Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Translating the word "sword"

Dr. Claude Mariottini has an excellent post on how the word "sword" is translated in the Hebrew Bible. He concludes,

    In conclusion, let me say that no one should be shaken by the differences we find in English translations of the Bible. We have to remember that no translation is meant to be a word-for-word translation of the Hebrew and Greek. Rather, the intent of a translation is to provide an accurate understanding of the message of the Bible.

    Every translation of the Bible is good and every translation of the Bible has its flaws. No translation of the Bible will translate a certain Hebrew word the way I think it should be translated, but in the end, a translation will carry the message that God cares for us and that he demonstrated his love for us by sending Jesus Christ to reveal the magnitude of God’s love. And that is all we need to know.

5 comments:

Dr. Claude Mariottini said...

Suzanne,

Thank you for the link to my blog and for saying that you liked what I wrote.

I subscribe to your blog through Google Reader and receive all your posts there.

I noticed, however, that your link to my blog did not appear in Technorati. This means that your blog is not being syndicated through RSS or a blog feeder. This means also that your blog is not being promoted in blog aggregators.

I recommend that you look into this and add a blog syndication to your site.

Claude Mariottini

Mark Baker-Wright said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark Baker-Wright said...

"Every translation of the Bible is good"

I'm actually not sure how this can possibly be true. Surely there are translations out there that are really, truly, bad translations!

Dr. Claude Mariottini said...

B-W,

There are bad translations of the Bible, like The New World Translation of the Jehovah's Witnesses. That is a bad translation.

What I meant to say is that even though some translations may not be a perfect translation, what is the most important thing in a translation is how we encounter God in Christ, and not how many times the word "sword" is translated correctly or how translators express the true meaning of the word "hesed."

Claude Mariottini

Suzanne McCarthy said...

Claude,

Thank you. I am quite busy at the moment but when I get a bit of time, I will try to attend to this.