When I looked up the quote of Malachi 4:5-6 for Turning the hearts of children from their fathers. I noticed that the NIV translation has replaced “fathers” with “parents”.
5 “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
This is in line with Honor Your Father Today providing a sermon to honor fathers on Father’s Day that advised Christians to not refer to God as the Father, but to call him a “Best Friend”.
It is worth noting that Dr. Douglass Moo, the Chairman of the Committee on Bible Translation that produced the new father free translation of the verse above, is the same man John Piper and Wayne Grudem turned to when they wanted to make the case for women preaching to women. However, to Wayne Grudem’s credit, the translation Grudem edits (ESV) has not feminised the passage, and has actually made recent changes that are sure to offend egalitarians.
Related: It is all about clarity
Pingback: Erasing fathers from Scripture. | @the_arv
Oddly enough, the verse in question appears to have already been “tweaked” a bit before the NIV translators got their mitts on it – Knox and Douay-Rheims both render it as reconciling father to son and son to father. Both are probably following the Vulgate, where Malachi 4:6 reads “Et convertet cor [b]patrum ad filios[/b], et cor filiorum ad patres eorum: ne forte veniam, et percutiam terram anathemate.”
Christ Himself referred to God as the Father. These people certainly need to learn Christianity a little more.
Hell, we might as well start worshipping “Buddy Christ.”
Do these people think they know better than God? It’s going to be hell some day to try to justify to him altering God’s word to support a rebellious agenda. Proclaiming themselves to be wise, these people are blind fools, leading blind fools.
The answer lies in what word the original Hebrew text uses. If it is אַבָּא (“Abba’), then “father” is indeed the correct word.
These people certainly need to learn Christianity a little more.
Or they need to just drop the silly pretense of Christianity and formally establish the secular gynocult that really want as their religion.
Repulsive
Agreed…a person can’t be a Christian and a feminist. The ethos oppose each other too much to go together.
Years ago the late Malcolm Muggeridge (St Mugg) observed that unlike thespians who ‘believe’ in Shakespeare are not thus constantly rewriting his words – to get closer to the true meaning – Christians who don’t really care for the Bible (written at the same time) are always rewriting so as to evade what is otherwise pretty clear.
I was hardly shocked then on checking my KJV to discover that the NIV translators in addition to shafting Fathers have also gone for strike whereas the KJV has smite – I always appreciate some biblical smiting. I also notice that – in the opposite direction of nastiness as well as less felicity whereas in the KJV God curses the land, in the NIV re-write God sounding more like a Hollywood scriptwriter goes for Total Destruction.
Do these people think they know better than God?
The question answers itself.
Changing this to parents loses the subtext of the authority from God which flows through the patriarchal order.
According to blueletterbible .org, the Hebrew text has אָב (‘ab meaning father) and בֵּן (ben usually meaning sons but sometimes children).
I’ve always preferred the New American Standard Bible:
Malachi 4:5-6 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. 6 He will [a]restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a [b]curse.”
They probably ask the damning question….’Did God really say that?’
NIV has several variations from the KJV. Not only this one.
Did you ever wonder why there’s been an explosion of translations since the 1970’s?
Find a Bible printed before WW2 and keep it on your shelf. Use it to compare references from time to time. You’ll know something of why your great-grandfathers generation had more respect for the Word.
Modern day fundamentalists can now safely say that they literally believe in the Bible. At least their Bible and not the old one.
I grew up using the NIV, but have sense realized that it really isn’t an acceptable translation. It is a paraphrase, and God’s Word shouldn’t be paraphrased.
NASB, ESV, KJV, NKJV are all far more accurate translations. Still, even these aren’t inerrant (unlike the original text).
http://hittinghomeministry.com/where-men-blow-it/
A link provided without comment because I’m still recovering from reading the comments. Cause I’m a special widdow snowflake.
The Cambridge bible for schools and colleges states of Malachi 4:6:
“The ‘fathers’ here are the patriarchs, whom the prophet regards as estranged from their degenerate ‘children’, or descendants, and ceasing to acknowledge them on account of their unworthy character and conduct.”
Malachi 4:6 looks like this in ancient Hebrew: וְהֵשִׁ֤יב לֵב־אָבֹות֙ עַל־בָּנִ֔ים וְלֵ֥ב בָּנִ֖ים עַל־אֲבֹותָ֑ם פֶּן־אָבֹ֕וא וְהִכֵּיתִ֥י אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ חֵֽרֶם׃
אָבוֹת֙ (’ā-ḇō-wṯ) = “of the fathers”
^ NOT the parents, NOT the mother, NOT the sister(s), NOT females in any way whatsoever.
Strong’s Concordance translates the biological gender:
ab: father
Original Word: אָב
Part of Speech: Noun Masculine
Transliteration: ab
Phonetic Spelling: (awb)
Short Definition: father
FATHERS is correct. “Parents” or any other substitute is false and damages the original meaning of the text. One of my advanced degrees is an M.Div. from a Church of Christ college and I’m asserting this as straight forward.
To me, Dr. Moo is being deliberately disingenuous… profitting in his office by mistranslating the Bible to comport to the ideology of post-modern progressive liberalism instead of simply telling the truth.
Pingback: Erasing fathers from Scripture. | Reaction Times
Do a Bible Gateway search in ESV for “brother” and “sister”. Then do it in NIV. Quite interesting.
“The ‘fathers’ here are the patriarchs, whom the prophet regards as estranged from their degenerate ‘children’, or descendants …”
This.
“Fathers” referring to Forefathers / ancestors and “children” referring to descendants.
However, Malachi 4:5-6 refers to the effect that Elijah will have in the moment he comes. Not likely that Elijah can have any visible effect on the dead (forefathers) – so we know that verse is talking about current, actual fathers and sons – not about ancestors and descendants.
They probably ask the damning question….’Did God really say that?’
The question looks eerily similar to the one the serpent asked Eve in the garden:
Genesis 3:1
…..Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?…..
The Elijah who was to come was John the Baptist. He turned the nation of Israel back to the fathers (the patriachs such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) meaning he turned them back to having faith in God and prepared the way for the arival of Jesus Christ.
Jesus himself stated:
Matthew 11:12-14 NASB
12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven [a]suffers violence, and violent men [b]take it by force. 13 For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John. 14 And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who [c]was to come.
The correct term is “Lilith God-mother of earth.”
Then burn the wicker-man each spring.
Of course the burning is done by churchians in the church,by the Lesbian man-hating “priests.”
There is no room for a man of God in the churches.
. . . This is in line with Honor Your Father Today providing a sermon to honor fathers on Father’s Day that advised Christians to not refer to God as the Father, but to call him a “Best Friend”.
What makes this kind of thing so grating isn’t just the word play, it’s the excuse they almost always give for why they do it. The script is familiar and you’ve probably already heard it yourself: A preacher will give a message where they refer to God as “Father,” only to then slide right into saying something like, “Now I know that there are many today who didn’t have a very good father or didn’t have a father at all, and so thinking of our Lord as a Father is only going to bring you pain.” And just like that, they’ve given the crowd their pastoral approval to regard the father role as being innately poisonous just because there happened to be men who failed to perform well in it.
I can’t think of any other role or office beyond “father” that the church so readily allows to be defined by the worst people that have had it. This is especially true when you compare it with the roles that have always been filled by women. I could point out to pastors that according to modern criminal statistics the most likely candidate to subject children to physical abuse will be their own mother. That won’t stop them from gushing out an endless stream of praise in their Mother’s Day sermons. Likewise, some of these same pastors are also probably aware that a homes headed by single unwed mothers are the most likely to produce kids — and sons in particular — who end up in trouble with the law. But when they mention these sorts of women, the first thing they’ll draw attention to is “how heroically they’re working at a difficult job.” Pastors like Mark Driscoll will even publicly scold single men who won’t consider them as marriage prospects. Speaking of marriage, let’s not forget that today more women than ever before are admitting to cheating on their husbands, and that when divorce happens it’s usually initiated by the wife, and usually for no marital sin any greater than “irreconcilable differences.” Do you ever see pastors acknowledge that for modern men, the marital landscape can be like navigating a minefield? Or are they more likely to say, “Not all women are like that! Now be a man and get married!”
In any other role or duty you’ll probably see the modern church emphasize the importance of not confusing the role itself with those who have done a poor job of filling it, and remembering that we too are sinners. But when we’re talking about fatherhood the first thing the church will say is that we must acknowledge that there are bad fathers — and that is why suspicion is justified, and why we must publicly call upon all fathers to prove themselves. That’s the “grace” of today’s church for you. They’re all for turning the hearts of fathers to their children. Turning the hearts of children to their fathers? Not so much.
John the baptist has his head cut off for making a woman jealous.
Just like the churches are cutting off the head of “patriarchy.”
Dissent will not be tolerated.
Praise to the New Police State which lets religion rape men’s souls.
Same “forces” that cut off John’s head.
Same black forces that burn crosses. (now you do what they told you)
It is actually worse than this Dalrock.
The satanic trash known as the new NIV has translated Psalm 1 as ”Blessed is the ONE who walks not in the council of the ungodly….for THEIR delight is the law of God Almighty….”
Literally everywhere in the new translation of the NIV they have taken out the word, ”man”.
What is staggering is that clergy still insist that we stick to scripture and that it is the last word in spiritual matters, while they torture the Greek until – Surprise, Surprise! The original Greek lines conveniently up with what feminists have been saying all along.
Two thousand years of faithful witnesses be damned.
“but…..but……..but if we don’t have the Bible in todays language the young people won’t come!”
Heard that before……..
The bible that our society was founded on wasn’t read in Greek. No one of note gives a shit about the text in a dead language. None of our great-grandfathers read Greek, and the Greek bible wasn’t used for anything. With that in mind, who cares? Especially now that SJW’s are using it to mangle the social order.
The bible that our society was founded upon was read in English. It’s still extant as the KJV. You guys should care about that.
Encourage the clergy to live as the Classical Greeks then – including swearing off electrical appliances, modern plumbing, and antibiotics. Who cares what they do?
Here is the bible that the founders of our society read for wisdom and guidance:
https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/King-James-Version-KJV-Bible/
Written in plain English, not overly esoteric or philosophical, and no “guru” is required to interpret it for you. No one in anglophone North America needs another source.
These guys do.
Yup
Pariah — Baptist John was not the “Elijah to come”.
And if they’re so concerned, they should demonstrate their sincerity by abandoning dentistry and toilet paper.
People who care about dead languages are people like me: goons. Moreover, translation is such a dicey business that these guys can justify feminizing the bible if they go back that far.
The KJV, in contrast, is a purely patriarchal corpus. Only the Qur’an comes close to its perfection. It’s perfectly fair to both men and women, and (with the exception of Shakespeare) is the defining authority for our whole written and spoken language. Most importantly, it’s actually relevant to our society, unlike the ancient texts from which it was derived.
ray, I’ll believe what Jesus said over what you say. John the Baptist was the Elijah to come because Jesus said he was. Don’t try and force the scriptures to conform to your preconceived theological system.
Any translation of the Bible is only relevant insofar as it accurately communicates the ideas of those ancient texts. That being said, if you’re an English speaker and you’re going to use a Protestant Bible you might as well use the KJV as it is accurate enough to not warrant any major revisions.
John the Baptist was certainly “the Elijah to come” he was not, however, literally Elijah himself. They were two separate human persons. The “Elijah to come” was more like a title than an actual prediction that Elijah himself would come again. Some Catholic theologians throughout history have said that Elijah himself will return near the end-times (along with Enoch), but that would be different than the “Elijah to come” spoken of by Malachi.
Uh … those guys speak Greek. It’s their language and they would disagree that it’s a dead language.
Or are you suggesting that Greek Orthodox Christians should used the KJV?
Uh … those guys speak Greek. It’s their language and they would disagree that it’s a dead language.
You don’t even know what language your own holy book is written in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek
No one speaks this language casually today, anywhere in the world. Moreover, if you knew what the translation process was like, you’d understand my point. Ask any competent translator about the process. It’s almost impossible not to (consciously or not) inject your own whims and biases into the text.
If they care about patriarchal values and cultural continuity, then yes, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting. You can pray in a dead language if you want, but the KJV was used to order and organize our society, and it is still useful in this regard.
Regards,
Boxer
Off topic Dalrock (apologies) but Vertigopolitix has produced a good summation of the current state of relationships between genders in Western civilization:
Boxer says:
January 30, 2018 at 8:57 pm
What is staggering is that clergy still insist that we stick to scripture and that it is the last word in spiritual matters, while they torture the Greek until – Surprise, Surprise! The original Greek lines conveniently up with what feminists have been saying all along.
Two thousand years of faithful witnesses be damned.
Encourage the clergy to live as the Classical Greeks then – including swearing off electrical appliances, modern plumbing, and antibiotics. Who cares what they do?
Here is the bible that the founders of our society read for wisdom and guidance:
https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/King-James-Version-KJV-Bible/
Written in plain English, not overly esoteric or philosophical, and no “guru” is required to interpret it for you. No one in anglophone North America needs another source.
Boxer: I’ve done exactly that – taken up a KJV that I use for most of my Bible reading and study. I’m still finding some of the language strange, but I’m not going back. I still use a 1983/4/5 NIV to read when I do the readings in church, since it still has intact pronouns, and I’ve made abundantly clear why I refuse to use the 2014 abomination that is in the pews.
Fatherhood Defines Heritage. “…this is my promise: Instead of Abram, your name will be Abraham, for I’ve made you a father of many nations.” [ Gen 17:4-5]
Not a “parent.”
The word FATHER occurs over 1,100 times in the Bible. Twice as often as lOVE [686], three times more than MOTHER [320]. Fatherhood is an essential idea. It’s not a surprise it’s under attack.
Abram’s name “Exalted Father” was an embarrassment. He had no children. God promised to make him “Father of Many” and by God’s grace he had sons with Sarah. 3,000 years later the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish peoples still identify themselves with Father Abraham. Gospel of Matthew tracks Jesus’s lineage to Abraham to prove His legitimacy as king of Israel.
Jesus used fatherhood deliberately to bring home a spiritual reality: We come into this world by the desire of our earthly fathers, but we’re adopted by our Heavenly Father through faith in Christ. Jesus says you are set free from something when you are adopted by God. He told the Jewish leaders “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” [John Ch. 8]
There is a supernatural change from being the child of an earthly father – Adam – to being God’s child. This is crucial because so many people struggle with their relationship with God because they didn’t have a great father. Many of you had great relationships with your dads, but not everyone. Some don’t even know their father. But that doesn’t mean fatherhood is meaningless.
In short – as Paul Harvey put it – if I were the devil, I would dismantle the whole notion of fatherhood, so people would find it impossible to understand what it really means to be adopted into God’s family, with God as their Father.
The Bible and Shakespeare are linked: there are – at random – for example no less than seventy references to The Bible in Henry IV Part 2. Re-writing The Bible has the knock-on effect of making Shakespeare the less familiar. The NIV is bowdlerised.
Boxer, the Bible was written over a period of approximately 1500 years in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. English is not one of the original languages of the Bible and all English translations (including the KJV) suffer somewhat from differences in languages, differences in idiomatic expressions, etc… as do Latin translations which were used widely by Catholics in the Americas who certainly did NOT and do NOT use the KJV. Catholics in early America who used English versions had the Douai Bible.
In fact, it was the Geneva Bible (not the KJV) which was the Bible taken across the Atlantic to America by the pilgrims. The KJV was not more plentiful than the Geneva Bible in the American colonies until the 1640’s. There were also various European language Bibles in the Americas.
KJV Bibles were scarce in the Colonial era due to England banning the printing of the English Bible in America in order to give a monopoly to the three British publishers licensed by the Crown and maintaining an import-export embargo in place to the end of the Revolutionary War.
It wasn’t until Aitken published 10,000 copies of the KJV Bible in 1782 that they began to become plentiful in the U.S.; however, the KJV subsequently became the most popular translation.
Also note that Greek New Testaments were printed in the U.S. and distributed from 1800 on while Hebrew Bibles were printed and distributed from 1814 on.
I would not say that U.S. culture was built solely on the KJV anymore than I would say it was built solely on Christian thought. There were plenty of different Bible translations around in various languages and Enlightenment philosophy also played a material role.
That said, the importance of the KJV in U.S. history is well documented and the Christian worldview was dominant in the formation of the United States. But let’s not be myopic.
Boxer: “Here is the bible that the founders of our society read for wisdom and guidance : [KJV]”
Who cares what bible translation the founders of the USA read? That doesn’t proof anything.
It’s still only a translation into a language native to only a small part of the earth’s population, and has no special relevance in itself.
Your remarks about Koine Greek being irrelevant are utterly stupid. Any scholarly discussion on any NT topic will involve Koine Greek. And the value of all translations of the NT are measured against their faithfulness to the Koine Greek.
@American
That is fascinating. Most interesting to learn that publication of the KJV had been limited and authorised by the Crown – and this was before the invention of Copyright in 1709 – to not one but three Publishers, I am surprised that before the revolutionary war that those same publishers were unable to send for sale to the Colonies copies of their publication. Can that be right?
What about the Tyndall Bible which predates the KJV?
To be fair to the CBMW (Grudem, Piper), they have had their disagreements with Douglas Moo widely published, including publicly denouncing the NIV/TNIV/INIV. As I have understood, Moo turned against them behind their backs.
In short – as Paul Harvey put it – if I were the devil, I would dismantle the whole notion of fatherhood, so people would find it impossible to understand what it really means to be adopted into God’s family, with God as their Father.
Such a tragedy that so many churches today, as well as “Christian” scholars, are so gleefully and enthusiastically aiding and abetting Satan in his destructive work.
Dear Fellas:
Spike sez:
Tactical perfection. You can pray in whatever language you want, and if you’re a serious hellraiser, you won’t want to attract attention to your hateful misogynistic self anyway. Atheists and non-Christians ought to study this book too, simply for historical purposes. Reading it is therapy for people stuck in an insane society, even if the reader only takes it as a literary work.
Strawman. But, you’re wrong regardless.
http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=religion_pubs
Most frontier families only had one book, and this was it. Before there were schools, parents taught their kids to read and write with this book, and it proved entirely adequate for the job. Note that the U.S. was conceived as a secular country, by a bunch of deists, atheists and agnostics who didn’t take the book literally, who nonetheless used it to order North American society. It functioned as a complete and perfect primer for a new society.
Best,
Boxer
No offense to their friends in residence, but such people sound like wimminz and male feminists, with all their petty backbiting and pathetic public airings of dirty laundry. One would expect more of people who took it upon themselves to “improve” one of the most perfect books ever to be conceived by anglophones. With this in mind, why does anyone take their “work” (lol) seriously?
It “proofs” that it’s relevant to North Americans. And it wasn’t just the founders, it was every North American family, in the city and on the farm, who read it. Atheists read it alongside Protestants, and no “scholar” or “guru” was necessary to understand it.
Insulting me suggests you don’t have an argument. It also suggests that you’ve never translated anything, and have an extremely limited idea of how languages work. It’s safe to assume you only ever knew one language. With this in mind, how is the dead language in question relevant to you?
There are scholars who are currently using the Greek to plausibly suggest that God is a transgendered feminist, and that Jesus had homosexual sex with John the Beloved. That’s what your devotion to the original language (which you are clueless about) gets you.
You can evade these silly arguments simply by sticking to the only version of the bible that our great-grandfathers considered relevant. The KJV was good enough for those men. It ought to be good enough for you, too.
Regards,
Boxer
Boxer is KJV-only? lol
Why is that funny? I don’t read feminist revisionism, except to induce vomiting. The KJV is the only version with historical import, also.
Pariah — “ray, I’ll believe what Jesus said over what you say. John the Baptist was the Elijah to come because Jesus said he was. Don’t try and force the scriptures to conform to your preconceived theological system.”
As your heart is closed, and you will only believe Christ, I will defer your accusation to King Jeshua, and leave it to Him to decide between the two of us, which is the liar and which is not. You won’t have long to wait.
___________________
OP — Good stuff. I don’t use the NIV as obviously it has been altered by the Moos of the world. Cow-fart Christianity.
As usual, the attack on Scripture has an end-goal of degrading Father and fatherhood generally, and of annihilating both if possible. Delivered to us by ‘Christians’.
“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
“And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Rev. 22:18-19)
The United States was largely Protestant and the King James Version was the most predominant Bible translation by the 19th century in the U.S.; however, there were quite a few different Bible translations being used in the U.S. including on the frontier.
For example during the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840s), the second largest Christian revival period in U.S. history, Stone-Campbell movement disciples were largely using ‘The Living Oracles’ biblical translation in place of the KJV all along the U.S. frontier of that period and they were the sixth largest Christian group in the country.
And in the 1840s, millions of Irish Catholics fled too the United States. In 1850 Catholics made up only five percent of the total U.S. population. By 1906, they made up seventeen percent of the total population and constituted the single largest religious denomination in the country (e.g. Catholic). Many of them headed to the American frontier where land was cheap and plentiful. If interested, you can read ‘The American Catholic Bible in the Nineteenth Century: A Catalog of English Language Editions’ by Sidney K. Ohlhausen to learn more about the various English translation Catholic Bibles that they used.
If you haven’t read it yet, and are interested in the rise and fall (with explanation) of U.S. denominations; I do recommend the 2005 edition of ‘The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy’ by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark.
P.S. One of the things that I respect about the KJV is that it correctly distinguishes between a male and a female, fathers and “parents,” etc…
It’s tragic that “progressive” evangelicals like Dr. Moo, and in his position no less, are no longer able to bring themselves to manage it.
I just found it humorous Boxer, given that it is a largely religious debate among some Christians about whether Jesus spoke Elizabethan English.
I like the NKJV myself, though I lean towards it or the KJV more than other translations. I am definitely not NIV-positive.
My preferred translation is the NASB…but it’s good to know what to look for when the egalitarians try to get their tentancles into translations.
Here’s another example of how the liberal news media glorifies the frivorce theft narrative. https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/house-tour-artist-elizabeth-suttons-glam-nyc-rental-253136
When I think about how women like this one would prefer an independent life of luxury over an intact family, it turns my stomach.
” I am definitely not NIV-positive.”
Hah! I’ll remember that one.
That’s the money quote I was looking for.
My question would be if she was ever in love with the guy or loved the avenues his multimillions opened up for her.
LOL! Dalrock username available.
@SigmaFrame: Ugh. “Her advice to others starting over: Don’t keep photos of your ex. The divorce with her ex is amicable (they FaceTime with the kids every day), but she didn’t want old energy in her new space. “There is NO reason to have photos of your ex in your apartment, or anything belonging to them for that matter.”
What about the two children belonging to her ex? Yeah, yeah, they FaceTime every day, fantastic, totally makes it okay that there’s not a single picture of the father of her children in the apartment.
If nothing else, this thread proves that a large number of American Protestants worship the KJV and not Jesus Christ. No reasonable person would choose to use a KJV to read the Scriptures. The language used is Elizabethan English, is outdated in 21st Century America and in many areas is extremely difficult to read and understand.
The people who built our society didn’t read the KJV primarily for religious purposes, but for social ones. It contains a complete outline of human self-organization.
The fact that you (and many others) can’t proficiently speak or read your own language doesn’t mean that the corpus should be replaced, any more than Shakespeare should. It means you should educate yourself, at least at a level approaching a literate log-cabin dweller on the 19th century American frontier.
Boxer
If nothing else this thread proves that a large number of Americans idolize William Shakespeare rather than Tennessee Wiiliams. No reasonable person would choose to read Shakespeare when reading Drama. The language used is Elizabethan English, is outdated in 21st century America and in many areas is extremely difficult to read an understand.
Isn’t that what every fifteen year old schoolboy says on coming to the Bard for the first time. ROFL
@sigmaframe
From the article “When I left, I was no longer in love. It was not an easy decision to make — to ask for a divorce when I had a three-week-old baby. I had been through a LOT the few years prior and I was ready to start over. I needed new, fresh, happier energy that was all MINE.”
Three week old baby, asks for a divorce because there’s no more hormone stable time to make that decision. And what’s something that all “MINE”
The rest of the article is the same. Make the space all about YOU. Memories of your ex, maybe in the back of an unimportant closet. Make this all about you.
Promotion of self is what the media is pushing. Marriage really just gets in the way of that.
Another thing to be grateful for. You aren’t that kid.
She’s going to have a problem when her kids start wondering about their father. You might be able to erase the ex’s memory from your single mother pad…but you won’t from your kids.
@earlthomas She can try. CAF is a shadow of its former…uh…glory, but there’s a poor fellow on there whose wife has already started the “man replacement” process:
Wife said she loves another man and wants to end our Marriage
While I agree that a large number of American Protestants excessively revere the KJV, I do not agree that they worship it instead of Jesus Christ. Nor would I say they were unreasoning if they prefer it to other translations.
However, I hope that use of the KJV does not prevent them from correctly understanding God’s word. That consequence can certainly be avoided today.
Every single post on CAF.
Do choreplay and give your cheating wife flowers. That’ll reignite the desire.
Take it from a man…you gave your marital vow to God and your husband…don’t go a sinning with another man because you have tingles for him. You’ll ruin a family and your children and God won’t look highly upon it.
As a grown man, Jesus took his turn reading from the scriptures in the Temple.
Whatever translation he used, if Jesus used it, it’s good enough for me.
(I wonder if Jesus pointed out the errors in his version as he read.)
(Some of you will understand that this is a small joke; those who don’t understand can research the issue. Start with this question: of all the quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament, the majority came from what version?)
@Boxer: apparently you’re an KJV-onlyist. The funny thing is that similar viewpoints have arisen in other languages too, were people are of the opinion that *a translation* itself is somehow inspired, and is the *only* bible that should be used. Thereby ignoring how many different languages there are. I’m sure you won’t find many KJV-onlyists in China.
“It also suggests that you’ve never translated anything, and have an extremely limited idea of how languages work. It’s safe to assume you only ever knew one language.”
Your mind works in mysterious ways. I can assure you all three your assumptions are wrong.
“Insulting me suggests you don’t have an argument.”
Well, the argument that your view on the relevance of Koine Greek is stupid (mind you, I’m not saying you’re stupid) immediately followed, having two points to it, did you miss it?
“There are scholars who are currently using the Greek to plausibly suggest that God is a transgendered feminist, and that Jesus had homosexual sex with John the Beloved. That’s what your devotion to the original language (which you are clueless about) gets you.”
No, it does not (and your fourth assumption that I’m clueless about Koine Greek is wrong too).
The fact that scholars are using Greek to make their argument proves my point of the relevance of it, doesn’t it? “Scholarly discussion” of course means people have opposing viewpoints, some of which you have apparently heard about. Those opposing viewpoints do not negate the relevance of the Greek.
Am I saying that everybody should read the Greek NT, or that translations are irrelevant? No of course not. You just need to be aware that your preferred translation is only that: a translation. When in doubt, the Greek has the last say, not the translation. Therefore Koine Greek remains forever relevant.
Jesus took his turn reading from the scriptures in the Temple.
I think you mean Synagogue. There was no scripture reading in the Temple.
of all the quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament, the majority came from what version?
Well, I understand your joke, but the topic is actually quite complicated. There have been historic accusations against falsifications being entered in the Hebrew scriptures during Christian periods, making some people believe “the” Septuagint (the oldest full copies are from the 4th century) has delivered the translation of text variants closest to the original. Hence the public reading of Jesus of the Isaiah scroll might have been an original Hebrew scroll, of a different textual variant than the Dead Sea Scroll 1Qlsa_a.
Love your contribution though!
A year or two ago, I read that the only way to copyright a new translation of the Bible in the USA was to establish that it varied by at least 10% from each of the previous translations. The man who authored the article I read was “KJV only” based on the idea that the 10% rule necessitated gratuitous changes in the text to meet the 10% threshold, even if some of the alterations were in fact corrections of actual errors in the KJV..
N.B.: Whatever tiny amount of general knowledge that I might once have had about copyright law has long since been forgotten, so I cannot vouch for this supposed “10% rule.”. And I am not trying to start a fight over whether the KJV contains any “errors.”
If nothing else, this thread proves that a large number of American Protestants worship the KJV and not Jesus Christ. No reasonable person would choose to use a KJV to read the Scriptures. The language used is Elizabethan English, is outdated in 21st Century America and in many areas is extremely difficult to read and understand.
It is no such thing — it is no harder (and easier, I think) than Shakespeare.
For study bible purposes I prefer to have the RSV there, either alone or together with the KJV, but for devotional reading the KJV is superb from my point of view — and I’m not even a Protestant! Yes, I am aware of certain translation issues, but once you are aware of those it’s fine to use it as a devotional text due to the simple beauty of the translation, especially in places like the psalms.
The fact that you (and many others) can’t proficiently speak or read your own language doesn’t mean that the corpus should be replaced, any more than Shakespeare should. It means you should educate yourself, at least at a level approaching a literate log-cabin dweller on the 19th century American frontier.
Boxer
Language changes. Try to read the Canterbury Tales or even English written before the Norman Conquest. It is extremely difficult and certainly not the most effective medium for conveying ideas meant to be understood by the reader. Rather than outdated Elizabethan English, I would rather utilize a true modern translation of the original Septuagint (the version of the OT used by Jesus and the apostles) and the original Koine Greek for the NT. Reverence for the KJV really has no theological basis since it is harder for the average reader to understand and since it contains errors in translation that more recent Bibles have eliminated. Moreover, it omits several books bridging the OT and NT (the apocrypha) from Holy Scripture.
The KJV like Shakespeare is part of the language as it is spoken and as it is understood. Replacing the KJV, like replacing Shakespeare is a way to undermine the past and thus also to undermine identity and I suspect that that is part of the purpose in these days of thought-crime. The argument that one so often hears, that the KJV fails in some way to accurately translate or in the jargon to be relevant is in my view just a cover for something else – namely a re-write to be more in keeping with modern sensibilities. This sleight of hand – placing old wine in new bottles – is not however unique to language: in the realm of classical music for example the last fifty years has seen the rise of ‘authentic performance’ on ‘period instruments’ and record companies are only too happy to indulge this marketing-ploy just as they once persuaded everyone that ditching their Vinyl, or Compact Cassettes and before that Shellac and Cylinders in favour of CDs was the punters opportunity to hear it all properly for the first time. The period instrumentalists are of course those who otherwise would not be able to get a gig. It is a freak show of ever more outlandish practice and the same goes for yet another translation of the Bible.
To all KJV-onlyists: you’re fully welcome to enjoy the KJV, but be aware it is based on an older composed Greek manuscript by Erasmus, with parts missing, and some parts translated back from the Latin Vulgate, and there are now better compiled texts available. Personally I would really like to see a NT translation based on the Byzantine/Majority Text as compiled by Robinson and Pierpont.
It was never particularly good; it has certainly declined from there.
I recommend this the NIV 2011 is an abomination:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/cbmw.niv2011.2.pdf
Designed to fit the spirit of the age and not Christ.
Hold all rotted vegetables as I confess and describe something I did recently. After being in the same church no for five years and after getting to know the teaching pastor and because he has only twice even mildly got my alarm up in his sermons and when he and I have had lunch etc., I signed on for the……wait…..wait…..Men’s Retreat. It happened last weekend.
I raise this here because Wayne Grudem’s son Elliot Grudem was there. He and my pastor were the leaders, speakers, so forth. They had met while stranded in some airport and now serve on panels together or something….whatever pastors do along those lines.
I am yet again encouraged about this church and a quorum of the men who are members. The church is only 325 folks and 80 men were at this thing. It coulda gone wrong fast. yet in every segment of teaching, where the opportunity to pedestaze women and bash men is there to exploit….not a peep. They spoke to men about men and God. Period.
In Q and A it came out from one of them, I forget which, the comfy chair that is the mindless observation of a wife’s relational superiority due to her innate vulnerability. However, it got zero traction, no Lift Chasers said Amen, no questions took us deeper into that bowl of Cheerios and crap.
I went there with the idea that Id record the seesions on an app on my phone and parse the words for a post of my own. I got nuthin. Well, I did get something. The sound of 80 men singing to accompaniment or a single acoustic, or just Acapella was amazing. Funny how the men can sing boldly and strongly in the absence of the nit pickers
That is great to hear Empath.
The way it should be.
That must be the more recent “gender-inclusive” and politically correct NIV, which has changed so many passages from earlier versions of the NIV that they’re unrecognizable. The 1984 NIV has the word “fathers” in both places in Malachi 4:6. For another example from Malachi of what the current NIV has done, compare Malachi 3:16 in the KJV or 1984 NIV (“I hate divorce,”…) to the current NIV.
Excellent breakdown. Everything else besides the KJV are perversions with provable history behind these so called “translations”.
King James VS Other Bible Versions- Dr. Kent Hovind
Which Bible Translation is Best and Most Accurate? KJV 1611 – Walter Veith
Ever notice that these so-called inclusive language Bibles depict Satan masculine?
really?
which version!