Judas Iscariot - Page 11

LoyaltyisaCurse · March 8th, 2006, 11:20 AM

Old English translations

Although John Wycliff is often credited with the first translation of the Bible into English, there were, in fact, many translations of large parts of the Bible centuries before Wycliff's work. Toward the end of the seventh century, the Venerable Bede began a translation of Scripture into Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon). Aldhelm (AD 640–709), likewise, translated the complete Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English. In the 11th century, Abbot Ælfric translated much of the Old Testament into Old English.

For seven or eight centuries, it was the Latin Vulgate that held sway as the common version nearest to the tongue of the people. Latin had become the accepted tongue of the Catholic Church, and there was little general acquaintance with the Bible except among the educated. During all that time, there was no real room for a further translation. Medieval England was quite unripe for a Bible in the mother tongue; while the illiterate majority were in no condition to feel the want of such a book, the educated minority would be averse to so great and revolutionary a change.

When a man cannot read any writing, it really does not matter to him whether books are in current speech or not, and the majority of the people for those seven or eight centuries could read nothing at all.

These centuries added to the (unfounded) conviction of many that the Bible ought not to become too common, that it should not be read by everybody, that it required a certain amount of learning to make it safe reading. They came to feel that it is as important to have an authoritative interpretation of the Bible as to have the Bible itself. When the movement began to make it speak the new English tongue, it provoked the most violent opposition.

Latin had been good enough for a millennium; why cheapen the Bible by a translation? There had grown up a feeling that Jerome himself had been inspired. He had been canonised, and half the references to him in that time speak of him as the inspired translator.

Criticism of his version was counted as impious and profane as criticisms of the original text could possibly have been. It is one of the ironies of history that the version for which Jerome had to fight, and which was counted a piece of impiety itself, actually became the ground on which men stood when they fought against another version, counting anything else but this very version an impious intrusion.

How early the movement for an English Bible began, it is impossible now to say. Yet the fact is that until the last quarter of the fourteenth century, there was no complete prose version of the Bible in the English language. However, there were vernacular translations of parts of the Bible in England prior to in both Anglo Saxon and Norman French.

Middle English translations

Middle English Bible translations (1066–1500) covers the age of Middle English – it was not a fertile time for Bible translations but saw the first major translation, Wyclif's Bible, from John Wyclif. The period of Middle English begins with the Norman conquest and ends about 1500.

Early Modern English translations

Early Modern English translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English. This was the first major period of Bible translation into the English language. It began with the dramatic introduction of Tyndale's Bible and included the landmark King James Version and Douai Bibles. It included the first "authorised version", known as the Great Bible (1539); the Geneva Bible (1560), notable for being the first Bible divided into verses; and the Bishop's Bible (1568), which was an attempt by Elisabeth I to again create an authorised version.

Modern translations

Modern Jewish translations.
Modern Christian translations.

Much like early English Bibles, which were based on Greek texts or Latin translations, modern English translations of the Bible are based on the best-available original texts of the time. The translators put much scholarly effort into cross-checking the various sources such as the Pentateuch, Septuagint, Textus Receptus, and Masoretic Text. Relatively recent discoveries such as the Dead Sea scrolls provide additional reference information. There is some controversy over which texts should be used as a basis for translation, as some of the alternate sources do not include verses which are found in the Textus Receptus. Some say the alternate sources were poorly representative of the texts used in their time, whereas others claim the Textus Receptus includes passages that were added to the alternate texts improperly. These controversial passages are generally not the basis for disputed issues of doctrine, but tend to be additional stories or snippets of phrases. The majority of modern English translations, such as the New International Version, contain extensive text notes indicating where differences occur in original sources.

English translations can be broken down into Christian, Critical and Jewish sections.

Christian translations

There are over 50 complete modern English Christian translations and many more partial translations. See main article: Modern English Bible translations.

Critical translations

Although most translations of the Bible have been authorised or made by religious people for religious use, historians and philologists have studied the Bible as a historical and literary text and have presented secular translations.

The best known is the Anchor Bible; each book is translated by a different scholar, with extensive critical commentary.

Jewish translations

Main article: Jewish English Bible translations.
Jewish English Bible translations are modern English Bible translations that include the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) according to the masoretic text, and according to the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim.

Jewish translations often also reflect traditional Jewish interpretations of the Bible, as opposed to the Christian understanding that is often reflected in non-Jewish translations. For example, Jewish translations translate עלמה ‘almâh in Isa 7:14 as young woman, while many Christian translations render the word as virgin.

While modern biblical scholarship is similar for both Christians and Jews, there are distinctive features of Jewish translations, even those created by academic scholars. These include (besides the avoidance of Christological interpretations) either complete adherence to the Masoretic Text or a greater preference for it, and a tendency to prefer transliterated instead of Anglicised names.

The first English Jewish translation of the Bible was by Isaac Leeser in the nineteenth century.

The Jewish Publication Society produced two of the most popular Jewish translations, namely the JPS The Holy Scriptures of 1917 and the NJPS Tanakh (first printed in a single volume in 1985).
Since the 1980s there have been multiple efforts among Orthodox publishers to produce translations that are not only Jewish, but also adhere to Orthodox norms. Among these are The Living Torah and Nach by Aryeh Kaplan and others, and the Artscroll Tanakh.

See also
Comparison of English Bible translations – for a comparison of two verses, one from Old Testament Hebrew and one from New Testament Greek, showing how they have been translated into the many different Bible versions
Jewish English Bible translations
Bible translations – for a view of translation into languages other than English.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
1911 Britannica entryAryeh Kaplan's The Living Torah Chumash online
The Judaica Press Complete Tanach with Rashi
A timeline and chart of various editions and translations of the Bible
Excerpt from "The Study of the King James Version of the Bible by Cleland Boyd McAfee (first published in 1912). From a conservative evangelical Christian theological background. Strongly prefers word-for-word (literal) translations in the likes of the NASB and ESV.
References
The Anchor Bible Series 1964-2005. Various editors, translators, and commentators. 44+ volumes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday
B. Barry Levy. Our Torah, Your Torah and Their Torah: An Evaluation of the ArtScroll phenomenon. in Truth and Compassion: Essays on Religion in Judaism, Ed. H. Joseph et al. Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1983.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English...s_of_the_Bible"

FischerKing · March 8th, 2006, 11:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoyaltyisaCurse

Original language

Most scholars believe that all of the New Testament was originally composed in Greek. The three main textual traditions are sometimes called the Western text-type, the Alexandrian text-type, and Byzantine text-type. Together they compose the majority of New Testament manuscripts. There are also several ancient versions in other languages, most important of which are the Syriac (including the Pe****ta and the Diatessaron gospel harmony) and the Latin (both the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate).

A few scholars believe in Aramaic primacy — that parts of the Greek New Testament are actually a translation of an Aramaic original, in particular, the Gospel of Matthew. Of these, a small number accept the Syriac Pe****ta as representing the original, while most take a more critical approach to reconstructing the original text.

Historic editions

The earliest printed edition of the New Testament in Greek appeared in 1516 from the Froben press. It was compiled by Desiderius Erasmus on the basis of the few recent Greek manuscripts, all of Byzantine tradition, at his disposal, which he completed by translating from the Vulgate parts for which he did not have a Greek text. He produced four later editions of the text.

Erasmus was a deeply religious Roman Catholic, but his preference for the textual tradition represented in Byzantine Greek text of the time rather than that in the Latin Vulgate led to him being viewed with suspicion by some authorities of his Church.

The first edition with critical apparatus (variant readings in manuscripts) was produced by the printer Robert Estienne of Paris in 1550. The type of text printed in this edition and in those of Erasmus became known as the Textus Receptus (Latin for "received text"), a name given to it in the Elzevier edition of 1633, which termed it the text nunc ab omnibus receptum ("now received by all"). On it the Churches of the Protestant Reformation based their translations into vernacular languages, such as the King James Version.

The discovery of older manuscripts, such as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, led scholars to revise their opinion of this text. Karl Lachmann’s critical edition of 1831, based on manuscripts dating from the fourth century and earlier, was intended primarily to demonstrate that the Textus Receptus must finally be rejected. Later critical texts are based on further scholarly research and the finding of papyrus fragments dating in some cases from within a few decades of the composition of the New Testament writings. It is on the basis of these that nearly all modern translations or revisions of older translations have, for more than a century, been made, though some still prefer the Textus Receptus or the similar "Byzantine Majority Text".

The canonization of Scripture

In Judaism it is commonly thought that the canonical status of some books was discussed between 200 BC and AD 100, though it is unclear at what point during this period the Jewish canon was decided. Protestants cite the Old Testament canon defined by the Council of Jamnia in AD 90 as their basis for not including the Deuterocanonical books, where Roman Catholics assert that Jewish council was convened in reaction to the rise of Christianity and its use of the Greek Septuagint.

To the books accepted by Judaism as Scripture, Christianity subsequently added those of the New Testament, the 27-book canon of which was finally fixed in the 4th century. Catholicism mostly considers certain deuterocanonical books to be part of the Old Testament, though Protestantism in general accepts as part of the Old Testament only the books in the canon of Judaism and uses the term Apocrypha for the deuterocanonical books. The Protestant Old Testament has a 39-book canon — the number varies from that of the books in the Tanakh because of a different method of division — while the Roman Catholic Church recognizes 46 books as part of the Old Testament. For details, see Books of the Bible.

Canonicity is distinct from questions of human authorship and the formation of the books of the Bible; these questions are discussed in the entries on higher criticism and textual criticism.

Bible versions and translations

In scholarly writing, ancient translations are frequently referred to as "versions", with the term "translation" being reserved for medieval or modern translations. Information about Bible versions is given below, while Bible translations can be found on a separate page.

The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of much of the Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. The Onkelos translation is particularly interesting in that it removes most references to God as a physical presence. This move towards a formless God was of immense importance to Jewish philosophy and religious exegesis. It was central to the philosophy of Maimonides, known in Hebrew as the Rambam, the most influential Jewish thinker of the Middle Ages.

Early Christians produced translations of the Hebrew Bible into several languages; their primary Biblical text was the Septuagint. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.

The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.

The ever-increasing number of variants in Latin manuscripts induced Pope Damasus, in 382, to commission his secretary, Saint Jerome, to produce a reliable and consistent text. Jerome later took it on himself to make a completely new translation directly from the Hebrew of the Tanakh. This translation became the basis of the Vulgate Latin translation. Though he also translated Psalms from Hebrew, the earlier Septuagint-based version, slightly revised by him, is the text that was actually used in Church and is included in editions of the Vulgate. This includes the deuterocanonical books, also revised by Jerome, and became the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church.

good information and i know most of this already. let me rephrase the question - how many times has our modern day bible been translated? say for instance, i own an NIV, how many times has the NIV bible been translated from the original Greek manuscripts to my English Bible?

shawn

40yearfan · March 8th, 2006, 11:32 AM

Interesting question. If Jesus's death to salvage mankind was pre-ordained, then Jesus or Judas either one would have been powerless to stop the course of action by either.

On the free will side and this wasn't pre-ordained, what if this got out of hand? What if they were only supposed to beat Jesus up a little and they got carried away and crucified him? If so, I'll betcha someone caught hell over it.

Divide Et Impera · March 8th, 2006, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FischerKing

good information and i know most of this already. let me rephrase the question - how many times has our modern day bible been translated? say for instance, i own an NIV, how many times has the NIV bible been translated from the original Greek manuscripts to my English Bible?

shawn

What does that matter? It like they say in the legal world - the fruit of the poisonous tree (or something like that). The versions available today are translations of translations of translations. The bible isn't pure. It has been bastardized by man through the ages. This is a reason why Muslims are so strict with regards to alterring or translating the koran. It doesn't happen, period. You may get an English version of the Koran, but it has the original Arabic script right there as well....

The bible is just another book that has gone through the hands of too many editors with agendas. Things have been changed to justify different issues through time while maintaining the guise of a holy book....

LoyaltyisaCurse · March 8th, 2006, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FischerKing

good information and i know most of this already. let me rephrase the question - how many times has our modern day bible been translated? say for instance, i own an NIV, how many times has the NIV bible been translated from the original Greek manuscripts to my English Bible?

shawn

The problem is with the historical translations and I am sure there were words in some of the original text that did not translate into other languages.

Also, factor in that I would think that back in early AD that much of this was oral history and subject to many "operator" style translations and the legend creating mythification that seems to happen with human beings.

FischerKing · March 8th, 2006, 11:49 AM

seeds - it matters very much - it's extremely important to know how many times it has been translated because that information is valuable to knowing how accurate the manuscripts are.

so, having said that - the modern bibles are translated once - not many, many, many times as is alleged. the best Greek manuscripts are used in the translation process. the translation goes from Greek to English - that's one step of translation. It doesn't go from Greek to German to Latin to English (which would be 4 steps of translation).

shawn

FischerKing · March 8th, 2006, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoyaltyisaCurse

Also, factor in that I would think that back in early AD that much of this was oral history and subject to many "operator" style translations and the legend creating mythification that seems to happen with human beings.

how much time passed between the actual events and when they were written down?

shawn

LoyaltyisaCurse · March 8th, 2006, 11:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FischerKing

how much time passed between the actual events and when they were written down?

shawn

I am not sure of that...

Stout · March 8th, 2006, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FischerKing

well - before i can even give an answer - we first have to clear up an assumption that i think you are making which is this - i am not telling you anything.

back to this discussion of making definitive claims - if Jesus made a claim, then you need to decide if that claim is definitive or not and you need to decide what he meant by it. if he said "I am the way, I am the truth and I am the life and no one comes to the Father except through me", then you have to decide what he meant by that. now to me, that's a pretty strong statement and it's pretty clear and it's pretty definitive. i don't think he leaves a lot of room for interpretation there, do you?

so the question isn't what i'm telling you - it's what did Jesus say or claim? now, we may not like it, we may not agree with it - but not liking it doesn't give us the liberty to just get rid of it. we still have to deal with the statement head-on.

shawn

As to your first...right on, brother. We have no problems!!!

As to the rest, you're making too much of a basic assumption...your assuming everyone accepts Jesus as the son of God, and accepts God as the true God. Say somebody doesn't think so, because of skepticism, or because of non-belief in an afterlife. Say that someone is also a good, kind, caring person, that in all other ways embodies the Christian ideal. Now, what happens to them, by your tenets, when they die?

FischerKing · March 8th, 2006, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoyaltyisaCurse

I am not sure of that...

okay, i was just wanting to get clarification on your statement "factor in that I would think that back in early AD that much of this was oral history and subject to many "operator" style translations". i can tell you this much - that the earliest manuscript copies that exist some are as close to 30 to 50 years from when the even actually took place. now, that's a manuscript copy - not a manuscript original (autograph), which means that the autograph would have been earlier if it were a copy.

what does this mean? it means that the events recorded were recorded fairly soon after the events took place. they were written down and circulated during a time when many other people were alive who also were witnesses to what occurred, giving them a chance to deny any writings that were circulating - which we have none of. in fact, no ancient historical texts that we have are original, they are all copies.

shawn

DjaugheOld · March 8th, 2006, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FischerKing

if you don't mind a question from me then, since you seem to be familiar with it - how many times has it been translated?

shawn

Oh!...Oh!...I know the answer!

FischerKing · March 8th, 2006, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stout

As to your first...right on, brother. We have no problems!!!

As to the rest, you're making too much of a basic assumption...your assuming everyone accepts Jesus as the son of God, and accepts God as the true God. Say somebody doesn't think so, because of skepticism, or because of non-belief in an afterlife. Say that someone is also a good, kind, caring person, that in all other ways embodies the Christian ideal. Now, what happens to them, by your tenets, when they die?

i'm not making the assumption - i'm saying that this is what Jesus claimed to be. now, we can take his claim(s) in one of three ways - 1. He lied, 2. He was mentally unstable, or 3. He was telling the truth. So then it comes down to how do you accurately judge between these three things?

now - to answer you question - according to Jesus, he said that he was the only way and that there was no other way outside of belief in him. his followers echoed the same claims. while this alone doesn't make the statement itself true, it does make the exclusivity of the claim very clear - that a particular historical figure made a claim to be the Son of God and that the only way to heaven was by belief in Him. he didn't qualify the claim by saying that you could believe in him except if you are skeptical and then we'll take that under advisement. he was very clear in saying that it came down to belief verses non-belief.

when you say "that someone is also a good, kind, caring person" i guess i would have to ask what do you mean by good, kind, and caring? because your standard or view of those things might not necessarily be the same as mine and my view may not be the same as Jesus'. again, it's not what i say that is the standard - i'm not making any claims, Jesus made the claims, i either choose to accept them or reject them. i rise and fall based upon the truthfulness or falisty of those claims. i'm not "good" because i think i am or because i believe in his claims. i'm "good" because he says that i am due to my faith. now "good" doesn't mean that i'm better than someone else either - because i'm not judged or compared against another person because we all have our particular faults - none of us are perfect. i'm judged against God and his perfection.

shawn

FischerKing · March 8th, 2006, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Djaughe

Oh!...Oh!...I know the answer!

ror

shawn

CardLogic · March 8th, 2006, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stout

But see, he DOESN'T provide...that is present tense, and that is a falsehood. He proviDED, which is past tense...in this case, ancient history. I'm simply arguing that, if God expects us to follow him blindly, without cause, simply based upon ancient history and the propoganda that has been passed down, then that's not a God I like.

Once again the misconception that God expects us to follow (believe) blindly. This is not a sensible nor Godly concept. The Bible actually states in several verses that the Laws of God are "written" in the minds and hearts of all men. This is a concept which I believe has much credence. Stout, I think that you have expressed that you do believe that God exists. If so then speak to Him! Approach God with an open and honest heart. Question Him and ask Him for understanding. Open a relationship with God, as you believe Him to be, and be specific about what you seek or wish to know. Be patient and persistent and He will be revealed.

LoyaltyisaCurse · March 8th, 2006, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CardLogic

If so then speak to Him! Approach God with an open and honest heart. Question Him and ask Him for understanding. Open a relationship with God, as you believe Him to be, and be specific about what you seek or wish to know. Be patient and persistent and He will be revealed.

Speak to god? and how will god speak back via internet?

God can not and does not answer specifc questions...