Science Forums 2

[UncleAl]

So how accurate are the translations of our modern English Bibles ?

All translations of the bible are crap. So is the original Torah. Hebrew started out with about 5000 words, and perhaps 5% didn't sustain any meaning into modern times. The rest of the language was deeply targeted at a dry ecology (ooooh!) nomadic lifestyle. It was all but impossible to document complex thought. The bible is a bunch of crap fabricated to situational political convenience. Modern Hebrew has split into Ashkenasic (the cultured and worldy Eastern Europeans who finally added written vowels) and Sephardic (the unevolved Palestinian patois less written vowels, less at least one pronounced vowel, and with most sibilants pronounced as plosive "t"). Go make consistent sense of that. Oh yeah... There's a whole additional set of grammatical marks that have no effect at all upon pronunciation or meaning. Cute. The last letter of a word may change (re uppercase or lowercase in Latinate alphabets), or not. Sentences were not well segregated.

Classical Hebrew had one word for large, huge, enormous, big, Brobdingnagian, immense, massive, jumbo, oversize, colossal, gargantuan, goliath, stupendous, tremendous, vast, extensive, sizable, monumental, titanic, whopping... gawdole (gahdole if Sephardic). An obese guppy would qualify. Anything important is masculine by default. "Prophet" was was as much musician as seer. The numbers are letters, with irregularities and mysticism imposed by forbidding certain text. Try counting ten commandments. Find the commandment in the standard list that is omitted bythe Church of Rome for being inconvenient.

Try finding a modern French word for "tepid or "lukewarm." It's a big stretch even given Larousse. A classical Hebrew big cup of tepid brew, rendered into French, could be anything from a mug of ambient temperature Guinness to a bathtub of steaming soup. That doesn't narrow it down much.