{"id":27784,"date":"2014-12-24T10:59:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T15:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=27784"},"modified":"2014-12-24T10:59:40","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T15:59:40","slug":"translations-of-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/12\/translations-of-translations.html","title":{"rendered":"Translations of Translations"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I am disappointed whenever a student of mine includes in an assignment\u00a0the profoundly mistaken notion that the Bible\u00a0we have today is \u201ca translation of a translation of a translation.\u201d But it is\u00a0all the more disappointing that we find the same idea in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2015\/01\/02\/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Kurt Eichenwald\u2019s <em>Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0article which is titled \u201cThe Bible: So Misunderstood It\u2019s a Sin.\u201d<\/a> It is thus ironic that an article about how frequently the Bible is misunderstood gets such basic things wrong.<\/p>\n<p>It does make some useful and accurate points, however. Here\u2019s a quote from the article:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000\">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\u2019s teachings. \u201cAmericans revere the Bible\u2014but, by and large, they don\u2019t read it,\u2019\u2019 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\u2014religious leaders depicted throughout the New Testament as opposing Christ and his message\u2014more than they accepted the teachings of Jesus.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2015\/01\/02\/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Click through<\/a> to read the rest.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am disappointed whenever a student of mine includes in an assignment\u00a0the profoundly mistaken notion that the Bible\u00a0we have today is \u201ca translation of a translation of a translation.\u201d But it is\u00a0all the more disappointing that we find the same idea in Kurt Eichenwald\u2019s Newsweek\u00a0article which is titled \u201cThe Bible: So Misunderstood It\u2019s a Sin.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":17119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,136,139,43],"tags":[1140,3203,8091,12839,12841],"class_list":["post-27784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-evangelicals","category-fundamentalism-religion","category-inerrancy","tag-bible","tag-evangelicals","tag-newsweek","tag-translation","tag-translations"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Translations of Translations<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am disappointed whenever a student of mine includes in an assignment\u00a0the profoundly mistaken notion that the Bible\u00a0we have today is &quot;a translation of a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/12\/translations-of-translations.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Translations of Translations\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am disappointed whenever a student of mine includes in an assignment\u00a0the profoundly mistaken notion that the Bible\u00a0we have today is &quot;a translation of a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/12\/translations-of-translations.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-12-24T15:59:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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