100% spot on.

I wouldn't disagree, in fact it's a great example of how to respond in a calm and constructive manner.

Whilst I'm happy to leave this subject at this point as not really worth pursuing much further, it does need to be said that 'insignificant' (WN's viewpoint) and 'just not true in the least' (your viewpoint) are not the same and my OP was factually correct and made sense.

If you have now moved from your position of complete denial, to WN's position of 'probably true but insignificant to the point of not really being worth mentioning', then we have nothing to discuss, and we have both gained something.

It stands in contrast to statements like these:

Which are given in response to such unreasonable questions like this:

The level of amusement I get from the "I'm the victim here" attitude continues to increase with time and the number of posts that you post.

Your OP can be broken down into 3 claims:

(1) If this turns out to be true, it could be very interesting [for biblical literalists?]
(2) If this turns out to be true, it could be potentially problematic for biblical literalists.
(3) I'll be following this story with interest.

Of these, the first two are speculations about what "could be" the case. I don't think it's a factual statement to propose vague possibility in the manner that you have done throughout this thread.

This leaves you with only one possible factual claim, that you will be following the story with interest. So you're right (assuming that you really will be following the story with interest), but not for the reasons you think you're right.

And your OP makes sense insofar as the sentences you constructed are syntactically meaningful.

I'd have thought gleefully mocking every post mightyboosh makes - all while he reads zero of them - would be enough. Do you really need to double post in response to one of his posts too?

I needed to contemplate the question of the nature of fact with regards to speculative statements. It was an interesting thing to think about on the drive to work. There are ways to view the statement "X might happen" as being factual claims (for example, we can conceive of a universe sufficiently similar to ours in which X does happen given what we know about how universes work). However, it seems that taking such a perspective is stretching things too far and the concept of a "fact" loses some of its essential properties.

I'm amused that my posting drives you so crazy when I post that you can't stop yourself from complaining about it. It's as if you feel a moral duty to keep reminding the world that MB has me blocked. I have no clue why you feel that obligation, but I assure you it's only in your head.

I, for one, am rather glad that mightyboosh seems to be uniquely valuable for you at motivating deep philosophical questions like "are vapid speculations facts?" for you to contemplate on your drive to work. No doubt you will quickly conclude that, like every other philosophy you seem to encounter, this is just moral relativism. It is wonderful to finally have found the motivator of your relentless obsession with mocking someone for years on end who doesn't appear to read any of it. I have to admit, "your sentences are syntactically meaningful" really is a gem.

Unfortunately I remain confused. You think I think you are posting something for MB to read? What on earth gave you that delusion? And what is this nonsense about moral duty? Surely someone who spends as much time relentlessly mocking mightyboosh at every opportunity can understand the idea of someone being amused by mocking you.

You know what my favourite part of this mocking post is? That you will read it and most likely respond to it.

My favorite part of that mocking post is its utter incoherence. And responding is my entertainment. If you wish to provide me with more, you may continue. We can call it a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Mightyboosh really is the quintessential punching bag. Years of mockery and derision and condescension hit on him for years on end and yet, like the punching bag, he doesn't experience it and never punches back. I'd suggest one of these days you find a real fight, but history as shown most of those result in you replacing your opponent with a straw man and punching that instead. And certainly you need a better source for thought provoking car ride philosophy topics.

For the record, I find this quite offensive. I'm posting this in the thread because I want everyone to know that, and I'm asking you politely to stop doing it. Further communications will be by PM.

Huh? You get the punching bag metaphor is because you have him on ignore, right? It says absolutely zero about you, how on earth is it quite offensive? I eagerly await your PM explanation.

100% spot on.

LOL -- Uke, you're so good at this. Please sir, may I have another?

Oh I'd love to. But if I make an analogy mocking you, and you alone, whose only relevance to mightyboosh is that he is the subject of your obsession, I might accidentally terribly upset mightyboosh and get him to demand a public cease and desist. Oh the irony, you can't get a response after years of openly insulting him and I get one when I don't even insult him.

I guess this means I may not. How unfortunate.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

So.... maybe we can get this back on topic.

What WN said has been bouncing around my mind and what percolated out at the end was this; that the act of translation itself is necessarily going to involve changes when the language being translated from doesn't have elements contained within the new language. For example, the Greek that the English KJB was translated from doesn't have indefinite articles (like 'a' or 'an') or lower case letters, so the KJB translators had to make decisions about when to capitalise letters for words perceived as proper nouns, and when not to, e.g. 'Spirit' and 'spirit', and when indefinite articles should be used e.g. discussions about t'the word', and those decisions may be influenced by a theological bias or simply by linguistic requirements.

Another example is the word 'proskuneo' which indicated supplication and for which the English word 'worship' was used. Since that time though, the definition of 'worship' has narrowed considerably and now may mislead readers into believing that any act of supplication, even a simple kiss, was in fact an act of worship.

It seems then that any rational and reasonable person might allow for some doubt as to the true meanings of words when they may have intentionally, or unintentionally, been altered in the act of translation, and that to simply discard this possibility and insist that the KJB is the true and divine, unaltered word of God, is a quite irrational act. So, does one need to be acting irrationally to be literalist? Is the argument that god was steering the hand and mind of the translators sufficient to dispense with this objection?

Yes.

But wouldn't that then cast the merit of previous versions into doubt and mean that we can never accept a new translation because it means that the old version must have been in error and could have been improved on? We know that biblical literalists don't accept every version of the bible as the divine and unaltered word of god, so once they choose, are they not stuck with what they chose using this logic?

If by "irrational" we mean "self-contradictory" than I agree with OrP that the argument that God (hypothetically) guides the process of translation is sufficient to dispense with that objection. The form of fundamentalism espoused by Only-The-KJV-Is-Inspired proponents isn't immediately self-refuting just because of the nature of language and translation.

On the other hand, if "irrational" means "unreasonable" then there are still lots of reasons that position is unreasonable, or reasons to think that position is not the best, abductively speaking. Of course some of those reasons amount to arguments against an entire family of theistic conceptions in general, rather than just arguments against KJV-only-ism of that sort.

I think so, excepting of course the possibility of them declaring at some point that they were wrong and now *this* is the actual one true text...

Sigh. You're misusing the word literalist yet again.

I'll repeat myself yet again for the obtuse.

#1. 'literalist' doesn't carry the meaning that you continue to give it
#2. Those that hold to Biblical inerrency, hold that only the original
manuscripts were inerrant (except for a fringe, very small minority).

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:
http://www.reformed.org/documents/in...ents/icbi.html


Article X.

WE AFFIRM that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

Misusing the term literalist yet again.

One that probably makes very little theological difference, but which I enjoy anyway, is in the prologue of John's gospel, and owes to the lack of punctuation in the oldest Greek texts:

πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων (John 1:3-4, SBL)

Most English translations look like this:

"All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." (ESV)

They put the period after ὃ γέγονεν:

χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν
"without him not one thing was made of what has come to be"

But, lacking punctuation, it's quite possible to read it like this:

"All things were made through him and apart from him not one thing was made. What came to be in him was life, and the life was the light of men."

It certainly seems less awkward in English the second way, and apparently early Christians, including Irenaeus, sometimes rendered it this way. (cf. Against Heresies 3.11.1). Both the Nestle Aland edition I have and the SBL version actually add punctuation to the Greek that indicates the second reading, which is also interesting to me, since the English ESV is based on the Nestle-Aland Greek. (cf. biblegateway.com for SBL)

If nothing else, the way some fundamentalists treat textual criticism and hermeneutics frustrates me because there's plenty of genuinely interesting things to to talk about. I'm quite enjoying learning koine Greek.

Not necessarily. One can accept the idea that language changes, so that while the particular text is to be taken as literally the Words of God, that it may require some extra interpretation to be rightly understood. So they may be "stuck" with one particular version, not necessarily be "wrong" to (for example) create a commentary in which certain passages are suggestively rewritten with language that matches concepts with the present use of language to bring clarity to the meaning of the passage.

Of course, this brings us closer to the more common forms of understanding Biblical inspiration and Biblical literalism, and more in line with the basic principles of translation.

I see what you mean, but I'm quite amused imagining the ensuing debates over which "extra" interpretation of the inspired translation of the inspired text is the inspired extra interpretation...

It's a word that can be used in many ways. I'm using the definition that I described for you in post #15. (Where I'm really just using the dictionary definition, a literal use of the word literal, if you like So rather than insisting that I'm misusing it and that all the points that follow are necessarily wrong, perhaps you can explain where my use of it contradicts the points I'm making?

Thanks for the link though, very interesting. Article V is very pertinent to the point I made regarding the difference between elements of various languages. It states:

This reads like a 'get out clause', i.e. take my example of the word 'worship'. Attempts to translate the original Greek into English have necessarily changed how that word is interpreted and therefore what is meant by it's use in the Bible. So, would you say that even though it now has a somewhat different meaning, that creates a somewhat different impression, that God actually intended this to be the case, that people reading the earlier version would understand one thing, and that people reading the later version would understand something else?

Also, what is your personal stance? Is there a version of the bible that you consider inerrant?