Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: kilroy@mimsy.umd.edu (Darren F. Provine) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Translation (and still "Re: I Corinthians 7:1") Message-ID: Date: 18 Oct 89 21:49:22 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Lines: 129 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) provides his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:1 -- > It categorically states that there ought not to be so much as even the >slightest degree of touching between unmarried people. This standard of >premarital conduct is sadly lacking in our world today. I happen to disagree with this interpretation, and I would disagree with it even if we use the word `touch'. Words are slippery things, and assigning absolute meanings to the words of someone else (particularly when you have only half of a conversation) is little more than speculation. (And please don't reply to this article by telling me that I'm rebelling against the Word of God and that if I was walking with the Holy Spirit then I would agree with you. You have no business judging me like that, and doing so will get you little besides a quick trip to my KILL file.) Dave laments that the NIV removes the absolute prohibition on contact from Scripture, and points out that this started when he was arguing for the most reliable translation possible. He adds: >The NIV translators apparently traded away a word-for-word translation in >favour of trying to help us understand what God meant. In doing so they >have lost many difficult to see yet extremely important messages from Him. which has a few problems: Firstly, 20th century American English is *very* object-oriented: word-for-word translations *create* meanings in the Bible that do *NOT* exist in the original languages, because much of the metaphorical import is lost. In other words, some of the `extremely important messages' that you are so worried about *may not be there*. [ Didn't we do this over in t.r.m. just a few months ago? I recommended reading Benjamin Lee Whorf, as I recall. Here's another plug for him. ] Secondly, there are *NO* word-for-word translations besides interlinears; unless that is the Bible you read, translators and scholars have re-arranged words, inserted words, and changed words to make the passages into sensible English. (Without this, the translation would be only slightly less gobbledygook than is Usenet. 8^) And if you *do* read an interlinear, then you are *still* re-arranging the text in your head as you read it -- in effect, you are doing the same thing the translators would do (but perhaps without either their knowledge or experience). Thirdly, you make an interesting comment when you say: > >Surely an all knowledgeable and all wise God does not need us sinful >human beings to clarify what He says. Surely His Holy Spirit does not >require the rephrasing of His Words by us sinful human beings in order >to bring people to salvation. We ought to leave His Word in tact and >just simply trust that He will bring its full power to bear on >whomsoever He pleases. Over & above my earlier complaint that it is not possible to translate the Bible *and* leave the words intact, this brings to mind some of the places in Scripture that *cannot* be left as-is; there are many places in Job and Proverbs (Job 6:6, 8:14, 21:24, 29:24, 30:12, 35:15, 36:20, 38:26, Proverbs 7:22, 12:27, 19:7, and more available upon request) wherein the meaning of a word (or in some cases an entire phrase) is unknown. There are literally *hundreds* of places where different manuscripts say different things, and there is no way of knowing which is correct. According to Ward Powers, author of _Learn To Read the Greek New_ _Testament_, "punctuation was NOT used in the earliest, uncial, manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, where in fact the practice of the time was to run all the words together without a space between them. [...] For example, are Romans 8:33b and 8:34b statements or questions? -- the Greek itself does not indicate which it is." [ from Page 22, emphasis in the original ] You state that: > > Any attempt to change His Words makes them become the words of men and >cease being the Word of God. But the fact of the matter is that nobody knows what His Words *are* -- there are hundreds of variant readings, passages that no one understands, and textual ambiguities. *ANY* version of the Bible you read, even if you read it in the original languages, is going to have this problem. (If you read it in the original languages, who will you learn from? And which version of the manuscripts will you read? Without punctuation, what will you do about the New Testament?) -=-=- Dave, unless you can produce documentation that you are a qualified translator of Koine Greek, then I have no reason to accept that you are in a better position to interpret 1 Corinthians 7:1 than are the translators of the NIV. A word-for-word translation just isn't sufficient -- putting literal meanings on English words when we don't know what the original words mean does nothing to relate God's Word intact. All it accomplishes is declaring some (sinful) person's interpretation infallible, which I am not willing to do. You were right when you said that God didn't need fallible people to clarify his word -- but the Bible he has given us is rife with words that don't translate, and metaphors that get lost under literalistic English interpretation. God may not *need* us to clarify his word, but He has shown that he *wants* us to engage in the effort, by making the Bible the way it is. Maybe we're supposed to learn something from the process that we couldn't learn from having the book handed to us already complete. Surely God can use fallible manuscripts to teach fallible people, n'est-ce pas? kilroy@cs.umd.edu Darren F. Provine ...uunet!mimsy!kilroy "All language is ambiguous. All artful language is MULTIPLY ambiguous." -- Michael L. Siemon