At What Point Does Interpretation Run Counter to Biblical Intention?

Readability is a lazy man's tool to not have to actually study God's word. The difficulty is that there is no such thing as a readability that allows one to ignore deep study. Readability is misleading and quite frankly more times than not distorts the word of God in big or small ways.

 

Rewriting the text so that archaic terms and measures are replaced with accurate substitutes seems ok to me. A footnote teaching that a Roman Legion was large, about 3000-5000 soldiers, divided into 10 Cohorts of about 300-500 soldiers, comprised of groups (centuriae) of about 80 soldiers, each lead by a Centurion might help. Many of today's readers could not tell you about how many are in an "Army" or "Corp" or "Division" or Battalion or Brigade or Company.

The problem with translation according to "functional equivalence" is functional non-equivalence occurs with regularity. Dr. Mounce here finds Luke "intended" to provide historical accuracy and that intended message was obliterated by function non-equivalence.

 

I think you are reading too much into the issue.

 

When the interpretion is actually not stating accurately what the Holy Spirit intended to say to us!

 

Here in lies the problem with Dynamic Equivalent.

 

Yes, as too may times what is given as its meaning is not what God intended it being!

 

How To Choose A Translation For All Its Worth by Fee and Strauss.

"In functional equivalence versions, words are translated according to their meaning in context rather than according to lexical concordance." (p.27)

"Accuracy in translation relates to equivalent meaning, not equivalent form." (p.27)

"Even translations that claim to be essentially literal constantly modify Hebrew and Greek forms to express the meaning of the text." (p. 28)

"So while formal equivalent translators try to proceed with a method of formal equivalence (word-for-word replacement), their decisions are in fact determined by a philosophy of functional equivalence (change the form whenever necessary to retain the meaning). (p.28)

 

Less intrepertive though than DE, and the concept has formal/direct equivalency is the priority, as every translate at times more DE, but that the stated/main objective?

 

The above needs to be translated. Please rephrase so I can understand what you are saying.

 

Just saying that the main emphasis of formal is to be literal when possible, but DE is to translate Dynamic as te norm

 

I have found, oinly, one version I have major issues with and the group that it was ranslated for seem hesitant to use it for anything other than witnessing, here and there. Early on the New World Translation stated ion a Fly-Leaf that the translators had assigned a meaning for every word found in the scrolls and then translated the scriptures from that standard.


That is insane! They used no contextual implication what so ever. I was stationed 2 years in Germany and 2 1/2 years in South Vietnam and have dealt with 3 languages. Nothing can be set in stone in translation because some words will simply not translate and make sense.

My favorite example comes from so many years of hearing my mother talk about Houston weather. She loved to say, Ït's raining Little Cats and Puppy Dogs out there." If I wanted to say that in German I would translate the idea and not the words. In German I would tell another person it was raining very hard outside and let it go, mentioning naught about der hundts.

People either love or they hate the Kong James but because of this issue it is translated as a thought for thought version and along with my NASB, it is easy to read and easy to understand what God has left for us to understande, but that NWT, nope, it is trash.

 

I had posted the above on December 4th. Someone indicated disagreement. I wonder why.
There four propositions. In the opinion of the poster who objected --are all four mistaken?
Go through them item by item. I'd like a meaningful response.