John 3:16
So right, halfway through my New Testament class, my lecturer said, "so who said 'for God so loved the world...'?" Of course it was Jesus, no? Apparently, maybe not. In the original Greek text, there were no punctuation marks and thus the translators had to just simply make a decision. In the NIV, they decided that it was said by Jesus. If you have a red letter edition, it'll show up in red plus the quotation marks. However, if you look at the recently updated TNIV, the translators have opted to REMOVE those quotation marks and have them as John's commentary on Jesus' teachings.
How crazy is that? I've spent my entire Christian life believing something that Jesus said but my interpretation was simply at the mercy of the translators. A quick look at various translations show that most translations i.e. the KJV, NRSV, NASB, The Message, NLT, etc has the text marked as said by Jesus but only TNIV doesn't. WHY? Haha, questions to ask the translators sometime.
Anyway, I've been keeping real busy with the assignments and tests. Did manage to pass my Hebrew vocab test right on the dot. Have one more on Tuesday. Below is a photo of Dawn and me on our trip to Nannup on top of a 61m Gloucester Tree. It was a long climb indeed.
How crazy is that? I've spent my entire Christian life believing something that Jesus said but my interpretation was simply at the mercy of the translators. A quick look at various translations show that most translations i.e. the KJV, NRSV, NASB, The Message, NLT, etc has the text marked as said by Jesus but only TNIV doesn't. WHY? Haha, questions to ask the translators sometime.
Anyway, I've been keeping real busy with the assignments and tests. Did manage to pass my Hebrew vocab test right on the dot. Have one more on Tuesday. Below is a photo of Dawn and me on our trip to Nannup on top of a 61m Gloucester Tree. It was a long climb indeed.
5 Comments:
yay. comment box!
haha... eh, interesting thoughts that our interpretation of the bible is at the mercy of translators!
you know, since the start of the year i've been doing a 'writing and critical thinking' moduele.. and one day as i was reading the bible, it dawned on me that what we read is merely an interpretation.. and after all these authors are just humans.. while i do not doubt the truthfulness of the Bible, i'm careful not to be too critical of whatever i read thoguh! :S
then i was also thinking... you know many of paul's letters sound rather... angsty.. ahha...
oh btw, you are on my rss feed! hahah.. (:
Hey Maggers! ya, the comment box is directly in response to your request. Cool right, RSS?
Interpretation is one BIG area of discussion hey. Some translations are literal though so you get weird sentence structures that don't really make sense. I guess in the end, translators have to translate so that we the readers can understand. But understand what? The text or what the translators understand of the text?
Yoz! Man, I haven't visited your blog for so long, and here you are, talking about the complexities about translation.. haha..
Yes, I do agree it's quite complex (I've been reading about it a little bit, and it's super complex), but in regards to where the quotations actually start, I don't think it'll matter that much since we believe that all Scripture is God-breathed and is inerrant and infallible. So, whether or not it's from Jesus, it's still God's word and it doesn't change much. Unless of course you (in a generic sense) don't hold to inerrancy and infallibility...
I do try to use translations as literal as they can to the original manuscripts, hence I stick with the ESV. I tried to read the NASB (which apparently is even more literal), but it's just too hard and the sentences are just weird. NIV remains a good translation as well. :)
Well, that's my position and my 2 cents on the matter.. haha..
Hey Chin Wee, nice of you to drop by and leave a comment! I do agree with you that since we believe that the entire bible is inspired, where the quotation marks start doesn't really matter. But it does illustrate how translations will affect our reading. I generally hold that inspiration can only be accorded to the original writers of the text and NOT the copyist or the translators.
Personally I use translations that are of dynamic equivalence (i.e. in between literal and free), I use the NIV and NRSV as my primary texts. My personal understanding is that literal translations can often distort our understanding of the text due to the nature of the translation process. I know of someone who uses the NASB and I know that he is often frustrated with the translation and ends up differing to the NIV.
On a final point, I personally do not accept the use of 2Tim 3:16 to refer to any of the NT texts as I firmly believe that Paul was strictly referring to the OT since the NT canon was only confirmed centuries after Paul wrote 2Tim (not too sure, but I think most of the gospels weren't even written when Paul wrote 2Tim).
I'm learning Hebrew now and Greek by the end of my theological studies (and maybe Latin too, UWA is offering it now) but I don't think I'll ever be even close to the scholarship of most of the translators so I'll just have to trust them (more like trust God that what I have is accurate)...
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