(May 12, 2015 at 8:08 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: Even a small change can drastically change the "basic idea. Take the omission of a comma.
Paint the care red.
as opposed to
Paint the car, Red.
The differences in the various versions of the Bible do not all have the same idea. The protestant Bible doesn't have the Apocrypha, while the Catholic Bible does.
And that's just in the same language. Imagine the havoc one small change can make when translating between languages. And we're not just talking different languages, Hebrew and English are in entirely different linguistic families.
My uncle told me that the translation he wanted me to read was clearer. Isn't that what a version does? I don't think it's possible to have a pure verbatim translation without doing some editing, deciding which words to use. Words that may have the same denotation may have quite divergent connotations. Can a translator make such choices without reference to his personal beliefs or those of his denomination? I doubt it very seriously.
It always pays to remember that the Bible is a fairly recent book. In fact it's one of the earliest real books. But even so it's only been in its current format for only a few hundred years. The basic ideas are consistent in all versions and translations.
