I have another blog which is shared with friends. I wrote this post for that blog, leading me to write it in a certain style aimed more at my friends, but I don't think that that has come out too much, and it should be just as readable (or unreadable :P) as the rest of my posts. Here it is, part one of two:
There are loads of different
opinions, interpretations and translations of the Bible. Not only that,
there are also tonnes of denominations, belief systems, factions and so
on that have arisen from it, and not just Christian ones!
Even
if I was interested in exploring Christianity, how would I know what to
look into? How could I divide the "worth looking into stuff" from the
"definitely without a doubt load of rubbish stuff"?
I
don't know if that's something you've ever thought about. I certainly
have. If you're at all interested, I'm planning on doing some posts on
the matter. The first (the rest of this one), is on which Bible
translations are worth reading (if any)? The second will probably be on
why on earth are there so many different denominations, and what on
earth we're meant to do if we just want to find out what the Bible has
to say without bothering with all the nonsense. I may or may not do some
more after that (hopefully much shorter posts!), based on the reception
of these ones :P
But in case you just can't be bothered to read two massive posts (I probably wouldn't be), the short answer:
-
The most common translations tend to be pretty good, so if you have a
Bible then I wouldn't worry too much about it, what you've got is
probably reliable and true. If you're interested in getting one, I'd
recommend the NIV and ESV translations of the Bible, as they are very
close to the original texts while remaining readable and without the
thees and thous of the King James Bible. These are also the Bibles that
you tend to find in hotels, they're the little red ones the Gideons gave
out in a school assembly once, you probably have one somewhere, or the
ability to get one for free if you want.
-
Don't bother with denominations. Read the Bible, find out for yourself
what it's all about. Anyone can understand it, don't let people convince
you that you don't have what it takes. If there is anything you don't
understand or want to ask someone about, go for it, ask someone! Just
don't listen to people who make stuff up (like purgatory).
So, on with the post.
The Bible - Which One!?!?
There's
the KJV, NIV, ESV, the Message, the New World Translation, the RSV, the
DRB, the CCD, the NABRE, to name but a few. Most of which sound like
the names of special forces and government agencies. And surely this
throws up the question of reliability? How can any of it be true if so
many different translations exist?
[WARNING - Lots of history stuff, might not be that interesting for you, feel free to skip to the ANYWAY below :P] First
of all, we still have many Koine Greek, Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew
manuscripts (the languages that the collection of books and letters we
call the Bible was written in). Many of these are on display in museums -
if you can read the language then you can go and read these manuscripts
for yourselves. It's the accuracy of these manuscripts that really
matter in trying to work out whether or not the Bible is historically
reliable, rather than the accuracy of the English translations people
have made of these manuscripts (of course the accuracy of the
translations we read does matter to us, but I'll get to that later).
Just to justify my last point:
Imagine
I heard a lecture from a Professor Higgs. I then went and told you all
about what he said. Except what I told you was a load of rubbish, it
wasn't what he was trying to say. That wouldn't make what he said untrue
or unreliable, it would just make me false and unreliable. So it is
with the Bible and people's translations of it.
Can we trust that these early (2nd
century BC to 3rd century AD) Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents are
indeed based on the original books and letters? And if so, can we trust
that through paleography, textual criticism, and hundreds of thousands
of hours of study, discussion and work that an accurate representation
of the original books and letters can indeed be made through these? Yes.
And if you use the same methods and critique as you use to determine
the reliability of other historical documents, then overwhelmingly yes.
Take many of the Classical works for example:
"In evaluating the significance of these statistics...one should
consider, by way of contrast, the number of manuscripts which preserve
the text of the ancient classics. Homer's Iliad...is preserved by
457 papyri, 2 uncial manuscripts, and 188 minuscule manuscripts. Among
the tragedians the witnesses to Euripides
are the most abundant; his extant works are preserved in 54 papyri and
276 parchment manuscripts, almost all of the later dating from the
Byzantine period...the time between the composition of the books of the
New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief.
Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a
few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the
New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after
the composition of the original documents." Bruce M. Metzger - Pulled
straight from Wikipedia.
What
that's saying is that the time span between the earliest surviving
copies of part of a widely accepted classical (ancient Greek) writing
are from roughly a millennium or more after the originals were written,
whereas the earliest surviving copies of the New Testament scriptures is
less than a century. In fact, in those terms, the New Testament
Scriptures are actually pretty top notch for ancient documents. Anyway,
this is a lengthy discussion, but well worth looking into (I'm certainly
going to be reading up much more on it. [Be warned, though, it's very
easy to get the wrong idea when you read this stuff - it's a lot more
complicated than you would think (or than I thought, at least). Later
manuscripts are less reliable than earlier manuscripts, but people often
refer to them in one category, so beware people talking about difficult
to qualify statistics like, "There's x number of conflicting words
between y manuscript and z manuscript", when really they've decided to
dump something written by a monk 500 years later which no one uses for
translation with a manuscript written less than 100 years later that
everyone uses.]
There's
loads more that I would love to say. I'm no expert, but I'm aware of
archaeological evidence, non-Christian historians (Tacitus being my main
example), historical standards and so on which would all suggest that
the early manuscripts we have can indeed be used to come up with a
highly accurate Bible. By that I mean a Bible which contains
historically really accurate copies of the letters and books it does
indeed claim to consist of. Whether or not what these original letters
and books had to say is true is a different argument. But I don't want
to consume the whole blog page in one post, so...
ANYWAY
I got carried away, my apologies.
Safe in the knowledge that there's a
good chance the Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents we get our English
translations from are reliable and accurate, we're now left trying to
work out what English stuff is accurate and what isn't.
First
of all, stay away from anything Gnostic, Mormon, Catholic, Coptic,
Jehovah's Witness' (New World Translation) or similar. Their scriptures
often include stuff varying from inaccurate and unreliable to just plain
made up. [WARNING AGAIN] I feel I ought to justify this, but I'm aware this is a pretty long post as it is. So I'll be as brief as possible...
The
Book of Mormon - meant to have been written by someone writing down
what someone else was reading off of a plate that no one else could read
or see (in 1830 by an American). Enough said. [Edit - I am perhaps being a bit harsh here, I am by no means calling believers of the Book of Mormon fools or anything like that, I'll consider writing a fuller and more loving post on this at some point, my apologies if there's any offence!]
Gnostic
Works - Gnosticism is a cult predating Christianity (some argue not)
that adopted and mutated Christian beliefs, it does not align
theologically with the major themes of the Scriptures and their
additional texts are likely made up (e.g. the "Gospel of Mary") ("The Gospel of Mary is an apocryphal
book discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex." and, "Hollis
Professor of Divinity Karen King at Harvard Divinity School suggests
that the original gospel was written in Greek sometime during the time
of Christ. Most scholars disagree with her conclusion..." Again, it's all on Wikipedia so you can see for yourself what I'm saying.)
Additional
Catholic Old Testament Documents - this one is more ambiguous. There
are 7 books present in the Catholic Old Testament which are not present
in the Protestant Old Testament. These books are present in the
Septuagint Greek Old Testament, but not in the more reliable Hebrew Old
Testament, and hence they are not included in the protestant Bible (the
standard of what could be considered part of the Bible had been
increased since the formation of the Catholic Bible). They remain in the
Catholic and some Orthodox Bibles mostly due to tradition, though you
could attempt to make some standpoint on their reliability (this is
without considering whether or not they even make sense historically and
theologically - the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures do). No
reference to these books is made in the entire Old or New Testament, and
though this definitely does not mean that they are false documents,
it's hardly in their favour.
ANYWAY
So we know what to stay away from, but what's good?
Well,
the RSV (Revised Standard Version), the ESV (English Standard Version)
and the NIV (New International Version) are all pretty reliable. They've
had some of the most care and time taken (by countless highly trained
and qualified translators, linguists, historians and scholars) out of
all the English Bible translations. They also tend to show you wherever
the translators are unsure of their translation - footnotes on the page
tell you if they're unsure of a word, or if a verse is in some later
manuscripts but not the original and most reliable ones. Such footnotes
are comfortingly rare, too. The RSV and ESV go as much as possible
towards as word for word a translation of the Bible as possible while
still maintaining English grammar and "readability". The NIV also
adheres to this, but with a slightly greater focus on conveying the
meaning of the original manuscripts, as this can occasionally be lost in
translation.
A lot of people have King James Bibles,
these are ok, but they're not the nicest read (subjective, of course)
and not as accurate as more modern translations.
The Message Bible is not really a
translation of the Bible at all. The author has decided to convey the
meaning of the Bible, without using most of the original Bible words.
This can be really helpful, some bits of the Bible aren't the easiest
read without patience, time and effort, and this could help make more
sense of these. But I'd be very hesitant on calling it a Bible. It begs
accuracy questions, and undoubtedly some of the great depth of meaning
and authority that the actual Bible has will have been lost. Not saying
it's a bad read, though.
So there you go. Sorry for a REALLY long post, but hope it was interesting enough for you to have got this far :P
All the best! Hope you're doing well (:
Matt(hew)
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