the New Testament

[BH]

I read a comment years ago and can't remember where. This person claimed to know Greek and said that part of the New Testament were written illiteratively, with sentences often not conforming to the know rules of Greek grammar to which translators had to just do the best they could to translate into English. Do any of you know Greek and is this charge true?

Do we have actual grammars going back to ancient times that tells us how we should translate these languages anyway?

 

[Kharakov]

Sheeshbazzar?


And what makes you think that the corrupt governments of the world, which fought to rewrite history for a few decades about a century ago (the corrupt won), didn't create and plant age obfuscated biblical fragments during the great wars?

Why do you assume the bible is an ancient text, rather than a relatively modern one designed to look ancient (with planted DS scrolls, etc.), with very specifically designed inconsistencies, that the corrupt winners of the war use as a tool for economic enslavement of the poor, while transplanting their consciousnesses from body to body, staying on the top of the economic heap and enjoying the good life while the good do all the work and get little return?

 

[lee_merrill]

I read a comment years ago and can't remember where. This person claimed to know Greek and said that part of the New Testament were written illiteratively, with sentences often not conforming to the know rules of Greek grammar to which translators had to just do the best they could to translate into English. Do any of you know Greek and is this charge true?

I have read the Greek NT and don't recall any passages where the grammar is garbled.

Do we have actual grammars going back to ancient times that tells us how we should translate these languages anyway?

Not that I have heard of, for usage the scholars will quote letters, etc., but not grammars.

Regards,
Lee

 

[DBT]

I read a comment years ago and can't remember where. This person claimed to know Greek and said that part of the New Testament were written illiteratively, with sentences often not conforming to the know rules of Greek grammar to which translators had to just do the best they could to translate into English. Do any of you know Greek and is this charge true?

I have read the Greek NT and don't recall any passages where the grammar is garbled.

Lee

Was that the modern Greek translation or the original Koine Greek spoken by Hellenistic Jews? As far as I understand, Paul's letters do have numerous errors. Which may have been corrected in modern NT translations, but I'm not sure...

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I read a comment years ago and can't remember where. This person claimed to know Greek and said that part of the New Testament were written illiteratively, with sentences often not conforming to the know rules of Greek grammar to which translators had to just do the best they could to translate into English. Do any of you know Greek and is this charge true?

Do we have actual grammars going back to ancient times that tells us how we should translate these languages anyway?

This seems to be in reference to the Septuagint, Greek translation of the Old Testament that differs from the Masoretic version to some degree. In the past, many scholars thought the Septuagint was poor translation.

Part of the problem with early Bible manuscripts is no two seem to be exactly alike. and some differ to a marked degree. Untangling what would be the more original form of the New testament has occupied a lot of effort by experts. Another problem for early scholats was the NT was written in Koine Greek and many words were vague until the mid 1800's when new Koine manuscripts surfaced in Egypt that explained that. It all lead to some new translations taking that into account at the turn of the 20th century, such as the English Revised version. We had ancient grammars for things like Athenian Greek, but nothing much for Koine. There was even a hypothesis that Koine was a special theological language, which turned out to be wrong.

And finally, the Catholic church, following the Protestants, finally had to create it's own vernacular versions of the Bible for the general public, but repeatedly bungled that project, a project that took over a century to catch up with Protestant scholarship.

So there are a lot of different streams of scholarship at play here to answer your question.

 

[lee_merrill]

I have read the Greek NT and don't recall any passages where the grammar is garbled.

Was that the modern Greek translation or the original Koine Greek spoken by Hellenistic Jews? As far as I understand, Paul's letters do have numerous errors. Which may have been corrected in modern NT translations, but I'm not sure...

I have read the Koine Greek NT, and I don't recall grammatical errors, in Paul's letters or elsewhere. Now I'm not an expert! But the content seemed comprehensible.

Now there are several violations of Greek grammar in John's gospel (e.g. John 14:26), where the masculine singular "ekeinos" is used to refer to the neuter word "Spirit". But this is doubtless deliberate, in order to clearly refer to the Spirit of God as a person.

Regards,
Lee

 

[lee_merrill]

Part of the problem with early Bible manuscripts is no two seem to be exactly alike. and some differ to a marked degree. Untangling what would be the more original form of the New testament has occupied a lot of effort by experts.

There are a lot of differences in manuscripts, but few would seem significant:

Of some 2,500 real differences, only about 300 involve any substantial difference in meaning. These variants involve less than one tenth of one percent of the text of the New Testament. The numbers of variants that actually affect the meaning—not just spelling—of the text are minuscule.

Regards,
Lee

 

[bilby]

Part of the problem with early Bible manuscripts is no two seem to be exactly alike. and some differ to a marked degree. Untangling what would be the more original form of the New testament has occupied a lot of effort by experts.

There are a lot of differences in manuscripts, but few would seem significant:

Of some 2,500 real differences, only about 300 involve any substantial difference in meaning. These variants involve less than one tenth of one percent of the text of the New Testament. The numbers of variants that actually affect the meaning—not just spelling—of the text are minuscule.

Regards,
Lee

Which would be all well and good if it wasn't an important document by which one is supposed to understand a perfect God. But if it was, the number should not be 2,500, or 300, or one tenth of one percent, or even 'minuscule'. It should be zero.

 

[lee_merrill]

Which would be all well and good if it wasn't an important document by which one is supposed to understand a perfect God. But if it was, the number should not be 2,500, or 300, or one tenth of one percent, or even 'minuscule'. It should be zero.

Well, that was before us humans got a hold of it! Christian belief is that the New Testament is inerrant in the original manuscripts.

Regards,
Lee

 

[bilby]

Which would be all well and good if it wasn't an important document by which one is supposed to understand a perfect God. But if it was, the number should not be 2,500, or 300, or one tenth of one percent, or even 'minuscule'. It should be zero.

Well, that was before us humans got a hold of it! Christian belief is that the New Testament is inerrant in the original manuscripts.

Regards,
Lee

Sure. But Christians believe all kinds of nutty crap.

 

[Kharakov]

Which would be all well and good if it wasn't an important document by which one is supposed to understand a perfect God. But if it was, the number should not be 2,500, or 300, or one tenth of one percent, or even 'minuscule'. It should be zero.

Well, that was before us humans got a hold of it! Christian belief is that the New Testament is inerrant in the original manuscripts.

Regards,
Lee

Sure. But Christians believe all kinds of nutty crap.

Well, consider the source, and that the physical universe is deliberately obfuscated when presented to children.

 

[humbleman]

Which would be all well and good if it wasn't an important document by which one is supposed to understand a perfect God. But if it was, the number should not be 2,500, or 300, or one tenth of one percent, or even 'minuscule'. It should be zero.

Well, that was before us humans got a hold of it! Christian belief is that the New Testament is inerrant in the original manuscripts.

Regards,
Lee

Sure. But Christians believe all kinds of nutty crap.

As far as I can see, Christians in these forums don't believe in the nutty craps you say most of the time.

 

[Keith&Co.]

As far as I can see, Christians in these forums don't believe in the nutty craps you say most of the time.

Well, you believe a lisp is a health hazard...
That crap's pretty nutty.

 

[humbleman]

I read a comment years ago and can't remember where. This person claimed to know Greek and said that part of the New Testament were written illiteratively, with sentences often not conforming to the know rules of Greek grammar to which translators had to just do the best they could to translate into English. Do any of you know Greek and is this charge true?

Do we have actual grammars going back to ancient times that tells us how we should translate these languages anyway?

Μόλις την σκασμό...lol

 

[Oecolampadius]

http://dspace.aiias.edu/handle/3442/283

 

[humbleman]

http://dspace.aiias.edu/handle/3442/283

Since the ancient Greek up to today, the rules in grammar have changed a lot.

In the famous number 666, the letters are χξϛ and ϛ (stigma) is a letter that doesn't exist anymore.

By the way, when you "pronounce" those letters as one word using the interpretation of χ (khi) as Xristos as it was used in the first centuries of this era, (or χmas (christmas as it is used today) and ξ sounding as Zus, plus ϛ Stigma (the marks of the body of Xristos from the crucifixion) you end with Kristos-Zus- plus s (the image with the man with the marks in hands, feet and side= Christ Jesus). Lol.

Of course, as the link says, you will find grammatical errors in Revelation if the book was written by a Hebrew speaking dude.

One more thing to add.

Ancient languages have lesser words but these words had more meanings than today's same words when applied to ideas in sentences. And many words might mean something different to what they mean in our times.

This is happening inclusive with English, where the word "nice", in the past had the meaning of "stupid".

So, based on the English language used five centuries ago, I can say that in these forums the dudes attacking God and the bible are so nice...

 

[Oecolampadius]

The name Jesus or Iesous in Greek was often abbreviated with the Greek letters iota-eta-sigma. The iota sometimes got transliterated as J, the eta looked like an H, and the sigma sometimes appeared as a variant that looked like a C rather than the typical sigma. Hence JHC, which some took to mean Jesus H. Christ.

 

[humbleman]

The name Jesus or Iesous in Greek was often abbreviated with the Greek letters iota-eta-sigma. The iota sometimes got transliterated as J, the eta looked like an H, and the sigma sometimes appeared as a variant that looked like a C rather than the typical sigma. Hence JHC, which some took to mean Jesus H. Christ.

That is correct.

The original Hebrew name is Yeshu.

Greeks don't use the pronunciation "sh" so they transliterated it as "iesou" but Greek male names end with the letter "s" as "Josephus" "Cassius", etc, so the transliterated name ended as Iesous.

Greeks abbreviated the title Christ as Xto. From here comes the modern Xmas sign (Christ-Mass=Christmas).

Greeks and Hebrews don't have a letter "j", however Greeks have words with "j" letter sound, as well as Hebrews. The word Hanukah actually is pronounced with a first sound like pulling mucus with your throat out and "H"anukah sounds like dog's grunt sound at its beginning.

This kind of rare pronunciation happened also when the bible was translated to the worst language to be adapted for Hebrew pronunciation by Johannes Gutenberg: German.

Here the name YHWH was pronounced Iave, because Germans have trouble with the letter "u". Then, rather than "Dauid" (which is a more close pronunciation according to me) it was transliterated as "David".

Here is the Jewish joke about tourists in Hawaii, so you will see better what I'm talking about.
__________________________________________________________

Two tourists (one of them a German and the another Italian) went to Hawaii for vacations. After a few days in the island, one of them commented how great were relaxing in Havaii.

-It's Hawaii, said the another.

-No, it's Havaii.

After discussing longer than Humbleman with others about relativity in "Elsewhere" section of Talk Free Thought forums, they agreed to find an aborigine of the island and ask him how the name of that land was pronounced.

Going here and there, they found a fisherman who had the appearance of being a native of the island.

-Excuse me sir -asked the Italian tourist - how do you pronounce the name of this island: Hawaii or Havai?

-Havai, of course, answered the fisherman.

-Did you see? -said the German- I told you the name is Havai.

They left the place going to the hotel, when the Italian had a concern, so he returned back to the fisherman to ask one more question.

-Excuse me again sir, can you tell me how long are you in this island?

-Two veeks -responded the fisherman.

 

[funinspace]

Sure. But Christians believe all kinds of nutty crap.

As far as I can see, Christians in these forums don't believe in the nutty craps you say most of the time.

Sure there are probably more normative Christians on this forum than otherwise. However, we do get our share of, shall I say, eccentric ones as well. Years ago there was a guy who seriously argued that your God directly and divinely built Egypt's Great Pyramid. Self-Mutation (S&M, as I called him) was always a crack up, but he got banned as well. And yes of course there are eccentric non-Christians as well. It is a colorful rainbow here if nothing else

 

[Jobar]

The different writers of the NT were not equally fluent in Greek. But I understand there's a fairly distinctive Semitic Style to the New Testament.