Jay, I have often wondered the same thing as you have about the texts used for the KJV, in the wake of the dead sea scrolls being discovered, etc., but it depends whether you think there are certain matters of the bible that are being revealed as time goes on which are unrelated to the essential points of salvation. We can have changing views of old/young earth creation, the bible and medicine, and other things as details emerge, because they are non-essentials that only become clearer as time goes on but were unnecessary for salvation. They only strengthen our appreciation for the scriptures and our faith in the age of information and science but were never essential to becoming saved.
Update My nephew is now starting to prefer the Douay Rheims and the King James, because he likes the fancy language. He asked me to read to him from "Cammy's special bible," meaning my leather one. He likes the thee and thou's because "it sounds like fancy language that no one else talks like." I thought that was adorable.
BTW I want to suggest that those looking for a faithful fascimile of the original 1611 King James may want to look here: https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Bible-King-James-Version/dp/1565638085 It seems to have good reviews for its faithfulness to the original and includes the Apocrypha (Note: you can find it on eBay in the US for cheaper, around $23 w/ free shipping, new).
Very nice.. I do wonder where the Apocrypha has disappeared in many modern translations/editions of the Bible As we are taught in the Articles, the Apocrypha is indeed very valuable, and may be used for edifying (even if not for doctrine)
Can anyone explain why the NRSV is so widely accepted in the Anglican/Episcopal churches when it clearly deviates from tradition on passages like Psalm 22:16, "My hands and feet are withered"? Since when has this ever been a traditional interpretation in the church's history? So far, I do not think that there is any advantage in the NRSV over the NKJV regarding modern literal translations, except for it's rather excellent contemporary translation of the Apocrypha, which I own as a single annotated volume (very helpful in explaining the deuterocanon to people).
You might already know this: the DR Bible is based on the Septuagint. So hence its Psalm 22 is what the King James Version (and other Bibles based on the Masoretic) label as Psalm 23. In the Douay Rheims version, the "Psalm 22:16" mentioned in the earlier post is actually Psalm 21:16.
I thought Douay was based on the Vulgate! In fact, I'm sure it is, since it retains all the Latinisms of the Vulgate. The order of the Psalms is also part of that tradition, too! In all honesty, I can't imagine using the DR as a primary bible (despite my name) simply because of the Roman Catholic association and footnotes promoting the doctrines in some passages. I have a small pocket Douay-Rheims from the 1950s, but I only use it as a reference to study the Vulgate differences. A lot of RCC-related things make me VERY uncomfortable, not being helped in any way by my very negative experiences with RCs in person. Based on conscience, I would never want to give someone the impression that I am OK with it being the primary bible for a Protestant. At the same time, Geneva makes me uncomfortable because of the Calvinist bias in the footnotes. Lastly, I often felt some animosity towards the KJV because of it's association with legalistic cults, but can appreciate it more in light of Anglican tradition. However, the NKJV is my primary bible at the moment.
I thought I had read that Jerome used the Septuagint as THE base for the Vulgate, but after looking it up after your posts, it appears that while Jerome may have used the Septuagint's numbering system when he was translating the Psalms, he mainly used the original Hebrew Tanakh as his starting text. So I have learned something tonight! I appreciate your posts very much.
I use the NRSV regularly myself. In terms of readability and style I enjoy it more than other translations. For some reason I've never warmed to the ESV or NKJV. I used both in the past but found them a bit wooden. That being said I agree the NRSV I find has a few problems with translations I'm not entirely comfortable with. My NRSV has a lot of the more conservative ESV renderings pencilled in which gives me the best of both worlds. There's a revision of the NRSV in the works btw. It'll be interesting what revisions they'll make and whether they'll revert to some more traditional renderings
With the whole RSV family you can always get the Catholic edition, which does much to temper the non-traditional excesses of the translation committees. A conversation piece of late has been the version released by the philosopher and Orthodox Christian David Bentley Hart - at least in my circles. I don't have it and probably won't unless it arrives as a gift but his brother Robert is a prominent voice in Continuing Anglicanism and an ACC priest. He offered some cursory thoughts in our inner circles when the work first came out last year. I see a steady trickle of reviews from both Orthodox and Anglican authors. The one constant seems to be an admonition to keep in mind that David Bentley Hart is a universalist and that perspective has colored his renderings of St. Paul. Having had Greek, translation is really hard! My final exam in the first unit was to translate John 3:1-12. I received a passing score but the professor criticized my submission for being overly dynamic. I don't beat up translators as much as I used to when I was ignorant and thought it was a fairly wooden academic process of matching words, putting the right conjugation on verbs, and getting one's tenses right. For comparison's sake, here's what I submitted: Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nikodemos, a ruler of the Jews, that was coming unto Jesus at night and saying, “Rabbi, we know that you come from God as a master and teacher because no man could be able to do these signs which you did unless God were with him.” Jesus answered and said, “Amen, amen. If any man is not born from above, no, he cannot know the kingdom of God.” This Nikodemos said unto him, “How can a man, being old, be born since he is not able to enter into the womb that mothered him a second time and be reborn?” Jesus answered, “Amen, amen. If any man be not born of water and Spirit, no, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born from flesh is flesh and that which is from Spirit is spirit. Do not wonder that I say to you, 'you must be born from above.' The Spirit blows where he would and the sound is heard but it is not known when it comes and where it goes. Thus are all those begotten by the Spirit.” Nikodemos answered, saying, “How can this be?” Jesus answered, saying, “You are the teacher of Israel, and do not know this? Amen, amen. We speak of that which we see and can bear witness to and the testimony is not received. If the earthly saying is unbelievable, how will you believe if I tell you of the heavenly things?” A few of the tenses are off from the traditional renderings. But, in hindsight, what I did with v. 8 is poor. Otherwise, I think it's serviceable and not ugly.
Bibles I own in my collection personally, in some format or another (sometimes multiple versions): English: -Douay-Rheims (Challoner Revision) -English Standard Version (w/ Apocrypha) -Geneva Bible (1599, Patriot's Edition by Tolle Lege) -Good News (w/ Apocrypha) -Holman Christian Standard Bible -King James Version (of course, who doesn't?) -Knox Bible -New English Bible -New King James Version -New Revised Standard Version (w/ Apocrypha) -Revised Standard Version: 50th Anniversary Edition (w/ Apocrypha) Foreign: -Chinese bible (may be cantonese, can't remember the exact version) -Korean Bible (again, can't remember which version it is at the moment) -La Sankta Biblio (Esperanto) -Rheina Valera 1960 (Spanish) -The Japanese Colloquial Bible (Japanese) Single Volumes of the Deuterocanon: -KJV Apocrypha (Cambridge) -The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (NRSV Version) My mother and father also own copies of versions I don't have. My mom has ones like the Amplified Bible and several messianic translations, and my dad has the New American Standard, an NIV, and others I can't remember. But they don't mind me reading them, of course. They're already quite impressed at my current collection.
I was doing some word study and cross language translation comparison a week or so ago. The passage I was working with was 1 Thess. 4:13-18. The word was: κοιμωμενων. It was traditionally rendered with some meaning of sleeping. But here are some abridged notes that I had passed on to a colleague who does Spanish ministry: I began comparing English and Spanish translations of the Greek and came away with some observations I thought you might be interested in. Obviously, English versions are a huge mess depending on what school of translation rendered them and there are many more of them than virtually any other language's versions of the Bible. But all of the formal versions have retained the notion of 'sleep' in that passage. The Spanish versions, I found, are a mixed bag. The LBLA and Spanish NIV (plus another which I do not know the provenance of) use a form of 'muerte' to translate 'koimomenon' and the Reina-Valera tradition uses a form of 'dormir.' [muerte/death, dormir/sleep] I had purchased an LBLA for my wife about 4 years ago because I knew she had never read the Apocrypha. I am unimpressed with the way they rendered the 1 Thess. 4 passage.
That's interesting. I know an American Christian who studies Spanish as a second language and told me that he felt Rheina Valera was clearer on some parts in Spanish than in English. I read an unsourced claim on wikipedia that the Japanese Colloquial Bible (one of the first complete english translations of the bible done in the 50s) was considered to have a 'poor literary style'. Japanese is the language I've studied the most, so I might understand it better when reading translations of the bible into other languages. I don't know who claimed that. All I see is a very literal translation of the scriptures into Japanese. They say the Colloquial translation owes something to the RSV. It could be translated from that version, meaning it's a translation of a translation, most likely because there were not enough qualified scholars in the original languages in Japan at the time. I am not sure what the situation is now. If I recall correctly, some Swahili bibles are translated from English versions for the same reason, the most notable being Habari Njema (or as we know it, the Good News translation). I've just begun studying Swahili so it's interesting to find this out.