"What's up?" The smart-alec answer to that question is: The sky, or the ceiling. How do we know what that phrase means? Because we grew up hearing it, and heard other people's answer to it, and figured out that it means something like, "What's going on?"
"Here's the scoop:" When a person grows up with a language, they get to know the different nuiance's of that language that you wouldn't generally get taught in school. A simple example, "Coche" in Spanish. For all of you that took Spanish in school, you know that coche means car, right? Well, if you were in Guatemala, coche means pig. You don't learn that in school.
"Do you get the point?" The King James Translators lived in a different world. They grew up reading books instead of playing video games. They grew up with language teaching, and it wasn't just something they were taught in school and never used again. The details of the translators are told of some having read the entire Hebrew Bible by the age of 5. Now, I'm going to be realistic and say, most likely it was mother or father reading with the boy the Hebrew Bible. Because, at age 5, you've hardly been alive enough to do that, but the point is still made. Some of these men were considered Greek masters at the ages of like 14. What were the modern translators doing at 14? When it came time for the translators to translate the KJV, they would have recognized languages and their peculiaralities (is that a word?) for what they really meant.
Reason # 7: Because the translators of the KJV were more engrossed in the ancient languages than modern translators
The argument is made that the scholarship of the modern translators is greater than that of the KJV translators. I am not pretending to say that today's translators are stupid or ignorant, by any means. I am quite sure that they are well qualified to make good translations. Here's what I am willing to say (I could be wrong): When someone today says that the KJV translators mistranslated a verse, or that they made a mistake in a verse, I really have a hard time accepting that. If someone wants to say that what the English words meant back then, and today we would say... whatever. I'm ok with that. But to say that the translators just slipped up and put a negative in there when there shouldn't have been one - I just don't buy. And the best part: when somebody that has taken 4 years of Greek in seminary feels confident in trying to correct the KJV translators' choices on words... I find that laughable.
2 comments:
This is a most interesting reason for a number of other reasons. For example:
1) Sure the KJV translators were learning languages early. There were two reasons for that: 1) people didn't live as long and as a result couldn't put things off until tomorrow; 2) their education system required it.
2) Given the fact that they had to choose between competing versions of the TR - Beza, Stephanus, and Erasmus - and none of those editions were verbatim - then one must ultimately do TC.
And here's where the argument you present falls apart - since a KJV translator couldn't use manuscripts he didn't have.
And since he didn't have Aleph or P75, all of the knowledge of Latin, Greek or whatever doesn't change the fact that he's limited by the mss.
Furthermore, the KJV translators miss the Granville Sharp construct at least twice - II Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13.
I'm glad you found my reasoning interesting at least :)
I actually have a post on my blog about long life not being all that it's cracked up to be from a Christian standpoint.
Yup, they did textual criticism. I wish I would have been around to see what all that really was like.
The translators didn't have all of the manuscripts, but I believe that they did have all of the readings that were contained in the alexandrian texts (in Latin and other languages, etc.) so they had access to the readings but chose against them.
They "miss the Granville Sharp construct" yet their translation in those passages is not wrong or a mistake. From what I understand, that same rule is not implemented 4 other times in 2nd Peter and considered by modern scholars to be exceptions. And the construct is only found 4 other times in 2nd Peter.
Yup, I'm happy relying on their scholarship.
Post a Comment