Reading translated texts, like the Bible

If any of you speak a foreign language, you know how difficult it can be to choose just the right word to convey your thoughts when you are trying to converse in a language which is not native to us.

For example in English, you might say "Do you know him?" when speaking of a friend. In German you would quite likely say "Kennen sie er?" to ask that same question. A literal translation of that German phrase into English would result in an English statement "Can you him?" Obviously a literal translation does not always convey the speaker’s, or writer’s, thoughts cleanly.

Jesus spoke Aramaic as his native language. The New Testament of the Bible was written in Greek, so already Jesus’ words have been translated into a “foreign language” once (Aramaic to Greek). Then to compound the translation related problems, his words were translated into many other languages, one being English. So an already imperfect expression of his thoughts from the first Aramaic to Greek was made even less perfect by the additional translation.

A simplistic attitude would be to tell ourselves, “God is in control, so I am sure he made it clear what he wanted.” The old “The Bible is God’s inspired Words” cop out. (Give me a break! God also gave us a brain to think with. Let’s use it!)

If the English NIV Bible truly is the inspired word of God, then we would not now have at least six other, different, English translations. Each of the English translations differs substantially from the others in the words they choose to express the very same original phrase.

Let’s take for example the word “Love”. In English we have only ONE word for Love. In Greek, and most other languages, there are MANY different words for love. Which intent did the Christ use when he spoke in Aramaic? Was it properly translated, with the Christ’s original exact intent, into Greek? And then once again into English? Obviously it was not translated perfectly into English, because there are no amplifications for the many different uses of the word ‘love’.

“Uh oh!” you say.

For example, if we are blithely literal in the interpretation of the English word ‘love’, we could interpret the command to “Love thy brother” as a command to be a homosexual.

“Uh oh!” you say.

So then, obviously we must try to find the ORIGINAL intent of the phrase when it was ORIGINALLY spoken in Aramaic by Jesus. We CAN NOT depend on the written words in our English Bibles, because we now agree for certain that the ability to interpret the English translations correctly leaves too much to our own previously taught predilections about sex, love, and the other wonderful gifts god has given us.