jjThomas wrote: ↑July 27th, 2020, 9:20 am
Hi Jonathan Robie, that is a lot of strawmen you erect. I didn't say SIL and Biblica are the same organization, or that SIL is responsible for the NIV, or that B-Greek is a forum for discussions of "best translation", "best critical text", etc. I mentioned my concern about SIL because you spoke of your employment there. SIL and Biblica give formal, public approval of each other by being two of 22 full members in The Forum of Bible Agencies International (
https://forum-intl.org/membership/members/).
United Bible Societies, SIL, Wycliffe, American Bible Studies, and most mainstream Bible translators have also signed onto these principles. You apparently disagree with them. That's your right, but that's not what we discuss here on B-Greek.
jjThomas wrote: ↑July 27th, 2020, 9:20 am
Most importantly of all, your hypothesis that all Bible translations will add and subtract words from the original is extremely objectionable, because there is a hugely important rule against doing so, given with tremendous warnings in Revelation 22:18-19.
Frankly, I have no idea what you are talking about unless you are comparing one English translation to another. I'm guessing you just might be the kind of person who works mostly with interlinears and hasn't wrestled with these issues. Translations will differ. That's because they are translations and no translation is exactly equivalent to the original text, let alone the Greek text of the original manuscripts. They can't be.
By definition, a translation replaces every part of the original Greek with something else. Because there are not exact equivalents between Greek and English for every construct, you have to make decisions. Because one word in Greek can map to several in English or vice versa, the number of words won't correspond. And they certainly won't correspond between two English translations.
Early manuscripts differ, we do not have the original manuscripts, so you have to make decisions about what you think the most reliable underlying text is, that's what you translate. So one English translation may be based on a different Greek manuscript, which may have a different reading. Unless someone discovers the original manuscripts, human judgement is required to decide what the best reading is. I don't see any way around this.
And I don't think that's what the Revelations warning is about.
But for the purposes of B-Greek, I think this policies is relevant:
Jonathan Robie wrote: ↑May 6th, 2011, 9:46 am
B-Greek is about Greek texts and the Greek language, and most of the forums in B-Greek require a working knowledge of Biblical Greek; that is:
- recognition of inflected forms of verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs
- recognition of standard syntactic structures
- a grasp of principal parts of common irregular verbs, and the ability to recognize them in a text
In the Beginner's Forum, we welcome beginners who do not yet have a working knowledge of Biblical Greek, and are actively working to learn the language. We want to help. Even basic questions about the meaning of the Greek text are welcome in the Beginner's Forum, and there's no shame in mistakes. Beginners will be gently pushed toward learning these structures over time, pointed to textbooks and other aids that will help them, and coached in how to see these structures in a text.
Learning a language is all about learning the structure signals, so we will try to help you learn what these signals are and how to recognize them in a text.
Even in the Beginner's forum, general questions or opinions about doctrine or the meaning of the English text are not welcome. Sometimes we may encourage beginners to postpone questions that are over their head at their current level of understanding.
So far, your posts do not indicate any knowledge of Greek. You are not posting Greek texts or discussing the meaning of specific phrases in a way that indicates you understand how Greek syntax works.
If you want to continue post on B-Greek, please post about the things we discuss here, please quote texts in Greek, please ask specific questions about the Greek text, and please try to learn the basic terminology used to discuss syntax. That's what we do here.