Talk:Guide to Bible translations

I think you should put this in the essay: space, so you can claim authorship and work on it unencumbered. The current "category" is, well, a bit out there. You know our essay space is full of cool things like this, right? (oh, and RobS' batshit insane rants, but there is no defamation by association!) human  01:06, 6 November 2007 (EST)
 * Well, I don't so much care about claiming authorship, as I think this is the sort of thing that demands collaboration. I do think you have a point about the essay space, but I'm sort of undecided. I'm certainly not married to that category name. EVDebs 01:26, 6 November 2007 (EST)
 * (Aggggg! an asterisk!) This does rather fall between two stools: it begins with, "This article is a list of thoughts about different Bible versions." which does make it look a bit personal. We do periodically get a bit biblical though and something like this in mainspace would be a good idea. But with a name and introduction change.--Bobbing up 05:47, 6 November 2007 (EST)
 * Would that be the stool that you sit on, or that somewhat more vile use of the word stool? --Edgerunner  76 07:46, 6 November 2007 (EST)
 * Yes, I agreee with Bob - rename to something like "Bible versions" (actually likely to be linked) or "Versions of the Bible" (you get the idea), and, yes, we'll all work on it, etc. Anyway, at least EVDebs has confirmed he didn't intend to (or want to) work on it alone. human  12:12, 6 November 2007 (EST)

Translations we need info on
I've added as much as I can at this point, I think. Anyone want to add info on some other translations? We need more on the NASB, as well as the Internet translations like the New English Translation and the World English Bible, as well as possibly some newer ones like the ESV and Holman. EVDebs 16:17, 18 November 2007 (EST)
 * Possible new name: Guide to versions of the Bible. Could be included in the bibleguide template. Thoughts? human  18:35, 18 November 2007 (EST)
 * Will Guide to Bible translations suffice? EVDebs 20:16, 18 November 2007 (EST)
 * Sounds great to me! Thanks for addressing my trivial concern. human  21:53, 18 November 2007 (EST)

KJV and Shakespeare
Article page: // The KJV has nevertheless been a major influence both on subsequent Biblical study and on the English language itself, being (along with the works of William Shakespeare) one of the major early touchstones of modern English literature. //

If it were not for the KJV and Shakespeare, very very few people would be able to read English from that period. The Dutch update their spelling, even of common words, about once a generation. Can you imagine how cut off we would be from our past literature if we were to do that?

-- Rem  Beau  21:07, 15 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Most European languages have an academy which dictates what is theoretically "right" and "wrong" in the language - but there is no such academy for either British or American English.  In English "correctness" is, in reality, simply defined by common usage.
 * However it is doubtful that the academy has as much influence as it thinks it does. Shakespeare and Cervantes were contemporaries and, in my experience, the average Spanish person has about the same amount of difficulty in understanding Cervantes as the average British person has with Shakespeare. I would suggest that languages evolve at more-or-less the same speed and that external efforts at management have little effect.--Bobbing up 10:29, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Bob's totally right. You cannot confine a language any more than you can get the average teen to stop saying (oh, god, I don't know any modern teen speech... ) Well, any more than you could get *my* generation of teens to stop saying "gag me".  As for spelling, we actually should be updating our spelling rather than living by archaic rules that have us saying "To" "Two" and "too"; "through" "bough" "thorough" "rough" "trough", etc...  I contend (especially as a dyslexic person) that english is STUPID :-)  --WaitingforGodot 10:44, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I think you guys should all go back to speaking Anglo-Saxon. [[Image:Nods.gif]] -- 10:51, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Thanks for the support. :-) But I'm not sure that we are together on spelling reform. While English spelling reform would, in many ways, be a good idea it has some problems. These include:  In the absence of an academy who would make it happen? How could it be implemented over the entire English-speaking world? (The differences between US and GB spelling already cause enough disputes). Would the the objective be an entirely phonetic spelling system - in which case we'd need additional letters for vowels. Etc. So, good idea - but I see too many problems..--Bobbing up 10:57, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * LOL. Oh, i wasn't actually being serious.  I was talking from my "god i hate english spelling" side :-)   One of the whole reasons we are in this spelling mess, is that some dudes in or around Jesus' time decided to codify the language as it was spoken, and well... forgot that north England has a quite distinct accent from Southern England which is distinct from the Scots, and on and on... By the way, did you all know that Shakespere spelled the same word many different ways throughout his writing?  He seemed to jet chose whatevr spelin made cents at the tyme he was writeeng a given ward.  Can I just stick to French and Japanese?--WaitingforGodot 11:03, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Yes, I know. I'm not too bad on the history of English. :-) I blame printing - that's when we decided on correct spelling. Or we could blame the French who shoe-horned our wonderful vowel system into A,E,I,O,W, or we could blame the Great Vowel Shift, or just History I suppose. --Bobbing up 11:08, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * By the way that wasn't supposed to be "in or around Jesus' time" but "in or around Shake's time". damn bible editing is getting to me brain!--WaitingforGodot 11:21, 17 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I took it to be poetic licence. --Bobbing up 11:23, 17 July 2008 (EDT)

Some are more equal than others?
About two hours ago i added this: ''' Now that story is apochryphal. ''' The village Atheist debating the village idiot approach is silly, and beneath intelligent people, not to mention fairplay. Either go mano-a-mano with intelligent Theists, or match dim Atheists with dim Theists, else it is ridiculously one-sided and puerile. It reminds me of the oft-repeated story members of the news media like to tell. An ordained minister said, "Scripture should be read in its original language: English". I doubt that ever happened.

In response to this: A humorous reference is sometimes made by using the quote: "If the King James version was good enough for the apostles, it's good enough for me." Unfortunately, there are a few rather dim fundies who actually mean it when they say that.

I didn't attempt to delete the work of others, why would anybody delete mine? It is my understanding that i have as much right as others to contribute.

-- Rem  Beau  22:59, 15 July 2008 (EDT)
 * I deleted it, because it was poorly written, did not follow from what was before it, and, in the end, made no sense. Glad you copied it here, maybe we can make a version of it that actually says something?  Mostly, you seemed to be "arguing by editing" - a thing that should be done on talk pages, not in article content. I think you actually  might have a point there, but the way you presented it simply fails to make it clear.  ħ uman  02:33, 16 July 2008 (EDT)

Extracts and paraphrases
Now that *cough cough* certain people *cough cough* trying to rewrite the Bible are big news, should this include a section on extracts and Bible story paraphrases people have written? I'm thinking of things like the Jefferson Bible, Tolstoy's The Gospel In Brief, Pearl S. Buck's The Story Bible... I was about to add a section with these three but a quick check on Amazon shows there are many more books of the same sort and this could make the article unwieldy. Too much topic drift - and none of these is a translation, nor are any of them of the entire Bible. (And I had completely forgotten about God Is For Real, Man, which is Bible stories badly paraphrased into 1960s street gang-speak, probably edgy for its time but a laughable anochronism today.) Worth adding, or not? Maybe a separate article? Secret Squirrel 00:37, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
 * See also, perhaps? "Expurgated Bibles"?  "Bowdlerizing the Bible"? "Personal Jesus"? I'd say run with the idea...  05:04, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

New World Translation
This is grouped with fringe / crank translations. Having considerable familiarity with JW theology, I must say that the linguistic arguments made in support of its peculiarities are quite good. For example, the change in John 1 is due to the word theos being used two times in the relevant verse, once with a definite article ho (the equivalent of "the") and once without it. It appears that it is mainly perceived as a fringe because most biblical scholars are Christian and the translation deliberately does not admit interpretations that are in line with mainstream Christian theology, e.g. that Jesus was God. --Tweenk (talk) 19:20, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The Jehovah's Witnesses are a fringe Christian group, and so any translation targeting their group specifically is kind of appropriately placed in the "fringe" area. Perhaps we could split the two up between "fringe" and "crank", but then we run into the problem of being arbiters about which Christian theologies and translations are not "batshit crazy"... because let's face it, all the Christians are batshit crazy. ;) -- 13:45, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Bible Translation
We have two articles, this one and Bible translation that contain tons of shared information. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, we really say little about the problems with translating the Bible (or any work for that matter) into any other language. I'd like to "dump" the other page as a listing of the various Bibles that are out there, and use it for a more focused discussion of the art and challenges of bible translation? If no one objects. I want to make sure we don't already have such an article tucked away under a different title, though.Godot  I smell roasted chestnuts. droollllllll. 14:52, 15 November 2011 (UTC)