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Changing religious scriptures for mission

Selinagirl

Member
If you are a member of a missionary religion,are you allowed to change yout holy scriptures to make it easier for a different culture to understand it? For example, to change "give us our daily bread" to "give us our daily cup of rice" if you want to mission in China?
 

Pegg

Jehovah our God is One
If you are a member of a missionary religion,are you allowed to change yout holy scriptures to make it easier for a different culture to understand it? For example, to change "give us our daily bread" to "give us our daily cup of rice" if you want to mission in China?

sure.
 

ChristineES

Tiggerism
Premium Member
If you are a member of a missionary religion,are you allowed to change yout holy scriptures to make it easier for a different culture to understand it? For example, to change "give us our daily bread" to "give us our daily cup of rice" if you want to mission in China?
What they call "The Lord's Prayer" is a model of how we are supposed to pray. You don't need to recite it word for word, the way I see it.
 

12jtartar

Active Member
Premium Member
Skwim,
Remember, the Bible was written in Hebrew, a little in Aramaic, and Greek. God used these languages, because they are relatively easy to translate into other languages. Even so, aubergine, meaning something is lost in translation, is invariably true.
When a translator translates into his a language, he should translate the words that mean as close as possible to the words that his contemporaries understand, not what was meant thousands of years before.
As for the scripture written at Matt 4:4 about bread, it is talking about food, not just bread itself.
Today, there are hundreds of Bible translations, and most of them are either, Thought translations, or paraphrased translations. This means that they do not translate as closely to the actual words, but they read the scripture and then put the thought into their own words, for their contemporaries. The main reason for this is, the many languages on earth put the parts of speech, the syntax, differently within the sentence, making a literal translation difficult to understand, depending on the language. As an example, The Spanish put the subject before the adjective, English put the adjective first. Because, sometimes there are several words between the two, the interpretation can become confused.
I believe the best translations try to use as few words as possible to explain the meaning, but put the words in the order that that the language translated into uses.
Remember, God warns about adding or taking away from His words, Deut 4:2, Pv 30:5,6, Rev 22:18,19.
The words of God are alive, and powerful, Heb 4:12,13. Man's words prove nothing. So when translating as few words as possible, should be used, to conveigh the meaning, to contemporaries.
One point of interest; The Koran was written in Arabic, and the official belief is; you cannot translate the Koran into any other language without corrupting it.
 

roger1440

I do stuff
If you are a member of a missionary religion,are you allowed to change yout holy scriptures to make it easier for a different culture to understand it? For example, to change "give us our daily bread" to "give us our daily cup of rice" if you want to mission in China?

Many verses in the Bible are connected to other verses in the Bible. We can call them cross references. If a word is changed in one verse, the link to the other verses may be broken. In the example you have given, if the word bread is changed to rice the connection to the manna in Exodus is broken. The connection to Bethlehem is broken. Bethlehem means “house of bread”. The connection of “the yeast of the Pharisees” is broken. There are probably many more connections that are broken.
 

Kolibri

Well-Known Member
If you are a member of a missionary religion,are you allowed to change yout holy scriptures to make it easier for a different culture to understand it? For example, to change "give us our daily bread" to "give us our daily cup of rice" if you want to mission in China?

what is important is that the thought is transmitted. If one wanted to be careful about not making the text say something that it did not, a broad term that covers both "bread" and "rice" could be used, such as "food".
 

Selinagirl

Member
Many verses in the Bible are connected to other verses in the Bible. We can call them cross references. If a word is changed in one verse, the link to the other verses may be broken. In the example you have given, if the word bread is changed to rice the connection to the manna in Exodus is broken. The connection to Bethlehem is broken. Bethlehem means “house of bread”. The connection of “the yeast of the Pharisees” is broken. There are probably many more connections that are broken.
That is interesting, thanks.
 

12jtartar

Active Member
Premium Member
Many verses in the Bible are connected to other verses in the Bible. We can call them cross references. If a word is changed in one verse, the link to the other verses may be broken. In the example you have given, if the word bread is changed to rice the connection to the manna in Exodus is broken. The connection to Bethlehem is broken. Bethlehem means “house of bread”. The connection of “the yeast of the Pharisees” is broken. There are probably many more connections that are broken.

roger1440,
I believe, as you seem to show, that we should keep as closely as possible to a literal translation of God's word. It is impossible to translate Hebrew and Greek directly into some languages, so some extra words are sometimes required, in order to make God's MESSAGE clear. In the example you stated, I imagine that he word food, could be put instead of bread, without losing the message.
One thing you mentioned though, I would like to comment about, the idea of reasoning and especially listening to one's conscience.
The only way reasoning can safely be used, is when you gather together all scripture pertaining to a subject, then reason on those scriptures to form a theory. If your theory fits all the scriptures, your theory must be correct. Reasoning from our own knowledge is called, Doping Out, because our knowledge is so limited we can never reason out a truth of the Bible, without relying on God's word, Pr 3:5,6, not men's words, Ps 146:3,4.
Many times, people believe that their conscience is the same as their heart, that their heart is good, they think, so their heart will not lead them wrong. This is a very dangerous belief, notice what the Bible says about our heart, Jere 17:9,10, consider also Jere 17:5,7.
One point about our conscience; we can only trust our conscience if is has been trained by the truth of God's word. If we are babes in the truth we must trust exclusively on the word of God. Only when we are matured Christians can we start to trust our conscience, Heb 5:13,14.
We must be very careful about listening to what people say the Bible says, instead of what it really says, remember, whether people are really false teachers or are mistakenly not understanding correctly, it is very dangerous to teach unless you are sure of your unerstanding, 2Pet 2:1-3, 3:15-18, 1Tim 1:5-7, Titus 1:14-16, Matt 7:15-23.
 

roger1440

I do stuff
I believe, as you seem to show, that we should keep as closely as possible to a literal translation of God's word. It is impossible to translate Hebrew and Greek directly into some languages, so some extra words are sometimes required, in order to make God's MESSAGE clear. In the example you stated, I imagine that he word food, could be put instead of bread, without losing the message.

Some words and/or phrases can be substituted depending on the word or phrase in question. Many of the concepts in the Bible are introduced in the first few books of the Bible. Subsequent concepts are then built upon what had preceded them. It is important to preserve the continuity of this scheme. This scheme gives the Bible a comprehensible flow. Many of the recurring concepts connect one story to the next. This repetition of ideas actually makes the separate ideas into one larger one.

If we would substitute “food” for “bread” in the Lord’s Prayer many of the concepts connected with the Lord’s Prayer would be broken. Example:

Give us today our daily bread.”(Matthew 6:11)

“…34Then they said to Him, "Lord, always give us this bread." 35Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” (John 6:34-35)

Granted John’s gospel is written independently of Matthew’s gospel but both gospels are utilizing concepts originating from the Old Testament.
 
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e.r.m.

Church of Christ
If you are a member of a missionary religion,are you allowed to change yout holy scriptures to make it easier for a different culture to understand it? For example, to change "give us our daily bread" to "give us our daily cup of rice" if you want to mission in China?
No!!! You can explain "the equivalent here would be a cup of rice", but we don't have the authority to change the actual scripture.
 

e.r.m.

Church of Christ
what is important is that the thought is transmitted. If one wanted to be careful about not making the text say something that it did not, a broad term that covers both "bread" and "rice" could be used, such as "food".
Not even, it says bread, not food. Just explain, they liked bread in that place and time.
 
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