WHO WAS SEEN AT THE NATIVITY SCENE?
a "fundamentalist christian" is one who believes that the ENGLISH TRANSLATION of the king james VERSION of the bible is the EXACT word of God. (who, as everyone knows, is a white, english speaking, grey haired, man.) go by your local "christian" church and check out their nativity scene. bet they have the three wise men in it. THE WISE MEN WERE NOT THERE ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE. the wise men are only mentioned in matthew. and matthew says they come AFTER Jesus had been born and go to Herod inquiring of him where he thought the young child would have been born. herod sends them off the Bethleham. and in the king james VERSION (that is his "version" --but no one ever gets that) matthew 2-11 "AND WHEN THEY WERE COME INTO THE HOUSE"....now unless a manger is a house or a house is a manger .....Luke who also writes about the birth of Christ mentions no wise men at all. John and Mark say nothing at all about the birth of Jesus the Christ they pick the story later in His life. go point this out to the minister and watch him hem and haw.
posted by Ron Shock | 9:35 AM
6 Comments:
-A Fundamentalist Christian believes that the King James Version is the inspired, complete Word of God, preserved in English. This is not quite what you are saying here. Also, it is named the King James Version because he commissioned its production. It would not be accurate to call it "his" version. Over 50 of the greatest linguists of the day worked on its translation.
-The popular notion of the Nativity Scene is, as you say, un-Biblical.
actually, it is an almost word for word copy of the WILLIAM TINSDALE bible which was orginally published in german. as an historical note, william tinsdale was hanged for heresy by the british crown. there is some irony there. it cannot be "preserved" in english if it was written in another language, in this case, greek. from aramic to greek to latin to french to german to english is the sequence. since the roman catholic church held all the original (or first copies) writings and in the 3rd century at the council of nice, it revised it's translation there has to be a certain element of suspision as to why this was done, especially since also at that time the catholic church went from a philosophical organization to a polictical one aliegning with the roman empire which lead to unspeakable tragedy for untold millions. p.s. if you don't know, i am a christian and have read the gospels in greek. i feel that the kings james version, as well as most of the others, contain purposeful misrepresentations of christ's teachings to give authority to the churches and mislead the people.
By "preserved" I meant that the Word of God is "preserved." For clarification, change "preserved" to "written" in my first post. Obviously English is not the original language of the Bible. The Word of God transcends human language. However, it does need to be conveyed by human language.
The translation of the KJV did not go through the various translations into the other languages you mentioned. It came from original texts that Erasmus established as the Textus Receptus, in Hebrew and Greek.
I consider myself ultimately agnostic about the inspired nature of the KJV, but after studying the issue, I am convinced that the scholarship, diligence, and intent to remain as accurate to the original languages as possible (even italicizing words that are not translated directly from Hebrew and Greek), have made the KJV the best English translation of the Word of God.
For further clarification, it should be acknowledged that there is a "best translation" of the Word of God in every language.
As a Christian I believe that the issue of the accuracy of the KJV is a matter of faith. However, like most other aspects of being a Christian, it can't be a blind faith. We need to prayerfully study this out because we will be held accountable for our beliefs.
As a final thought for this post, if you stand by a translation of the Bible, and I stand by a different translation of the Bible, and they say different things with different meanings, they cannot be both correct. A small book I read on the subject had a great title that illustrates this: "Things That are Different Cannot Be the Same."
very intelligent post. thank you for your views. someday i will write a little essay on translations and use the gospel of matthew as the basis. i would enjoy corresponding with more on this subject.
postscript to above. "corresponding with you..
Ron,
You are perfectly right about the nativity scenes being wrong, good point.
Although I will say, your take on the old king james version being the only right english version, is absolutly wrong.
We all know that the devil has great gain when he can keep the people from understanding the word of God.
He kept many people from the truth back in the time (that you mentioned) of the catholic church, they did not allow the bible to be translated to the language of the people, so that they could tell the people what the bible said, thus being able to control them, because the common folk could not read or understant latin. Once the people got the bible in a language they could understand, they got saved, and religion could no longer control them.
I was born and raised in the Amish religion, which speak a dialect of german, as well as english. They say the same things about the german Martin Luther translation of the bible, that you said about the old king james version in english. The bad thing is, the martin luther bible is written in high german, which is different from the german that they speak. The very same thing happens here as did with the catholic church. If people ever study a bible that they understand, they usually end up getting saved, which was the case with me.
And then there are people like you that act the same way about a translation the was good and is good, just like the latin and the german, to someone that speaks the language. You know as well as I do, that the english today is far different than it was in the day when that translation was written, causing it to be harder to understand.
I have read most of the english translations out there, and I agree that some of them are kinda far out there, and some are absolutly wrong. But I challenge you to take any of the NKJV, NIV, to name a few, and find any difference in the gosple message, which is what you should be keeping your fucus on, instead of trying to cause strife, and keeping the good news from people that may not have reading skills as good as yours.
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