All my life, my church and school used the NIV (New International Version) translation of the Bible. Granted, that worked for me since it was realtively easy to read and understand. The church we currently attend uses KJV (King James Version). Sometimes the "thees" and "thous" make it hard to understand a verse, but I keep trying. In the last couple weeks, Preacher has mentioned in the sermoms a couple verses that are in KJV but don't appear in NIV. Finally, I took the time to look them up. Whoa! He wasn't kidding! Not that I doubted him, I'm just a see it myself kinda person. Are they in your Bible and what version do you use?
Matthew 17:21- "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."
Acts 8:37- "And Pillip said, 'If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.' And he answered and said, 'I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.'"
What is the significance in leaving these out? What other ones have been left out? If the Bible is supposed to be infallible, why are there these errors? If this error happened in translation, then what is the true translation? Now, I'm not questioning God, I'm questioning the errors of humans. Some friends told me about a couple books that go into more detail about what's missing with the NIV. I plan to get these books and read them before long. The books? If the Foundations be Destroyed- by Chick Salisby and I can't find where I wrote the other one down.
ThePoeTrio Goes To School
7 years ago
5 comments :
Good questions. I'll have to consult my greek version.
From what I know (and it's not too much) the translations are all done by people with pure and good intentions. KJV was commissioned by King James (our church uses this one because it is widely recognized as the closest english translation). His translators tried to produce a product he would like so they didn't get their heads chopped off (see the title page for their shower of praises to win his approval). NIV was similarly translated by a good, God fearing group in an attempt to produce a translation in modern language to make it easier to understand as you noted in your post. I believe all translations contain much truth but all are skewed by personal faith and doctrine models. As we see hundreds of christian churches today have emerged from the very same bible. They all interpret verses to the best of their understanding, thus goes the translating of the bible to english.
One of our beliefs is: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly..." This recognizes that the Bible IS the word of God, but there is never a direct translation from one language to another - translations by man have introduced some degree of man made error. This is why we must rely on the Holy Spirit to direct our understanding and actions.
Brian reads in Spanish sometimes. He's shown me where english and spanish translations don't have the same meaning. Sometimes by the selection of a single word the entire meaning of the verse changes. It is interesting to compare and this solidifies in my mind the need to rely on God to understand the true meaning and include prayer in our scripture study.
You could always study and read it in the original language...got a few years to learn Hebrew, Greek and a few other languages?
I'll be interested to read other comments. :)
I'm with Angie, the "best" of the translations will be those in the original language. Even KJV has it's issues. It's just like religion in General, mans attempt to make sense of the word of God. We try our very best, but even we don't get it "perfect." I think the important thing is that people are reading and studying the Bible, whatever translation it may be. Did you know there is even one for Hawaii? It's called Da Jesus Book!
Oops, capitalizing general clearly shows I need to get away from base more often :)
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