Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered | Hacker News Reader

Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

neh.gov

247 pointseverbody231 comments

All: please avoid religious flamebait and stick to what's intellectually interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry to nag, but with a topic like this, past performance predicts future returns.

Obviously it’s interesting to religious people and people who study religion. But, on top of that it’s an important document of the English language at that time. So it’s got linguistic interest as well. But that’s the case for many historic religious texts. One has to do with religion the other is the linguistic aspect. Of course there are other areas of interest like culture and so on.

It also has a lot of timeless wisdom

It is almost impossible to imagine that the writings of any long-lived society would not have ample quantities of "timeless wisdom". In fact it would be striking and unusual if it were otherwise.

Much wisdom can be difficult to stumble upon but is self-evident once known. Long-lived societies are sure to import all such wisdom from around them, then discover more for themselves over time.

Exactly. I'm pretty sure one can find "lots of timeless wisdom" in the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Norse Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, the Necronomicon, etc., etc.

especially in the age of limited literacy and scribal skills, I'm not sure people would have invested much time in copying and archiving ideas and texts they thought were garbage. this is sort of a literary survivorship bias at play, it would seem.

Yes. But the Necronomicon is one of two things (depending on what you're talking about): A fictional grimoire, or a piece of fiction (a hoax, even).

I know, throwing that in was my lame attempt at humor. :-)

You're right; the main way that the bible (and by extension religion) is important in this regard is that it's survived, in various forms, for as long as it has. I kinda believe you need a religion to preserve knowledge and wisdom like this for so long.

I mean tangentially related, a while ago there was an article about how to safeguard nuclear waste storage for the next 100.000 years; one suggestion was to create a religion around it and its preservation. Something that can survive an intellectual step backwards. (Not unheard of; see the Greek and Roman societies of old. Their knowledge was lost for a long time, but Christianity survived. Of course their knowledge getting lost may be related to the rise of Christian religions as well)

> I kinda believe you need a religion to preserve knowledge and wisdom like this for so long.

Depends on how high you set the bar for 'survive'.

We have a few of the writing of Euclid, Archimedes and other Greeks, and mostly they weren't preserved for religious reasons.

Religion was certainly an effective carrier for stories prior to the age of the printing press. Unfortunately most religions lose the ability to adapt and error correct, which means that they end up stalling progress as surely as they preserve it.

I was going to post some parts of the old testament that could be deemed the opposite of wisdom, but here we try to avoid flame-wars so I ask for the same level of self-restrain from you when using adjetives about such controversial topics.

I ask for the same level of self-restrain from you when using adjetives about the quality of the bible and similar kind of opinions.

Note that the person you're replying to did not say that the bible was ALL timeless wisdom, or really say much at all about the overall quality of the bible.

There's no contradiction between the bible containing lots of timeless wisdom AND containing lots of utter nonsense and complete bollocks.

Even as somebody who is an atheist and who generally finds religion to be a blight on our society, I think one can find "timeless wisdom" in the bible mixed in with the other stuff. Whether that, on balance, makes it worth investing time in or not is another question.

Yeah, New Testament is a fair bit nicer.

Much of the Old Testament can be read as a collection of stories about a small tribe becoming a nation and fighting for their survival over hundreds of years. The stories are interesting not always because they are nice but also often because they are not. Not everyone portrayed there is a hero.

Then again, that is probably how it was and when I read the old viking stories they are equally - if not more violent.

I have also enjoyed reading both the Viking age Håvamål as well as the ancient Proverbs (as well as a number of other sources).

Though as I recall the old testament has more quotably poetic one-liners.

That is kind of a myth. For example the concept of Hell and eternal punishment is from the NT.

It's not a myth. It's the opinion of most people who have read them (including me).

However, many would say the entire compilation is a myth.

Can you point out where it mentions eternal punishment? AIR from my reading I see absolute destruction vs living with God, but not Dante's inferno by a long shot.

https://www.christianity.com/wiki/heaven-and-hell/what-is-he... has a good overview with references in the bible to how Hell is described; in short, it's dark, gnashing of teeth, fire, and separation from God.

The New Testament surely mentions that even Jesus "descended into hell" before his resurrection (practically spending some days there):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell

Catholic church takes care explain that officially (1):

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122...

Some people find that inconvenient.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism

Well Dante is a completely different thing, but the NT describes eternal suffering in fire e.g. in the story of Lazarus and the rich man. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+16%3A19-31...

so, uh, you probably weren't aware of this (I know I wasn't until fairly recently when I made a similar comment and a jewish friend pointed this out) but many jewish people consider speaking casually about how the new testament is good/ the old testament is bad to be pretty offensive. The gist I think of what my friend was telling me was that if I took the time to understand the jewish scripture, all of the stuff about loving your neighbor, feeding the poor, etc... is already in those jewish scriptures that prefigured the new testament- I mean, that's just scriptural interpretation, which I am not really qualified to get into - but the offensive bit is that casually dismissing the old testament as bad while praising the new testament as good can come off like saying "the religion my ancestors had has a more moral holy book than the religion your ancestors had" and it's pretty easy to see how that could give offense.

(I mean, I'm not a bible scholar; just... it was, you know, one of those times when I unintentionally gave offense, and seems like something you should be aware of if you are trying to avoid flame wars.)

>"like saying "the religion my ancestors had has a more moral holy book than the religion your ancestors had" and it's pretty easy to see how that could give offense."

What if it's true though?

The problem you have is that the converse would be objectionable to Christians as you'd be saying God's new covenant achieved nothing.

Eh, it sounded like the person I was responding to was trying to avoid flames? I mean, if you are trying to get into it about religion, that's a different thing.

I'm just saying this was something I stepped in by accident and that you should be aware of it.

Such as?

I'm struggling to imaging something recorded in this draft that is useful, and not already known?

A lot of timeless wisdom is also obvious.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

It’s obvious exactly because it has been already incorporated as values in our societies.

> A lot of timeless wisdom is also obvious.

As another commenter said, it seems obvious to you because it's been incorporated into our culture.

For instance, I lived in Turkey for a few months, and I had a Turkish roommate who was a devout Muslim. He gave me an English translation of the Qur'an to read, and I gave him a Turkish translation of the New Testament. He decided he would come and show me the places where it must have been changed (since Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet, but what he says in the New Testament obviously doesn't match what Mohammad said).

What was the first place he found that was obviously changed? Matthew 5:38-39: "You have heard it said, 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them on the other cheek also."

Well, there's a good example for you: Either that seems like good advice, in which case you certainly got that from your culture; or it doesn't, in which case it's worth chewing over to get some wisdom out of it. :-)

That reminds me of a surprisingly popular argument against religion which goes something like, "God is supposed to be good, but look, this part of the Bible disagrees with my cultural norms."

What did he suggest was changed about it?

So this is literally 20 years ago now (plus or minus a month) we had this conversation, and I'm not sure I 100% understood what he thought even then.

What he said was something like that Islam says that when you're attacked, you should be strong defend yourself; and maybe let the other person know that you're not weak. So I guess he thought that this contradicted what Allah said elsewhere (through Mohammed), and therefore couldn't have been said by Jesus (since Jesus also spoke for Allah); and so must have been added in by someone later.

(To be clear, trying to repeat what I remember he said, not making any claims about what Islam does or doesn't teach.)

The thing is, the whole reason Jesus' statement stands out is because it does contradict our natural ideas about the right way to react. I can understand someone adding in fake stories about miracles or fake claims to be divine; but why would you add in fake teaching that's so counter-intuitive -- and on the face of it, so... pathetic?

His question honestly caught me off-guard; I was expecting him to bring up claims of Jesus' divinity, or his death and resurrection. "Turn the other cheek" is so firmly established in our culture as one template for "how good religious people behave" (a la Ned Flanders from the Simpsons) that it wouldn't have occurred to me that people would consider it "false teaching".

And because I was caught off-guard, I didn't ask him how he thought it came to be that way in the first place. Probably he hadn't thought that far. :-)

Thanks! I can understand where your friend is coming from. I think if you polled most Christians (a least most that I know) you would find that most of them believe it is fine to defend oneself or at least take oneself out of harms way. So even though 'turn the other cheek' is such a common phrase in our culture and most Christians are well aware of this saying by Jesus, they don't interpret it literally. Most would say it means to forgive those who do evil towards you and not take revenge against them. I think the original saying has some cultural connotation of a strike on the cheek being more of an insult than a physical attack, but I a not an expert. (Though this article supports this idea: http://learntheology.com/turn-the-other-cheek.html)

Now, in Muslim culture (I am again not an expert) it may be that they teach a more strict sense of a right to take revenge/justice on those that do them harm?

> So even though 'turn the other cheek' is such a common phrase in our culture and most Christians are well aware of this saying by Jesus, they don't interpret it literally.

Jesus often says things hyperbolically to shock people enough to get them to think outside their boxes. It's a bit like that quote from Suits: “What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? ... You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.”

In certain cultures, if you're insulted or attacked, people feel like they basically have to respond in kind. But this sets up a cycle of violence: someone attacks you, you "have" to attack them; but then they "have" to attack you back, and so on until one of you is more or less destroyed. (Furious 7 probably unintentionally demonstrated this perfectly: both the main hero and the main villain were revenging attacks done by the other on their own family.)

Saying "Turn the other cheek" is basically along the same lines as the gun quote: "What are your choices when someone smacks you in the face? ... How about this: You turn the other cheek. Or you ignore it and move on. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things. You don't have to respond in violence."

The bible is by far the most translated text (and a reasonably sized one). I just wish it wasn't written in a weird way.

I learned a little bit of Korean by reading the bible as the primary source and when I tried to speak, I only got weird looks. I get why. It is like someone asking you "How art thou?"

I tried something similar to learn Samoan, but didn't get far. I would compare some phrases in English and Samoan, then ask native speakers what a confusing word meant. I stopped pretty quickly because I found that a phrase made of three words might mean "tree", but if you just take the first word alone it means something extremely vulgar (I couldn't get anyone to tell me what).

Think in syllables and that's not terribly unlike English.

Country Farmer

"So, I know what tree and farmer mean ..."

I find it a bit weird that people stick with such antiquated translations of the bible in English. The German translations are pretty much standard German. Even the Luther Bible is quite readable to this day.

There's always some friction when it comes to updating translations (source: I used to have to go to church, there was much debate whether or not to replace the archaic translation with a modern version). A lot of debate is about whether the translation is correct (compared to the old version), and people read the bible so often they are used to the old translation - if the new one changes some words, or even changes the meaning (to be a more accurate translation), people get a bit antsy.

But yeah, the old translation is becoming nearly incomprehensible now; compare the King James version of the ten commandments with the new translations: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&versi... vs https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&versi...

The KJV version of the Ten Commandments is still easily comprehensible. You only need to know a few archaic constructions ("spake" instead of "spoke," "thou" instead of "you"), which most native speakers of English are probably reasonably familiar with.

Looking at the Luther Bible, it has a similar number of archaic constructs as the KJV. For example, it uses archaic forms of the genitive case extensively (compare Luther's "der Väter Missetat" with the modern German equivalent, "die Missetat der Väter").

The reason people like these old translations, in my view, is that the slightly archaic language separates them from the common language we use in our everyday lives. That separates the book from the "profane" or mundane everyday world, and makes it something special. Even as a cynical atheist, I appreciate the feeling that this sort of slightly archaic language creates.

1. The Ten Commandments in the Luther Bible: https://www.bibel-online.net/buch/luther_1912/2_mose/20/#1

Didn't Orwell have a point when he contrasted a verse from the KJ version (antiquated!) bible with his own modern (' a parody but not a very gross one') version.

"I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

Doubtless someone can provide a much better modern version but why bother?

Amazing that the original was the product of fifty people.

I'm not a native English speaker. To me, your first excerpt is much more understandable: I can automatically form the abstraction given these examples, whereas the second excerpt, although more general, is honestly harder to "hammer" into the brain. But I think that is because the second version is not just modern language, but also more abstract.

That was the point being made by both Orwell and parent commenter. The KJV is, for all it's archaisms, incredibly 'punchy' in a way that really can't be improved on. You could try, but you're only going to ever get a fraction of the way there, and in the end would only amount to a revision that nobody would accept.

Try your hand at easier fare, like say Shakespeare.

I see, thanks for the clarification.

I agree that this is what's being expressed, but I think I'd have an easier time revising KJV than Shakespeare. The pieces of translated bible that I have read didn't come anywhere near the complexities of Shakespeare. I don't think anyone would read/accept my revision, but I think it would be more beautiful in the eyes of most English professors.

"I returned. Under the sun I saw that the race was not for the swift, nor the battle for the strong, nor the riches for the wise men; time and chance affected all."

Not a major departure, and it could certainly be improved upon, but it's more to the point while still showing the reader rather than just stating the point, and the repetitious bit in the middle has been paired down to three parts with a slight variation on the last repetion upending expectations while not going so off the rails that there is no particular expectation.

There is a lot of crufty old stuff in Shakespeare, the stories are re-written pretty much yearly pretty much all omitting this stuff. I'm not a part of that world, but I'd be pretty surprised if theater companies that regularly run Shakespeare plays weren't revising the plays in that regard.

I believe that Shakespeare had more rhyme and meter than the bible. I also believe that text with more rhyme and meter is more difficult to edit without damaging these qualities, while text with less rhyme and meter has less to damage by these metrics and is therefore easier to edit. Do you agree with both of these statements? If so, do you think the bible has other complexities Shakespeare lacks which outweigh the complexity added by Shakespeare's rhyme and meter? If so, what are those qualities?

Oh dear I'm certainly not prepared to dive that deep into the topic. I was more referring to the content rather than the specific qualities of the verse. The Bible is surprisingly hard to compress. Shakespeare, well you can make two hour long movies that hit all the story beats.

As a counterpoint, I'm a native English speaker, and I found the second much easier to understand, whereas the first seemed like a maze.

As a former hard-core Bible reader, but never a fan of the KJV, I found the first easier. But I think that could be because it follows closely to the patterns of the Zen Buddhist literature I'm reading lately. 'cuz it does read kind of like a Zen koan.

I don't think it's weird, in fact I think it's very interesting and telling of the world we live in. After all you could make the same argument for the Bible in Latin, why did the catholic church stick with it up until less than a century ago? And let's not even mention the Quran or Vedic Sanskrit.

The USA is now the world's superpower, English is its language and it's become the de-facto lingua franca of the world, a new Latin. But all that is fresh and new, in the grand scheme of things. Religions and cultures call for relics, for heritage, for proofs that there's something greater than a sum of people living in the same place at the same time.

The King James Bible is one of these artifacts. It's the one true bible for our Anglocentric world and like the Latin of the catholic church it's probably going to outlive the language it's been written in by a long margin (unless of course the USA manage to collapse before that and some other civilization takes over).

Besides that, there's clearly a certain fascination for overly formal and/or outdated English in the American psyche. Look at how Received Pronunciation is so popular in American media (especially in fantasy, but not only) even though it's effectively only used by a small minority of mostly British and Indian speakers.

I grew up on the KJV so for me it's a very powerful cultural touchstone, just as much as Shakespeare with which it is roughly contemporary.

For me the atheist/rationalist view and the mythical/spiritual view are two poles of my psychological constitution. They are opposed, yet indivisible like the poles of a magnet. I feel as though I wouldn't be my whole self without either. The Bible, the Greek myths, Norse mythology and the King Arthur stories and all foundational cultural touchstones for me. Their influence is everywhere, and I don't need to be a believing Christian to appreciate the influence of the Bible, any more than I need to believe in Zeus and Odin to appreciate the cultural contribution of their mythologies.

A lot of anomalies invoke Christian religious sentiment in our culture, I’ve been around co-workers who simply had no idea what people were talking about

There was yet another preacher convinced they had mathematically determined when the rapture would be and that it was “surprisingly” a nearby upcoming date and his flock was selling their possessions. Watching my co-workers giggle after the explanation was entertaining.

But you can really be out of the loop

Could someone please explain to a non-English speaker why is it considered correct (in non-religious context, as many of the commenters here do) to write "the bible" instead of "the Bible" and "new testament" instead of "New Testament"? Aren't they proper names of the books? We don't say "the art of computer programming" instead of "The Art of Computer Programming" when we reference Donald Knuth's book, do we? Looks like there is some English language rule that I don't understand.

English also has a specific convention for spelling titles: https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_titl...

That link says the correct form is The Bible:

> Titles should be written in title case. This means only using capital letters for the principal words. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions do not get capital letters unless they start the title. For example:

> The Last of the Mohicans

But the article is not necessarily part of the title.

E.g.

> Bible scholar N.T. Wright says ...

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

Because this is an informal context and capital letters aren't all that meaningful in english

It wouldn't be weird at all to say "the art of computer programming by donald knuth"

It would be incorrect, but it would not be weird because we have unfortunately gotten lazy in our writing.

It could also be dismissal of their importance like not capitalizing "god" when referring to the entity known as such. Capitalization may allow a reader expecting it to infer which god is being referred to by name vs the description like Zeus is a Greek god, God is the christian god. I'd prefer it if variables weren't reused though.

Lowercase is wrong for these titles, they should be title case. Anyone who writes them lowercase is likely being lazy.

Does anyone know whether or not the language of the king James bible was typical of early 17th century English?

I heard that the translators use archaic expressions no longer commonly used in 1604 for stylistic reasons.

Compare it with Tyndale’s translation from about eighty years earlier (normalising the spelling of both), and, where they vary, Tyndale’s is normally the easier to read and understand. Tyndale intended that the ploughboy could understand the Scripture, while the KJV was “appointed to be read in Churches”.

(Most of the time they do not differ substantially, as the KJV drew most heavily from Tyndale’s translation.)

IIRC Tyndale was burned at the stake for his efforts.

Strangled to death and then burned, apparently.

For those not familiar with the period, Tyndale was executed during the reign of Henry VIII, while England was still at least nominally a Catholic nation (Henry's relationship with Catholicism is complicated). At that time Catholicism was opposed to translations of the Bible into local languages and translation was a politically and theologically charged issue. In this case, Tyndale translated certain terms in such a way as to undermine various Catholic principles and doctrines. For example using the term Congregation, implying the Bible was referring in certain passages to the Christian community as a whole, instead of the term Church which was associated specifically with the institutions of Catholicism.

King James was a protestant ruling about 70 years later, so had no problem with an English language translation, and in fact this was an opportunity to cement the basic language of protestant Biblical interpretation in the minds of the English people.

>>> King James was a protestant ruling about 70 years later I think it was people's doubts about his protestantism that led him to commission the bible - James' mother was Mary Queen of Scots, a catholic who was executed for a supposed plot to depose his predecessor Elizabeth I.

You can understand why, the meaning of the NT goes pretty hard against established religion as it cuts priests out of the loop entirely. It also has a very strong, communist/shared wealth message.

If you're rich or powerful and don't believe it would be anathema. Letting just anyone read that ...

Compare https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/08/gay-rites-are-civil-ri...

There's also a whole lot of "give unto Cesar what is Cesar's," and some "come on guys, don't start the Jewish-Roman wars, they're going to be a bad idea." I don't see why rich people should be bothered by that.

There's no comparison in the degree, but Manning, Assange, and Snowden are perhaps recent examples of radical who argued that individuals should be able to read the raw source text used to justify the structure of society (not to mention wars in the M.E.).

However, for contrast, consider also John 11:47–53; the leaders both political (chief priests) and religious (Pharisees) were considering Jesus and his teachings to threaten the relatively stable situation they had with the Romans—that was a key reason they claimed in why they sought his death.

Yes, it took a number of phrases from previous English translations.

By way of comparison, the translation occurred entirely during Shakespeare's adulthood. Othello and Macbeth are thought to be written in the early years of the translation.

Shakespeare certainly had different linguistic goals and ideals, but they make for a nice contrast.

The KJV does consciously use phrasings which were on their way out in several places. The most notable is hefty use of the singular second-person (thou), which was in decline at the time (somewhat akin to `whom' in modern speech); this was done to distinguish where the original texts used singular or plural second-person.

Thou was still widely used in some regions of the UK in the 80s. Not sure about those areas now.

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

I think the consensus is there can't really be a "best" translation. A quick google led me to this page which matches well the reasoning I've heard from most practicing Christians: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/which-is-t...

There is no consensus since “the most accurate” isn’t a single goal. For instance, you could try to translate word-by-word, but then you’ll lose a lot of idioms. Or one translation might well preserve the poetic nature of a part of Genesis while leaving out the understanding of what specifics the poetry referred to. One commonly acclaimed translation is the ESV, which I’m familiar with and like the translation of, but it certainly has its problems.

I know it's outside of the academic translation studies conversation, but I really enjoyed Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot, which contains dozens of translations of a single French poem, to emphasize how difficult a task translation is, how many different ways of doing it there are, and how many different purposes it can serve.

The NRSV is commonly used by scholars, but there is, of course, no such thing as a "most accurate" translation of the Bible.

Nor indeed of anything, from any language to any other.

My personal preference (for accuracy, anyway) is Thomas Nelson's "The Expanded Bible", which provides alternate and literal translations, as well as important commentary (such as "wind" and "spirit" being the same word in Greek). No deuterocanon, unfortunately!

That is a nice translation available under Bible software based on the SWORD project if I remember correctly. I too like to use that one from time to time.

Any translation has a profound impact on the way the bible is perceived, so perhaps it is worthwhile to look directly at the source.

Take this famous opener in the KJV bible for example:

John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Well just what does it mean by Word? Turns out this is Koine Greek λόγος, logos.

Logos not only means word, but it importantly also means reasoning, order, and logic. Logos has multiple senses that don't translate well into a single, word. This was a big revelation for me.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logos

"reasoning, order, and logic" still make sense to me because I believe in theistic evolution - evolution is basically a tool that God used to get us where we are today.

There is also Pandeism (where basically God ceased to exist because he became the universe). Scott Adam's book God Debris touches on this.

FYI, (I'm not Catholic, but) the Catholic Church today holds that view that Science explains the how, and Religion explains the why. It was actually a Catholic priest that came up with the Big Bang theory.

FYI continued, I believe everyone should be open-minded and respectful. I understand that my beliefs may be wrong (after all not all religions can be right at the same time). I believe people taking either side to the extreme does not help anyone, and I'm glad we can have reasonable, respectful conversations here on HN.

Logos comes from the stoics also.

Thats not correct, anthough many stoics adopted the common term. Its akin saying 'vibrations' today.

What is the cirlejerk around stoicism these days? Is life for coders really that bad?

> I believe everyone should be open-minded and respectful

That would be probably the biggest improvement for mankind since inventions of fire and wheel, but we're unfortunately often far from there. As an atheist/agnostic, the amount of crap I had to (and sometimes still have to) go through is significant.

Almost all religious people interact with me in fashion of 'oh-you-lost-foolish-boy-who-doesn't-get-the-one-and-only-truth-which-is-mine/ours, but-we-shall-be-kind-to-you-nevertheless' to some degree. That's not how respect looks like.

Probably the most respectful behavior was actually from various muslims while travelling, although for them it was sometimes hard to grasp that I can be fully working human being without faith in god (at least in usual sense). Its such an integral part of their existence, more than most Christians these days I believe. Most christians are way too self-righteous, and you can't even talk with them about it because they become immediately deeply offended.

I'm sorry about your experiences.

I think being offended about stuff and judging people isn't exclusive to religion though.

I do wish that everyone would become more intelligent and thus nicer to each other (I believe if people were more intelligent, they would realize they would be better off if they were nicer), but then again, I think humans are inherently flawed and thus we'll still have problems, just of a different variety.

Oh well. We have to make the best of what we can while we're here.

Won't do it justice, but there was a sermon I thought was pretty interesting a couple years ago relating to the passage where Jesus asks Peter if he loves him.

Basically Jesus asks Peter three times whether Peter loves him. And three times Peter says "You know I love you".

Seems like a pretty uneventful passage in English.

Our pastor elaborated a bit and explained that in the original (greek / aramaic, don't remember which), there are several kinds of love.

What Jesus is saying is basically "Do you love me perfectly, the way only God can?"

What Peter is replying is basically "I love you the way that man can, imperfectly."

This happens twice.

The third time Jesus asks "Do you love me imperfectly, the way that a man can?" And Peter gives the same refrain.

Put's a different spin on it since in the first it's just a repetitive exchange, but in the second form it's an instance of God coming down to man's level.

Thought that seemed really interesting.

The New Testament was written in Greek, though the original dialogue would have been in Aramaic. In the Greek version, Jesus uses the verb ἀγαπάω (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἀγαπάω#Ancient_Greek) and Peter replies with the verb φιλέω (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/φιλέω#Ancient_Greek).

My “to-read” list is too long, so I haven’t actually read it, but personally I’m interested in “The Art of Bible Translation” by Robert Alter.

Heard an interview with this guy on NPR about a year ago [1].

He made some comment about how he tried to make it more poetic than most translations. Then proceeded to give several examples where his translation sounded distinctly more awkward to me than the text he was replacing. For example, replacing "anoint" with "moisten" and "soul" with "life breath".

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scho...

I don’t remember how I learned about that book at all. But I appreciate having another data point about the author. Thank you.

Um "anoint" and "moisten" have very different meanings in English.

Robert Altar's book "The Art of Biblical Poetry" is mandatory reading for understanding Old Testament poetry. Hebrew poetry is based primarily on parallelism, as opposed to meter or rhyming as in English. Wonderful part about that is that parallelism, as opposed to rhyming or word-plays, translates well across languages.

I’ll put that on my “to-read” list as well. Thank you.

> most accurate translation of the bible into English?

It's not really possible to do that. First of all many of the Hebrew words have multiple meanings, and all the meanings are intended.

So how do you translate that? Pick one for the main translation, and add notes maybe on alternate meanings? Some translations do that.

But there's more. Jews have a long history of what the words in the bible mean, but Christians don't. So when Christians translate the bible they will do so in a way that's different from what Jews do.

Now you have a complicated question to answer. Who's right? Who has the correct translation? Christians will typically go by their best understanding of the Hebrew, but Jews will use their tradition.

Next you have questions of intent. Take an idiom in English - if you translate it to another language it makes no sense. So what do you do with similar situations? Translate word for word? Try to understand that intent? How do you do that? Use the Jewish tradition on the intent? Something else?

In summary: If your translation doesn't have an associated commentary almost as long as the main text you can be pretty sure it's not going to be accurate.

Not only is there to such consensus, but there is an important (important beyond religious issues) lack of consensus of what is the most accurate text to be translated.

Modern societies weren't the first to find absurdities and contradictions in holy texts. Early scholars decided to search for the "actual" underlying meaning. For if the gods are infallible, and failures in the text must be human failures trying to translate their gods' word into lowly human expression. In christianity this "hermeneutic" scholarship laid the groundwork for modern linguistics, hermeneutics and semiotics.[1]

As for translations: I was surprised to learn that the biblical supposed prohibition on homosexuality dates in the English bible as far back as...1946. [2]. Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hermeneutics

[2] https://medium.com/@adamnicholasphillips/the-bible-does-not-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions#Pol...

>Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages

That's not what your [3] says.

>Nevertheless, Historian John Boswell argued that Adelphopoiesis, or brother-making, represented an early form of religious same-sex marriage in the Orthodox church.

>Alan Bray saw the rite of Ordo ad fratres faciendum ("Order for the making of brothers") as serving the same purpose in the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

John Boswell died of AIDS. No mention of how Alan Bray died, but he was also homosexual. Hardly impartial sources.

I don’t particularly see how how this person died has a bearing on what he said.

Heterosexuals also have relevant biases. And your statement regarding John Boswell's death is crass and offensive.

The prohibition on homosexual intercourse is ancient. What your [2] says is that the word "homosexuality" did not appear in an English Bible until 1946, which is unsurprising, since the word didn't even enter the English language until the end of the 19th century.

Also your [2] is highly eisegetical.

Just to be clear, the oldest texts unambiguously condemns male-on-male sex under penalty of death:

"If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."

(NIV translation https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+20%3A...)

The translation just doesn't use the specific word "homosexuality" which would be misleading and anachronistic anyway. The modern idea about homosexuality is about being attracted to persons of the same sex. Leviticus doesn't concern itself about any of that, it condemns the specific act of two men having sex.

You can argue that the Bible doesn't condemn sex between women though.

Male on male sex was also a fact of life across many Christian communities, including/especially with monks, eunuchs, and other segregated communities, and people were certainly not frequently put to death for this. You can look up medieval crimes and punishments around the 12th century I think for a decent record of this.

Note I am being super reductive, lmk if you want better sources.

I'm just pointing out the biblical prohibitions against male-on-male sex is not a recent invention as the GP comment suggested.

Of course people did it anyway.

The bible prohibits many things that never really took root as social mores; I think the transition into society is super fascinating and arguably is an invention of sorts.

Interesting that you chose a modern translation (1973). I just randomly scrolled to another (the orthodox jewish bible) and it says no such thing: "If an ish also lie with zachar, as he lieth with an isha..." So I don't think you can say "just to be clear"

I am neither gay nor part of any religion so I don't have a dog in this fight. But I am interested in hermeneutic philosophy, translation, and, separately, the nature of disagreement.

> "If an ish also lie with zachar, as he lieth with an isha..."

What does that mean then?

The Douay-Rheims translation is the most accurate. You can directly reconstruct the latin[1] from it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harv...

The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin vulgate, which is itself a translation of the earliest Greek/Hebrew texts into Latin. The vulgate itself is imperfect, and the Douay-Rheims is more like a translation of a translation, so I wouldn't call it the "most accurate"

But Greek is the original language of the NT...

And there's definitely translations directly into English and other languages from Greek...

That's a question that will invoke a lot of passionate (and different) answers in the right circles.

The NASB is probably the best word for word one.

I haven't looked into it, but this might be interesting to you: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-tra...

The NET bible has very extensive translation notes. Basically anytime something is even slightly ambiguous there's a note with information on what the ambiguity is and why they went with the translation they went with.

https://www.artscroll.com/Products/STOH.html

There's a reason traditional Jews read the five books of Moses in the original Hebrew (and why I was raised to be fluent in Hebrew, and also studied Aramaic, in addition to the Yiddish we used for daily conversation at home and the English I used outside in the United States).

Do you still have occasion to speak Yiddish?

Sure! When I'm hanging out with Hasidim.

Short story: it’s complicated. But if you want to read up on something really fascinating about using technology to get the most accurate translation, look into CGBM: https://www.uni-muenster.de/INTF/Genealogical_method.html

Look into the Peshitta Bible. Whilst Greek manuscripts have come and gone. The Peshitta has remained untouched as far back as it goes.

Fair warning: Brace yourself.

It sounds on-topic enough. After years of being a Christian and reading and studying a number of Bibles and studying a bit of Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek (in order to read the source material, even if it's just to study simple words or phrases) I've got a few translations that are noteworthy.

The most noteworthy for me is the Cepher Bible[0]. This one is pricey, but it covers everything I've seen and liked from the other Bible translations I will list. It restores the Aleph Tav throughout the Old Testament, which is all over the Bible and ommitted in basically all mainstream Bible translations. The significance of the Aleph Tav can be understood when you read the New Testament where Jesus in Revelation says "I am the Alpha and Omega" well this translation in Greek makes no sense, but if you take it to be "Aleph and Tav" and that He indeed said this to Hebrew Israelites, he is literally saying that He is the scriptures of the Old Testament, which flows with other claims such that He fulfilled the Old Testament. It's worth investigating. There's other things such as the mathematical error in Matthew being fixed up, which is a result of a mistranslation from Aramaic to Greek (check out Shem Tovs Matthew, considered to be the Original version of Matthew which was written in Hebrew not Greek!). There's other things like pointing out (and if you study that the New Testament was really written in Aramaic and then translated to Greek, not a popular thing, but if you do, you'll hear of some of these changes) that the whole phrase about a rich man getting to heaven is like a camel going through the eye of a needle was actually written in Aramaic to say it is like a ROPE going through the eye of a needle! Meaning they have to take apart all the different threads surrounding their soul, so they can fit through, or become humble, after all, you wont take your gold nor jewelry with you when you die.

Then there's The Scriptures by ISR[1]. This one attempts to restore the names of God by showing them in Hebrew form, and the name of Jesus (Yeshua) in Hebrew as well. It also restores some of the names of different characters throughout the Bible similar to what the Cepher does.

There's the HallelYah Scriptures[2] which seems to be really closely related to The Scriptures by ISR. This one's a little more extreme about restoring some names, and even more words, they also do not put any words in red like a number of Bibles because they found it 'too religious'.

There's also the Aleph Tav Scriptures[3], which last I checked was only the Old Testament, but I believe the author's worked on the New Testament as well. I've written about the Aleph Tav in the former paragraph about the Cepher, if you really want to understand the Aleph Tav, this Bible is going to take you deep enough.

Then for just plain regular reasing the CSB (formerly HCSB) is my personal choice. It's something you can read to people in a Bible Study who aren't interested in the depth of the scriptures. I wont link to this one since it's mainstream but one thing I do appreciate from them is the fact that usually in the front of their Bibles they will have a chart explaining where "Lord", "Lord God" and "God" come from in regards to Hebrew. There's too many Bibles that don't clear this up and it becomes confusing to follow the text, they also point out some other things.

[0]: https://www.cepher.net/

[1]: https://isr-messianic.org/publications/the-scriptures.html

[2]: https://www.halleluyahscriptures.com/

[3]: https://alephtavscriptures.com/

One final note: You can also get the app for the Cepher, they have a free version without some books that are not even in Catholic bibles.

I leave one final note for anybody wanting more from the Bible as a fellow Christian / from a Christian perspective: scripture is revealed more than anything by God. So pray before you read. Some of my best readings have resulted from prayer.

>"I am the Alpha and Omega" well this translation in Greek makes no sense

It makes perfect sense; alpha and omega were the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet at the time. It's equivalent to the modern English phrase "A to Z".

Makes more sense to a Greek than an Israelite maybe. But it loses its deeper meaning where He once again calls Himself the Word just like how the Gospel of John starts.

Edit: When you see how often the Aleph Tav is in the Old Testament. It is insane. It is all over. And it has deep meaning when studied further. It is even in the first verse of Genesis.

The Aleph Tav gets even deeper when you study the Paleo / Pictographic Hebrew:

https://www.cepher.net/what-is-the-aleph-tav.aspx

I’m personally a fan of the New World Translation [1]. It was first released in English, but has since been released in about 160 other languages as well.

[1]: https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/

Is that the Jehovas Witness translation? The word Jehova is itself a mistaken translation.

It agrees with the Byington translation, as well as early King James versions and many other translations in that respect.

But the most interesting testament to the accuracy of the NWT, I think, is that it uses parallel translations of texts from the era in languages other than Greek and Hebrew (for example Sumerian) that have definite article. This means that scriptures that are ambiguous due to the lack of grammatical constructs in Greek, are accurately represented. For example, John 1:1 reads “the word was a God” rather than “the word was God”.

The same constructs elsewhere are assumed in most translations based on context, but modern context is based on doctrine, and doctrine is uninteresting for literary science.

NWT apologists often fail to mention that the Byington translation was published exclusively by Watch Tower until the copyright expired. I personally suspect they published it for the sole reason of justifying translation errors in the NWT.

> The same constructs elsewhere are assumed in most translations based on context, but modern context is based on doctrine, and doctrine is uninteresting for literary science.

Context determines meaning. If you discard context you cannot translate documents accurately, in any language. The NWT has the worst of both worlds. It discards the context of the original document in order to support doctrine. This can be seen in John 1:1. The language is not particularly ambiguous. https://carm.org/john-1-1-word-was-god

Matt Slick, the author of that article, is one of the worst Bible commentators you’ll find. He has zero credibility and does not understand Greek grammar. The NWT is correct and does not discard the context, which says that the Word was “with God”, and therefore could not be God.

John 1:1 is one of the easiest verses to translate, yet most translations get it wrong because they are biased towards the Trinity or Oneness doctrines.

I don't know about the New Testament, but I'd recommend Robert Alter's The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary for the Old Testament.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN5HWWX

I studied Greek, Hebrew, and Bible translation for an undergrad, so I'll toss my two cents in.

Accuracy depends on what your aiming for. There are two schools of thought on modern english translations, dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence.

Formal equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the linguistic and syntactical features of the original languages and will often prefer to leave ambigous language or difficult readings as they are. Sort of a 'window' into the original language. The English Standard Version is probably the best representative of this perspective.

Dynamic equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the affect and intention of the original languages, and so will often remove ambiguities, paraphrase passages, and make translation choices that limit alternative readings. The New International Version is both the most popular and pioneering translation in this regard.

Which is why most Christians (I know, in UK) use several translations. I go with NIV, NASB, MSG and if construing particular words will use blueletter to look at Greek/Hebrew.

If you want to aim for the epic feel of, say, Tolkien, try the New English Bible (“NEB”) from the dynamic equivalence school, which reads like literature and formats poetry as poetry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Bible

Tolkien was at Oxford in 1925 - 1959, and wrote The Hobbit and LOTR during that time frame.

NEB was kicked off in Oxford and Cambridge in 1946.

Donald Knuth made his own translation (of some part of the Bible): https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html

Read the book “Truth in Translation” by Jason BeDuhn[1]. He examines, IIRC, 7 different Bible translations and shows why many have translated specific passages in a biased manner. And he more or less declares a “winner”, with some caveats. It’s a really good, down-to-earth read that’s not too technical in terms of language discussion.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Translation-Accuracy-Translatio...

Do religious groups in the US, specifically, Christians, talk about the history of the King James Bible? Why is it, uh, trusted by so many, when stuff like this hints at a storied construction?

That's a great point. There's some much arguing about what different passages in the bible mean, and what get's lost in those conversations that the passages in question are already a derivative source. The thinking must go something along the lines that everyone involved in each step must have been tasked by god himself with the wisdom to faithfully transcribe his wishes... or something of that sort.

That's not lost in the conversation. "Churches and religious groups" vary widely of course, but a core part of seminary training (which most Christian traditions require before someone can be a pastor) is learning enough Greek and Hebrew - and specifically learning how to study the original written language - so that you can consider translations skeptically.

Further, it's very common for Sunday services to consist of the entire church making their way through a book of the Bible together, with the pastor bringing an analysis of the text each week centered on this whole idea of different translations and what did the original mean in the context of its time.

Even among the laity in a church, most Bible reading and study consists of comparing multiple translations and commentaries by scholars that debate what the original context and meaning was.

I had a fellow student in a Latin course whose church taught that the KJV translators were divinely inspired in the same way as the original authors (the original inspiration of the Bible being a very common Christian doctrine). However, that's not a common view among English-speaking Christians, nor even necessarily a majority view among people who prefer the KJV.

Apparently there are at least five reasons that people give for preferring the KJV:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement#Varia...

Then you have the crazy end of things, accusing NIV of being satanic: http://www.av1611.org/niv.html

https://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Bible/1611_authorized_king_j... (this site is also a good example of how the old internet isn't dead. It's just that the internet we think of today has grown to around it, dwarfing it in size)

Here’s a translation of the US constitution into Spanish: https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/h...

Can you argue about what the law is based on that translation? R is the exercise meaningless merely because you’re not reading it in the original English.

What if the English translation was lost to history. Is trying to engage in constitutional interpretation on the remaining Spanish text fruitless?

I don't think it's widely trusted. Translations are hotly debated, but I think most people consider the KJV to be a poor quality translation, besides the fact that even if it had been a quality translation at some point the language has changed enough that it's no longer very helpful for a modern english speaker seeking to understand the original greek and hebrew texts.

Something subtle that's easy to miss is the fact that the original text did not contain quotation marks, and neither does the KJV. There are places where by introducing quotation marks, the translator necessarily must make decisions which the original text does not support.

Take for example one of my favorite sayings, Matthew 24:15-16.

ESV: "So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."

KJV: When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

The quotation marks in the ESV suggest that the parenthetical phrase "Let the reader understand" was spoken by Jesus. But in actuality, it is ambiguous whether that was spoken by Jesus, or whether it is a note by Matthew. Was it Jesus telling us to understand Daniel, or Matthew telling us to understand Jesus? And if it was the former, did Jesus say it knowing that someday it would be read (even though no stenographers were present) and would thereby gain a double meaning?

My personal and completely unfounded speculation on the gospels is that they're a script for actors. (Thus the confusion about whether certain names refer to two people or one person appearing multiple times. It's one person but different roles.) So that part of the verse is a stage direction for the performer.

Hah, I like that. If you need some foundation for it, you could always quote Paul: "You are to imitate me, just as I imitate Christ." (1st Corinthians 11:1)

That's probably a bit too on the nose. The idea came to me while watching a Michael Wood documentary[1] and seeing a street performer in it. The way he told his story reminded me of the way the Bible was written.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272979/?ref_=tt_urv

There's a good summary of KJV Christians on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Only_movement

I'm not an expert, but out of the five groups of KJVO Christians listed, only the "KJV as New Revelation" group would seem to be troubled by any of this. If you believe that e.g. the KJV was a translation based on providentially-preserved Greek and Hebrew texts, you wouldn't be surprised that it took work and multiple drafts to translate.

It's too fragmented for that to really be a first class concern. "Christian" is a broad class that encompasses LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, etc. We have no shortage of controversy and conflict to debate about.

On this particular topic, I'd be more interested in the Italian opinion.

Why Italian?

The Vatican probably?

so, uh, I thought the kjv was... not recognized as valid by the catholic church? Like, the KJV was authorized by the church of England, a, uh, rather different body from the Vatican. I thought a lot of what made the KJV important was that it was early in that split.

I mean, i suppose that the Vatican would probably still have a pretty interesting opinion on it.

Another commenter elsewhere in this thread just mentioned the Preface to the KJV, which includes some specific criticism of the Catholic Church (referred to as "our chief adversaries") for (at the time) disapproving of vernacular language editions of the Bible.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C....

I misunderstood a detail here: this section admits that the Catholic Church sponsored an English translation (the Douay-Rheims Bible) but complains that this translation was itself made in response to pressure from Protestants, and that Catholics were expected to seek permission from church authorities in order to read it. So I probably shouldn't have said "disapproving of" but rather something like "grudgingly permitting" or "restricting access to".

I actually had no idea that the catholic church permitted an english translation so early.

It's not that that the KJV is not "valid". It's that it's not recommended over the Catholic version.

The Catholic version contains the "deuterocanonical" books of the Old Testament.

https://bustedhalo.com/ministry-resources/why-doesnt-the-cat...

PS. [mentioned in the article] Apparently the original KJV did include the deuterocanonical books, but they were not considered canon. The Puritans and non-English protestants were the first to omit them entirely.

Because they have the most influence on things "Christian" and the best historical material.

I can tell by your your response that you are not a Christian.

Roman Catholic raised, agnostic. Irish descent and dissolutioned might be more interested in the historical source than the destination.

Similar. Fascinating to me was that some Catholics consider the "Roman" a bit of slur. But to me it was a common, unremarkable description.

Your profile says "greybeard", "skeptic" and "computers" so probably VERY similar backgrounds. Skimming your comments now to confirm :)

Edit: Early, but see Apollo/HP, SunOS/Solaris already. Small world. Any chance of early 1990s Linux, Kermit, Windows packet drivers, KA9Q, Unicos, Mosaic, AT&T 3B2, Pyramid OSX, Usenet, UUCP, C, Perl, TCL, etc?

All those and more. Except for the 3b2. Not much Tcl.

Karnac says you're 54ish and from the Northeast US or Ireland or maybe UK ;)

I suspect not US, which makes the shared experience more interesting, as the world in general wasn't particularly very global at the time, yet we have a remarkably shared experience (I'm EU born, US bred). Yay early (late 80's / early 90's) Internet.

This is one of those rare HN moments that I wish more would notice.

What is karnac? A brief websearch was not enlightening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnac_the_Magnificent

> This is one of those rare HN moments that I wish more would notice.

Sorry to cut in... but I concur. Sometimes you read comment that makes you think 'wow this person is so similar to me!' but it's a single comment in the middle of a thread and that connection ends up being fleeting.

Hacker News' de-emphasis on Users (i.e. no avatars or extensive profile, or direct messaging) is one of its strengths as it forces the focus into the public discussions; but it can also be frustrating when you do stumble over a like minded person.

Personally, I'd like to see a sanctioned way to build on the HN community via other more real-time platforms, which ultimately could lead to proper friendships with real-life meet-ups etc.

Yeah, I'm a dreamer, I know.

Um not sure about all of those being "technically" "Christian"

Curious why you think that. From my POV, they are all very "Christian".

From the perspective of any Protestant or Catholic, LDS and Jehovah’s Witness are not Christian churches.

In general, outside of their circles, those two are considered heretical cults.

Protestants and Catholics generally disagree on many doctrinal things, but they agree on that.

I think for some the issue is that if you consider the Bible to be absolute and without error, then the logical conclusion is that the first available translation is the right one and you can't have others that conflict. If, say, NIV conflicts with KJV in some way, then if said that the NIV was right it means the KJV is wrong, and for some people that's yanking out a key pillar of their epistemology.

Another aspect of it is that the modern translations are all copyrighted, whereas KJV is public domain. One criticism I've come across of modern translations is that sometimes they use convoluted ways of saying something just because they don't want to be accused of plagiarizing some other modern translations, and there are only so many ways to write the same sentence. I'm not sure if that's a real issue that Bible translators actually worry about, but it's at least plausible.

> I think for some the issue is that if you consider the Bible to be absolute and without error, then the logical conclusion is that the first available translation is the right one and you can't have others that conflict.

If you considered that the Bible as originally revealed was absolute and without error, that would absolutely not demand the conclusion that the first translation into your language from intermediate texts was therefore “the right one”. In fact, it would (given the inherent act of interpretation in translation) lead to suspicion of any translation from the original (see Islam and translations of the Quran.)

Sure, you can believe that the original text was correct but the KJV is not. I guess what I meant by "The Bible" is "The Bible in English".

As a practical matter, few people know the Greek and Latin and Aramaic of the original texts, so to question the validity of the English Bible is to question the version they know and trust, that is accessible to them. If you question KJV, that opens up some other questions: if the KJV is wrong, which translation is right? Is any translation right? It seems like a hard question for which no answer is arbitrary and unclear and any wrong answer could have unknown bad consequences, and many of these people believe strongly that humans are very fallible when it comes to moral and religious discernment.

One defense against making the wrong decision is to make no decision, and simply to abide by the traditions of your upbringing.

Personally, I don't think Christianity is such a weak system of thought that it all comes crumbling down if you yank out the doctrine of inerrancy of scripture (such as it is available to them), but I can sympathize with those who don't want to try it and find out.

>If you considered that the Bible as originally revealed was absolute and without error

I've never understood how anyone could believe this. Every single book of the Bible has lots of ancient versions, none of which are exactly the same as any other.

Most of the serious Christian apologists these days don't have that kind of faith in the KJV, but rather on the originals as first written by the authors. In fact they don't consider the KJV to be anywhere near the best since much earlier manuscripts have been found since the KJV was translated. William Lane Craig writes about a lot of this in his books. I highly recommend his book "reasonable faith" for a look at the most scholarly philosophical apologetics (from a Christian view). Just don't accept his explanations of atheist thought because it's a giant straw man.

For atheist thought go with David Kyle Johnson for philosophy, Bart Ehrman for biblical history, and Richard Dawkins for science. Sam harris does a ton of philosophy too which is good, just not my favorite.

I do struggle with biblical literalism of any stripe, after learning just a little about the construction of it. It's always been a moving target, long before the KJV, with parts added and removed for political reasons at various convocations of bishops. Not to mention the many layers of translation, the inconsistencies from the Old Testament that are quoted when convenient and disavowed when not.

In some ways, I can better sympathize with a Mormon true believer or a Scientologist. Their prophets might be absurd and possibly venal, but Christianity is extensively well-documented as a political construction.

I'm Christian, KJV in all uses I've seen of it is simply the "default" version. It's not treated as more correct than any other version.

I grew up in a religious family and community and I asked the same question! There was a debate among people about which version to use and anything but the King James version was wrong.

Why?

Because of Revelation 22:18,19

18. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

19. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

So my first question was: The King James version is a translation, so it had to be changed at some point. No translations are perfect!

Their responses to the question ranged from: King James didn't experience those plagues, he must have translated it correctly, ... to the King James version is the first one translated into English and since The Living Bible or another version is different, then King James must be right as the change happened between the time of the King James and the subsequent translations.

I believe that taking the warning to mean the entire modern collection called the Holy Bible, and not strictly the book of Revelation, is up to you. It does say 'book of prophecy' which clearly narrows it down, but it's all you.

I believe that teaching this interpretation to others (that it means our entire Bible, which didn't yet exist in one book when that was written) also constitutes adding to or removing from the things in Revelation, violating the same warning.

I was remembering Ed Decker explaining that Joseph Smith arbitrarily edited bits all over the Bible. He was explaining this as a problem in the context of that warning from Revelation, when a Mormon pointed out that it was strictly about the book of Revelation, so Ed simply rolled out a list of edits that were made to Revelation.

I didn't piece it together at the time (yesterday). I think I was responding to the supposed case where "someone" thinks it means that, or not, but parent didn't actually say that so it doesn't really matter. I think I strawmanned a thing for no real raisin and I think it's because I'm violating my own warning: someone else's stupidity is a profoundly stupid thing to concentrate on / obsess over. And IRL I'm surrounded. But that's never an excuse... that I consciously & voluntarily got myself into this situation is already a bad sign.

"The Bible" in its current form didn't exist at the time the book of Revelations was written. So clearly it could only be talking about the book of Revelations otherwise the act of compiling the Bible would be violating this warning.

The Living Bible is a paraphrase, not a translation.

There is a small but very convinced group that believes that the King James Bible is "perfect", preserved by God to be the only true scripture for Christians.

This is just my opinion, after many hours of researching this phenomenon myself: They mean well, but they're very wrong. The translators of the King James Bible themselves, specifically and without ambiguity stated in the introduction to the KJV that it's important for scholars to update the texts from time to time to allow current culture to understand what ancient writers meant. There are a lot of archaic words in the KJV that don't mean today what they meant back when it was written, for instance.

I used to work with a KJV-onlyist and I had a few debates with him over lunch about it. I gave him a verse with an archaic word in it, and asked him to explain it. As I expected, he interpreted it using the modern definition which made no sense at all. When I pointed out that I had basically tricked him, he flat out refused to even admit he was wrong.

My take on this find is that it's nice and all, but it's a rather minor 'find' in terms of how useful it will be.

What was the verse?

I wish I could remember it, or even just the word, but it was several years ago. It might have been the word 'prevent' which 400 years ago meant to precede, but I really don't know.

Psalms 119:

I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in thy word.

Versus the NIV's

I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word.

Would be a good candidate

Not OP but Psalm 37:8b[0] is my go to verse for this. I grew up reading, hearing, & memorizing out of the KJV and kind of prided myself in being able to understand that style of English. Even knowing various words & phrases have changed,I still have no idea what they verse would have meant to the original readers. I can look at a modern translation & see what it "should" say,but wow, I just can't get there from the KJV languagefret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

[0] "fret not thyself in any wise to do evil."

I saw a humorous YouTuber (from the US South?) that made comedy from quoting phrases constantly, but in socially ironic moments.. like people doing somewhat embarrassing things at the mall.. things like that.. it was irreverent overall, but for someone who does not know that many verses, to hear so many, but funny .. it was entertaining..

I understand you are not OP.

I am confused as to whether the word "fret" is considered archaic. I'd settle on "used more often 100 years ago" or something similar, but I have doubts and curiosity.

I don't think its archaic but it is certainly not a common word anymore. My primary reason for using that verse though is that it is just impossible to get at the meaning from the modern vantage point. I have no idea how to parse it to make it make say anything like what a modern translation says or even anything meaningful to be honest. Don't worry to do evil? Don't worry about doing evil? Don't do evil while worrying?

> The translators of the King James Bible themselves, specifically and without ambiguity stated in the introduction to the KJV that it's important for scholars to update the texts from time to time to allow current culture to understand what ancient writers meant.

Wow, I don't think I had seen this before. I think you're probably referring to this section:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C...

Or maybe even further

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C...

> Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labours, do endeavour to make that better which they left so good, no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us.

(I didn't realize that the Preface had so much discussion of the history of Bible translation!)

Yeah the KJV was and is still a very good translation, and it was very controversial in it's day. The Catholic church didn't want the Bible in a "vulgar" or common tongue or even being able to read the Bible without their approval and guidance. The Latin Vulgate existed for the learned, and those who knew Latin objected also. I think that's why they felt the need to explain why they made the translation.

Just to add, the Douay Rhiems is a Catholic Bible released a few years before the KJV.

What was taught at a USA top-10 University class on the first day was.. Christian teaching can be grouped into two groups.. one interprets the Bible as historical, allegory, divine guidance and ethical wisdom but not literally true, and the second is.. the Bible is literally the Truth of God, end of sentence. The former groups tend to be the better educated, more literate and more capable of critical thinking in a constructive way. Many of the second group do not actually spend that much time reading, or read in groups just in bits.. and the faith and work focus in other areas. The teacher was a Lutheran or Methodist perhaps.. It was a mixed class of students of many origins, and the teacher was pleasant and handled things well.

The origins of prominence of this edition are certainly political, from an English-speaking origin world. Alliance with this edition has something to do with political alliances between sects it seems like, over time.. people fight a lot over just about everything, including this..

> the Bible is literally the Truth of God, end of sentence. The former groups tend to be the better educated, more literate and more capable of critical thinking in a constructive way.

Your taxonomy is too simple. :-)

There certainly are Christians who seem to focus only on verses in isolation, without considering even the context of the surrounding verses, much less the cultural and historical context into which they were written. But there are others who think that taking the Bible seriously requires taking the historical and cultural context into account; that God did speak, but he spoke to a specific set of people in a specific circumstance; so if you want to hear him speak clearly, you have to go back and put yourself in the shoes of the original hearers. People who take this kind of approach are are both "better educated, more literate and more capable of critical thinking in a constructive way", and believe the Bible to be "literally true" -- at least at literally as the author intended it to be taken literally. :-)

> hints at a storied construction?

By the way the process of producing that translation was well documented at the time.

The KJV has greatly influenced modern English. Because of this, many of its passages resonate with people from or descended from the UK, often in a way that they don’t realize.

There is a specific theological movement known as King James Onlyism. Its a minority position and not held among (theologically) liberal or conservative bible scholars. In fact, the KJV version most popular is actually the 1811 Authorized Version, which itself underwent nearly 200 years of revision and updates.

The original translation of the King James, like Luther's German bible, was a monumental work of cutting edge scholarship and had profound social impact. For several centuries leading up to the 16th century no full Greek or Hebrew manuscripts were available for translation.

The main issue with the King James Version is that we have better manuscripts available. The Textus Receptus, which was a truly amazing piece of scholarship at its time, is no longer preferred. Scholars now use an 'eclectic' text, a combination of manuscripts. I believe we have something on the order of 24,000 manuscript fragments of varying length for the New Testament, some even potentially dating to the first century. Modern translators have access to better resources than the KJV translators did.

The King James version is the best version: It has unicorns.

https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=unicor...

"an unicorns"

It's a pity so few people realize that beside all the usual stuff (love or hate it) that society associates with the Bible, the Gospels contain discourses of Jesus which are genuinely brilliant purely in their own right as philosophical works.

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." (Matthew 6:5)

The brilliance exists. Indeed, anyone can witness the psychological nature of influence upon people "born into low social status" and who become docile & obedient from the "word" while disregarding their birth status because just wait until death. :)

People misunderstand that old saying, 'Religion is the opium of the masses'. They think it means religion is meant to pacify and control. And maybe that's what Marx intended it to mean, I don't know. But it has a truer and infinitely more subversive meaning. The words of Jesus will get you high as a kite, if you study them and meditate upon them.

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34)

The reason there's confusion about that quote is it's always without context.

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people"

It's not so much that religion is meant to pacify, but that it does. It is soothing, and makes conditions which may be unbearable without it, bearable, preventing the people from attempting to change the underlying conditions which caused the suffering in the first place.

Thanks for the context! I guess if you kick enough crutches out from under enough old men, maybe one of them will be inspired to become a doctor. I'll take the bearable world, thanks very much!

"The kingdom of heaven is near."

Over in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes has a strong Greek philosophy feel to it. It's quite different from the books around it.

Ecclesiastes is one of the finest works of existential literature ever.

The paper still holds the text after a 400 years. That's some kicking MTBF.

Interesting comment that there is evidence for the translators working independently.

A curious fact is that in 1610 Shakespeare was 46, and in Psalm 46 you will find 46th word from the beginning put together with the 46th word from the end is Shake spear. (Start counting at line 1 excluding the directions and Selah)

that's cool but 1610 doesn't link up to the other numerology, so the first statement is equivalent to "shakespeare was 46 at one point"

> when Ward was still just a young man, he was tapped to be one of the translators of the King James Bible, published in 1611.

I would imagine this meant the translation occurred sometime around then.

The Douay-Rheims is actually a decade or two older and the first English translation, if memory serves.

This discussion is about the King James Version. You seem to be talking about something else.

Tyndale’s was the first printed Bible in English; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Englis... has more information.

Douay-Rheims is a translation from Latin to English. King James is a translation from Hebrew and Greek to English.

But neither translation was the first of their kind. The Wycliffe Bible was translated from Latin in the late 1300s. Likewise, Tyndale started publishing a translation from Hebrew and Greek in 1494.

The article is about the discovery about a piece of paper from one of the King James translators. So it’s the earliest handwritten manuscript from the King James translation effort.

My mother has a copy of the "Breeches" (Geneva) bible, first published in 1557 (sure, hers is a reprint from 1607, regular folk could never afford a first edition). The Douay-Rheims translation was published in 1582.

The King James version might be considered definitive by many, but it's nowhere close to the first English translation. In fact, King James' version was less popular than the Geneva bible and wasn't selling well until His Majesty banned the competition and punished those caught with a copy.

The famous refugees that migrated from England to America in 1620 on the Mayflower carried Geneva bibles, not King James bibles.

I'm ignorant enough to have only read the first five books (Genesis through Deuteronomy), Ecclesiastes, and a scattering of quotes from other books of the bible. I started reading that piece of the old testament after going through some translated Sumerian/Babylonian works and commentary about the relation of the old testament to other pan-Mesopotamian theology, and I feel like it's pretty interesting from that perspective. Yahweh is clearly Enki/Ea with some aspects of Marduk sprinkled in. The flood stories are funny, because in When The Gods Instead Of Man we have a story about a bunch of gods deciding to kill all humans and one god (Ea) deciding to warn the flood hero (Atrahasis) about the flood; when all the other humans die and Atrahasis is the only one sacrificing food to the gods, the other gods realise their mistake and are thankful. In the old testament version they have to tell the same story with only one god, so the same god who wants to kill everybody also wants to save a specific person/family due to their righteousness, rather than as an act of desperation in the face of other gods' foolish plans. That whole sacrificing-food-by-burning-it thing carries over into the old testament too, with god consuming offerings in the tabernacle via flames. It also struck me how human the Sumerian/Babylonian gods were. Before creating humans they had to grow their own food, one of the gods was in charge of controlling a canal. Like, that's some mundane shit. Then you have the old testament being super unsure of how to portray god. Sometimes he seems abstract, he'll appear as a burning bush if he feels like it, sometimes he seems to consume people/offerings in flames, and a couple of times (Moses looking at his back, Jacob wrestling with him) he appears downright human. The book Who Wrote The Bible? has an interesting take on the first five books of the old testament (the "Torah of Moses") being written by at least five separate people/groups and compiled by Ezra the lawgiver. I know that some people think Ezra is entirely mythical, and there are other objections to some details of that book, but I still think it's an interesting take. It claims that the early books often repeat themselves because they're a blending of two earlier narratives meant to unify the people of Israel after a north/south divide. Since one group said that Noah sent out a dove, and one group said a raven, he just does both. There are a lot more examples of things that look like two versions of the same story spliced together. I place no religious significance in the texts, and I haven't cared enough to read more (though I might read through Jeremiah/Baruch's works at some point), but I think it's a fascinating work just due to the age. Ecclesiastes is legitimagely beautiful, and while I wouldn't say it's unparalleled for it's time (props to Lao Tzu) I think it's one of the few works of that era I've been exposed to which I found that beautiful.

Comparison with other contemporary religious practices is a much neglected aspect of lay Bible study. For many people the Old Testament is the only ancient Middle Eastern text they'll ever read.

The Bible is amazing.

I bet Hobby Lobby hires someone to steal this.

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