[MR] English translation from original Greek and Aramaic

[Anthony Bryant]

Jensen, Julian wrote:

> The greek text used for most modern translations that do
> not follow the Textus Receptus or Majority Text (King
> James and similar) is published in Greek in United Bible
> Societies edition 4 and Nestle-Aland edition 27. Any
> translation based on these will be a more or less
> accurate translation of the best greek exemplar.

I have a few books here in my theology shelf (actually, 
eight shelves...)... four of them are the gospels (one book 
each) that is nothing but every extant historical variation 
of the Greek texts. The differences are really incredibly 
piddly -- if a word was misspelled, it counts as a variant.

> I know that the NRSV is a direct translation from these
> Greek manuscripts. It is possible even to buy an
> interlinear New Testament that features both the Greek
> and English.

Ack. NO. The RSV is a direct translation. THe NRSV is the 
result of a committee determined to "update" and "inclusify" 
the RSV.

For example, the psalm that begins "Blessed is the man who 
walks not in the council of the ungodly" has been "gender 
corrected" to read "Blessed is the one..." -- despite the 
fact that for centuries the Church's teaching and 
understanding is that this is a prophetic psalm, and the man 
--er, "one" spoken of is Christ. The NRSV is full of this 
type of change.

When I was at Seminary (St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological 
Seminary) we used various translations, but most of us, I 
think, had the RSV as it also had the deuterocanonical 
books. There is an ongoing translation project right now 
that does the full received-text Greek Bible for the 
Orthodox church (using the LXX for the OT) but it's years 
from completion.

I admit to a great fondness for the KJV just for the 
English, but it's not as precise a translation as one could 
hope for.


Effingham

-- 

Anthony J. Bryant
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