Translations of Translations

Translations of Translations December 24, 2014

I am disappointed whenever a student of mine includes in an assignment the profoundly mistaken notion that the Bible we have today is “a translation of a translation of a translation.” But it is all the more disappointing that we find the same idea in Kurt Eichenwald’s Newsweek article which is titled “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin.” It is thus ironic that an article about how frequently the Bible is misunderstood gets such basic things wrong.

It does make some useful and accurate points, however. Here’s a quote from the article:

The Bible is not the book many American fundamentalists and political opportunists think it is, or more precisely, what they want it to be. Their lack of knowledge about the Bible is well established. A Pew Research poll in 2010 found that evangelicals ranked only a smidgen higher than atheists in familiarity with the New Testament and Jesus’s teachings. “Americans revere the Bible—but, by and large, they don’t read it,’’ wrote George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli, pollsters and researchers whose work focused on religion in the United States. The Barna Group, a Christian polling firm, found in 2012 that evangelicals accepted the attitudes and beliefs of the Pharisees—religious leaders depicted throughout the New Testament as opposing Christ and his message—more than they accepted the teachings of Jesus.

Click through to read the rest.


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