BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

A Bible Devotion

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Bible Translations

JOHN 8:31-32 KJV

31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Originally, the books of the Bible were written in Hebrew or Greek.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect English translation of the Bible. And there probably will not be one until Jesus returns to earth and we have the "Jesus Translation."
While all English Bibles are only translations done by fallible men, they are all valuable.
Anyone who knows enough about Hebrew or Greek to translate the Scriptures, knows more than I do of those languages. So any intelligent person will realize they can learn something from them.

I appreciate every translation we do have, and the efforts of the translators who tried their best to bring us the Word of God in a language we can understand. Thank God for them!
Please do not tell me we should use only the King James Version of the Bible. I have already been down that road and know the arguments. I have even burned other Bibles in the past because of their "errors."
But, I also know the difficulty of communicating with non- church people when using the KJV.
And, I have known the leanness of soul that comes from neglecting the Bible -- sometimes simply because it was boring -- having read it so many times and being so familiar with it.
I have also known the joy that comes from finding modern language translations that seemed to speak to my heart in a fresh way, and helped me to grasp what the Word was saying all along -- but I had missed it because of the language.
My suggestion is that you use modern translations like devotional commentaries. Read them and let the Lord speak to you through them. But for detailed study, I suggest using the KJV or the New King James Version (and the tools that are available to study the words used in them).
The important thing is not which Bible translation you use, it is whether you act on the Bible teaching you know and manifest the love of God to the world.
Dr. C. H. Dodd, in the Introduction to the New Testament of "The New English Bible," says, "No one who has not tried it can know how impossible an art translation is. Only those who have meditated long upon the Greek original are aware of the richness and subtlety of meaning that may lie even within the most apparently simple sentence, or know the despair that attends all efforts to bring it out through the medium of a different language."
Clarence Jordan in his Introduction to "The Cotton Patch Version of Paul's Epistles" provides a thought provoking example of the difficulty of understanding and translating something from another time and culture.
"For example, someone would be perfectly understood if he wrote to a friend, "We had hot dogs and Coke for lunch, fish and hush puppies for supper, and then sat around shooting the bull until midnight." But let that letter get lost for about two thousand years, then let some Ph.D. try to translate it into a non- English language of A.D. 3967. If he faithfully translated the words it might run something like this: "We had steaming canines (possibly a small variety such as the Chihuahua --Ed.) and processed coal (the coke was probably not eaten but used to heat the dogs -- Ed.) for the noon meal, and fish and mute, immature dogs (no doubt the defective offspring of the hot dog, with which twentieth-century Americans were so preoccupied -- Ed.) for the evening meal, followed by passively engaging until midnight in the brutish sport of bull-shooting (the bulls were then processed into a large sausage called bologna, which sounded like "baloney" -- Ed.)." For such scholarship the good doctor may have won world renown as the foremost authority on twentieth-century English -- without having the slightest idea what was actually said!"
Should you let this discourage you from reading and study of the Bible. No! Jesus promised that continuing in His Word would cause us to know the truth which would make us free. But we must continue. It is not enough to just read the Bible once and expect to have mastered and understood it completely.
2 TIMOTHY 2:15 KJV
15 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth, and bring to our remembrance what Jesus said (John 14:26, 16:13). Understanding the truth of the Bible requires more than Bible college degrees. The help of the Holy Spirit is necessary.
LUKE 24:45 KJV
45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures,
So, as you read and study the Bible, always do it prayerfully, asking the Lord to teach you and give you understanding. And remember to be humble, realizing that what you think -- or what the whole crowd of Christians have thought for years -- may be wrong. As the apostle Paul, who was caught up to Heaven, received direct revelation, and wrote down most of the New Testament, said in 1 Corinthians 13:9 "For we know in part."
SAY THIS: I will study God's Word and act on it.

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