Posted on 09/09/2014 7:52:23 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
In 1611, the new British state headed by King James I issued its translation of the complete Bible, "newly translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. By His Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches." The book gave English-speaking Christians a common standard through which they could express their faith. Soon, the spread of printing technology meant that this translation above all became the definitive Bible that believers kept in their houses, and before too long, carried in their pockets.
*snip*
Even thinkers not sympathetic to the Bible's message still praise its language. Famous skeptic H. L. Mencken found in the King James "a mine of lordly and incomparable poetry, at once the most stirring and the most touching ever heard of."
*snip*
No serious study of literature in English can neglect the impact of the 1611 Bible, and that is equally true for any century from the 17th through the 20th. All the great canonical authors are immersed in that Bible, even (or especially) those who reject its fundamental religious message. To put it ironically, the Bible they reject is the 1611 version, which created the literary air we breathe. The King James language informs and inspires American literature, from Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne through Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. It has its special power in African American tradition, from Frederick Douglass through Alice Walker.
(Excerpt) Read more at baylor.edu ...
I agree completely.
However, from the 17th century on, Spanish, French and Portuguese influence around the world began to wane, while Britain's grew. Keep in mind that a century ago approximately one-quarter of the world's population was under British rule, add to that the fact that much of America at the time (especially the wealthier classes) also attended Anglican or Methodist churches and that American law derives primarily from English common law and the net impact of British influence on the world is staggering. As a result, the KJV was spread throughout the world and translated into nearly every language.
The Mayflower Compact is always worthy of consideration, as they were greatly motivated by religious liberty. They brought the Geneva Bible to America.
Very true, but keep in mind that many of the translators of the KJV didn't really care for Calvinists/Puritans any more than they cared for Catholics. As overseer of the translation, Bancroft went out of his way to remove as much Calvinist influence as he could.
Huh... You know, it just occurred to me that the same argument revolves around Cain - whether God's curse upon him made him glow or gave him horns... He (or his seed) is depicted among the profane in both ways... I wonder if that is due to the same translational problem...
“Oh, a priest, theologians, Church fathers, Church doctors, Holy Saints, and much much more.”
I’d suggest skipping those and simply using a decent commentary that includes discussions of the original language and the historical setting. Theologians will argue over almost anything. The Church Fathers were all over the place. In one writing they would say one thing, and in another say another - with the same person writing! Church doctors and Holy Saints were interested in preserving Catholic theology, and cheerfully would do so at the expense of the word of God.
The New Testament knows of two types of human priests - Jewish priests, offering blood and other sacrifices, and every Christian, offering sacrifices of obedience, thankfulness, etc. There were no priests in the New Testament in the Christian Church. Someone who is a priest is, by definition, someone who does not accept the authority of the Word of God over his own theology - so why consult him to find out what the word says, when he doesn’t CARE about what it says?
That was why Wycliffe was so dangerous to the Roman Catholic Church. By getting the word of God into the hands of believers, he allowed the believers to discover they had been lied to about what God wants of them. That is also why they attacked Tyndale, and attacked Luther, and why they still attack the KJV - because letting people read the Word of God leaves the Roman Catholic Church with no foundation.
A church who wants people to “do penance” instead of repent is not interested in the Word of God.
Based on all of the untruths in your last post to me, I am not going to be taking your advice to rely on commentaries. The modern ones especially breed lies and confusion. Although I don’t pretend that my reading of the Fathers is exhaustive, I don’t see the conflicts within Irenaeus, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, etc. Origen and Tertullian are well known special cases.
Ultimately, the teachings of the Church Christ founded, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, provides the guidelines. She is the Bride of Christ, and the Gates of Hell, or Luther or Tyndale, shall not prevail against Her.
Well, if someone refuses to read anything that might not agree with what they already believe, then they certainly won’t ever feel challenged!
Heck, Augustine and Jerome never agreed on the status of the Apocrypha, and even the Council of Trent refused to decide between them! If two Great Church Fathers can’t even agree on if the Apocrypha is good for doctrine or not, then just how useful are Church Fathers? Indeed, how useful is a Council if it can’t decide?
“Ultimately, the teachings of the Church Christ founded, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, provides the guidelines.”
Given the discrepancies between the New Testament and the Roman Catholic Church’s theology, the inescapable conclusion is that Christ did not found the Roman Catholic Church. There were no Christian priests in the New Testament, nor Bishops, nor Pope. There was no evolving doctrine. There was no purgatory nor indulgences. Baptism was for believers, because it makes no sense to baptize someone who cannot or does not believe.
All that is obvious if one simply reads the New Testament by itself. But it can only be discovered by someone who values the Word of God over the Word of Church.
The NAB is horrible.
By that I mean if you have to read it out loud it sounds like stereo instructions. Just horrible.
Now it is a decent translation for accuracy, but it doesn’t flow.
For Catholic Bibles, I like the Jerusalem Bible or the NRSV.
We use the ESV in the LCMS, which is also a good translation that tries to preserve some of the flow of the language.
I once had the pleasure of talking with some one who was a missionary in North Africa. He talked about the old Ethiopian Bibles that date back over a thousand years, and some of the rather interesting idioms the translators had to use to convey the Work in that language. I remember one talking about Jesus rising from the dead which says something like “The jackals did not eat Him”. Which means he was whole and did not rot. They were working in an area with few translations, and were trying to develop a vernacular Bible for the people in conjunction with Catholics, Orthodox, and Russian Orthodox. It presents quite the problem when the people have no words certain things.
I would suggest you both read what Erasmus and the Vulgate said in Romans.
It is rather interesting.
Defending the Vulgate is difficult to do. It is, and was, a botched translation. There is a reason St Augustine, (and others) hated it. They had much better translations than it floating around.
Jerome had a noble goal however. He wanted a Bible in the language of the common people. However, his sources were not the best, and his ego was rather huge.
aThe KJV changed very little...what changed the world was the invention of the printing press. Before the press was invented, virtually no one could read because there were very few books and those books were in the hands of institutions and the wealthy. The KJV came along about the same time as the press and at the same time that people could afford books and learn to read. The KJV was, of course, in English and while there were many latin versiions of the bible available, they were not in the hands of the people because they were prohibitively expensive...Hand written by monks over the centuries, works of art!!!The press, however, opened up the world of books to the general public......that’s what changed the world, not the KJV
Christiaans baptized households full of people.....Confirmation is the sacrament for those who believe....confirms their belief...
“Christiaans baptized households full of people.”
There is no example of baptizing a baby in scripture, nor would it have made any sense to Jews. Baptism by water was for converts, not for infants.
“The KJV was, of course, in English and while there were many latin versiions of the bible available, they were not in the hands of the people because they were prohibitively expensive..”
Actually, that began 100 years before the KJV, when Luther and Tyndale made their translations. However, there was a demand for scripture in the vernacular, which is why Wycliffe’s followers labored so hard to distribute hand written copies. There was a reason the Jews in the days of Jesus knew the scriptures - because it was emphasized. Had the Catholic Church wanted, it could have done so as well. It chose not to do so, because it could not reconcile what was in the scripture with what the church was teaching.
The Word of God spreading around the world changed the world. Things printed...literature, etc...that's nice. But it is the Word of God that changed the world.
Not to interfere but you need to let go of the Catholic thing and put your focus on the Lord.
Everyone knows the translation from Hebrew (shining) into the Vulgate (horns) was responsible for Moses having horns.
Look at Michelangelo's Mose.
Those horns were the fault of the Catholic mistranslation of the Hebrew.
Please stop with the defense of Catholicism and drop to the REAL subject matter...the Cross and the Blood of Jesus.
We are all in this boat together.
It isn't Catholic versus Protestant...it is untruth versus the Truth.
Perhaps that is somewhat exaggerated, but it is documented that the “stipulated “unanimous consent” of the fathers?, requires both terms, even for Mt. 16:18.
Then you have Jerome's tortured argument from Genesis that even numbers denotes uncleaness and destroys prefigures the marriage compact, illustrating how even a Catholic scholar as him can wrest Scripture to support his skewed view.
There were no priests in the New Testament in the Christian Church.
Indeed In her effort to conform NT pastors to her erroneous understanding of the Lord's Supper (“Eucharist”), Catholicism came to render presbuteros” as “priests” (which the RC Douay Rheims Bible inconsistently does: Acts 20:17; Titus 1:5), and sometimes “episkopos,” in order to support a distinctive NT sacerdotal priesthood in the church, but which the Holy Spirit never does. For the word which the Holy Spirit distinctively uses for priests*, is “hiereus” or “archiereus.” (Heb. 4:15; 10:11) and which is never used for NT pastors, nor does the words presbuteros (senior/elder) or episkopos (superintendent/overseer) which He does use for NT pastors mean "priest." Presbuteros or episkopos do not denote a unique sacrificial function, and hiereus (as archiereus=chief priests) is used in distinction to elders in such places as Lk. 22:66; Acts 22:5.
Jewish elders as a body existed before the priesthood, most likely as heads of household or clans, and being an elder did not necessarily make one a Levitical priest (Ex. 3:16,18, 18:12; 19:7; 24:1; Num. 11:6; Dt. 21:2; 22:5-7; 31:9,28; 32:7; Josh. 23:2; 2Chron. 5:4; Lam. 1:9; cf. Mt. 21:13; 26:47) or a high priest, offering both gifts and sacrifices for sins. (Heb. 5:1) A priest could be an elder, and could elders exercise some priestly functions such as praying and laying hands on sacrifices, but unlike presbuteros and episkopos, the two were not the same in language or in function, as one could be a elder without formally being a priest. It is also understood that even the Latin word (sacerdos) which corresponds to priest has no morphological or lingual relationship with the Latin word for “presbyter.”
The Catholic titular use of hiereus/priest for presbyteros/elder is defended by the use of an etymological fallacy , since "priest" etymologically is derived from presbyteros due to imposed functional equivalence.
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and evolving changes in form and meaning. over time, however, etymologies are not definitions. The etymological fallacy here is a linguistic misconception, a genetic fallacy that erroneously holds that the present-day meaning of a word or phrase should necessarily be similar to its original or historical meaning. However, the idea of the NT being a distintive class titled "priests" was a later development. Catholic writer Greg Dues in "Catholic Customs & Traditions, a popular guide," states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions." "When the Eucharist came to be regarded as a sacrifice [after Rome's theology], the role of the bishop took on a priestly dimension. By the third century bishops were considered priests. Presbyters or elders sometimes substituted for the bishop at the Eucharist. By the end of the third century people all over were using the title 'priest' (hierus in Greek and sacerdos in Latin) for whoever presided at the Eucharist." (http://books.google.com/books?id=ajZ_aR-VXn8C&source=gbs_navlinks_s) And R. J. Grigaitis (O.F.S.) (while yet trying to defend the use of priest), reveals, "The Greek word for this office is ‘?e?e?? (hiereus), which can be literally translated into Latin as sacerdos. First century Christians [such as the inspired writers] felt that their special type of hiereus (sacerdos) was so removed from the original that they gave it a new name, presbuteros (presbyter). Unfortunately, sacerdos didn't evolve into an English word, but the word priest took on its definition." (http://grigaitis.net/weekly/2007/2007-04-27.html) Thus despite the Scriptural distinctions in titles, Rome made the word “presbyteros” (elders) to mean “priest” by way of functional equivalence, reading into Scripture her own theology, supposing that the presbyters engaged in a unique and primary sacrificial function of turning bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Christ as an expiation for sins, and which is then physically consumed to gain spirtual and eternal life. . In response to a query on this issue, the web site of International Standard Version (not my preferred translation) states, No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people. Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description. To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. ( http://isvbible.com/catacombs/elders.htm)
But don't forget...Jesus is a Jew...Christians are grafted into the vine.
I might be wrong, but my rule of thumb is never trust humans. Love them but never trust them.
I say that because I am a human and as such am tempted by sin and cannot be trusted.
I don't trust the Pope and I don't trust Martin Luther.
They mean well, but they are flawed.
But you can trust God. He is always constant...always Trustworthy.
Is it Protestant versus Catholic?
No.
It is human versus the Divine.
Never ever trust human institutions. As much as they mean well...they can never achieve it.
God on the other hand is True as rain...and completely accessible.
Sorry for being so dense.
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