Question: If there is a perfect Bible in English, doesn't there also have to be a perfect Bible in French, and German, and Japanese, etc?
Answer: God has always given His word to one people in one language to do one job; convert the world. The supposition that there must be a perfect translation in every language is erroneous and inconsistent with God's proven practice.
64 comments
...Gipp is talking about the King James Version, Mk. I, right?
I suppose, then, that Gipp regards the translators admitting in the preface that they probably don't have a perfect translation as Obfuscating Stupidity?
There is no perfect Bible in English! Any time you point out a line that can't be explained away, they just say "It's not translated well, the line doesn't really say that."
The "mistranslation" defense is a frequent last resort, as common as the "historical context" argument.
How can anything be erroneous and inconsistent with your god's practices, when your god's practices, as described in your bible, are nothing but erroneous and inconsistent?
There is no perfect Bible in English! Any time you point out a line that can't be explained away, they just say "It's not translated well, the line doesn't really say that."
The "mistranslation" defense is a frequent last resort, as common as the "historical context" argument.
Of course, under no circumstances are you to apply the same arguments to fundy condemnation of homosexuality.
The conceit that the bible is a perfect book underlies their need to feel invincible, to have a kind of insurance policy on their soul.
God's proven practice
So, would that "perfect language be Aramaic, Coptic, Syriac, Hebrew, or Greek? Because the books of the Bible are written in many different languages.
God has always given His word to one people in one language to do one job; convert the world.
What, and undo all the good work of the Tower of Babel?
Does any of this make any sense at all?
Well, then learn hebrew or greek, as these are the languages that the old testament or new testament was written in, not an imperfect language like english ;)
An idiot, yes, but not really fundy. Unless he's a KJV only nut, and thinks that 1st century Palestinians spoke 16th century English.
He writes about god giving the Jews the Old Testament in Hebrew (their language at the time), then the New Testament in Greek (again, the predominant language of the early Christians, according to him), and finally when the whole Bible in English because he thinks it's the only language suited to the whole world.
My brain just imploded from Teh Stoopid...
IF your Perfect God *can't* put out His Word in a perfect translation in any language, THEN He is not perfect. (Otherwise we'd *have* those translations, and not see all this "KJV-Only" shit.)
So you guys better hit up your Greek and Hebrew, not your "English".
Damn fundies, can't even keep their conspiracies and paranoia straight.
Scary as it sounds, there are fundies who want to translate the bible into every language for just this purpose. I remember when I worked in the Northern Territory (Australia) some missionaries had been working there for decades trying to translate the bible into Arrente and other native Aboriginal languages. Trouble is not many of the Aboriginals in the NT actually know or speak their native languages fluently anymore, which makes the NT missionaries bizzare little quest all the stranger.
I was reading the source, and here is the explanation for english being the language of choice:
"The English language had been developing for many centuries until the late sixteenth century. About that time it finally reached a state of excellence that no language on earth has ever attained."
lolw
This is close to what Muslims would say about the Quran. Translating it out of Arabic can never be the real thing, although it's allowed.
Except that the Quran was actually, you know, originally in Arabic, whereas the Bible was not originally in English, so this fundy fails.
@onoma
Hang on minute even MR Gipp's response isn't in that form of English, so must be less than perfect ,therefore it is a lie.
There is no perfect Bible in English, I agree with the rest of FSTDT here. But Virgin Mary told me that the currently Perfect bible is the Ang Salita ng Diyos in Tagalog.
Have fun learning!
BTW: Tis your job to prove me wrong!
Serious citation needed. God originally spoke in Hebrew - Sh'ma Yisroel, Adonai Elohenu...etc.
Jesus never spoke a word of English...
The language of the KJV is not the same English as Americans speak.... It is remarkably different. For example, Gipp, when did you last berate someone for their superfluity of naughtiness???
Speakest thou e'en yet Elizabethan English?
Or Chaucerian English that was around before the Great Vowel Shift?
Or, cannst thu Englisc sprecan?
Language is in constant flux and change. What a stupid argument you make! Any linguist would laugh in your face, you ignorant Gipp.
"God has always given His word to one people in one language to do one job; convert the world. The supposition that there must be a perfect translation in every language is erroneous and inconsistent with God's proven practice."
And the implications of this are completely lost on "Dr." C. Gip. As he even mentions further on in the answer that the Bible was originally in Greek and Hebrew, but then he ignores the fact that they had to be translated translation is the perfect one, on nothing more than the fact that other nations teach students English.
It's obvious you have never taken a foreign language, you ethnocentric fool. If you had, you'd know there is no such thing as a perfect translation. Things always get lost because of slight differences betweenn the two. For example, “Ojalá habría una fundamentalista inteligente.” Roughly translates to, “Would that there were an intelligent fundamentalist,” but ojalá, a common expression in Spanish, doesn’t have an English equivalent, but an approximate expression showing the speaker’s desires. Keep in mind this is between two fairly close languages, with many similar words. Médico is doctor. It can only get more muddled going from an ancient language to modern, or even Elizabethan English.
Now you're just being ridiculous. Fundie God isn't up there plotting a piecemeal Hebrew/Greek/Latin book that will be perfect in English 1000 years later so that those loyal French, German, Syrian, etc. Christians who tried to follow His book can be screwed over.
Honestly? God farks His translation and then blames the people who bought the WRONG VERSION OF HIS BOOK that He permitted to exist? Get bent.
What?! Write a book that could touch every human soul, regardless of everything from gender to language? That's impossible--the author would have to be some sort of... super-author, or a being that transcends all senses and measurement, or...
Oh, wait...
Because it's easy to convert the world when you force them to learn your language first. Of course, then you have to figure out how to force them to learn your language.
Plus, uh, wasn't the Old Testament originally in Hebrew, and the New Testament originally in Greek? I seem to recall something like that.
Then shouldn't you folk be reading the Bible in its original form, i.e. a mixture of Classical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek? If you really take your religion seriously and truly regard the your holy texts' original forms as the only inerrant, divinely inspired versions, then why would learning 3 ancient languages hinder you from reading and studying your holy texts in them, and why would the KJV be inerrant unlike the other translated forms?
Something is going to be very much lost or gained in any translation unless it was done by very skilled translators and Biblical scholars who used footnotes very liberally in order to meticulously explain all the nuances and connotations of the authors' choices of words, verb conjugations, noun cases, and other linguistic minutiae. An explanation of these things and discussion of other historical context would have to be nearly equal in length to the original text.
I can tell you the KJV most certainly does not meet those criteria and is, frankly, a hackjob in comparison. On the other hand, many of the other translations that the KJV fundies automatically despise actually come much closer to achieving a very accurate, near-lossless translation, even if they still fall short because they use footnotes sparingly and avoid getting "meta" too much for brevity and accessibility.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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