"Bible Versions"
The Bible is the Word of God in the Word of Man. That doesn't make it any less the Word of God, but neither does that make it any less the Word of Man.
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What happens when an average person, not trained in Hebrew and Greek, reads a book like Riplinger's New Age Bible Versions, a book produced by someone not qualified to write on the subject?
If you are going to pontificate on Bible versions you should have been to seminary. At the very least you should have done basic studies in theology. You should have studied Hebrew and Greek, and completed some university-level studies in Textual Criticism. You should have a better than passing acquaintance with Biblical Archaeology – you should understand how we came to have the various manuscripts that we do today.
Gail Riplinger was interviewed by Wayne House, a conservative, evangelical Christian scholar. Wayne House reports that she "repeatedly mispronounced terms used by biblical scholars" (1) . After he had asked her four times, "She hesitatingly admitted that she could not read Greek". (2)
It is not a simple matter to reach an informed opinion regarding biblical texts and correct translations.
When I consulted the experts regarding my neck, there were three neural radiologists, two neuro-surgeons and four or five neurologists, all looking at the same MRI scans. Each of them expressed their personal opinion. They weren't looking to make a political decision, they were looking for a right decision. They were considering a technical problem, with each bringing their own technical perspective and professional experience to bear on the question. Medicine is not an exact science. There is always a margin of discrepancy.
The same applies to Textual Criticism. It is not as easy as people make it out to be. With Gail Riplinger we have someone who doesn't know what she is doing, causing enormous upset in the lives of untrained Christians. Wayne House points that the only good thing about Riplinger's book is that it "is not any longer than it is and that the foolishness of its various claims are transparent when one takes the time to study them". (3)
I have to agree with him. New Age Bible Versions is rubbish, absolute rubbish. This is not to put down the King James Version, and it is not to endorse other versions.
Personally, I do not think the New International Version (NIV) is a good translation. It is structured on a thought-by-thought basis, rather than a word-by-word basis. Whenever you take that approach to translation work, you end up with too much of the translator's personal interpretation.
All translations carry a certain amount of interpretation. If you had a speaker in one language with three fluent speakers of that language translating into another language in which they were also fluent, the three translations would differ in many ways. There is always a subjective element in translation work.
The Greek of the New Testament (koine) is trying to convey Hebraic or Aramaic thoughts to a Hellenistic world. Which is not to say that you need to be a Greek or Hebrew scholar to understand the Bible. You don't. But if you are going to make definitive pronouncements – this is the right one and that is the wrong one – you had better know what you are talking about. Some of the conclusions that Gail Riplinger has arrived at are absolutely absurd.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.