The Bible

[Gregory Matthews]

The Bible

 

I decided that it might be of value to give a background to the book that we call the Bible.

Catholic Bibles mainly differ from Protestant Bibles in that they include some ancient writings, generally called by Protestants, The Apocrypha, that is not included in Protestant Bibles Some other differences are very minor and not significant.

Origin: All of the Biblical books began as written documents (Autographs) written well before printed documents existed. We do not have any of those documents. All we have are copies of the original documents. Those documents do contain some scribal errors. But, they are highly accurate and the minor errors are commonly seen in comparison with other copies which we have.

 Chapters and Verses: As first written, the Biblical books did not have chapters and verses. They were mostly written as one document. L Scholars added the chapters and verses at a later time.

The New Testament was written in Biblical Greek (Koine Greek) which differs from the modern Greek language of today. Scholars understand that language very well today. Those documents also contain Individual words from other languages that were spoken in Palestine in the time when the writings were prepared.

The Old Testament was mostly written in Biblical Hebrew, which differs ftom the modern Hebrew of today. However, a little bit of the Old Testament was written in
Aramaic, which is well understood today. Aramaic is a close cousin to the Hebrew of that time. All those who spoke Hebrew were likely able to understand Aramaic.

Translation: The Bibles that you purchase today have generally been translated in one to the following three types:

Formal Translation sticks very clsely to the original text. It is commonly used for doctrinal study, preaching and by scholars.

Dynamic Translation attempts to esent the authors thinking in a manner that is easly understood in the translated language.

Paraphrased translation attempts to present what the translator thinks the author wanted to say, into the translated language.

The careful student of the Bible will need to understand the background of the Biblical material and the process of producing the copies and the methods of translation. However, that student can rest assured that the Bibles of today do contain what God wanted humans to know.

 

 

 

[Asia Joe]

We also need to understand the both Hebrew and Greek are far more expressive than English. So to me it is silly to argue which English translation is better.  They are translations. 

[Asia Joe]

However, after reading Hobie's post, " NIV changes, from 'ta hagia' to 'hagia haggiwn'. ", I can  see there is a difference. 

I highly recommend people read that.