Monday, February 16, 2015

I Don't Care about "Plainer" Translations of Scriptures

I view scriptures as records of how people from the past viewed God and his relationship to them - and not much else, when it gets right down to it.

That's really important to me, but it doesn't say much about how WE view God and his relationship to US. Absolutely, it can and should influence us, but I believe in an evolutionary model of understanding that includes religious understanding - that "further light and knowledge" and "ongoing revelation" are FAR superior to past pronouncements of scripture, with the exception of the words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

I think that is axiomatic to Mormonism.

Thus, while I value scripture highly (from all faith traditions), I don't really care much about spending time trying to translate them more plainly - since, in the end, I believe translations reveal much, much more about the worldviews of the translators than they do about the worldview and intent of the original authors, scribes and abridgers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, the KJV is a translation. Do you prefer your Bible with a 1611 wordview? Since the KJV, there have been additional copies of the books of the Bible found, and this has allowed Bible scholars to produce a more accurate translation that more closely matches the original intentions of the writers. This is one advantage of continued Bible scholarship and translation.

Papa D said...

I use the King James Version at church simply because it is the generally used version of the community. I like to compare various translations - but I don't care about making biblical language "plainer". There are positives and negatives to plainer language and more literary language, so I prefer multiple translations over a focus on trying to create the plainest one.