Saturday, July 17, 2010

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

The first thing to know about selecting a Bible is that there is a big difference between Bible version or translation and the format used by publishers.When choosing a Bible you will want to know which translation the Bible uses.God has revealed himself and has asked his people to make that revelation known to others.Translation is transferring the message from one language to another. Translationms are necessary for people who speak a different language other than greek and hebrew.

The Bible was not written in English. Thus it is important to understand the process that God used to get the English Bible to our hands.From the divine author, the process goes downward to the human author,( the writer of the revealed message),who writes the original text of scripture. Then copies are made of the original scripture which is the critical text,and then translated by the translators which ends up in the hands of the modern readers as the English translation.

The question is out of who's mouth did scriptures come? God's or Man? God spoke through Human prophets,that their words were concurrently his and his words were concurrently theirs.
before the printing press was invented, copies of the Bible were written by hand. As you know when you copy a lenghtily letter by hand you make mistakes. The scribes who copied the scriptures occasionally made mistakes too.

However the basis of all modern English translations comes directly from the Greek new testement, the original text whilst its old testement is a direct translation of BHS. these are the standardized critical texts.

the Latin Vulgate was created by the early christian leader Jerome, which was used for more than a thousand years by the church. then came the Wycliff bible which was a word to word translation of the Latin Vulgate rather than a Hebrew translation.
after the reformation of the press, William Tyndale translated the first English text from the original Greek. Tyndale was unable to finish the old testement due to persecution.He was burned at the stake, for his resolute commitment to translate the Bible and his desire to make it available to the common man. Then came the popular bible of Shakespeare, and the puritans.however none of these bible translations were able to satisfy the different factions of England. Thus the KJV authorized Bible was produced.
The goal of the KJV translation was to translate original Hebrew and Greek texts into the language of the ordinary contemporary people. The KJV bible has become one of the most widely used translations of the English speaking world. Since language evolved over time, the KJV has been revised many times. but its is maintained that the most accurate translation of the original Greek and Hebrew text is the KJV version of 1611.
More recent translations , are simplified direct translations of the authorized KJV of 1661. When considering the formality and the functionality of all translations available today, the KJV, NKJV would be formal, while the good news Bible and the Message would be functional. NIV is both moderately formal and functional. One word of warning though!..NIV bible and some other modern translations( check the publisher), printed by Zondervan publishers are not to be trusted as it is they who also publish the satanic bible. Additionally NIV has some major errors. Some important scriptures are purposely left out of the NIV translation. In spite of the many good translations available for us in the market today there is no such a thing as a perfect translation. If you had to choose then the most perfect translation out of the many,that I would recommend,is the Authorized King James Version of 1611, since its is the blueprint used for all other modern translations.

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