Direct translations of the Bible

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

After the thread about the Bible being 'lies and spin', I thought it might be interesting to discuss what it would be like to have scholars take the earliest texts they can find for certain portions of the Bible and directly translate them into English. Thus we would have the benefit of current scholarship that could be tested and questioned, and people could find out what the ancient texts said as interpreted and translated into a modern context.

This work has been started by Neil Douglas-Klotz, a scholar of Hebrew and Aramaic and a Sufi Murshid (teacher). He has written several books. The two I have are "Prayers of the Cosmos" which translates Jesus's words from Aramaic to English, and "Desert Wisdom", which translates "sacred Middle Eastern Writings form the Goddess through the Sufis".

Would there be anyone here interested in reading excerpts from these works? I think that there is much that one would find enlightening.

[coloradodem2005]

1. Sounds like fun.

:)

[Zen Democrat]

2. I am very interested in learning what differences these translations have

with the KJV of the Bible.

[Grey]

4. Yes, Please

I would love to read as much as possible on this subject.
Do you have any links? And thanks for bringing up the idea.

[stellanoir]

3. One of my few spiritual teachers was fluent

in both Hebrew and Aramaic. He used to read from the first five books of the Bible to me and go, "Here it is for a Greek audience. . .,here it is for a Roman audience. . ., here it is for a Pagan audience. . .etc.,. . . and here is my interpretation. . . "

His interpretation was most profound. It was riddled entirely with divine irony, weaving together the best in both divine comedy and tragedy. It was mind boggling.

Oh and all that talk about the firmament in Genesis had some very specific Astrological info.

Whenever I'm accosted by a Bible thumper, I simply state, "I simply am not inclined to discuss the Bible with anyone who is not fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic." That politely shuts them up every time.

But you have to understand that these languages are far different from Germanic and Romantic languages. There are always multiple meanings to not just words but even characters.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. your teacher sounds like a good one!

Saadi (Neil Douglas-Klotz) talks a lot about the fact that Hebrew and Aramaic have multiple meanings. He says that the concept that things must one thing or another came from the Greeks, and that in Aramaic one can be both-he even makes an analogy with the scientific concept that light can be both a particle and a wave.

[Ando]

6. The Message

Eugene Peterson has done a direct translation of the Bible from the original texts into modern English. It's called "The Message". You should check that out as well.

[pelagius]

7. There's a recent translation of the Torah...

...by Robert Alter that has gained some critical recgnition for the way it renders into English the sense of original Hebrew.

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0393019551-0

[InvisibleBallots]

8. are there any text, of the Bible or anything else, earler than 1000 AD?

We have lots and lots of books printed during the early days of the printing press - many of them claiming to be ancient scriptures, classical histories, etc. We have almost no writing that can be reliably dated more than 1200 years ago.

The Bible may be lies and spin - just like most of the history of the "ancient" world, including the "histories" of Greece, Rome, and England.

[pelagius]

9. Some of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" have been dated...

...to about 100BCE. These contain fragments of Hebrew scripture. The the "gold standard" for the Hebrew text of the Tanakh ("Old Testament") is the Masoretic texts dating back to 900AD.

It is true, though, that many ancient texts were lost during the years between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages.

[InvisibleBallots]

10. the DSS is quite an interesting story

Unfortunately, they were not dated independently. We have the word of one group of scholars - who stand to make a great deal of money by limited access to the DSS - who did a study. So far, the C14 tests have not been duplicated. When other groups do independent studies, the dates can be confirmed.

I've always assumed that the DSS were very ancient, and I always read that they were c14 tested and shown to be ancient. Then, the David Eisenmann scandal happened, when "unauthorized copies" of the Scrolls were published. I was surprised that the DSS were being kept secret. Eisenmann suggested a different date for the majority of them. Predictably, Muslim scholars supported Eisenmann's theory, Christian and Jewish scholars opposed it.

Who is right? According to the one group, they are. According to the other, they are. And so far, only one "side" did any C14 testing, but won't let anyone else do it.

That's not peer-reviewed science now is it?

[pelagius]

11. The whole Dead Sea Scrolls thing...

...is a puzzler and I'm willing to concede that the dating is "controversial". The Masoretic texts are better established, I believe.

[Astarho]

12. The Peshitta

While I haven't read the books you mentioned, I do have a copy of the Peshitta. George Lamsa, a native speaker of Aramaic, translated it and I think it was first published in the 30s.

It has a whole section of retranslated verses, side by side with the KJV. It also has footnotes explaining various Aramaic idioms.

The word Peshitta means simple, or straightforward, ie the original, to distinguish it from other revisions and translations introduced to some eastern churches after Ephesus and Chalcedon.