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A Question for Christians
- Thread starter joe1776
- Start date
You mean inspiring men to write in a language that is one of the best-studied and best-attested in the world where we know every minute, excruciating detail about its grammar, phonology and lexicon? Mistranslations and misinterpretations aren't God's fault. They're the fault of inadequately trained and/or dishonest people trying to sell something.
That's only true if we consider Scripture a dead document. Treated as a living document within time and culture these become less problematic.
joe1776
Well-Known Member
So, your explanation is the God inspired the Bible to be read and understood by a tiny group of experts?
What difference does it make whose fault it is? An all-knowing God would know that these misinterpretation would happen.
What was God's purpose in inspiring the Bible? What did He expect to accomplish?
joe1776
Well-Known Member
I don't understand that concept. Are you saying the meaning of the scripture changes? If so, what changes it?
Not just them. It's also read and understood in Church, the context in which the New Testament was originally written and the Old Testament understood in light of Christ, under the guidance of the bishops who are the successors of the Apostles.
You also assume that those who study the Bible make no effort to relay their understanding to the rest of the Church. A half-second of thought should have told you that that's obviously not the case.
Yes, so what's your point? Just because the priest's wife knew her kids were going to misbehave during coffee hour after Liturgy doesn't make it any less the kids' fault.
To give a written account of the things that God has done for us, so that we might have a guide in how to live a Christian life.
joe1776
Well-Known Member
I gave it more than a full-second thought and it occurred to me that if that small group of experts you speak of truly understood the sacred texts, they would be teaching the same message and we wouldn't have more than 30,000 Protestant sects alone.
If the priest's wife was an all-knowing god why would she leave her kids alone to misbehave during coffee hour? An all-knowing god would know that mistranslations and misinterpretations would happen.
How to live a Christian life? Please explain: Are you saying that God inspired the Bible as a moral guide?
The reason that there are 30,000 Protestant sects (the vast majority of them arising in the US) is because of anti-intellectual fideism and Protestants deciding to split and form their own denominations over such matters as whether music should be used in worship, whether baptism regenerates the believer, or how many buttons a shirt should have. In other words, there are so many sects precisely because they reject what the experts have said about the Bible since the beginning of the Church.
If one compares the oldest Christian traditions--the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East--one finds massive areas of agreement, and relatively few points of contention. For example, the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox have largely agreed that our disagreements were primarily cases of linguistic misunderstandings.
Yes, and you have yet to make any kind of point. All I can guess is that you're arguing that God should make us little puppets with no free will. He should just Matrix download knowledge into our brains. Is that you're trying to say?
If Weird Al-Yankovic knew his single "Don't Download This Song" would become the most-pirated song of all time, why did he make the song? He should have known that people would download his song.
If the mother knew her child was going to put his hand on the stove, why did she let him put his hand on the stove?
If George Washington knew that people were going to form political parties, why did he just tell them to not make political parties instead of making political parties illegal?
This can go on and on and on and on. Foreknowledge does not necessitate causality or responsibility.
As a moral guide, as a witness to things that have happened, and as an aide to understanding the Gospel and the theology of the Church.
joe1776
Well-Known Member
I was referring to "Ancient Hebrew." However, it's my understanding that "Ancient Greek" is obsolete (no longer spoken) also.
Biblical Hebrew is studied by Jews and Christians the world over and is hardly obsolete, at least for them. Koine Greek is so similar to modern Greek that anyone who knows it can pretty much read and understand modern Greek (first hand experience!)
joe1776
Well-Known Member
While I grant that many of the 30,000 sects separated on trivial matters, I think you exaggerate the factor. For most of its long existence, the Roman Catholic Church claimed to be the only path to Heaven, for example.
In recent years, there has been a better understanding between the churches but it was not always that way. And, if the Bible was interpreted correctly by that elite group of experts you claimed, Christians would not have killed and persecuted other Christians as they once did.
You have either missed the point or you have no answer for it.
I think I made my point clearly. It's not that difficult to understand.
Because Weird Al is not an all-knowing god.
Because she's not an all-knowing god.
Because George was not an all-knowing god.
My question is not about causality or responsibility. It's about whether inspiring the Bible in a human language that would become obsolete, mistranslated and misinterpreted would have been a smart thing to do or a dumb thing to do for an all-knowing god.
If an all-knowing, all-powerful god intended to give us a moral guide, we would have a simple, cross-cultural guide not dependent on human languages. We may have that in the intuitive feeling that we refer to as "conscience."
For example, it is conscience that has told us that the Bible is wrong and Slavery should have been condemned. It is conscience that is telling us that the Bible has been wrong about the way women and homosexuals should be treated.
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joe1776
Well-Known Member
Are you claiming that most Jews and most Christians are Hebrew scholars? I hope not because that's absurd.
It wasn't until late in the last century that the Sixth commandment, the most well-known and repeated lines in the Bible, were revealed by Hebrew scholars to be mistranslated. That's about 1,700 years of Christians basing their interpretation on a most important piece of mistranslated text.
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Most people don't speak Welsh, even Welsh people, does that make it obsolete? Dutch? That's a pretty minority language. The fact is that the Bible is relevant to millions of people, therefore the languages in which it is written are still relevant.
Axe Elf
Prophet
It sounds to me like your question is more for God than for Christians, but if I had to venture a less-than-omniscient guess, it would be because inspiring men to write the Bible in a language that had not yet been invented would have made it more likely to end up in the garbage than on the all-time best-seller list.
joe1776
Well-Known Member
Ancient Hebrew is obsolete. That's a fact. So, whether Welsh is obsolete or not is not a relevant question.
The claim is that God inspired the Bible to be written in Ancient Hebrew knowing that it would be mistranslated into other languages. Why does it matter that the mistranslated Bible is available in languages people understand?
If Shira couldn't make it clear to you, then I'm not going to bother trying the same words in a different order, honestly.
joe1776
Well-Known Member
My question is for Christians because it's their belief that I'm trying to make sense of.
You turned this into a false dichotomy: As though the choice was between an existing language or one not yet existing.
Why use a human language at all? What was God trying to do that couldn't have been done in a way that made more sense?
joe1776
Well-Known Member
I think your problem and Shira's is that you have no answer for a fairly simple question.
No, the problem is that you don't understand the answer, or you don't think there is one, and no answer will ever suit you. That's how it appears. To the Jewish people (as I am not a Christian, sorry for butting), Hebrew is Lashon HaKodesh, the holy language, and both ancient and modern are used for prayers, recitals, etc., so it's not obsolete in that sense. If you want to say it's obsolete in that it is no longer being written then you are right, but that doesn't make it any less the holy tongue in which prayers, blessings and so on are said.
The texts are studied in this form of Hebrew (and Aramaic), and anyone who converts has to at least have a working knowledge of this Hebrew. So at least from this end, translations shouldn't really be necessary, but due to life simply working the way it does, they were made. Ancient Jewish laypeople needed targumim (explanations), because their vernacular was Aramaic, but these targumim were not considered on a level with the Hebrew, just as the LXX was not considered so.