(Screenshot: Comedy Central)Posted on 04/20/2014 4:36:29 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
(Screenshot: Comedy Central)
As we mentioned, Stephen Colbert, heir to David Letterman's chair on "The Late Show," openly talks about his Catholic faith. It's a surprise to those who know the comedian only as the satirical conservative host of "The Colbert Report."
In this April 2009 episode on Maundy Thursday, Colbert hosted Bart Ehrman, a prominent New Testament scholar and biblical critic.
As Ehrman points out contradictions he's found in the Bible, notably in the crucifixion of Jesus, Colbert takes him to task in his usual acerbic tone. But under the caricature, Colbert presents the divinity of Christ in ways that leave Ehrman at a loss for words.
You probably opened a big can of worms. People are often very dedicated to their particular version.
Me, I was raised on and memorized huge swatches KJV, but for accuracy my fave is the NASB. I simply think it is the most accurate in modern English word for word while retaining much of the poetry.
Both translations, Douay and KJ, correctly translate "χαιρετε" as "all hail". Compare "χαιρε" in Luke 1:28. "Hello" would not match the elevated style of the Gospel but in a context of another book would be correct. In fact, in modern Greek, "χαιρετε" is a frequent greeting of several people, -- you'd hear the word often.
I use mostly unbound.biola.edu. Include "Greek NT: Byzantine/Majority Text (2000)", or any other Greek variants among the versions, pick the chapter and verse segment, and it will let you copy and paste from Greek or Hebrew, or any other language.
www.blueletterbible.org is less convenient for quick searches but works as well. Here's John 1:1 from Textus Receptus:
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος
A difficult decision is whether to choose accented or unaccented Greek. I prefer unaccented, but opinions probably vary.
If you want a Greek keyboard, you probably will have to either buy one with the keys marked in Greek, or make one using phonetic match, so you don't have to remember what English key is what. For Windows there is Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. Also there may exist online virtual keyboards for Greek.
That's the point: in a translation that does not pretend to be really a paraphrase, like the "dynamic" trash, it is not acceptable (pardon the pun).
The use of modern pronouns is also not for serious reading of the Bible.
I should add that indeed one must verify Douay against the Greek (or Young's Literal) before arguing from it; it kept the errors of Vulgate, some quite serious, like:
1 Corinthians English: Douay-Rheims Greek NT: Byzantine/Majority Text (2000) English: King James Version 1 Corinthians 15
51. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. ιδου μυστηριον υμιν λεγω παντες μεν ου κοιμηθησομεθα παντες δε αλλαγησομεθα Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
Who knows why St. Jerome got himself confused by these "μεν" (in some copies, "indeed"), “ου” (“not”) and “δε” (“but”). Maybe he had a corrupted copy.
Great video.
I’ll bet he is an awesome Sunday school teacher.
That's the point: in a translation that does not pretend to be really a paraphrase, like the "dynamic" trash, it is not acceptable (pardon the pun).
Ha.Ha. :)
Anyway, a well done translation is NEVER strictly literal. It would be unreadable in the target language. There is a difference between paraphrase as a genre of translation (Living Bible), and periphrastic handling of certain passages in order to overcome the language-mapping impedance that exists between source and target languages.
But taking the strictly literal route in all situations uniformly is considered a beginner's approach to translation. You often see it in new students to the Greek, who become convinced that they now know the one true meaning of a given term or grammatical construction and seek to impose it everywhere without variation, whereas the "black belt" translators who are their teachers are in some cases far more guarded and reflective in their analysis.
What you really need are translators who can literally think in both languages fluently, according to the best lexicographic information over a broad spectrum. This gives them the ability to effortlessly spot those areas where a better mapping can be made by using an accurate alternative word or word set in the target language. It satisfies the condition of a formal translation, because formal and literal are not the same, without falling into the genre of paraphrase.
BTW, I have found what I think is a rather good article on principles of translation, and after I've had time to vet it a bit I will try to get back here to post it. It seems quite good, and explains some these more advanced topics in translation.
The English Standard Version (ESV) is in many ways the old RSV, with a few more notes.
I grew up with the RSV. The pacing and wording of the ESV is close enough that I do not have any issues with it. There was supposed to be a Catholic version, but I know that got held up because the US Bishops wouldn’t have held the copyright.
The NASB sucks. Just sucks. My brides priest admits it sucks.
But I grew up in a church were we put great store in the ability to read the Bible out loud in front of people. We LCMS people also had to memorize huge amounts of the Bible, and recite it on command in Sunday School, so having a good flowing translation is very important.
Yes, I sometimes do the readings at Mass. I do the best I can, but the NASB is not an inspiring translation, and hard to make it really sound biblical.
I’m afraid you’re right, that the Bishops’ main concern seems to be copyright ownership. If they used the RSV or whatever, less money would flow their way.
And the HQ for copyrighted texts and lousy, post-Vatican-II hymns is Portland, Oregon, which is not exactly a center of traditional liturgy.
Exactly...To say 'we have been graced' is far too broad of a definition...First we need to know what graced means and then translate it based on how it's used in the context...
(BTW, I should point out that a number of the scholars doing the translation for the KJV had studied the Hebrew and Greek and Latin from their preteen years, along with many of the cognate languages that were tributaries into the main Biblical languages (Persian, Chaldee, etc.). (John Bois, for example, was reputed to have learned to read the full Hebrew text by age 5. That’s five.) They were the cutting edge scholarship of the day. One needs to be quite sure of one’s footing before picking a fight with them.)
I doubt that anyone since then has become their equal in bible translation...
I would advise to stick to the Unicode fonts; anything else may not display correctly on the Internet.
Thank you, good thing.
I understand that word-for-word is often impossible and when possible, can be undesirable. The famed “gratia plena” is a good example of a translation that would not be possible literally as the unique for the case Greek morphology could not be rendered.
But here we have a well-used word, with a specific theological meaning, and a simple grammatical conjugation of it. “Made us accepted” is both clumsy and steers away from the concept of grace, present in the original.
You don't have to like the Holy Scripture, but that is exactly what it says in the original: "graced".
Kids in public school here do not use food for arts and crafts. No macaroni necklaces etc. It is disrespectful to those who do not have enough.
Finding favor and being accepted are cognate concepts. So far from steering away from grace, this passage gets us closer than many of the more abstractly theological passages in Paul.
I’m actually somewhat fascinated by this particular thread of our ongoing conversation. It almost seems as if Protestants and Catholics have a fundamentally different view of what grace is. This perhaps is why it is so easy for us to see grace as manifest acceptance with God through Christ. Indeed, many Protestants, as I have suggested before, find this passage one of the most beautiful explications of grace in the entire Bible. Especially those of us who came to Christ as total outsiders, burdened with a load of seemingly insurmountable guilt, who were very worried about ever being accepted by God. These are the ones, myself included, who feel a palpable joy at the hearing of these words.
No, the joy does not validate the translation, but the translation, which is accurate, does validate the joy.
But you see it somehow differently, and I haven’t got a handle on that. I can’t read your mind, so I’m only guessing here, but it seems almost as if you are seeing grace more in some intermediate sense, perhaps as a power of God to cleanse from sin, rather than in its terminal sense, the creation, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, of a favored status with God, despite the fact we deserve no such status.
I know I am grasping at straws here, but I am struggling to understand how it is that you can think “accepted” is so far off the mark, when in reality it is so very close to a perfect expression of the end state of grace.
Ping to #76
It is indeed the issue also with the Catholic desire to take words of Christ literally where no allegorical speech is in evidence, as in His words regarding the Eucharist, and a few other Catholic distinctives.
It almost seems as if Protestants and Catholics have a fundamentally different view of what grace is
For sure, St. Augustine's idea that grace is no different than predestination -- and therefore those passed over for the election have no access of grace, -- is completely non-Catholic. I suspect that at least more calvinistically minded Protestant would join Augustine on that.
between grace and predestination there is only this difference, that predestination is the preparation for grace, while grace is the donation itself. […] Abraham […] believed, giving glory to God, ‘that what he has promised, he is able also to do’. He does not say, to foretell— he does not say, to foreknow; for He can foretell and foreknow the doings of strangers also; but he says, He is able also to do; and thus he is speaking not of the doings of others, but of His own. (On the Predestination of the Saints I.19, quoting Romans 4:21)
A Catholic would immediately rebut with
[God] will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4)
We believe that grace is available for all; grace is the reason grass grows underfoot. The predestination occurs across time as God foreknows the responses of men to grace, and leads those whom He elects to salvation based on the foreknown content of their heart. Compare “the Lord beholdeth the heart” (1 Kings/1 Samuel. 16:7).
Surely you recognize that most Greek words have more than one English word meaning...How about your religion's version of Mary 'full of grace'??? You claim that means she is sinless...
That is a good indication that Mary is sinless and had been before the Angel came; but we know it from the Church, not from the scripture alone. The scripture merely confirms what we know.
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