Years ago I would spend every morning before work at a local coffe shop with an interesting group of men. One of them was a Muslim, one was a Rabbi, one was an Atheist, one was a business man and then--there was me.
Somehow or other the Rabbi and I were always left as the last of the group talking alone with each other.
One day I got on the subject of bible translations. I asked his opinion.
And the Rabbi spoke to me saying: "In Judaism we hold it to be an inviolable rule: All Translations are lies!"
Not on purpose--but--inadvertently because the mind of the man inspired by Adonai only thought in Hewbrew!
Well, I pondered that idea. And from time to time (working in a used bookstore as I was) I'd read any book that came in
on bible translations and textual criticism, the history of the church, early church fathers, canonicity etc.
It wasn't long before my mind cried out that something inside my BELIEF SYSTEM must CHANGE---or else!
Changing an opinion requires a complete rooting out of all connecting inferences like tangled roots beneath the soil on weeds you pluck from your garden. Our ideas are connected and the redundancy of an error is everywhere lurking and doing its damage.
It became clear to me (and to anybody studying SCRIPTURE origins) that there is a dead skunk in the woodpile that everyone pretended wasn't there. I'm talking, of course, about the controversial issue of "inspiration" in religious writing and what is canonical and what isn't.
Without a verifying text to support a religious doctrine you have only human opinion. And that, my friends, is a thorny fact.
Once you have a verifying text your problems have only just begun. How do you ascertain the veracity of a written text? How do you authenticate the god-breathed part of it and distinguish from the man's-hands part of it? How do you parse a text for the distinction between hidden meaning (symbolical) and contextual historical meaning?
How can you ever know what you are reading wasn't just the result of a redaction and rewriting AGENDA of some person or group (like the Watchtower with its "a god" rendering of John 1:1) intent on influencing a beloved doctrine?
Well, you can't! But, some do pretend!
THERE IS A TRAP and it is one involving intellectual honesty. If you already BELIEVE with all your heart---how can you be honest in dealing with contrary evidence? Intellectual honesty is the willingness to change your mind and follow the evidence no matter where you are led.
Otherwise?
You end up proving your presupposition. If you demand for yourself that the Bible MUST HAVE BEEN "inspired" then you will also insist it was PRESERVED. And that will settle the issue for you and you'll dismiss all evidence to the contrary.
Your investigation will only have been an annoyance and not an honest intellectual inquiry of warts and all.
Humans hate and despise uncertainty. Pious humans will go so far as to make up wild stories to eliminate doubt and uncertainty!
The SEPTUAGINT (also spelled SEPTUIGINT) is a mere case in point of the entire process of mythmaking away doubt.
Whenever a revision, translation or redaction of a beloved document is undertaken it is sorely tempting to make it into what it (by your own opinon) SHOULD BE rather than what it is. That is why a fisherman will lengthen the size of the fish he caught each time he tells of the catch!.
The myth of the creation of the SEPTUAGINT version of the scriptures:
The Jews became overawed by Greek culture and language after Alexander the Great conquered the Eastern World. Pious Jews lost the ability to read Hebrew since they now regularly spoke Greek. A translation was needed but it had to be "perfect"! 70 translators worked separately--we are told--and when they finished and compared their work---OH MY!! THEY ALL MATCHED EXACTLY!!
The 70 translators weren't 70 translators. Seventy appeals to the numerologists and does not conform to the actual facts. That's just a head's up going in to this subject. As the rabbi's will tell you, "All translations are lies". And they don't mean necessarily deliberate ones. They mean a translation calls for CHANGES and changes require judgment, familiarity and pivotal viewpoints to resolve issues of importance. So, it comes down to why the changes are made and not merely what changes are made. This is policy.
The AUTHORISED KING JAMES...um...versionThe King James translators were not translators per se, as an example. They were learned and scholarly men who were charged with propping up the notion of a King and lending as much credence to his authority as humanly possible. Further, they were intent on sifting through PREVIOUS translations into the common tongue and choosing the apt phrase and the beautiful cadence rather than sourcing a Hebrew word and literally showcasing it. This is a fact. Should we expect that the Septuagint translators were free from all worldly and human issues, policies and rationale just to assure ourselves that truth is crammed into every sentence? That would be delicious and yet lacking in realism.
My own conclusion is that a kind of sad and unfunny farce has been perpetrated on generations of humans that concerns our gullible acceptance of the very notion of an "inspired" writing passed on to us for our edification and enlightenment.
Does that eliminate God?
No.
It should eliminate our addiction to MEN'S OPINIONS OF GOD.
How pompous and inflated can man's ego get to expect and demand to KNOW THE MIND OF GOD?
Why can't we admit we are making it all up?
God can be unknowable and more transcendent than a mere ancient book.
But no--we insist on capturing God in a bottle like a firefly and entertaining ourselves with the blinking of his tiny captive light!
