I just posted a translation of 2 Corinthians 3:7-11 in the translation section (which will be followed-up with verses 12-18 soon). In this section, Paul makes some contrasts between the Mosaic Covenant, and the New Covenant. Here is a list showing the contrasts:
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Nope, its not on 1 John, which I was working on after Philemon. That translation is on hold until after the semester is over. Instead, it is a section of scripture from 2 Corinthians, more specifically it is 2 Corinthians 1:15-24. This semester I am taking a class on Paul’s second (extant) letter to the church at Corinth, and I will be posting my translations here. Because we are only doing sections of the letter each week, it won’t be a complete translation (yet), but it will be a large bulk of the letter.

In this particular section, Paul is defending his change of plans of delaying a visit to Corinth.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”
John 1:1

Some have made the argument that the greek word λογος (logos, “word”) in the opening verses of John’s Gospel should be better translated as “logic.” Gordon H. Clark, Christian theologian and philosopher, once wrote “Any translation of John 1:1 that obscures this emphasis on mind or reason is a bad translation. And if anyone complains that the idea of ratio or debate obscures the personality of the second person of the Trinity, he should alter his concept of personality. In the beginning, then, was Logic.”

However, this hardly follows. Why should we assume that a translation is faulty, or outright wrong, for using “word” over “logic?” Presuppositions notwithstanding, I see no reason why every English translation that has been used by the Church since TyndalWycliffe has been a wrong translation. In fact, I believe the context of 1)the prologue (verses 1-14) of John, and 2) the Gospel of John en toto suggests that our translations have it correct.
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I have updated the translation of 1 John through chapter 2, verse 23. In so doing, I realized that this theme doesn’t allow comments on pages- so if you want to leave a comment or suggestion, please feel free to do so on this post.

Per the discussion from a few posts back, I have decided to go with “because” in verses 12-14, with a footnote. Feel free to leave a comment.

This was previously posted at my old blog. I had mentioned that I would post it again earlier and am finally getting around to it. This is part 2 of a 2 part series.

In the last post on Luke and Matthew’s account of the death of Judas, I looked at the differing accounts to see if there was a contradiction. I showed that there was not a contradiction for several reasons: The first reason is that Luke’s account of Judas falling presupposes that Judas was at some height in order to fall. This is confirmed by Matthew’s account of Judas hanging himself. Because one account does not exclude the possibility of the other, there is no contradiction. The second reason is that while we can (and, I believe should) take both as historically correct, we can also see possible typological allusions to the Old Testament in Matthew. While I definitely think Matthew uses some typology, I think we should take both accounts as historically accurate because 1)both authors include other details, which seem to point to a historical reality, and 2) both books are written in genres with a historical bent.

In this post, I want to look at some other details that both authors include that also appear at first glance to be contradictory: Who actually bought the field, and who prophesied the events. Here are the two accounts:
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This was previously posted at my old blog. I had mentioned that I would post it again earlier and am finally getting around to it. This is part 1 of a 2 part series.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the apparent contradiction between Luke and Matthew’s accounts of the death of Judas. This discrepancy has long been one of the main issues involved in the debate on the doctrine of inerrancy- the belief that the Bible, in the original writings, are without error due to the superintendence by the Holy Spirit. On a superficial look, it seems that these differences would be contradictory and that the idea of inerrancy is defeated. Here are the accounts:

“And throwing the money down into the temple, Judas left and hanged himself.”
Matthew 27.5

“Judas bought a field a field with the reward he got from his wrong-doing, and falling head-first, his body burst open in the middle and his intestines spilled out.”
Acts 1.18

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As most of my readers probably already know, the website dedicated to the codex Sinaiticus was launched recently. You can go there by clicking here. The website is gorgeous. The designers did a fantastic job with the look, and it is very accessible as well. The manuscript viewer did well on Firefox 3 (though Eric at Archaic Christianity had some issues).

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the text of their “about” page:

“Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. In the Codex, the text of both the Septuagint and the New Testament has been heavily annotated by a series of early correctors.

The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the reconstruction of the Christian Bible’s original text, the history of the Bible and the history of Western book-making is immense.”

Included books at the time of this post:
1 Chronicles
2 Esdras
Esther
Tobit
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Psalms
Mark

There is an interesting issue that creeps up in 1 John 2:12-14. Here is the passage in the NLT:

“I am writing to you who are God’s children
because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus.
I am writing to you who are mature in the faith
because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I am writing to you who are young in the faith
because you have won your battle with the evil one.
I have written to you who are God’s children
because you know the Father.
I have written to you who are mature in the faith
because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I have written to you who are young in the faith
because you are strong.
God’s word lives in your hearts,
and you have won your battle with the evil one.”

Certainly, the repetition in the passage catches our eye. The Greek is equally, if not more so, eye-catching. Before I actually get into the issue at hand, I do want to add that I really like NLT’s rendering of father and young men as “mature in the faith” and “young in the faith” respectively. The issue that I mentioned comes with how we translate the word ὅτι (hoti), which can be either causal (which the NLT, and most other translations, take it as), which would warrant a translation of “because,” or we it could be showing the content of John’s writing, which would be rendered “that.” In other words, is John giving the reason for writing or is he giving a summary of what he is writing?
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I just put up my translation of Philemon. Please feel free to check it out and leave comments and suggestions. As with Colossians, I will add a Philemon wordle soon.

Also, in the next few days I will be adding the two posts I did on the death of Judas from my old blog. The post deal with the apparent contradiction between Matthew’s Gospel and the book of Acts. In it will be an explanation of what makes an actual contradiction, and why the two accounts, though different, do not fit the criteria of a contradiction.

I hope that you can forgive me being a little anachronistic with this post, using modern terminology to describe a period where the terminology did not exist. Today, we have several terms to explain how something is translated. For example, the two most commonly used terms is “formal equivalence” and “dynamic (or functional) equivalence.” Formal equivalence (henceforth, “FE”) is the method of attempting to retain the original wording (including order) to the highest possible degree, or what some people call a “word-for-word” translation. Some people also use this term synonymously with “literal translation,” though I think that this is unhelpful and flawed (that is for another post, however). An example of this is the New American Standard Bible. Dynamic equivalence (Henceforth, DE), on the other hand, is a method of translation that seeks to convey the original meaning, though it may translate ancient idioms into modern idioms, or change grammar so that it is understandable to modern ears (this includes breaking up sentences, etc). Examples of DE include the New Living Translation and the Today’s New International Version. Translation is not black and white, of course. There are between these two a myriad of other methods, with more seemingly created each day.

The period of time between the actual life and ministry of Jesus and the writing of the New Testament books is often called the “oral stage,” or the “formative stage.” During this time, the stories of events and teachings were passed from person to person orally- via word of mouth. This was quite common in the ancient oral cultures. At some point, the authors of the New Testament began putting these stories into writing as the faith spread to other nations and languages. My question is simply this:

What method did the original authors use when translating the original stories into Greek?

One of the issues regarding translation that is often lost is that no language has a one-to-one correspondence. When people say that their translation is “word-for-word,” it is ultimately misleading, because I guarantee that their translation will actually have many more words than the original Greek New Testament. As fellow-blogger Mike [at least, I think it was Mike. Either way, here is a free link.] has stated (paraphrased), “Aner does not mean man or husband; aner means aner.” This is important for us to remember when we consider that the Gospels, in the original Greek, are themselves a translation. Jesus did not speak in Greek (at least, not primarily) but Aramaic. The Gospel authors are translating the Aramaic into Greek, or going with the translation that came out of the oral period. Just as there is no 1:1 correspondence between Greek and English, there is no 1:1 correspondence between Greek and Aramaic. It would be interesting to see how the New Testament authors have chosen to translate the Aramaic of the oral stories, and accounts given by actual eyewitnesses.

For the most part, of course, any ability to do this is lost. There may be some clues hidden in the Gospels however. At various times, the Gospel authors have included some Aramaic along with its translation. This is particularly true of John and Mark:
John 5:2; 19:13; 19:17; 20:16
Mark 3:17; 5:41; 15:31
See also Acts 1:19

If anyone happens to know both Aramaic and Greek, and would like to put in their thoughts, I would be very appreciative!