Different versions of the Bible are dramatically different. How can an translated book be infallible?

Question

The King James Version of the Holy Bible, most used by fundamentalist, was translated by men who were not fully versed in translation. Many verses could have possibly been mistranslated or wrongfully rendered.

It is generally accepted in the ancient languages community that those who wrote the KJV did NOT fully grasp Greek or Hebrew. The scholarship available at the time was simply not as advanced as today. One must also look at the context of the times that the book was written in, and what certain words meant at the time.

How can the Bible be infallible and guided by God when there are obvious differences between the versions? I mean look at it truthfully. Basically what we believe is based on what men translated?

Then ALSO was the older versions of the Bible that were WRONGLY translated still infallible for those people in that day such as those who founded many Protestant churches?

Answer 1

Learn to read it in its original language. Jews do. I'm sure a few Christians do as well.
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Answer 2

"Dramatically" different? Aside from word choices, the rendering of an idiom or syntax, Bibles say pretty much the same thing, at least enough that the verse numbers are consistent. Sure, there are a few "missing" or "additional" verses depending on whether you subscribe the the "Textus Receptus" source or the "Nestle-Alland" source.

The point is, there are people who HAVE made the effort to study and understand the surviving manuscripts, as well as the cultures that produced them. The doctrinal differences come down to selective reading, emphasizing preferred verses and ignoring inconvenient ones. The sources can be compared for consistency and well-educated guesses can be made about their intent.

But slavish devotion to specific words and phrases in the Bible is a trap. God's "word" isn't words. Words can easily be misinterpreted, twisted to whatever meaning a "teacher" wishes to impart. Truth requires a holistic approach to the Bible, a comprehensive feel for the consistent truth of the Bible. Some parts of the "original" are less important or less universal than others. Some of it is actually poor editing. But if one gets beyond the doctrinal turf wars, one should be able to detect a simple, quintessential "message", something that transcends the natural tendency toward self-protection and self-interest.

Can we arrive at such an understanding without God? Certainly. But it requires experience and maturity. The Bible is a book about one nation's spiritual "experience", extended out to others. Insofar is God may exist, this would be one way to express God's underlying message about life in the material universe. The less one pays attention to the factional elements of the Bible, the closer one is to the pure message, and thereby, to "God". The "difference" that this spirituality makes is not one of rituals, labels and exclusion, but of fundamental understanding of how to regard and treat other people regardless of their faiths.

It's easy to get lost in the trivial details of the Bible. True inspiration takes some digging, a familiarity that lets the seeker see through the accretion of tribalistic dirt to the radical message that overcomes the organic fear of annihilation. One can still misinterpret the meaning of "good", but it's less likely than relying on disjointed, fragmentary "proof texts".

You can tell when an interpretation is inspired. If if makes life more cruel and burdensome, it probably isn't. If it frees people, all people, to take better care of each other, it probably is.

Answer 3

Personally I believe the KJ version is an acceptable version to read, as good as any other, if you can wade through the language that is. However, do some research into exactly HOW the KJ version came in existance. It is an interesting story of how one man decided he wanted/desired something, and set about to accomplish it.

Also God, himself did NOT write the Bible. Man did. With their various spins on different accounts. Plus when the Bible was first compiled, the Catholic church ( who were the ONLY ones overseeing the Bible) decided to leave OUT ALOT of other books. If ALL books of the Bible should be read, then why did the Catholic church exclude some and include others? Because ultimately it was MAN who compiled the Bible.

One example of how modern man has chose to re-interupt the Bible, has to do with Jesus making wine. Todays Christians will say, it is really referring to grape juice. Bull hocky if it is. It that area of the world, grape juice would spoil in minutes, unless the fermentation process was started. Jesus nor God says not to drink alcohol...but man has chosen to input his own ideas into this book and what the meanings are.

I think God himself is infallible, but man surely is, and thusly his translation of the Bible. So yes, basically, what we read today isnt what God wrote, but what man has written, and been translated too many times. But all in all, the teaching are worth learning.

Answer 4

Fortunately, we still have over 2,300 existing manuscripts of the New Testament that date from before the time any translations were made. Another 7,000 copies of the original manuscripts still in the original languages from the time of the first translation (the Latin Vulgate) to the invention of the printing press. After that, the number explodes into the millions.

If you take those original 2,300 manuscripts and compare them, you will find that they are word for word indentical 99.7% of the time. Of the 0.3% where they vary, the majority are either different spellings of the same word, or the reversing of the words "Jesus Christ" and "Christ Jesus". Of the over 7,000 lines that compose the New Testament, there are less then 40 about which there is any debate on the original wordings. None of them affect a single major doctrine of the church.

Comapre that to works like Homer's Illiad, of which we have 11 manuscripts total, and nearly 1/3 of the work is in dispute. Or the more recent writings of Shakespeare, where not a single one of his plays has not had to have one or more scenes ADDED by scholars because they are missing from the earliest published copies.

You are correct that any translation is going to introduce errors. No work can be perfectly translated between two languages without some loss of meaning or the accidently introduction of a new meaning.

But since we still have the original language manuscripts to look at, and hundreds of translations to compare so that we can spot those errors, the results is many translations are that are both accurate and reliable when compared with the original manuscripts.

SIt down some time and actually compare four or five modern translations. (If you do not have several, try biblegateway.com where you can see them online for free.) You will see that the differences are in style, not in meaning.

Answer 5

I’d also avoid the King James Version . . . unless you’re used to reading Middle English like Shakespeare. Also, a lot has been learned since 1611, (the Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1948, for example) and the KJ version has major translation problems. Even the New Revised King James Version is pretty poor, despite hundreds of changes to the previous version.

I use the NRSV, published last year. But I also like looking up OT references in a good Jewish translation of the Tanakh - the "Jewish Bible.”

If you get different versions, and closely read the words, you’ll find different translations that have different nuanced meanings. It doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong, it means the human translators made different judgments in translations.

Of course the Bible isn’t THE WORD OF GOD . . . it’s translated into a language we can understand.

But the Bible is God’s Word . . . meaning the message, not the medium or the method, is what God tries to tell us.

(And by the way, what I believe has nearly nothing to do with a book. I'm a follower of Christ, not a follower of the Book. I follow the spirit of a living God, not a book.)

Godspeed.

Answer 6

A translated book can be infallible. That's why if you are going to make a major lifestyle change and follow a book, you need to look for the most accurate translation you can find.

Though the NIV translation of the Bible is wildly popular, it is a paraphrase of the Bible, and not good to use for in-depth referencing. (The Message, The New Living Translation are similar in paraphrasing.)

If you are looking for an English translation, the King James is the closest translation to the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. It is more difficult to read 16th Century English, but the effort is worth it for the richness of the text.

The King James Version we have today was "assembled" by the Septuagint in the middle ages, a group of some 70 Bible Scholars and linguists of the time.

Answer 7

in 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves around and within the Wadi Qumran. On the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. They were written between the 2nd and 1st century B.C. They were written in Classical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. The texts when compared to the bible of today are vastly similar in comparison. But guess what; the message hasn't changed a bit.

The truth in the message has always been simple, timeless, and universal. Whether translated in Russian, German, Vietnamese, Swiss, or Swahili. The message is clear. And still the same song friend.

Now if you get all bent out of shape about whether Yeshua ha'Maschiach (Jesus) spoke English, Old French, or Latin there's another problem. The bible isn't perfectly translated word for word from the mouth of God. Just as Jesus is a mistranslation of Yeshua. Or Israel for Yees-ra-ayl. As are various other words.

The essential message has always been within the Ten Commandments. Love the Lord your God. And to love your neighbor (other humans) as yourself. Praise be to God (Yahweh)!

God bless

Answer 8

The original books within the bible were written by chosen men inspired by the Holy Spirit. This does not mean the translators were inspired. It was written in Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Then is was translated into Latin. From there into English. You have to remember that some of these languages did not have words to represent some of the words they were translating so they tried to extrapolate some meanings and come up with a word that was close.

Answer 9

All books to some degree are translated into another language from time to time. Languages don't always have word for word matches, in fact, they seldom do. One word in Hebrew or Greek can have many meanings, and since most versions of biblical languages are no longer spoken (at least not in the form we associate in the Bible) there will be some missed translations. Study of the Bible and of those cultures has led to better translations, the King James translation was a good effort, but they didn't have the knowledge or technology basis we have today. Not to mention, the King James suffered from, like many things in Europe of the time, political slants. Most "modern" translations agree with the vast majority of the Bible in meaning and context.

Answer 10

The only dramatically different versions of the Bible are ones produced by unorthodox groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses and other Unitarian-types or anti-Trinitarian groups. The KJV was translated by men who were brilliant scholars and gifted in language translation (especially Latin, which many of the translations they worked from were written in). Who on earth told you differently? Their only limitations were the limited number of ancient manuscripts available to them. But as more and more ancient manuscripts are discovered, the amazing accuracy of the Bible is being vindicated. It is probably the best-attested document in the world, scholastiically.

Answer 11

The versions are not dramatically different. Believe me, I have at least four different translations, access to many more, and every verse I've ever looked up read about the same. It is true that the original King James version had errors in it but they were corrected long ago. The difference in translations is mostly what modern word they choose to use for an ancient Hebrew or Greek one to best convey the original meaning. Even the King James is updated once every ten years because language is fluid and changing. The original 1611 version is practically unreadable.