Any thoughts about the "Jesus Secret Book?" (Koine Greek New Testament)

[derby378]

Saw the ad and clicked the link - here's part of what the publishers claim:

While the real life first century residents of Judea were concerned about useless trees, the sixteenth century King James Version of the Bible was concerned about a totally different class of trees. The King James Version of the Bible was worried about the dreaded corrupt trees.

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. – Matthew 7:17-19 KJV

The passage above illustrates the difficulty some of the earliest Bible translators had due to their complete unawareness of the Koine Greek language. The King James Version mentions corrupt trees and evil fruit, which is kind of funny when you think about it. After all, how does one corrupt a tree? Do you expose the tree to pornography? And how can fruit be evil? It cannot murder. It cannot rape. It does not have the capacity to molest children. What’s all this talk of corruption and evil when dealing with trees and fruit?

In the Koine papyri we find an individual who wrote about his worthless assistant. The assistant was not immoral. The assistant was not evil. But the assistant was totally and completely useless; he was worthless (Koine Greek: ponerous). And guess what? This is the Koine Greek word translated as evil in the passage above. Jesus wasn't talking about evil fruit. He was talking about worthless fruit.

http://theunhiddenbible.org/the-unhidden-bible-book/

[old mark]

1. I think is it salesmanship, pure and simple - Try to find something online about this

translation that is not related to this single book or publisher...


mark

ADDED: If you look through this Wiki article, the bottom three sections deal with the Greek used in the Old and New Testaments. Evidently Koine Greek is a main predecessor of modern Greek, and there was not such a big mystery as the author would have you believe.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

[mw23412]

15. Not salesmanship at all

Another online source for this is WikiChristian. Even WikiChristian admits:

"For some time the Greek language of the New Testament confused many scholars. It was sufficiently different from Classical Greek that some hypothesized that it was a combination of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Others attempted to explain it as a "Holy Ghost language," assuming that perhaps God created a special language just for the Bible."

WikiChristian also says that it wasn't until the twentieth century that scholars knew the language had ever even existed. This means the first English Bibles were translated by men who did not know the language had ever even existed. Of course these men had to have made a lot of mistakes when they translated a language they didn't even know!

So no, the book does not rest on salesmanship claims at all.

By the way, the WikiChristian link is:
http://www.wikichristian.org/index.php/Koine_Greek

[VAliberal]

2. nonsense

there is no single manuscript 'in koine Greek' containing the entire New Testament canon

koine Greek is what scholars have read and translated from for two millennia

it's what I took six years of in undergraduate and graduate school - it's no secret; there are more variants in the transmitted texts, in the manuscripts and fragments, than the total word count; again there is no single scroll or codex 'in koine' as though koine Greek is something unique, hitherto unknown

selling it as a sort of 'secret Bible' teaching revolutionary doctrines is like promoting a book purporting to have discovered the Jewish Bible written in 'ancient Hebrew' - silly

[VAliberal]

4. I suppose I should add

koine Greek was simply vernacular Greek, unvarnished, everyday Greek - it is represents the language the New Testament texts were written in, as opposed to the Attic Greek of classics such as the Iliad or Odyssey, the tragedies, etc.

[mw23412]

8. Scholars did not "read and translated from for two millennia"

The Koine Greek language became extinct in the Medieval Age. The translators of the first English Bibles didn't know the language had even existed. That's why they translated the phrase as 'evil fruit.'

The Koine papyri was first discovered in the early twentieth century. So scholars did not ""read and translated from for two millennia."

And to date, not a single Bible has been translated using the discovered meanings.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Meh - the OED says 'poneros' means 'oppressed, injurious, evil'

Ponerlogy

Theol.

< ancient Greek poneros oppressed, injurious, evil (< ponos work, labour (< an ablaut variant (o-grade) of the root of penesthai to labour: see -PENIA comb. form) + eros -, extended form of ros -, suffix forming adjectives) + -LOGY comb. form.

A theory or doctrine of evil.

Similarly, the web page in the OP claims:

And what about the corrupt trees? Well, the Koine Greek word here is sapron, a word that describes something of such poor quality as to be of little or no value. This Koine Greek word is used to describe things that are useless.

But 'sapron' actually means putrid, as in:

saprophyte
f. Gr. sapros - putrid + phyton plant: see -PHYTE.

Any vegetable organism that lives on decayed organic matter.

It's that web page which is mistranslating things.

[mw23412]

12. Oops - the OED has censured the meaning

Even the Christian BDAG gives the following as one of the definitions of poneros: "to be so deficient in quality in a physical sense as to be worthless, of poor quality, worthless."

This is exactly what the website says. The theological dictionary you quoted has censored the meaning. Not surprising for a theological dictionary - and that's the point of the website.

The website definition is the one found in the Koine papyri as well.

[mw23412]

13. One More Note

I just rechecked the BDAG. Interestingly, it uses the 'poneros fruit' as an example where the word poneros means "worthless." See page 851 if you have the reference work.

So the website is correct that Jesus was using "worthless fruit" as a metaphor for "worthless people." Yet, strangely, no modern Bibles translate the word according to its actual meaning. They either talk about 'evil fruit' or 'bad fruit'; which is very different than 'worthless fruit'. It's fascinating Jesus said its the worthless - those who don't help society - who are thrown to the fire. What a difference!

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. The OED is the Oxford English Dictionary

not 'theological', not 'Christian', just the most authoritative dictionary for the English language in the world. There's no 'censorship' in what it says - you need to drop the conspiracy theories.

By the way, are you associated with the 'unhidden bible' site?

[mw23412]

19. Thanks for the clarification

A couple points.

First, I apologize if I characterized the OED as being a theological dictionary itself. In your post, you used the phrase 'theol.' which I'm still assuming means "the theological definition of the word." Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

Second, I thought you were adding information on the first century Koine Greek word 'ponerous,' not the twenty first century English word 'ponerology.' Which now I understand is what you were doing.

Third, please note that the Oxford English Dictionary gave the 'ancient Greek' definition in its etymology, not the 'Koine Greek' definition. This is exactly why the translators of the first English Bibles wrote about 'evil fruit' instead of 'worthless fruit.' They only knew classical Greek. They didn't even know the existence of Koine Greek - the language the Bible was written in.

I agree with you that the Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest authority on modern English. And the BDAG and A Greek English Lexicon (by Liddell and Scott) are the greatest authorities on classical and Koine Greeks.

The website is discussing the first century Koine word 'ponerous'. And the greatest Greek authorities show this word meant 'worthless' in the Koine papyri. Jesus didn't use the twenty first century English word 'ponerology.' Nor did Jesus use the word during the Classical Greek period - he didn't speak 'ancient Greek'. Rather Jesus used the first century Koine word 'ponerous.' He was talking about 'worthless fruit.'

And yes, I am affiliated with the website. And I want to provide as much info as I can about it.

PS - I am aware that the Koine Greek word 'ponerous' has a lot of flavors. But when the topic is 'fruit' the meaning is constrained to 'worthless.' Topic drives meaning.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. "when the topic is 'fruit' the meaning is constrained to 'worthless.' "

You do know what a metaphor is, don't you? Saying meanings are 'constrained' to the exact literal meaning that may be most likely to be associated with another word in the sentence is no way to read a piece of literature. Especially something like the Bible, which makes heavy use of parables. And it's no way to do a translation either. You may as well get a machine to do the translation, if you're not going to think about the most appropriate choice.

By the way, this is the first we've seen of "I am aware that the Koine Greek word 'ponerous' has a lot of flavors". That matters just a little, doesn't it? Especially when Liddell and Scott says:

πονηρός 1 πονέω
I. toilsome, painful, grievous, Theogn., Ar.
II. in bad case, in sorry plight, useless, good-for-nothing, Ar., Plat., etc.:—adv., πονηρῶς ἔχειν to be in bad case, Thuc.
III. in moral sense, bad, worthless, knavish, Lat. pravus, improbus, Aesch., Eur.; πονηρὸς κἀκ πονηρῶν rogue and son of rogues, Ar.; πόνῳ πονηρός laboriously wicked, id=Ar.:— ὁ π. the evil one, NTest.
2. base, cowardly, Soph.; π. χρώματα the coward's hue, Xen.


1 ponhro/s, h/, o/n

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dponhro%2Fs

So we have other uses of it in a moral sense.

And:

σαπρός 1 σα^πῆναι
I. rotten, putrid, Theogn., Ar.; of fish, stale, rancid, τάριχος Ar.
II. generally, stale, worn out, Lat. obsoletus, id=Ar.:—of persons, id=Ar.
2. of wine, in good sense, mellow, id=Ar.


1 sapro/s, h/, o/n

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dsapro%2Fs

[mw23412]

27. Yes, I know what a Metaphor is ...

Yes, I know what a metaphor is. But I'm forced to ask, do you?

A metaphor is based on two things sharing something in common. "She is a house." This is a metaphor where the "she" and the "house" both have "hugeness" in common. Are you with me so far?

Even when we personalize nouns in metaphors, there is a shared attribute. "He's as dumb as a rock." Both the "he" and the "rock" share the attribute of "no intelligence."

However 'people' and 'fruits' do not have 'evilness' in common. That translation is not a metaphor. But people and fruits can both be 'worthless.' Hence the metaphor... right? And that's why the word 'fruit', when used in a metaphor, constrains the translation... no?

As for your quote of Liddell and Scott. I am trusting you understand the difference between the BDAG and Liddell and Scott's reference work. The BDAG is exclusively focused on Koine Greek. While Liddell and Scott covers Greek from multiple time periods, including classical Greek. It should never be quoted with referencing which Greek you are documenting - for there are big differences.

The discovery that 'ponerous' was commonly used to express 'worthlessness' was one of the big surprises in the Koine papyri. And it finally explained Jesus' metaphor - for translators finally had a quality that 'fruit' and 'people' shared in common.

I don't know why you want to distract people away from this awesome historical finding (not a finding by me, but by the first Koine archeologists). Why do you feel compelled to bring a twenty first century English dictionary and an out-of-context quote of Liddell and Scott?

I'm always confused why people don't want to simply read the Bible in light of the Koine papyri. We finally have the entire vocabulary of the original Bible, yet people want to distract attention away from that. Why?

[tama]

36. Philology and historical linguistics

is more complicated than you lead to believe. BDAG is one very respectfull philological work but in this field there is no final word.

To quote Jerker Blomqvist's review:
"In that article Bauer expresses his view "that our literature on the whole represents the late Greek colloquial language". This is the assumption under which Bauer started--and continued--his work, and Danker seems to embrace the same views as he on the development of the Greek language. However, labeling NT Greek as "colloquial" seems problematic nowadays. The diglossic or polyglossic situation that prevailed in the Greek-speaking world involved more linguistic varieties than "colloquial" and "literary", and no variety of written Greek would be identical with spoken Greek. Even the concept of "NT Greek" becomes problematic, since the differences between the individual writings of the NT are so conspicuous, and, in spite of all parallels that have been detected, there are certain linguistic features that are attested only in Jewish and Christian texts. Before the next edition of BDAG some rethinking along these lines is advisable; the views that the lexicographer holds on the position of early Christian Greek in the Greek language community will influence, e.g., his selection of parallels to be quoted and his readiness to accept that ordinary Greek words may have developed specialized meanings in the linguistic milieu to which NT belonged. But that remark should not obscure the excellence of BDAG in its present shape. It is without doubt the best tool of its kind that exists in any language, and the present edition is decidedly superior to the earlier ones."
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2001/2001-06-01.html

As for the meaning of 'poneros' in this context, I don't have BDAG available and I would need to see if it really supports what you claim.

[mw23412]

37. The BDAG

I'm glad you will check it out. And when you do check it out, please notice the BDAG specifies that Matthew 7:17 is an example where the word means 'worthless'. Matthew 7:17 is the 'ponerous fruit' verse.

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. And Liddell and Scott specifies the New Testament for the 'evil' meaning

In particular, 'the evil one'. Which I would think is referencing 1 John 5:19 - how do you translate that - "the whole world lies under the worthless one"? Anyway, that means there is direct evidence from other parts of the Bible that the word stem poner- was in use, at that time, to mean 'evil' or 'wicked'.

I have no idea why you think there has been an "awesome historical finding". The passage made sense beforehand. Your translation removes the 'corrupt' meaning for the adjective for the tree (and 'corrupt' has been used to mean 'putrid, rotten or rotting' in English since at least 1380), and just uses 'useless' - a bland word with less meaning, or relevance to trees or people. 'Evil' was a word used to describe organic substances as 'unsound' or 'corrupt' in 1320 - "evil blood was here within". The implications of the words the KJV, and other translations, use, are there in the original - something living that has gone bad. This 'unhidden bible' translation, on the other hand, seems to want to reduce it to economic worth - talking about whether the fruit is salable at a market.

[mw23412]

47. Context, context, context

First, if 'evil fruit' reads fine to you, then we'll have to agree to disagree. It doesn't read fine to me. I have never met an evil fruit before. Perhaps you have.

Second, first century Judea was an agrarian society. The majority of people made their living from farming the land. Cutting down useless trees bearing worthless fruit and then tossing them into the fire was a common every day occurrence. So when the discovered Koine meanings match the historical setting - that's a great archaeological find.

Third, the discovered Koine meaning is a tremendous discovery because of its theological implications. Jesus' quintessential teaching on judgment says those who feed the poor, clothe the naked and shelter the homeless go to the kingdom. And, in the same teaching, he says that those who don't (i.e. the worthless) will be thrown to the fire. And when we apply the discovered Koine Greek meaning to the 'ponerous fruit' metaphor, we find the metaphor says the very same thing.

So the historical setting is a land where useless trees bearing worthless fruit are cut down and thrown to the fire. And Jesus taught elsewhere that those who are not worthwhile to society are thrown to the fire. And the discovered Koine meaning ties the historical setting and Jesus' quintessential teaching on judgment seamlessly together. That's awesome!

When Jesus' teachings are read using the discovered Koine meanings, a very different message is revealed. How many of us, myself included, believed we were marching toward heaven because of our 'faith' and 'imputed righteousness'. But Jesus said the worthless are tossed to the fire. If I am 'righteous' but 'societally worthless' then I still qualify for the tossing; which only agrees with Jesus' quintessential teaching on judgment anyway.

And as for 'the worthless one' example - nice try. In reply, I have an example of my own. Please consider the following sentence:

The sailor took the port out of the port while standing on the port at the port.

Now tell me, what does the word 'port' mean? For if I tell you the first word means 'wine' you will insist all the other instances must mean 'wine' as well. At least that is what your 'worthless one' example says. It's a deceptive argument.

The first instance of 'port' means one thing, and one thing only - wine. The context drives the meaning. The second instance of 'port' means one thing, and one thing only - briefcase. The context drives the meaning. The third instance of 'port' means one thing, and one thing only - the left side of a ship. The context drives the meaning. The fourth instance of 'port' means one thing, and one thing only - harbor. The context drives the meaning.

Contextually, the sentence means:

The sailor took the wine out of the briefcase while standing on the left side of the ship at the harbor.

What does port mean? It has a lot of meanings - but the context reduces the possible meanings often down to one in each and every instance. Said another way, the context drives the meaning. When the context is "drinking port," port has only one meaning - wine. And when the context is "fruit," ponerous has only one meaning - worthless. Context drives meaning. Fruit drives the meaning of 'worthless'. Change the context, change the meaning - as in "the evil one". Simple. Right?

[LiberalFighter]

66. Thanks for posting. Read the previews.

There is no doubt in my mind that all versions of the Bible have been mistranslated.

[tama]

24. It is possible

that historical Jesus knew Greek, but there is little reason to presume that he spoke Greek when speaking with people who knew Aramaic. The authors of NT wrote in Greek but there is no evidence of them using any written Aramaic sources. The little philological work I've done with NT suggests to me that the synoptics are parsed together from quotes from a Greek Q (one or more versions of) and fitting (some of) them (and inventing others) into a narrative created fron elements of various oral traditions, narrative needs etc.

Yes, topic drives meaning (ie. translation = context dependent interpretation). :)

[mw23412]

29. Touche

Yes, "context dependent interpretation" within the bounds of both "the word" and "the context". :)

For example, let's re-translate the following from English to English:

The sailor took the port out of the port while standing on the port at the port.

Which means:

The sailor took the wine out of the briefcase while standing on the left side of the ship at the harbor.

Yes, we must choose the meaning of the word from the context. But we also must choose from one of the meanings of the word! We are free to choose: wine, briefcase, left side of a ship, or harbor. But we are not free to choose: soda pop, purse, tennis rack, or bowling alley - regardless of the context.

Context helps us choose from the list of known uses of a word - but it never gives the translator license to invent a brand new use of his own. 'Eagle' means 'eagle'. To change 'eagle' to 'vulture' is not using context to choose from a list of known uses of the word. It is inventing a brand new use of the word. It is this kind of disingenuous translating in modern Bibles that I personally find sad and misleading.

[tama]

33. Agreed

Loyalty to the original means there are limits to degrees of liberty. Myself, I would also prefer the translation 'eagle' but in that context cannot say that the 'vulture' is unjustified.

[mw23412]

35. Interesting

I'm curious (and I mean that honestly, for I'm really, really curious), do you believe the writer meant 'vulture'? Do you believe he was 'expressing vulture' when he wrote 'eagle'?

I'm extra curious because I admire your posts ... a lot. And I would really like to understand how you come to a perspective so very different from one I don't even see as possible. Usually when this happens, I'm about to learn something - which is my favorite thing in life.

[tama]

40. "Writer meant"

That is extremely problematic concept in many ways (e.g. postmodern criticism of 'subject' and 'consciouss subjective intentionality') and especially so in prophetic language that implies some backward causation or other non-mainstream notions of time. My own experience of writing poetry and conversing with muses is that I myself often become consciouss of the meanings present in the text that I've written only afterwards, and other readers have their own interpretations that are no less incorrect than the writer's conscious and/or subconsciouss intentions and interpretations of them - that also change as function of time and space. It could be said that the very essence of poetic and prophetic language is in it's openness to various interpretations, in contrast to more analytical modes of language that strive for exact meanings with minimum space for interpretational variation (e.g. legal contracts etc.).

The word in the text is αετος which is symbologically and mythologically a very loaded word - as are also 'eagle' and 'vulture'. When interpreting symbolical and mythological language both-and is usually more loyal strategy than either-or, though in practice a translator cannot allways escape either-or judgements.

[mw23412]

45. I believe I see where you are coming from

I agree that prophetic language is very often symbolic. And therefore the writer could be talking about 'symbolic eagles.' Yet what I personally still can't grasp is how even 'symbolic eagles' could be construed to be 'vultures'? But I do see that from your perspective, it's sincerely possible.

From my current perspective the context (our favorite word :)) keeps compelling me to keep the word as it was written. For the 'eagles' reference is found in Matthew 24 which starts as follows:

"Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him. And He said to them, 'Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.'"

Given that the context is the destruction of Jerusalem, and given that the Romans came bearing the ensigns of eagles to destroy Jerusalem, the history and the written word match perfectly. The history matches the written word so much that I just don't see a need to change it.

[mw23412]

48. Thank you

I also owe you a thank you.

Because I could not understand how anyone could translate 'eagle' as 'vulture,' I immediately questioned the motives of those who do. While I still don't yet grasp how you get there, I do grasp your intellect, expertise, and sincerity. And your posts remind me not to necessarily question the motives or the intellectual prowess of those who see things so very differently. Thanks for the reminder. I'm going to work harder on toning down my "motive questioner."

[dimbear]

73. Let's kick this around a little.

"The authors of NT wrote in Greek but there is no evidence of them using any written Aramaic sources."

Well, if we start by ignoring all those Aramaic words right there in Mark, and if we disregard the hypothesis that the first two chapters of Luke differ in wording and grammar because they stem from an Aramaic source, you would be there except that an Apostolic Father states bluntly that Mattthew was originally written in Hebrew, or as we would understand it today Aramaic.

Now that is only the evidence of a learned person far in the past, but it is certainly evidence. And that supposed Aramaic source for koine Matthew had enough actuality to make it into the stichometry of Nicephorus.

If I recall, it came in at 2000 lines, a bit shorter than canonical Matthew.

[mw23412]

21. Documentation of Ponerous and Sapron

Ponerous - "to be so deficient in quality in a physical sense as to be worthless, of poor quality, worthless." (BDAG, p. 851)

Sapron - "something of such poor quality as to be of little or no value." (BDAG, p. 913)

When dealing with twenty first century English, the Oxford English Dictionary is a great resource. When dealing with first century Koine Greek, it's best to use Lexicons dedicated to the task. Wouldn't you agree?

[ashling]

3. When I took Greek in college

we read the Gospel of John in the original Koine Greek.

[LuvNewcastle]

5. This isn't a new translation,

it's an interpretation. It's a style of preaching. The preacher says he is translating the Bible for his congregation when he's actually giving his interpretation of the Bible. This author seems to be writing a series of sermons and calling them "hidden" translations.

[mw23412]

9. I beg to differ, the site is all about translation issues, not interpretation

There is a big difference between 'translation' and 'interpretation'.

The NIV Bible adds the word 'only' to Deuteronomy 6:13. That is not an 'interpretation' issue, that is a direct 'translation' issue.

See: http://theunhiddenbible.org/the-cave-four-mystery-book/

The modern Bible uses the known meaning of the Hebrew word 'emuwnah' in every verse except one, Habbakuk 2:4. That is not an 'interpretation' issue, that is a 'translation' issue.

See: http://theunhiddenbible.org/

Modern Bibles don't render the Hebrew idiom "new moon to new moon" as "one lunar year"; making it appear that hell is forever. That is not an 'interpretation' issue, that is a 'translation' issue.

See: http://theunhiddenbible.org/the-unhidden-commentary-book/

The entire site is dedicated to translation. Interpretation is what takes place after legitimate translation. And modern Bibles are not legitimately translated, and therefore sorely misinterpreted.

[tama]

14. Incorrect

All translation is interpretation.

Of course, it is no great secret that most modern translations are heavily influenced by (dogmatic) translation tradition that goes back to Vulgata instead of philological editions of the original Greek.

When Erasmus of Rotterdam made his new Latin translation of the Greek text, e.g. he translated εν αρχη ην ο λογος (beginning of John) with the meaning 'In the beginning there was discourse' (sermo) instead of Vulgata's interpretation 'word' (verbum)). Consequently, many Erasmians who wouldn't take a word for it but preferred dialogue were burned at the stake. :(

[mw23412]

16. Not all translation is open to interpretation

Cool info on Erasmus. I'm going to check it out. Fascinating.

Of course some translation is interpretation. But to say 'all translation' is interpretation goes to an incorrect extreme.

When a Bible writer adds words that are not in the original text, this is a pure translation issue. There is nothing wrong with theologians debating which flavor of a word best fits a text - that is open for interpretation. But to add words (or render meanings that aren't even in the scope of word) is far outside the boundaries of 'interpretation'.

For example, in Greek as in English there are two separate words for 'eagle' and 'vulture' because they are two very different animals. You cannot translate 'eagle' as 'vulture' or 'vulture' as 'eagle'. As I think you would agree.

Yet stunningly, the NIV Bible has changed the Greek word 'eagle' to the English word 'vulture'. Why? Because the NIV Bible wants people to believe a future coming AntiChrist. But unfortunately for the NIV, the passage in Matthew was referring to the first century Roman eagles (the Roman army marched with giant ensigns of eagles). However the NIV Bible wants people to think the passage is about something in the future, not the past. So they simply change the word 'eagle' to 'vulture' in Matthew 24:28.

Now this is not an 'interpretation'. 'Eagle' means 'eagle'. And when Bibles can change nouns, there is a huge translation issue that goes far beyond 'one interpretation or another.' The actual meanings of words simply don't seem to matter to modern Bible translators. And sadly people quote them as if they somehow represent 'the Bible.' I strongly believe Christianity would be well served if people were told what was actually in the Greek Bible.

[tama]

22. There are no "correct" translations

only various interpretations of various degrees of agreement, depending on cultural and other contexts, intentionality etc.

The eagle/vulture example is a good one. 'Vulture' is OK interpretation in the context of interpreting ptoma as 'carcass'; referring to habit of birds of prey gathering around meal. You can just as well interprete it meaning Roman military ensign. Another ('New Ager') could interprete that it it refers to the myth of eagle and condor (ie. both eagle and vulture) meeting at the end of age of Pisces and beginning of Aquarious, ptoma meaning fallen body below and birds of omen high above bringing in mind the Hermetic maxim 'as below, so above'. Etc.

Translations are allways context dependent (on multiple levels), dependance on context is the definition of interpretation/hermeneutics.

[mw23412]

25. If a static noun can be changed ...

Verbs and adjectives have a lot of interpretive leeway. Is 'mujer bonita': "a pretty woman", "a beautiful woman," "a sexy woman," etc. There's a lot of room for interpretation. For the adjective has some play to it.

But we are not at liberty to say 'mujer bonita' means 'beautiful swimming pool.' The noun doesn't have so much play to it. The noun refers to "women" - not "swimming pools." Even if the context is a bunch of people swimming, the word 'mujer' still refers to the females that are doing the swimming, not the swimming pool. Contexts can't change the noun "female, women, etc." into "swimming pool." They are two different things. They are two different nouns. Just like 'eagles' and 'vultures' are two different things. They are two different nouns.

I chose the 'eagle' example for a reason. In both Greek and English this noun is not subjective. In English and Greek this noun is very static. And when the NIV Bible feels free to change the noun 'eagle' to the noun 'vulture' context simply cannot be used as an excuse.

The very reason the NIV changed the noun was because it didn't like the context. In the first century, 'eagles' + 'carcasses' = 'Roman military carnage.' But the NIV wants the passage to be about a different context - a future context. And if it left the word 'eagles' in the passage, then people would know it was a reference to the Roman army. For I don't know if there is any other historical association of 'eagles' and 'carcasses' - which kind of limits the interpretive bounds.

The Bible is an amazingly different document than what is published today. And when the boundaries of translation are respected, we find there are a number of fascinating teachings that have been lost due to the free hand of modern Bible writers.

Translation is both an art and a science. I wholeheartedly agree there is an artistic side to translating. Can you agree there is also a 'science side' as well? Or is nothing out of bounds - even changing one fixed noun into another?

[tama]

32. Science of translation

I have read some articles and books about the subject and worked as a professional translator (mainly from Greek to Finnish, specializing in poetry). The science of translation is not prescriptive (the 'art' can be prescriptive -> various prescriptive schools of translation), the science side is purely descriptive. A lot of descriptive sides both on processes involving the source language and target language, but in between there's an intuitive "black box" in the translating mind that scientific approaches cannot reach. :)

Translation is not really about words, word classes or even sentences - those are just some technicalities - but about interpreting and expressing meaning. The meaning conveyed by e.g. noun in the source language is often expressed by other linguistic structures (other word classes, relative sentences etc.). To convey the meaning as interpreted from source culture into target culture ofter requires finding close(st) analogical relation between the source and target. That is not against ethics of translation (loyalty to the meaning of the source text based on benevolent interpretation) but required by ethics of translation. In practice the ethics of benevolent interpretation leads, curiously, to the attempt to express the meaning "better" in the target language than it is expressed in the source language, because only by trying to do "better" than the "original" there is a remote chance of rising to the same level.

And no, ethics of benevolent interpretation is not easy on any level. So if you can't imagine being able to interprete and translate e.g. 'Mein Kampf' benevonently, then you should not try to translate it. :)

Likewise, if you can interprete Jesus' words (supposedly genuine enough from Q) only in historical context but not benevonently as words of a true prophet ("pre-teller") and cannot intuitively identify with Jesus, then IMHO perhaps you should not try to translate them, but only present your interpretations as you see most fit.

[mw23412]

34. The Spirit of It All

If you are saying that translators need to do their best to discover "what the person was expressing" and then reflect that in the translated text, I couldn't agree with you more. And I'm not arguing for a strict 'socio-historical' translation either, by the way.

What concerns me is when a translator takes his/her own beliefs, message, ideas and then tries to force them into a text - most notably the Bible. When the NIV rewrites Jesus' words about 'eagles and carcasses' they are not, in my opinion, trying to reflect what Jesus was expressing. The translators have a pre-conditioned belief about the passage, and they change it to reflect what they themselves believe. And then Christians quote their 'translation' as unquestionable gospel - much to the detriment of the high stakes social and environmental issues we face today.

And while the complete removal of self from translating is impossible, there are some safe guards. Whenever a translator is tempted to invent a brand new meaning of a word or phrase, that should give him pause. That is a sign that something is being forced into the text rather than trying to express what is actually there.

Unfortunately, the greater the emotional content, the harder it is to remove ourselves from translating. So the Bible is one of the toughest books to translate. But why are all the popular Bibles translated from a conservative perspective. Why is the conservative agenda forced into the text? Why don't we have a benevolent translation of the Bible - one that is true to the text, yet reflects the liberal ideology of Jesus?

This is my interest in all of this, by the way. It's my passion. I would love to see a Bible which truly expresses the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. And amazingly, if we just stuck to the Koine meanings discovered in Egypt, this is the Bible we are left with; a Bible that promotes love and the highest of societal ideals; a Bible that cannot be used to justify intolerance, bigotry, or the destruction of the planet.

[tama]

42. Well

As I try to explain in my other post, "what the person was expressing" is also a very problematic concept. Spirituality, to use as neutral word I can think now, is very much about surpassing personal boundaries, rigid divide between subject and object, division into inner and outer world. Gospel of Thomas emphasizes more clearly than any other Christian text that the "Kingdom" means just that.

When Christianity was adopted to replace the worship of Emperor of Rome as the state religion, many things followed - beginning from what texts were chosen for the "most suitable" collection and what texts banned. The idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation IMO has nothing to do with "love and the highest of societal ideals" and all to do with worship of the Emperor at the top of the pyramic scam, private property as creating more boundaries, including patent and copyright and other notions of limiting and thieving "intellectual property". Knowledge is an unlimited resource that gets stronger by open sharing.

So my advice, if it has any worth, to translating words of Jesus, is in addition to carefull and respectfull scholarly work ('philology' is a beautifull word :)) to liberate from the notions of intellectual property and that there is only one correct interpretation, to meditate Christ-nature by means best suited for your character, and translate from heart. :)

[mw23412]

46. What you learn from intuition, I get from the Koine

I guess the reason I'm passionate about the discovery of the Koine papyri is that it woke me up to what you seem to know intuitively. I used to believe "the idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation." And it was the Koine papyri that changed my mind. Matthew 9:13 reads so very differently when the common Koine meanings are used.

Literal: I did not come to call the equitable, but sinners.

Colloquial: I did not come to call those who treat others equal to themselves, but sinners.

What an amazing difference when the Koine meanings are applied. Jesus himself taught that those who already treat others equal to themselves don't need him for salvation. You apparently found that out intuitively. I did not. I found it by applying the Koine meanings (and now it feels intuitive!).

And I also believe there are a multitude of people who would view God, Jesus, and their neighbor so differently if they read the Bible translated according to the discovered Koine meanings. I used to get tired of the Bible. But now that I read it from the Koine Greek perspective, I can't get enough. And it's really helping me overcome some of the most stubborn, selfish parts that I thought would never surrender. I still have a long ways to go to become 'spiritual'. But at least now I believe there's hope I'll get there!

[tama]

49. Intuition

is just part of trying to stay open, philology and other scholarly fields are just as important as is all experience. By the way Greek 'skhole' from which school and sholarly are derived means originally 'leisure', opposite of 'ponos' which means 'toil', 'hard and painfull work', from which adjective 'poneros' is derived.

Your translation 'worthless' looses that central meaning and also the fact that hardships are not worthless in the sense that they can be learned from, and that nothing in the interconnected world is really worthless - who can judge something as worthless, without any value in any respect? A poneros fruit sounds 'worthless' only in the sense that the value of the fruit is not worth the toil of gathering them (c.f. toiling like madman in service of the rotten tree of corporate America to gather fruits of junk in consumerist frenzy that is only harming the planet). As a non-native speaker of English I cannot find a satisfactory English translation and can only suggest that you stay open to a fuller spectrum of meanings of the Greek word and try to find an expression that could convey them most loyally.

For a translator all dictionaries are just aids, not authorities.

[zeemike]

6. None of that matters because he was speaking metaphorically.

It was not about trees it was about people and a tree is a metaphor for that.

[mw23412]

10. It matters what type of people he was referring to

The word matters a lot. Was Jesus talking about 'evil' people being thrown to the fire, or 'worthless' people. A lot of worthless people are not evil. And it's fascinating that Jesus said those who are not helpful to society - those who are worthless - are thrown to the fire. The word matters ... a lot.

[old mark]

17. I have a lot of trouble with jesus condemning a class of people as worthless-

I think this "new translation" is fundamentalist bullshit, and they are looking to make a quick buck.

mark

[mw23412]

20. Jesus and 'the worthless'

The fundamentalists believe Jesus was talking about the evil fruit. They believe people will go to heaven based on 'faith' and 'righteousness.' They believe they are 'going to heaven' regardless whether they lift the burdens of others or not.

Jesus never said human beings themselves were worthless. He wasn't contrasting people's inherent worth. He was contrasting "those who do worthwhile things" and "those who don't" - a different issue altogether.

Jesus consistently taught that those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless go to the kingdom - for they do worthwhile things. And he consistently taught that those who don't do worthwhile things - the ponerous - don't go straight to the kingdom. They take a trip through the fire.

[LAGC]

68. Works vs. Faith

It seems the new interpretation would give preference to good works leading you to heaven, versus just having faith like the King James Version says. Is this a correct analysis?

[zeemike]

30. I don't think you really get analogies.

If you plant an orchard of fruit trees and one of them has a bitter fruit or one that is not good to eat then you cut it down and burn it because you do not want that genetic pattern to propagate.
this would have been well understood among the people of that day because most of them were farmers.
And if your goal is an orchard of edible fruit then it is not unreasonable to consider one with bad fruit evil, in that it corrupted the good.

[mw23412]

31. Yes, I really get analogies

Yes, I know what metaphors and analogies are.

A metaphor is based on two things sharing something in common. "She is a house." This is a metaphor where the "she" and the "house" both have "hugeness" in common.

Even when we personalize nouns in metaphors, there is a shared attribute. "He's as dumb as a rock." Both the "he" and the "rock" share the attribute of "no intelligence."

However 'people' and 'fruits' do not have 'evilness' in common. Such a translation is not a metaphor. But people and fruits can both be 'worthless.' Hence the metaphor.

When archaeologists discovered that the Koine Greek word 'ponerous' was used to express 'worthless things' they were ecstatic. They had discovered an attribute that 'fruit' and 'people' have in common. They finally had a viable translation of Jesus' metaphor. And there are hundreds of examples where the Koine Greek discoveries cause the Bible to read seamlessly and fluidly - devoid of 'evil fruit' and the like.

[zeemike]

38. Yes they do if you look at it closely

The evil in the fruit is that it can propagate it's traits.
And you also know that an evil Man can propagate it's evil on society....an evil person can raise and propagate an evil child.
And a look at history makes it clear....Hitler propagated much evil...and in the 80s greed was propagated and is alive and doing well today.

[mw23412]

39. Okay

If you believe fruits can be 'evil' then okay. In that case, evil fruits does a metaphor make.

As for me, I believe Jesus was simply using a metaphor based on the common, everyday experiences of the people he was talking to. In their agrarian society, useless trees bearing worthless fruit were routinely cut down, chopped up, and thrown into the fire. And I believe he was using their everyday experience as an analogy - as a metaphor - to teach them.

And I find it interesting that archaeology has uncovered the meaning of the Koine words. And the meanings they discovered were 'useless' (as in useless trees) and 'worthless' (as in 'worthless fruit). To me, I find the archaeology compelling.

[zeemike]

41. I believe that too.

What I don't agree with is changing the wording from what the scholars thought was a proper translation in the KJV.

And example of this is in the KJV Jesus is quoted as saying "resist not evil"
Look up the same thing in the new version and you will see "resist not an evil man"
It is not the same thing.
If he meant resist not evil then he was talking about not fighting wars against evil....like communism or socialism that is said to be evil.
But if you restrict it to a man then you can fight against the evils of communism or other things that are said to be evil.

[Jim__]

7. I don't know Greek, and I don't know much about the Bible.

But, "worthless fruit" sounds like a better translation to me than "evil fruit." I know what "worthless fruit" means; I have no idea what "evil fruit" means.

[tama]

28. The passage

is about "false prophets" compared wolves in sheep clothes and then to 'sapron' trees - by their fruits you shall know them.

So why not 'kakos' (Greek for bad) but 'poneros', with the sense of 'toil', 'burdensome' etc. I'd like to suggest meaning that 'false foresayers' promise rewards in future but produce only more misery and hardship in present. Like holding a carrot in front of a donkey, of the Aesopian fable.

[Igel]

26. This thread has so many problems. Where to begin?

Let's start with English. Modern English. It's not the same as English in 1750, nor is it the same as in 1600 or 1400 or 1200. If you go back in time and try to find the moment when "Modern English" started you can't. There's a smooth, gradual transition from one variety to the other. Even when the change is stunning abrupt by historical linguistics standards, it takes at least two generations, if not three.

"Evil" in 1600 did not mean solely, nor even principally, "morally vicious." The primary meaning was "bad" or "spoiled." "Corrupt" has changed it's meaning a bit since then, too. They weren't bad translations for the Greek. They had a drawback--they had to follow the Bishop's Bible translation when possible, so some of their language was a bit archaic even in 1611. Still, had the English been a bad equivalent for the Greek they'd have been authorized to change it. Now, had the KJV been transated in 2001, it would have been a horrible translation. The website is chronologically challenged and doesn't understand that languages change--even as they say that "classical Greek" changed to koine.

The problem is that if they generalized their knowledge to English, they'd have nothing outrage-inducing to say. They'd miss their audience, they wouldn't make people feel superior in their ignorance, and they wouldn't be able to achieve whatever their goals are. Thus ends point 1, with a rebuke.

Point two concerns koine. Koine wasn't a language. It was a language variety. Let's get straight what that means: The way I speak to my neighbor's dog and the way I speak to my wife's colleagues are usually different. One's informal. The other isn't. We can call those "registers" since they form different parts of my unitary language. The way my wife speaks and the way I speak form mildly differing language varieties--SW American vs. Mid-Atlantic English. My neighbors speak AAEV, African-American English Vernacular, which is even more divergent from modern standard American norms. The guy across the street from my mother is from near Dover, England, and speaks a general South British English variety. They're all English, but they're different varieties. We could speak of Early Modern English, as opposed to Modern American English, as a different variety--it accounts for some of the problems people have trying to understand the Constitution. The language has changed, and with it the grammar and meanings of words. Oh, and the pronunciation.

Notice that most people don't really consider these different varieties to be different languages. Why? Because there's a very large degree of interintelligibility. I can understand my neighbors, provided there's a bit of good will; my wife and I miscommunicate (because of linguistic differences) rarely. If I *want* to I can consider them all different varieties with unified grammars and nicely different lexicons, because they are. But that's immaterial. I know somebody who's writing a grammar of Inupiaq based on the westernmost portions of the dialect continuum--and when she's done, it won't be a grammar of Inupiaq but of the Inupiaq in two villages so that's what she'll call it. Still, when all's said and done if you learn *that* grammar you'll get by in most Inupiaq-speaking areas.

Such is koine. It wasn't the descendant of "classical Greek", because "classical Greek" is usually just Attic Greek; "classical Greek" is also the cover term for a variety of dialects--Doric, Ionian, Attic, etc., and in this sense koine is sort of the descendent of them *all*. It's an interdialect. It's the variety used between dialects that became so useful that it displaced the former dialects. But just as Standard English might, in theory, displace current American dialects still most of the dialectal material would continue. Why? Because the standard isn't *that* much different from the dialectal varieties, on the whole. So koine is very similar indeed to the older dialects--a bit of levelling, a bit of simplification, a few hundred years language change all with a shift from the educated, rhetorical norm to a more vernacular, street-use norm.

Is it a separate language? Define "language." The way that your site uses it, no. It's not. What wasn't recognized was that it wasn't just a set of ad hoc simplifications and changes to Attic, but an entire system of its own--albeit one very similar to educated, older dialects. Until it was necessary, in fact, to draw all the distinctions because of fine-grained linguistic work done by too many "generalists," most people didn't much care about how all the differences correlated. Granted, some theologians decided it had to be a "special" Greek, but that phase lasted but briefly.

Now, the Greek texts weren't widely known, but they were out and about for the earliest English translations. Scholars, such as they were, mostly based their translations on the easily available Latin, but more than a few checked the Greek. They weren't published, but they knew they were around and used them. That's point 2, hacked to death. But there's more.

Point 2a is that koine wasn't monolithic. It was more standard than they used to think, but there are still blatant dialectisms, Levantine usages, in the NT. It couldn't have been written by koine speakers from Athens. It may be that it was translated and too many phrases from Aramic loan-translated--a bad practice, but it happens to the best of us. It may be that there was simply substrate influence--just as a lot of children of Spanish speakers have a changed English grammar because they learned standard English imperfect. This is another source of change in koine. It can make life difficult, because even when you get the words' meaning, you have to look back to Aramaic to see what the non-compositional meaning of a phrase might be.

Point 3 involves what a translation is. Let's take a good, easy example from Russian--modern Russian. "Vot idyot poezd." Literally, "There goes train." The verb "idyot" means "go", and it's what you'd use in "I go to the store," "The train goes to the station", "The train goes at 3." But notice --no "the" in that sentence; no "the" in Russian, so the "right" translation--since we can't "add" words"--is ungrammatical. We translate a grammatical sentence as ungrammatical? Hardly sporting.

Also my example lacks context. It almost always means, "Here comes the train." That's what an American would say in parallel as a Russian said, "Vot idyot poezd." Russian can say "come" just fine, thank you: Russians wouldn't in this case. "Ya shol, ya idu, ya budu idti" shouldn't be simple-mindedly translated as "I went, I go, I will go," but more as "I came, I go away, and I will keep on going."

The point is this: When you translate, you have to understand the text. You can't translate "word for word" because that often leads to idiocy. Often there *are* no words in one or the other language corresponding to what's understood by native speaking; often you flip things around *to preserve the meaning.* After all, language is all about meaning--the meanings of words, the meanings intended by the speaker, the meanings understood by the listener. "There goes train." You can't translate word-for-word, as though every word has a fixed translation, because that leads to inaccuracy. "There goes the train" (which in English usually means it's passing by, or possibly leaving; it can't mean what the Russian "word for word" translation almost always means. In other words, it's not a translation of the Russian.)

In fact, often you wind up with completely bizarre translations, if you think that the translation should sound like actual speech. "Ne sgovarivayas'" and yet doing things the same way can't be translated as "Not agreeing," but by "As if by agreement"--the expectation is that you'd only act in parallel by agreement, and both deny that there was agreement. Different groups of speakers have different assumptions about what needs to be said. And when you start playing with language, or using dialectal forms, all bets are off.

The KJV translations sometimes did precisely what I say is wrong. Then again, they often did it when they didn't understand the original. Things like "the apple of my eye," not realizing that it was "the pupil of my eye" (not a grade-schooler, either). Or, I think, there's a place where they have "slime" but some later scholar suggests "egg white" (the matter's probably still unresolved). Often it involved realia unknown to them (and not always well known to us now).

Nida had a famous example: The NT was being translated many decades ago for some Amazonian native population. They had no wine. They had no grapes. They had never seen wine or grapes. How, then, to translate the NT Passover narrative? Do they make up a word for grape and wine and then explain it in great detail hoping that the tribal community will understand, or use the native beverage closest to wine in form and function? Nida didn't provide the answer: Knowledge came from the question. Both are right, in different settings; so both options are also wrong. Of course, now that this particular group has been more "westernized" they'd know what grapes and wine are, so if they opted for a native drink it would now look like a bad translation. :-)

[tama]

44. I beg to differ

Now that westerners have become more "primitivized", IMHO Ayahuasca would be excellent translation of "Body of Christ" also in English translation of Bible. ;)

PS: RE "my wife and I miscommunicate rarely." - Allow me to express a degree of scepticism :D

[Lydia Leftcoast]

51. As a professional translator with a graduate degree in linguistics, I agree with you

Koine Greek is nothing more than the colloquial Greek of the Roman Empire period.

It did not "become extinct in the Middle Ages," because 1000 years would have been a tremendously long time for a language to go unchanged.

However, sometimes languages "go into a tunnel" because the people preserve ancient forms in writing while the colloquial forms change. This happened with Latin > Italian and also with medieval Japanese.

I don't know much about Greek except that I've looked over textbooks in both classical and Koine Greek, and they seem awfully similar. I used to know a lot of classics majors when I was in graduate school. They could read the Greek New Testament without difficulty, which they would not have been able to do if it were a different language.

Anyway, what I've heard of the "rediscovery" of Koine Greek is that at some point (I forget when), scholars discovered shipping records, court records, and personal letters that were written in the same style as the New Testament. There was never a "lexicon" of Koine Greek. The discoveries of these secular documents merely proved that there was nothing unusual about the writing style of the New Testament.

[mw23412]

52. A couple thoughts

The phrase "became extinct by the Middle Ages" is simply a reference to the fact that Koine Greek gave way to Medieval Greek (more formerly known as Byzantine Greek). Thus, by the Middle Ages, Koine had truly gone extinct.

Second, Koine Greek is so very different from Classical Greek that it confused even the Bible scholars who tried to translate the first English Bibles. Sure, you can read a Koine Greek document using Classical Greek definitions - but you'll completely misinterpret the text at every turn. And this is precisely what happened to the first translators of the English Bible.

Third, towards the turn of the twentieth century, there were more than just a few shipping records, etc. discovered. Rather, the mass of Koine material unearthed in Egypt was measured in the tons when it was shipped to London for analysis. The entire Koine vocabulary, for there was literally tons of material, was discovered in one fell swoop. And thankfully today, Lexicons have indeed been developed from this mass of material.

To document some of these points, I've cut & paste an excerpt of the WikiChristian entry for 'Koine' below. It demonstrates that Koine is sufficiently different from Classical Greek (hence it is not possible to accurately interpret the text based on Classical Greek). And it also demonstrates the rediscovery of Koine (hence it was extinct before the re-discovery). Hope this helps.


WikiChristian, excerpt for Koine

"For some time the Greek language of the New Testament confused many scholars. It was sufficiently different from Classical Greek that some hypothesized that it was a combination of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Others attempted to explain it as a "Holy Ghost language," assuming that perhaps God created a special language just for the Bible. But studies of Greek papyri found in Egypt over the past 120 years have shown that the Greek of the New Testament manuscripts was the "common" (koine) language of the everyday people - the same as that used in the writing of wills and private letters."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

53. There's no such thing as "the entire lexicon of a language"

But don't let that stop you.

You have your mind made up, and mere facts aren't going to change it.

(I once had a similar encounter with someone who insisted that Norwegian was not a Germanic language.)

[mw23412]

54. No one said 'the entire lexicon'

Your sarcasm aside, I'll still be glad to respond.

No one said 'the entire lexicon' was discovered. That would imply that every word was discovered relative to every possible topical usage. Such a silly statement was not made.

The statement was the entire vocabulary was discovered in one fell swoop. The point of that statement was to highlight the fact that not just a single word or two was discovered, rather every single commonly used word was found within the tons of material - ie. the entire vocabulary. It's truly an incredible moment in archaeology and history - despite your downplay of it, or despite your nit picking over semantics.

I appreciate the intensity and passion, but please don't put words in my mouth when trying to claim I'm the one not sticking to the facts.

Let me see if I can avoid your semantic nit picks. Here's what I was trying to express:

The Koine language disappeared by the Medieval Age. Did it disappear all at once? Of course not. Slowly, gradually, but definitely by the Medieval Age, it was extinct. Fact.

Amazingly, almost overnight, literally tons of Koine Greek documents were unearthed in Egypt. Thanks to the tons of material, multiple instances of every single commonly used word was discovered all at once. Fact. If you don't like the phrase 'entire vocabulary,' simply give me a better colloquial phrase and I'll happily use it.

Lexicons have been developed based on this discovery. Most notably edits to Liddell and Scott's "A Greek English Lexicon" and the Christian BDAG. Fact. Now are these complete lexicons of the language? Of course not. And that wasn't claimed. I'm well aware there are no complete lexicons of any language.

I think you doth protest too much.

Peace.

[mw23412]

55. Another point

Not quite what your beef is with my post, but to paraphrase:

1. The Koine Language (and yes, scholars refer to it as a language) disappeared.

2. The first English Bibles were translated at a time when biblical scholars didn't know the language ever even existed.

3. Therefore, they translated it using Classical Greek meanings.

4. The actual Koine Greek meanings were discovered at the turn of the twentieth century.

5. No Bibles have been produced using the discovered Koine meanings.

Not sure which fact you disagree with, or why you find it necessary to argue with the facts. But hey, that's life.

[tama]

60. Greek is alive

Linguistic variation is essential feature of all languages. You are not the same you as you were previous moment, does that mean that you disappeared?

Greek spoken in Egypt also varies according to time and place and is of course different from other dialects spoken in other parts of Hellenistic world. Diglossia (e.g. Greek as second and Koptic, Aramaic etc as first language) is also huge source of variation.

Koine is not defined by semantics but by phonological and morphological and syntactic variation, from which Modern Greek is continuation.

[Angry Dragon]

50. The point is being missed

Everyone is basing what they know of this god by what other men have written. A collection of books assembled into a larger book written by men. None were titled, none proven to really have been written by a god. Others left out completely because they did not fit the message that men wanted to convey.

[mw23412]

56. Not sure the point is being missed

I don't think the person who started this thread missed the point you were making. He was simply asking what people thought of a real life book that has been written - The Jesus Secret.

Most liberals don't believe God wrote the Bible. Yet most liberals understand that a large number of conservatives do indeed believe this. So, if there is a book that shows conservatives that they have their 'God inspired' book wrong, then that's kinda interesting. And maybe if conservatives could be shown documentable proof that they got the book wrong, liberals might have a much better life in this country. To me, that's the point.

[redqueen]

70. "maybe if conservatives could be shown documentable proof..."

I appreciate the sentiment, but considering their response to evolution? I doubt it would do much good.

That's the thing about 'belief'... it's an extremely dangerous slippery slope.

[mw23412]

58. Clarification

I should add, that while liberal Christians generally do not believe God chose the individual words of the Bible, the Bible is still very important to them; especially when it comes to the teachings of Jesus. And when the Bible is read in Koine Greek, it's very clear that Jesus' teachings were very liberal.

I used to be a fundamentalist. Had I known Koine Greek a long time ago, I would have stopped being a fundamentalist a long time ago. If current fundamentalists learn what the Koine Greek Bible really says, many would probably leave fundamentalism, and embrace liberal Christianity.

As a liberal Christian I do believe in an afterlife and the spiritual world. And I do believe the quantum mechanical model of the universe shows such a belief is not intellectual suicide. However:

1. I believe my soul is rewarded or punished based solely on how well I treat others.

2. This means I believe that atheists who treat others equitably will be rewarded just as much as any Christian who does so.

3. I do not believe there is a place of 'eternal damnation,' rather I believe any punishment is for the growth of soul, to help perfect it.

All of this is what is taught in the Koine Greek Bible. And if the fundamentalists who believe God chose every single word in the Bible knew what the real Bible says, they would believe these things too - and become much more tolerant, peaceful, helpful people. Then liberals - liberal atheists, liberal Christians, and liberals of other religions - would all have a much better life in this country.

[QuestionsRGood]

67. Thoughts & Ramblings...

First, I am thankful that there are people who want to know
the truth and are willing to "go against the grain"
in order to seek it out and/or reveal it.  I do think that
"fundamentalist" Christians do tend to fear doubt,
questioning, and, dare I say, intellectual study of the Bible.
 Humans in general of fearful of things that are a mystery -
that they can't wrap their brains around neatly and easily. 
Humans also have their own agenda, no matter how much they
would like to believe they do not.  We are imperfect and we
are all biased to some degree.  That said, the persons
responsible for writing the "unhidden bible" website
and related books do have an agenda.  Is the agenda to want to
translate the Bible more accurately based on new findings? Or,
is the agenda to manipulate new findings to support their
already established beliefs? I do not know.  I would hope it
is the former and not to make the "fundamentalists"
realize Jesus was a "liberal".  I actually find that
rather funny - not that Jesus' teachings would be considered
"liberal" in this time in history - just that it's
funny to me that humans want to "fight" to have
Jesus on "their" side politically or theologically
or whatever.  I guess if I have a point it is that I think
questioning and seeking the truth is a good thing, as long as
we all realize we are human, we are flawed, and none of us can
claim to be unbiased.  

Second, I want to respond specifically to the three points
mentioned above.  

"1. I believe my soul is rewarded or punished based
solely on how well I treat others." Okay.  I can see how
you got there based on what is written on the "unhidden
bible" website.  But how does that work out? How does a
human know when he/she has treated others well enough? What
does treating others well mean specifically? What does loving
others mean? On what basis does one define love? How will my
soul be rewarded if I'm "sort of" treating others
well versus "usually" treating others well? 

"2. This means I believe that atheists who treat others
equitably will be rewarded just as much as any Christian who
does so." Again, what does "equitably" mean?
Also, the Bible says that besides loving your neighbor as
yourself, the greatest commandment is to "Love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind." (Matt.22:37-38, NIV) If that is so,
aren't atheist's supposed to not only love others but love
God? That is hard to do if you don't believe in a god.  

"3.  3. I do not believe there is a place of 'eternal
damnation,' rather I believe any punishment is for the growth
of soul, to help perfect it."  So if you believe your
soul will be punished based solely on how well you treat
others, then you are saying you think any punishment will be
given after death (to your soul).  So, do you think that after
you die you will be punished to some extent, but it will not
be in the form of eternal damnation, rather it will be a type
of purgatory when you have a chance to grow from your mistakes
- to make you soul perfect? How does that happen and from
where in the Bible are you getting that idea? 

If this is about longing to understand what is true, if God
exists, and if God does exist, how does He makes Himself and
His will known, then I say, "Let the discussion begin /
continue."  If this is about trying to bash and insult
people - liberal, conservative, those who believe in God,
those who aren't sure, and those who do not, etc. then what is
the point? Why not look to see where the other is coming from
in terms of their beliefs? Why not try and understand why one
might lean one way or the other politically? Can a person
believe some behaviors are "sinful" and not hate
others? Can a person not understand another person and still
love them? Can we not stand in judgment of others who disagree
with us? 

Last thought - if you don't believe Jesus is God / the Son of
God / that the Bible is the Word of God, then why do you care
whether it is translated correctly or not? I would think that
you would only want to know what it "really" means
if you believed it showed what God's will is / how to follow
Him.  If you do not think Jesus is God, why do you care about
how Jesus' words are translated? If Jesus is not God, then I
really don't give a darn what He said or what others wrote
about the early Christians (i.e. the epistles) or about creeds
or about the Reformation.  Why believe it something that is
not true? And if God does not exist, and this is all that
"is" then why should I care about how I treat
others? Shouldn't I just seek my own pleasure and well-being?
Why should I care how my actions affect others? I mean that
sincerely.  What's the point if it is not true? 

[eShirl]

57. For anyone interested in teaching themselves Koine Greek

One of the ancient language subforums at Textkit.com is dedicated to Koine Greek learners.
http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/

[Silent3]

59. Why worry so much over issues of translation?

I have nothing against the intellectual and historical value of trying to refine translations of ancient writings.

What I object to is an assumption I feel is often lurking behind concerns about translation that, gosh, if we only knew just what those ancient words really meant, then we'd finally know what God and Jesus really want us to think and believe and do!

What kind of God would have a very important plan for the people he created to live by, leave the job of recording that plan to goatherds 2000 or more years ago, and then be happy to leave it as a game or "test of worthiness" which particular translations, transcriptions and compilations people choose to follow as the centuries roll by?

[Jim__]

61. And then, there's the original Aramaic.

What effect does the translation to Greek have on the original message. There was a recent column on this question:

The ancient Greek word for sin, hamartia, is an archery term that refers to missing the mark. It evokes an image of someone who tries to hit the bullseye, who has the intention of hitting it dead on, but who fails.

As pure as our intentions may have been, what if our past interpretations of Jesus' message have created a gospel that was never meant to be? Wouldn't that mean that we have sinned against the gospel?

It is important to remember that Jesus spoke Aramaic better than he spoke Greek and Latin, and that most of the people with whom he interacted likely spoke Aramaic as well. It was the common language spoken by most of the locals. Given this fact, wouldn't it make more sense if we bypassed the intermediate translations and tried to find out what his message was in his own idiom? Thinking that we can only find truth in Jesus' words in our own language makes no more sense than accepting at face value a Spanish text translated into English via Russian.

That's what a new movement of Aramaic linguistic study is all about: discovering the words of Jesus in his spoken tongue.

Have bible scholars ever tried to recapture the gospels in Aramaic?

[golddigger]

62. Jesus spoke Greek and Latin also?

Ugh, if he is the son of God wouldn't he be able to speak all languages perfectly?

[SarahB]

63. My husband posted about this on his blog:

He thinks the scholarship is dubious and that it misses the point anyway:

http://progressiveskeptic.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/the-real-jesus-secret-is-that-he-probably-never-existed/

Recently, as I was surfing through my favorite progressive blogs, I noticed an advertisement for a new book called “The Jesus Secret”. According to the author’s website, the Bible was originally written in a form of Greek that had never been fully understood before, but suddenly, after an amazing discovery in an Egyptian tomb, we can now do a correct translation and divine the real meaning of the Bible stories. And what do we find when we do it right? That “Jesus was a liberal, Paul never condemned homosexuals, and James agreed with Paul.” Wow! We now have biblical confirmation that God is a liberal!

Or do we? First of all, the entire premise of this book is total bullshit. As Professor Bart Ehrman noted in his excellent book “Misquoting Jesus”, we don’t even have an “original” version of the Bible. What we have are copies of copies of copies of documents written by many different authors, mistakenly and deliberately changed over the course of many, many years. To claim that the Bible was originally written in an obscure form of Greek, and that we have a copy of that original that we can translate properly, is utter nonsense.

However, there’s a bigger problem with the theory behind this book, and it’s a problem that plagues progressives who are trying to use ancient writings to win moral arguments: the ancient writings themselves have no basis in reality, and therefore cannot be used to justify anything.

[mw23412]

64. Dubious Scholarship Is not Posting Fact Checks

True scholarship requires letting people know when you've been fact checked. Someone on your husband's blog fact checked him ... and you did not include it in your post here. Hmmm.

The fact check reads:

"The website only says the Bible was originally written in Koine Greek, not that the original copies still exist."

Your husband's quote of Bart Ehrman's was out of place. And speaking of Bart Ehrman, a man who writes a lot about the Bible, isn't The Jesus Secret more information along the same lines? Just a thought.

Oh, and let me post the rest of the fact check, as I couldn't agree more:

"As progressives, we have to deal with a large percentage of the population who believe the Bible was written by God himself. If there is documentation showing that the Koine Greek manuscripts treasured by conservatives actually promotes liberal ideals – that’s awesome! Maybe we’ll finally have a tool to pry open the airtight minds of conservatives; which I think is the point of the website in the first place."

[mw23412]

65. I See the Blog is Looking For More Info - Impressive

I see your husband asked for more info on his blog, that's impressive. It looks like the blog is being written by someone who seeks out and responds to facts. Very nice. Maybe this will be a blog worth following.

[CoxRox]

71. I was Tempted to buy this book.....

but then I have a problem with having to PAY someone in order to discover 'hidden' knowledge that surely God would want to be freely available. Alarm bells have definately gone off because of the secretive nature of the author and how he is going about releasing his 'findings'. I gave in to curiosity and bought his other book: 'The Jerome Conspiracy'. I read the 'free' chapters and just had to know the rest of the story (which I'm sure is what the author bargains on.) I would very much like to discuss these matters (and a mistake I found in the Jerome Conspiracy) but it doesn't seem Michael Wood is contactable, which is a shame.

[humblebum]

69. Koine Greek was not one congruent dialect. It varied somewhat

according to location and time around the Aegean Sea and throughout Hellenistic areas.

[nssan]

72. New information about Bible’s

The strang thing, all of the writers of the Bible believed that God was not Jesus. The idea that Jesus is God did not become part of Christian belief until after the Bible was written, and took many centuries to become part of the faith of Christians.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, authors of the first three Gospels, believed that Jesus was not God (see Mark 10:18 and Matthew 19:17). They believed that he was the son of God in the sense of a righteous person. Many others too, are similarly called sons of God (see Matthew 23:1-9).

Paul, believed to be the author of some thirteen or fourteen letters in the Bible, also believed that Jesus is not God. For Paul, God first created Jesus, then used Jesus as the agent by which to create the rest of creation (see Colossians 1:15 and 1 Corinthians 8:6). Similar ideas are found in the letter to the Hebrews, and also in the Gospel and Letters of John composed some seventy years after Jesus. In all of these writings, however, Jesus is still a creature of God and is therefore forever subservient to God (see 1 Corinthians 15:28).

Now, because Paul, John, and the author of Hebrews believed that Jesus was God’s first creature, some of what they wrote clearly shows that Jesus was a pre-existent powerful being. This is often misunderstood to mean that he must have been God. But to say that Jesus was God is to go against what these very authors wrote. Although these authors had this later belief that Jesus is greater than all creatures, they also believed that he was still lesser than God. In fact, John quotes Jesus as saying: “...the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28). And Paul declares that the head of every woman is her husband, the head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God (see 1 Corinthians 11:3).

Therefore, to find something in these writings and claim that these teach that Jesus is God is to misuse and misquote what those authors are saying. What they wrote must be understood in the context of their belief that Jesus is a creature of God as they have already clearly said.

So we see then, that some of the later writers had a higher view of Jesus, but none of the writers of the Bible believed that Jesus is God. The Bible clearly teaches that there is only one true God, the one whom Jesus worshipped (see John 17: 3).

Encyclopedia Britannica notes that "none of the sources of his life and work can be traced to Jesus himself; he did not leave a single known written word. Also, there are no contemporary accounts written of his life and death. What can be established about the historical Jesus depends almost without exception on Christian traditions, especially on the material used in the composition of the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, which reflect the outlook of the later church and its faith in Jesus.