Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Baffler]

So
(Asking the Christians of the thread)
Who would be open to starting a reading and discussion of the bible verse by verse in this thread
Ya'know start at genesis and work our way through

Eh. I'd much rather keep going like we're going, maybe bringing up an interesting bit every now and again to fuel discussion.

I'd like to ask though, what translations are people using? I've got NRSVCE and KJV in print.

[penguinofhonor]

I usually go to NIV first.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

King James or whatever I find on the inter webs

[Arcvasti]

Usually I look it up on the internet and swing it through various translations to make sure that it doesn't have a completely different meaning in the first translation I found then in the rest.

[Orange Wizard]

NIV, because it's the easiest to read. It's also fairly close to the KJ in terms of apparent meaning.

Usually I look it up on the internet and swing it through various translations to make sure that it doesn't have a completely different meaning in the first translation I found then in the rest.

Also this, but sometimes Google is less practical than a physical book.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I'm curious on what would happen if someone took all of, let's say genesis and translated it into traditional Chinese on google translate and then translated it back to English how much of it would be screwed up

[Frumple]

... so, for those of you that have translation preferences, what's your heuristic? How are you choosing one over the other?

[Orange Wizard]

I chucked this into Google Translate. It's taking forever to translate because it's such a huge amount of text.
Edit: Actually, never mind. Google doesn't like that, understandably.

... so, for those of you that have translation preferences, what's your heuristic? How are you choosing one over the other?

Mostly ease of reading, honestly. If something does seem debatable or questionable, I start looking at other books. Asking my minister seems to work pretty well, seeing as he knows a lot more about it than I do.

[penguinofhonor]

Someone gave me an NIV Bible when I went to high school. The writing was a lot less awkward than whatever edition my Catholic school gave out, so I decided I liked it better. I don't really know anything about different Bible editions.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Ok silly discussion topic time

Funniest, favorite, or most awesome thing you've found in the bible


I'll start with an awesome one
There is a king that is mentioned somewhere and in some translations he has a pet basilisk/dragon/ fire breathing lizard/water monster thingy (ok some of those aren't it I know but I forgot so I threw out what I thought it was. I'll try to find the part where it is mentioned)

[Arcvasti]

Song of Solomon. That is all.

[penguinofhonor]

Song of Solomon. That is all.

Agreed! As Solomon said,

Your breasts are like two fawns,
like twin fawns of a gazelle
that browse among the lilies.

[Baffler]

I'm curious on what would happen if someone took all of, let's say genesis and translated it into traditional Chinese on google translate and then translated it back to English how much of it would be screwed up

On it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

New Revised Standard Edition: Google Edition (English -> Chinese(traditional) -> English):
In the beginning when God created heaven and earth, Earth is an invisible void and darkness covered the deep surface , and the wind swept through the water god. God said: " Let there be light " ; and there was light . And God saw the light was good ; God separated from the light and dark . And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning , the first day . God said : "Let the waters into the dome and let it separate the waters from the water ." God called the dome of the sky. And the evening and the morning were the second day. "

Original:
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,  the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

It didn't do too bad. Except for casually claiming the existence of an already-extant "water god" anyway. I'm willing to bet the intermediate Chinese was pretty silly, but Google translate speaks its own language, I guess.

[Orange Wizard]

I was always fond of the mountains of foreskins in... Joshua, I think?

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

DOME!