When I visited the Life and Legacy of the King James Bible Exhibit I really thought it was interesting how bibles changed over time to fit the new medium and the changes in language. As was discussed in class originally the first bibles that were printed were made to look like the handwritten bibles of the past.
The bible was translated from its original language into languages that for the most part the general population couldn't read. Later after King James the 1st comissioned the new translation of the bible(Madison Grant has a good blog about this specifically) and the translator did there best to make sure that there translations were accurate by going back to the Hebrew and Greek versions of the bible that they had to make the best translation possible. If we were to look at alot of the meaning of the words that the translators translated in the past we could find alot of things hard to understand because languages change over time.
Some words today if I read from the King James version have a much different meaning than I would think was being refereed to. Such as, accursed which means devoted or amazement which means terror(More here). These word have a much different meaning and can really be confusing in today's world.
How much do the differences in our language today affect the understanding of the Bible and in the future with languages changing how much will the changes affect the understanding further?
My mother isn't a member of the Church and the bible she uses is a different version than the King James version. Once, when I was little, my mother and I were reading our scriptures and I kept questioning why her version was just the slightest different than mine. She just said that different people choose to translate the scriptures differently, then I asked her which one was the right one, she said both were right but it was just that they were translated differently. I just accepted that since I was a little 6 year old.
ReplyDeleteBut it is definitely interesting to see even the differences in just the people, not even language, that cause the translations of the Bible to be different, even at the slightest.