“Read It In Greek” Excuse

[Fweethawt]

 

I remember him cuz he and Reach were two of the first members to welcome me here.

Oh man! I miss Reach and Loren!

Me, too.

 

Reach was one of those people I'll never forget. She was such a beautiful person.

[Thurisaz]

The irony here is that there are Jews who read the Jewish Scriptures (Christian Old Testament) in the original Hebrew, and they strongly disagree with Christian interpretations!

 

He hee what a surprise eh?

 

Invariably, the only reason why they are even making the pretense of going to "the original Greek" is to make some apologetic excuse for something that doesn't translate into English the way they wish it did ... "slaves, obey your masters" being one.

 

You know... from the very first time I heard the term "apologetics" I instantly equated it with "apology", and "cheap" at that. I haven't seen much that would make me change my mind yet, and as it's been years already I'm not holding my breath

 

Reach was one of those people I'll never forget. She was such a beautiful person.

Ayup!

 

Damn, remember how she shocked us all when she announced her deconversion? Man she really was one of the rare christians who ever came in here who were pretty much exactly like they all say they are, no?

[Fweethawt]

 

Reach was one of those people I'll never forget. She was such a beautiful person.

 

Ayup!

Damn, remember how she shocked us all when she announced her deconversion? Man she really was one of the rare christians who ever came in here who were pretty much exactly like they all say they are, no?

I'm not exactly sure what you meant by that last part, but yeah, I remember her announcement. She made a mark here for plenty of people, I'm sure.

 

Then she just disappeared.

 

One can only speculate. :-(

[Ellinas]

 

It annoys me mightily when I hear preachers and so called teachers trying to make points based on "the original Greek" - usually prefaced by "I'm no scholar but..." - when it is patently obvious that they have utterly misunderstood some textbook or half-arsed commentary and are making up ideas to fit the point they've just invented.  Even my moderate competence in modern Greek is generally sufficient to allow me to see through their bulls**t, whilst everyone else - who don't know their A's from their Ω's - sit there lapping up every word as if the mere use of the word "Greek" infuses every point made with something equivalent to papal infallibility.

 

I'll stop now as I can feel my blood pressure rising...!

On occasion, though, the argument-from-greek is not a fallacy, and this is something we do need to keep in mind as well.

 

 

Indeed - but it's a pretty rare occurrence when it's actually got some valid point to it, in my experience at any rate.

[Merlin]

According to a wiki article on the subject.  there are 400,000 variations among all of the  ancient and fragmented New Testament manuscripts currently available (from the 2nd to 15th century) which means there are more variations between the old manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.     I'm not sure that 'reading it in Greek' is going to change a thing...

 

Here's a link to the article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript

 

Enjoy!

[miekko]

According to a wiki article on the subject.  there are 400,000 variations among all of the  ancient and fragmented New Testament manuscripts currently available (from the 2nd to 15th century) which means there are more variations between the old manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.     I'm not sure that 'reading it in Greek' is going to change a thing...

 

Here's a link to the article:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript

 

Enjoy!

You could have included the very next clauses: " This is less significant than may appear since it is a comparison across linguistic boundaries. More important estimates focus on comparing texts within languages. Those variations are considerably fewer. The vast majority of these are accidental errors made by scribes, and are easily identified as such: an omitted word, a duplicate line, a misspelling, a rearrangement of words. Some variations involve apparently intentional changes, which often make more difficult a determination of whether they were corrections from better exemplars, harmonizations between readings, or ideologically motivated." Which are pretty goddamn important caveats regarding the 400 000 variations.

[Blood]

 

Blood,

 

thanks for your further input. I've been away from formal studies and this type of information for so long, some of it has grown rather vague in my mind. Thanks again for filling in some details.

 

Along the same lines of thinking, do you find the theory of Gospel "Q" to credible or fanciful?

 

Human

 

 

"Q" fills the same emotional need of the theologian. The subconscious fear is that the material unique to Matthew or Luke may have been invented by those authors, and that cannot be allowed to be seriously considered, because they think it would destroy the historical credibility of the gospels. 

[miekko]

 

 

Blood,

 

thanks for your further input. I've been away from formal studies and this type of information for so long, some of it has grown rather vague in my mind. Thanks again for filling in some details.

 

Along the same lines of thinking, do you find the theory of Gospel "Q" to credible or fanciful?

 

Human

 

 

"Q" fills the same emotional need of the theologian. The subconscious fear is that the material unique to Matthew or Luke may have been invented by those authors, and that cannot be allowed to be seriously considered, because they think it would destroy the historical credibility of the gospels. 

 

So you really think even atheist scholars who believe there was a "Q" think this because of that reason? Heck, lots of scholars - even religious ones - have no problem whatsoever admitting that Matthew and Luke invented stuff. Ther are good, non-religious arguments for the existence of Q, and your dismissal of it based on questioning their motives seems downright petty.

[Guest]

When I was younger (and had a bit more fire on my belly) I used to debate with local Christians in a public forum. Some of it was OK; sometimes they got a bit unpleasant, but hey if I felt required to defend slavery, sexism and so forth, I might get a bit defensive as well

 

One thing has stayed with me. When faced with nasty texts, I was “advised” to read The Bible in its “original “Greek. Bearing in mind, not a single 1^st edition Bible has survived, this read it in Greek, sounded like a feeble excuse to make it more palatable.

 

I remember one instance in particular. I mentioned the issue of slavery, and how The Bible explains how slaves are to be beaten.

 

Naturally I didn’t understand what the Bible was teaching, according to my opponent. If only I had read it in Greek, I would see that the earlier texts meant servant, and not slave.

 

OK then, well the Bible explains how “servants” are to be owed and beaten then.

 

Then of course the goal posts are moved. Am I reading the text in context, what is the deeper meaning of the words?

 

I think Christians do Yahweh a great injustice.  He is quite capable of having His words translated as He sees as appropriate. What with Him being the feckin creator of the universe and all.

 

The fact is they look for linguistic loopholes, because deep down they are ashamed of the texts when confronted with them, and desperately try and humanize them.

 

First off, 99.9% of christians who say "read it in the original Greek" are only parroting what they have heard from others, and can not read ancient Greek to begin with.

 

The fact they tell you to read the slavery passages in Greek betrays their ignorance, because the verses about beating your slaves was in the OT, written in Hebrew...

[Blood]

 

 

 

Blood,

 

thanks for your further input. I've been away from formal studies and this type of information for so long, some of it has grown rather vague in my mind. Thanks again for filling in some details.

 

Along the same lines of thinking, do you find the theory of Gospel "Q" to credible or fanciful?

 

Human

 

 

"Q" fills the same emotional need of the theologian. The subconscious fear is that the material unique to Matthew or Luke may have been invented by those authors, and that cannot be allowed to be seriously considered, because they think it would destroy the historical credibility of the gospels. 

 

So you really think even atheist scholars who believe there was a "Q" think this because of that reason? Heck, lots of scholars - even religious ones - have no problem whatsoever admitting that Matthew and Luke invented stuff. Ther are good, non-religious arguments for the existence of Q, and your dismissal of it based on questioning their motives seems downright petty.

 

 

I'm not aware of too many atheist theologians (though I do recall Ehrman said he was an agnostic), but those that do follow the Q hypothesis are just mindlessly following the consensus. That's a common phenomenon. Secular scholars who write about the Bible invariably just copy the arguments put forth by theologians without questioning them much, if at all. 

[Aggie]

I have a Ph.D. in ancient Greek and publish stuff about texts written in it. Scholars never stop arguing over how to interpret texts written in Greek (or Latin or any language - that's the thing about texts). The people who say "But in the original Greek it means X and nothing else" sometimes get it right, more often just make moves like those described so well in the OP.

 

I've noticed that a lot of the time, they don't actually know Greek themselves but crib from a commentary or website. Not naming names, but at least one Christian member of this forum did that a lot when she was on here.

 

I have had a few classes in Greek (no PhD for sure!) but I have the same basic perspective.  If you read the various English translations, you will get a very good idea of what the "original Greek" was saying-- of course that's what translations are trying to do in the first place.  There are Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, Orthodox, Jews, etc who read the "original languages" and still come to different conclusions.  And of course some Christian groups hold that their translations of texts are inspired... (KJV, Septuagint, etc.)

[seven77]

Sometimes, I find it helpful to look at original Greek or Hebrew translations online. This was something that was strongly discouraged in my former place of worship. As I did this, I learned that many things in the "good" book are approximations, best guesses, and subjective hunches. Hebrew has no vowels. Greek does not use the same sentence structure as English. Often, the same word will have any uses or meanings and a lot of times, the context determines the meaning of key words.

 

There is also the troublesome fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic. None of NT texts that we have are written in Aramaic. So that means that all of Jesus' sayings, those beautiful red-lettered parts...are translations from the get-go.

 

I am no language scholar. Far from it. The resources are out there for those that want them. I find it laughable when Den apologists want to lecture others on what the Bible says when they couldn't even be bothered to consult a concordance or do a cursory examination of the text in Greek or Hebrew. As if their preferred English language version of the text is the only one that matters.

[Blood]

I find it laughable when Den apologists want to lecture others on what the Bible says when they couldn't even be bothered to consult a concordance or do a cursory examination of the text in Greek or Hebrew. 

 

Exactly. You would think that since their God spoke in Hebrew the least they could do would be to learn their God's language. Nah. They're too busy arguing over whether the NIV or RSV is the best version. Idiots. 

[miekko]

Sometimes, I find it helpful to look at original Greek or Hebrew translations online. This was something that was strongly discouraged in my former place of worship. As I did this, I learned that many things in the "good" book are approximations, best guesses, and subjective hunches. Hebrew has no vowels. Greek does not use the same sentence structure as English. Often, the same word will have any uses or meanings and a lot of times, the context determines the meaning of key words.

 

There is also the troublesome fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic. None of NT texts that we have are written in Aramaic. So that means that all of Jesus' sayings, those beautiful red-lettered parts...are translations from the get-go.

 

I am no language scholar. Far from it. The resources are out there for those that want them. I find it laughable when Den apologists want to lecture others on what the Bible says when they couldn't even be bothered to consult a concordance or do a cursory examination of the text in Greek or Hebrew. As if their preferred English language version of the text is the only one that matters.

One warning though - usually, when looking at Greek or Hebrew translations, people tend to use things called concordances. Concordances are essentially pimped up dictionaries with some referencing apparatus (so that you can find all instances of the word 'מלך' throughout the Bible, for instance). Now, most christian concordances at the very least only have words as entries. That is more of a problem than you'd think - oftentimes, phrases have meanings different than the sum of their words (think of the English phrase 'beg the question', which many educated people use to mean 'is fallacious since it relies on circular reasoning', which is quite distinct from the meaning you'd get if you parsed the phrase word for word; another example that is somewhat more obvious is 'kick the bucket'.) In English, there's lots of these - so many, in fact, that we don't even think of them as such, our brain just gets them right without realizing that it's doing anything special when parsing them. However, when we're trying our hands at translating a text that is ~2000 years old, in a language we have no experience with whatsoever, from a language that is separated from us by time, geography and culture ... chances are we will misunderstand pretty much every idiom we come across. 

[traveller2]

i always hated the read it in greek for a better understanding thing.It seemed like such a cop out.Sometimes the greek meaning was so damn diferent its like, well why not fooking publish the engish version that way.