Hi
@Israel Khan ;
I apologize, I assumed you had a bit of Hebrew since you spoke of Hebrew Elohim being translated as “angels”. I agree with you and others regarding the concept that certain words in original texts are changed for reasons other than that the changes represent good translation.
1) WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION FOR VARIOUS TRANSLATORS OF VARIOUS VERSIONS TO CONSCIOUSLY RENDER THE TEXT INACCURATELY
For example,
NIV of Psalms 8:5 reads “
You have made them[a] a littler lower than the angels and crowned them[c] with glory and honor.
The footnotes read as follow :
[a] Or him, Or than God, [c] Or him.
Now the actual Hebrew word “Elohim” אֱלֹהִ֑ים does NOT mean “men” or “Judges” or “angels”, BUT the words “men” or “judges” or “men” have been inserted in the place of "elohim" or “God”.
Even the parsing is incorrect. The NIV Hebrew for
“made them a little lower” corresponds to the Hebrew SINGULAR verb that reads,
“made HIM (male singular) a little lower…” וַתְּחַסְּרֵ֣הוּ. The NIV Hebrew for “
and crowned them” corresponds to a Hebrew SINGULAR verb “
have crowned HIM” תְּעַטְּרֵֽהוּ (again, male, SINGULAR).
The point here is that whether one uses “Elohim to mean “God” (singular) or “judges" (plural), the context of what is made lower, and what is crowned refers to a singular object, not plural objects. In this case the footnote is more correct than the text. Doug Moos translating team know this. One then needs to ask what the motivation was to render it incorrectly as they did.
IF Elohim means “God” and not “judges” or “angels”, can you not think of a reason that a translator would be uncomfortable to render the translation as “God” and would RATHER render it as almost ANYTHING else other than "God"?
I would expect the logical reply would have been, “
Well, the translator might be uncomfortable” translating the sentence as “
You made him a little lower than God (or Gods)” since this would have seemed blasphemous and improper to use the word “God” for “Elohim”
in this specific instance (whereas it would be fine in other instances….).
Doug Moo was the head of the team that translated the NIV. I expect that their team had the expertise to know that whatever noun the man was made lower than was a singular, whether the noun was “angel” or “judge” or “man” but used “angels” since it would have been very uncomfortable to their theology to render “elohim” as “God” in this instance.
As another example, John 1:18. In Greek the most correct version we have reads :
Θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε μονογενὴς Θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο. This is the version in the Greek Translators 4th version (GN-4).
It means :
“No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God, who is in the Bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (ἐξηγήσατο actually means “explained” but in this case, “declared him” or “made him known” is a more comfortable English).
However, The NIV reads, “
18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”
While the NIV is very popular (I use it and LIKE it), it is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, “rendering” of the Greek in this instance. Nowhere in the Greek does it say
“who is himself God” and “is in closest relationship with the Father”.
These phrases are completely bogus and represent a contamination of the text with the biases and theology of the translating team members.
I think a similar motivation is at work here that was at work at John 1:18. What I think happened is that Doug Moos Group knew the Greek versions that read “monogenes Theos” (only begotten God) in the second phrase was the more correct, but it was an uncomfortable translation to make for their readers (who, in the main, would NOT like the phrase “only begotten God” in the text. Thus I think they tried to create a phrasing that gave some deference to the actual Greek text while trying to keep the translation from any uncomfortable rendering. It is a case of dogma, driving translation due to translator discomfort with accurate translation.
The NWTranslation phrase done by Frederick Franz is actually a correct rendering. “
The only begotten God” is the better Greek.
Having said this, I do NOT like Frederick Franzs’ renderings in the main. I think he did a terrible, terrible Job at creating a terrible bible and he corrupted much of the text in his OWN tendency to have his OWN dogma, driving his translation. My point is that he did a good Job on this specific phrase.
In any case, I did not want to encourage you to believe that the NWT is an accurate work, but did not want to engage in the dishonesty of claiming it is ALL a terrible work.
Translators, including some modern versions (NIV in the example I gave) translate incorrectly due to bias.
Luther, for example, left out the second commandment in his earliest version since he didn’t think the second of the ten commandments applied to modern Christians. He was forced by public opinion to add the commandment back into later versions. (This is why the ten commandments were different in protestant and catholic Europe for a time.)
MANY, Translators, including some modern versions (NIV in this case) translate incorrectly due to discomfort with what the original text actually says. This is also why I supported the comments made by
@Audie that
“Evrrybody "falsifies" the bible.” (Audie in post #7) and
@shunyadragon s' point that “
From this perspective the Bible has been edited, redacted, and added to, and interpreted in many ways to justify an agenda. The JW is just one more in a long history” (post #9)
I hope your journey is good and wonderful in this life
Clear
σeτωτζω