as its "official" version of the Old Testament. It was read by Jesus and the apostles, and is quoted in the New Testament.  If they accepted it and you don't, guess who should be believed.

One of the most important areas of study relating to the Septuagint is the use of the OT in the NT. The reason for this is that most of the direct citations of the OT in the NT match the Septuagint, not the Hebrew Bible (or Masoretic Text [MT]). There are approximately 300 OT passages that are directly quoted or strongly alluded to in the NT.

In cases where the OT is cited word-for-word, the NT writers quote the Septuagint over the MT approximately 75 percent of the time (according to some scholars, that percentage climbs to over 90 percent, depending on how one defines “citation”).

The preponderance of Septuagint citations in the NT and key theological terms demand that we take the Septuagint seriously.

The importance of the Septuagint cannot be emphasized enough. It sheds much-needed light on important words and theological concepts in both the Old and New Testaments. It helps us understand better the religious and political context in which Jesus and the New Testament authors lived; it has helped scholars determine which manuscripts are most reliable, which in turn leads to reliable translations of the Old Testament; and it gives us greater insight into the church fathers, who often quoted the Septuagint over the Hebrew Bible.

For those who want to understand the truth about the Septuagint, I recommend this article: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-is-the-septuagint/

Edited June 11, 2023 by JimmyB

[Retrobyter]

10 hours ago, JimmyB said:

Depending on whom you believe, the original King James translation has undergone three or four major revisions. (Not just misspellings, etc.)  So the KJV has not been "static".

Yes, you're right. I've heard the same thing.

I should tell you, though, that once it settled in, it didn't undergo near so much revision. It has lasted for 400 years, though; so, it's no wonder that there have been some revisions! However, they were NOT new editions; they were REVISIONS for language changes, and yes, because it wasn't done periodically every few years, after a long time went by, they HAD to revise the version!

Have you ever seen an early copy of the KJV? You couldn't read it (unless you've had training)!

Let's just say that the KJV has been more "static" than the English language has been.

[Retrobyter]

On 6/11/2023 at 11:37 AM, JimmyB said:

Such as ..?

Shalom, JimmyB.

I've said this before, but there is MUCH information that was lost when we went to modern English, whether Brittish English or American English.

People today don't even KNOW that they have been deprived of this information! There was a REASON for the "thee's" and "thou's" in the KJV. They show the singular as opposed to the plurals of "ye's" and "you's."

One might think that the context would show the difference between the two, when all we have left is the "you" form, but that is not always the case! In fact, I can SHOW you instances where it makes a HUGE difference!

Here's an example:

Luke 17:20-21 (KJV)

20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said,

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: 21 Neither shall they say, 'Lo here!' or, 'lo there!' for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

The word "you" here is PLURAL! It is NOT the word "thee." This is reflecting the Greek of the verses:

20 Ἐπερωτηθεὶς δὲ ὑπὸ τῶν Φαρισαίων, πότε ἔρχεται ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς καὶ εἶπεν,

"Οὐκ ἔρχεται ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ μετὰ παρατηρήσεως· 21 οὐδὲ ἐροῦσιν, 'Ἰδοὺ ὧδε,' ἤ, 'Ἰδοὺ ἐκεῖ.' ἰδοὺ γάρ, ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐντὸς ὑμῶν ἐστιν."

Transliterated, this is ...

20 Eperooteetheis de hupo toon Farisaioon, pote erchetai hee basileia tou Theou, apekrithee autois kai eipen,

"Ouk erchetai hee basileia tou Theou meta parateereeseoos; 21 oude erousin, Idou hoode, ee, Idou ekei, idou gar, hee basileia tou Theou entos humoon estin."

It is not the word "sou" in this verse but "humoon." "Humoon" is the plural, 2nd-person, pronoun in Greek. So, what was Yeeshuwa` saying? He was telling these P'rushiym ("Pharisees," "Farisaioon") that they didn't need to be looking with some "careful observation" ("parateereeseoos") for God's Kingdom; HE WAS ALREADY THERE AMONG THEM! He IS the "Kingdom of God," because He brings the Kingdom WITH HIM!

Luke 19:11-15ff (KJV)

11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. 12 He said therefore,

"A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. 13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them,

"'Occupy till I come.' 

14 "But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying,

"'We will not have this man to reign over us!'

15 "And it came to pass, that WHEN HE WAS RETURNED, HAVING RECEIVED THE KINGDOM, THEN HE COMMANDED these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. ..."

Notice the order! We also read this:

Matthew 25:31 (KJV)

31 "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, THEN SHALL HE SIT UPON THE THRONE of his glory:" 

The Greek preposition "entos" CAN means "within," but with a plural noun or pronoun, it can also mean "AMONG!" And, He was right there AMONG the P'rushiym!

He was certainly NOT saying that the "Kingdom of God was within" THEM!