Comments on: The Strange New World of the Bible http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/ My musings on Biblical Studies, Biblical Hebrew, Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Popular Culture, Religion, Software, and pretty much anything else that interests me! Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:50:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Wayne Leman http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/comment-page-1/#comment-8033 Wayne Leman Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:47:09 +0000 http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/wp/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/#comment-8033 There are a number of things that contribute to this false sense of familiarity, including Bible translations that mistakenly modernize idioms and contexts (A translation should not make its readers think that they understand the Bible better than they actually do).

I agree with the overall point you are making in this post. Bible translation is a balancing act that calls us to retain the historical and cultural contexts of the original biblical passages while linguistically communicating those passages in another language so that speakers in that language can understand what they could not understand in the biblical languages.

This seems so obvious one might consider it a truism, yet there are significant debates over translation of biblical idioms, to use one of your translation examples. I suggest that if we are committed to accurately communicating the meaning of those biblical idioms to our translation audiences we need to test our translations to determine if the biblical meaning is understood through the translation. If it is not, we need to adjust somewhere. One place to adjust so that the audience will understand what the idiom means is in a footnote. Obviously, another way to adjust is to have a Bible teacher tell people the meaning of biblical idioms that do not make sense translated literally.

]]> By: Iris Godfrey http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/comment-page-1/#comment-7343 Iris Godfrey Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:15:28 +0000 http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/wp/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/#comment-7343 Said very well.

I would like to copy this on my blog. Would that be possible? I can, of course, leave just a link to this post, but it would be more readily read if I put the entire post there. I would, of course, put all the proper credits.

You have hit the nail on the head. Much of our thinking pulls the text into our own scene and trys to make it fit. This leads to many false understandings.

I will check back here for a reply, or you can email me. Thank you for considering my request.

Thank you for saying it so well. I enjoy your site.
Iris

]]> By: Person http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/comment-page-1/#comment-7266 Person Thu, 10 Aug 2006 21:19:17 +0000 http://biblical-studies.ca/blog/wp/2006/08/09/the-strange-new-world-of-the-bible/#comment-7266 Ummmm… shouldn’t it read “The Strange OLD World of the Bible”?

I recently read Malina’s “Windows on the World of Jesus”. I agree with you 100%, adding that there is much, much, MUCH more to be said on this topic.

]]>