This is good evidence that you're conflating dictionary-literalism with Biblical literalism. You want to use the word "literal" to be the dictionary meaning, but then apply it to religious people who don't use the dictionary meaning. If you really want to use the dictionary definition, I'm quite certain that there are zero literalists. And you claiming that you know some doesn't convince me of anything.

The theology of a literalist does not function through the dictionary definition of literalism. It contradicts the points you're making because there's no theology of literalism that uses the dictionary definition of literalism.

I tried to find a dictionary definition that uses "unaltered" as part of the definition, and I could not find one.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literal

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literal

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us...nglish/literal

http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/literal

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/literal

I would be interested to see what dictionary MB is getting his dictionary definition from.

I looked around further to try to find some sort of evidence of the usage of literal with unaltered. A Google search of "literal unaltered" reveals scant evidence of usage within Christianity of those words used together. The phrase "literal unaltered word of God" does appear, but they all seem to be criticisms, so that nobody is claiming it as their own belief. You do see statements about "literal unaltered word of God" with regards to Muslims and the Qu'ran, which makes theological sense.

Exactly what I've been trying to get through to him throughout this thread. If he doesn't get it this time, I'm giving up. I get the feeling that at times he's acting obtuse on purpose.

I agree with 99% of the folks out there that hold to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, that is - that *only* the original autographs were inerrant

Anyone who is familiar with language translation knows that you lose/change
(subtle) meaning no matter how you translate. There is also the issue that
languages evolve and change over time. What the word 'hell' meant
in 1611 KJ English is different from what it means today.

I don't believe that major doctrines have changed by translating Koine Greek into English, but I think one needs to study how words have changed over
time, and the nuances between languages to get a more exact meaning
on a passage. My wife is a classical language scholar, she has written books
on Latin and Greek, so she is able to help me when I have questions about
certain passages.

I have some problems with both the idea of inerrancy and infallibility.

With inerrancy, it seems to me that the concept can only make sense under a hermeneutic that reduces the texts to collections of propositions which have a truth value in some correspondence theory of truth, whether truth be measured by historicity or in an empirical/scientific sense. That already seems to be a highly problematic way of approaching ancient religious texts.

Then of course, there is the fact that many passages of those texts, if treated that way, are quite clearly errant. But once inerrantists start excusing those texts on the basis that those aren't the ones that should be taken "literally" (in this sense) then the whole thing seems to fall apart. It also gets to the problem of interpretation and infallibility, i.e in how you recognize which passages have such a criterion of truth/error.

Then, with infallibility, I subscribe to the view of hermeneutics that suggests that an infallible text, even a hypothetical one (and the "original autographs" are certainly that) would require an infallible interpreter...

am i right that inerrancy implies infallibility?

It depends.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_infallibility

Direct reading from the reference: http://reformedperspectives.org/file...inerrancy.html

There do seem to be a bunch of shades of meaning on the definitions people use for inerrancy and infallibility. The way I tend to use them is the same as Frame, and that's what leads to the conclusion that infallibility isn't something that can inhere in a text itself. If infallibility implies the impossibility of error, rather than just a lack of error, then it makes no sense to call a text infallible in the hands of a fallible reader.

But then, even if inerrancy is logically weaker, in practice arguments about what it means for the text to be inerrant seem to me to amount to a problem of infallibility, because there is no completely objective basis for establishing the "correct" interpretation of the texts against which to measure error. The lack of such an objective basis owes mostly to their genres. A book of mathematical proofs, or a modern history might have such a basis, but the books of the Bible are not like either of those things. Or, as I said before, if we treat them as such, then they are clearly errant, so that in practice advocates of inerrancy do a lot of qualifying and interpreting to avoid that conclusion, again leading to the question of the fallibility of interpretation.

Even from a Christian perspective that wants to accept and honor in some way the idea of the inspiration of scripture, the enterprise seems dubious to me.

What I don't understand is that you agree that translation necessarily introduces, at the very least, the possibility of error, such that the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that "it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired", but you yourself do not speak either of the languages in which the original texts were written, rendering it virtually impossible then for you to understand and appreciate the original meanings.

Only someone truly fluent in a language, with such knowledge and experience of that culture as it is possible to acquire without actually having been part of it, could really hope to appreciate the original intent, nuance and meaning, and even they are translating it into their own language, their own frame of reference. Doesn't this then mean that you personally are reliant on translations by those people, which you claim must be errant since they are not the original texts?

"you yourself do not speak either of the languages in which the original texts were written, rendering it virtually impossible then for you to understand and appreciate the original meanings."

This is a non sequitur.

The translations are done by panels of scholars, and are as precise as can be. Sure there are subtle nuances, but to make the statement "impossible to understand" is a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

Anyway, that's why those that are really studious, learn the original language, and/or read lots of commentaries by people that have.

There are clearly "errors" in every single Bible translation ever done, this is really not problematic.

Clearly it's not. Since you don't speak biblical Greek or Aramaic, you cannot read the original texts and appreciate their meaning as if you were a native speaker of those languages**

And you go on to agree with me later in the same post when you say:

Which you haven't done.

No I don't, it is impossible for you to understand the original texts, you're reliant on translations. So you are in a situation where you cannot understand the original biblical texts and are entirely reliant on errant translations which you claim is "really not problematic", further claiming that the differences are simply 'subtle nuances'.

Can you explain how you know that they are only subtle nuances since, if the difference in meaning were understood well enough that it could be labelled 'subtle' then surely it would be understood well enough to be corrected, so the errors could actually range from subtle nuance to significant difference and your 'subtle nuance' is an assumption. Also, you claim it not to 'problematic' and this is something I find strange, given the importance of what we're discussing. It's not a translation of War and Peace, it's the bible, the word of your god, how can you simply allow that there may or may not be mistakes and that you don't know what they are?


** Do you speak any languages? I speak French, not well though, but the process of learning French has taught me that we often simply don't understand how native speakers think about things, that it's not a case of literal translation, but of finding a way to express a concept as the native speaker would, and that's assuming that you understand how they might think about it.

Actually, it is.

And therefore, one must conclude what? This?

Nope. I can understand and appreciate the original meaning of Euclid's elements without needing to know Greek. It's not anywhere close to impossible.

If you take this position, then since a text written in English in 1920 will use terms and cultural references that a reader today may not get, then it would also be "virtually impossible then for you to understand and appreciate the original meanings." And that's just dumb.

Thanks for responding Aaron, I just had to shake my head and move on...

Move on from what? That you basically argued that you can't trust the only versions of the bible that you can actually read? And you simply side-step my 'how do you know that they're 'subtle nuances' question'? Seriously, how do you categorise something as a 'subtle nuance' without then understanding exactly what the difference in meaning is (such that you can describe it as 'subtle'), and therefore understanding it well enough to correct it? This claim by you makes no sense.

These are communications from your god and you can't trust what you read, the best you claim to hope for is that any errors are 'subtle', I don't understand why you don't think it's 'problematic', are you going to help me understand that?

It's just a situation where you're just overstating your case. Even the jump from "infallible" (meaning something like not containing errors) to "fallible" (which means something much closer to being likely full of errors) is already a massive leap that makes no sense. It's really hard to take your position seriously when your argument almost proves that people can't understand anything.

Sigh. Languages translations aren't perfect, and they can't be. Koine Greek has verb tenses that don't exist in English. Nouns exist in certain languages
that have no meaning in other languages, i.e. there is no one word to translate into. Idioms exist in one language and not in others. Is it better to translate an idiom word for word or thought for thought? Are any of these
translation issues *errors*?

The Germans have a word for body fat that is gained by emotional "comfort" eating: kummerspeck. There is no word for this in English. If you translate this as follows into 7 English words, is it an *error*?

Kummerspeck m ‎(genitive singular Kummerspecks)

(uncountable) Excess weight gained due to emotional overeating.

I don't really understand why you're elaborating on the point about translations that I've been making to you throughout our conversation. I gave examples like these ones quite some time ago. Perhaps you should read back.

In the meantime, perhaps you could explain how your claim about 'subtle nuances' makes sense, or how it's not problematic for you that you know that the word of your god is errant, I have asked you a few times now, it's starting to look like you're dodging the question. Are you?

FesteringZit and Aaron (and nearly everyone else) agree that no translation is perfect. You are taking this to imply that no translation can be trusted. That doesn't seem like a warranted inference since imperfect translations that manage to get most of the sense and style of the original can be trusted as communicating the meaning of the original. This is especially true in the case of the Bible, which is the most widely translated and studied book in the history of humanity.

I agree that MB is over-extrapolating, but it seems to me that he's mainly overstating the linguistic problems, as a matter of translation, but he's not as far off in terms of interpretation given the wide gap in cultures, especially as a practical matter for most people who don't spend years engaged in scholarship on the subject.

As an example, whenever I've attended or read excerpts from bible studies that American evangelicals tend to engage in, I'm always struck by how much they are really studying the theological systems of protestants of the last few hundred years, rather than studying the texts of the Bible in themselves.

It's not that it's entirely impossible to understand biblical texts, but I think the gap in culture, exacerbated by the sheer weight of traditional interpretation, is significantly harder to deal with than the problem of translation. It's not that we have no idea what they meant, but I do think a lot of things are far less obvious than they might seem to be.

It's true that the application of Scripture is far less obvious than the translation of Scripture.

The last few hundred years? Try the last 50 years. I think there's an overdependence on a few high profile Christian speakers/writers and not enough on looking at Christian theologians. For example, no "proper(?)" Christian theologians subscribe to the prosperity gospel, but the prosperity gospel pervades many segments of American Evangelicalism.

I would also point to the anti-intellectualism of American Evangelicalism as another stumbling block that adds to the struggle.

At this point in history, American Evangelicalism seems much more focused on maintaining an Evangelical culture than pursuing something that looks more like "discipleship." But I think Christian millennials are moving in the right direction.

Talmudic rabbi assessors: 50 years wut.

@Matisyahu: lol.

Thank you, this is more what I'm saying, but I don't think that I'm guilty of an over-extrapolation since I've never said that it's 'impossible to understand the bible', I said that it was impossible for FZ specifically to understand the original texts since he doesn't speak the languages in which they were written, to then be able to highlight how entirely reliant he is on the translations. He claims that any errors in them will only be 'subtle nuances' and I don't know how anyone could know that because if they understand that there is an error, such that they could correctly categorize the level of that error, then surely they'd know enough to correct the error?

But in any case, we're talking about the most important book in history for Christians, the word of their god. So unless they take an interpretive approach to the bible so that human error isn't really an issue, how can they tolerate even a 'subtle nuance'? A nuance, even a subtle one, is a difference.

And I'm not satisfied with the 'guided by god' counter. And neither is the Chicago church statement it would seem, since they affirm that only the original texts are inerrant.

No, not exactly. I question the claim that any errors will only be 'subtle nuances' for reasons I've explained (and again to WN above this post) and I think that there's an unusual level of importance in the relationship between how accurate are the translations and how important it is to be able to trust them. Even subtle differences must matter far more in the context of the bible than in almost any other context perhaps, because they are differences, but I'm being told that these differences are 'not problematic'.

Is it sufficient to "manage to get most of the sense and style" in this context? And how does this explain that entire branches of Christianity, and Judaeism, use versions of the bible containing different books, or the with the books arranged in a different order? How is this possible when the defence against the charge of inaccuracy in the bible is that it is the most studied book in history, implying that there must be such a level of common consensus on what it originally said that error is highly unlikely? It seems to me that the result of this is not the most perfectly translated book in history but the most widely diverse and differently interpreted book in history.

However, we're now far outside the scope of the discussion I was trying to have with FZ.

Why does Festeringzit believe there are only subtle nuances of difference? Probably because scholars that he trusts have said so. If you think he is wrong about this claim and want to challenge it, then you should demonstrate that those scholars shouldn't be trusted, or that they don't reflect the consensus of the field.

But that isn't what you are doing here. You are merely pointing to the fact that it is possible that they are wrong, and that Festeringzit hasn't independently checked their conclusions. But personal independent verification of all historical claims is not the standard we should or do accept when evaluating historical claims. So why are you using it as the standard here?

Yes, for most contexts of usage.

What order and which books to include in the canon is a religious/theological issue, not a scholarly issue about how to translate the books of the Bible. Hence, the quality of translation doesn't really affect this issue.

It is possible because translation of the books of the Bible doesn't determine which books should be included in the canon, nor the order in which they should be included. This is extremely easy to demonstrate as these debates are often between religious scholars who do understand the original languages of the Bible.

Translation =/ interpretation. That is, the Bible could be the best translated book in history and the most widely diverse and differently interpreted book in history. So...