God's Preservation of His Written Word

It is a fact that the KJV itself is a revision of several earlier English Bibles [Tyndale's to Bishops']. To advocate a KJV-only view that implies that the earlier English Bibles were not the word of God in the same sense or manner as the KJV undermines the actual English foundation of the KJV. The earlier English Bibles disagree with each other at many verses and with the KJV at many verses. The Holy Spirit was involved in the translating and revising in the earlier English Bibles in the same sense that it is claimed that the Holy Spirit was involved in the translating and revising in the KJV.

 

Ed, maybe I misunderstood your poll. I voted "many" but not under the understanding that it included "all". I do not believe that all of the English translations are good enough to be called God's true Word; but, I do believe that a good majority of the mainstream translations are indeed The Word of God.

 

For Biblical proof of this, note that from the original words in Aramaic of Jesus Christ, "Talitha cumi," Mark translated "Damsel, I say unto thee, arise" (Mark 5:41), and Luke translated, "Maid, arise" (Luke 8:54).

 

Obvious John of Japan

John of Japan, you obviously understand translation very well since you translate from or to Japanese.

I am amazed at the number of people who think there are word-for-word translation from different languages. Obviously, they have never learned other language to the point of understanding this.

It is well known in the military that if you take ten translators who translate a document will end up with ten different translations. Are any of these translations wrong? Possibly there will be errors. Let us assume, for my point that they are all accurate translations. There will STILL be ten different translations.

Are some better than others? Yes probably.

Will some be more dynamic and others be less dynamic? Yes

Does this mean the more dynamic translations are worse? Not necessarily, they may carry the emotion or state-of-mind of the author better.

My point is, it is amazing that people who see a difference from one single translation as an error.

God's words are preserved and as said above, if He wished there could be an infinite number of ways to translate His Word. Obviously, there are quite a few since many hve done such a great job.

 

I found this out on a mission trip to Mexico. We were holding a lay revival, giving testimonies. Our interpretor was translating. Sometimes we'd say a bit, and it didn't take mush to translate into Spanish. Sometimes we'd say a bit, and it took a lot to translate into Spanish.

it was truly eye opening for me in the language/translation issue.

 

While there cannot be exact word-for-word translations from one language to another except to some degree in an interlinear, there can be various levels of literalism or freedom in your translation. The most free translations are those of poems, including song lyrics. Those are almost impossible to translate completely literally, being as they are full of symbolism and often constrained by rhymes (English) or syllables (Japanese).

Next in line are movie subtitles, which can be quite free as long as they get the emotion and the plot line across.

Diplomatic translations, however, must be as precise as possible, and that is what I liken the Word of God to. I don't have time to run down the quote right now, but Jerome, the great translator of the Vulgate Bible, said that while he liked to translate literary works freely, he did his best to be literal with the Word of God.

All of this is very true. Those who believe that there must be one and only one perfect sentence in the receptor language for one sentence in the original language have usually never learned another language, certainly never gotten fluent. This is where many education systems fail. I thank God that when I was in high school two years of a foreign language were required, so I was able to cut my linguistic teeth on Latin, which I can still read thanks to a wonderful teacher who made us love the language! :applause:

 

Love those short term missionaries, who come over and truly learn what it is all about. :thumbs: :applause: