Ask Carl
How much do you think we Christians are missing out on by not knowing the true word of the Bible in its original Greek form? So much of what we are hinges on a sentence or two from the Bible. What could an incorrect translation do to the faith?
I think that the Bible that you can purchase today, even the New King James (heck, even the old King James) is a very faithful translation. If you are American, then great versions like The Message, The New Living Bible, God’s Word Translation and even the new New International are just great. I have one of each of the first three and use the New Living Bible the most. They each fairly and accurately represent what was meant and expressed by the various writers of the books and letters.
Now, that said, looking at the original koine greek is great and powerful and I often (not everytime) will drag out my Greek New Testament and my study helps to dig through it myself. And you don’t even have to really know Greek to do this because there are some great study helps to get you through it all. It takes time to process things, but you can go deeper. Usually, what you’ll see is that various Greek words have various meanings in various circumstances (English words do too at times, though not as often), and the translators of those Bibles that I mentioned (and ones I did not mention like the old NIV and NAS and RSV) all have worked very hard to word it just right.
Were we ever to find an autograph (original document) and discover that some verse had been incorrectly translated by a scholar, then it could be huge. However, in a similar way, were to ever discover that aliens indeed populated the earth and merely told the first of their offspring that they were humans, that would be huge too. Yet, we should not bank on that very remote possibility. From what we know now and have discovered, we are still alone in the cosmos. And, if we find other life, it is even more remote that they came here first before humans ever existed. In that same vein, from what we know now, the Bible is the most accurate, historically true, internally correct work of antiquity. Its purity is at such a high level that it is miraculous (about 99.5% pure—and that .05% is in various spellings and wordings that have nothing to do with the core theologies). So, while an incorrect sentence could be very bad, we aren’t there. And when you compare a Bible translated in 2003 with one translated in 1534, you see a stunning similarity which tells you that we aren’t faced with rogues and unscrupulous people who are out to trick you.
Now, that said, looking at the original koine greek is great and powerful and I often (not everytime) will drag out my Greek New Testament and my study helps to dig through it myself. And you don’t even have to really know Greek to do this because there are some great study helps to get you through it all. It takes time to process things, but you can go deeper. Usually, what you’ll see is that various Greek words have various meanings in various circumstances (English words do too at times, though not as often), and the translators of those Bibles that I mentioned (and ones I did not mention like the old NIV and NAS and RSV) all have worked very hard to word it just right.
Were we ever to find an autograph (original document) and discover that some verse had been incorrectly translated by a scholar, then it could be huge. However, in a similar way, were to ever discover that aliens indeed populated the earth and merely told the first of their offspring that they were humans, that would be huge too. Yet, we should not bank on that very remote possibility. From what we know now and have discovered, we are still alone in the cosmos. And, if we find other life, it is even more remote that they came here first before humans ever existed. In that same vein, from what we know now, the Bible is the most accurate, historically true, internally correct work of antiquity. Its purity is at such a high level that it is miraculous (about 99.5% pure—and that .05% is in various spellings and wordings that have nothing to do with the core theologies). So, while an incorrect sentence could be very bad, we aren’t there. And when you compare a Bible translated in 2003 with one translated in 1534, you see a stunning similarity which tells you that we aren’t faced with rogues and unscrupulous people who are out to trick you.
