Original Holy Bible If I gave you $100 and you converted it to British Pound Sterling, you would get £75.3. But if you take that £75.3 pounds to a bureau de change, you would not be able to buy back the original $100. You could perhaps buy $98. You see, in the course of conversion, some value is lost.
Now, consider that the King James Version was not translated from original Scripture. It was translated from the Latin Vulgate, which itself was translated from the original codexes. So, instead of buying $98, you are actually buying something like $94.
It is like making a photocopy from another photocopy. You can get an image, but you can’t get a perfect image.
In the course of translating Scripture to English or any other language besides the original languages, some value, or should I say power, is lost.
A good example is Matthew 11:12, which reads in the King James Version as follows:
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”
As a born again Christian in university, my colleagues and I read that verse and began praying ‘dangerous’ prayers to take the Kingdom by force violently.
It was not until I read that verse in Greek that I realised that that was not what it said and that the KJV translators mistranslated it.
If you read that verse in subsequent translations, such as the NIV, NLT, CEV, etc, you will see that it is saying NOTHING of the sort of things that the KJV implied.
For example, this is the same verse in the NIV:
“From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.”
Another mistranslated verse is Isaiah 45:11:
“Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.”
I remember that my spiritual colleagues and I were literally obeying God by commanding Him, because He asked us to command Him.
It was not until I read that verse in Hebrew that I realised that that was a question. God was asking us if we had the audacity to command Him concerning the works of His Hand.
Biblical Hebrew has very few punctuations, and it does not have a question mark. So, it is effortless for translators fo turn a question into a licence.
And subsequent translations have since corrected that error in translation. I will now quote the same Isaiah 45:11 in the NLT:
“This is what the LORD says-- the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Concerning things to come, do you question me about my children, or give me orders about the work of my hands?”
It is a similar thing that occurred in the case of Cain and his lineage. Because Western culture makes men and women equal, Westerners, and those they colonised, have inserted their bias into Scripture, and because Scripture does not acknowledge women in ancestral lineage, they have been misled into thinking that only males existed on Earth (with the exception of Eve) at the time Cain killed Abel.
That is far from the truth. Very, very, far indeed.
And unless Christians learn from Muslims, and instead of translating Scripture, we translate ourselves, by learning the original language of Scripture, we will keep getting tossed to and fro by translators who may or may not have an agenda.
Credit: Reno Omokri, Gospeller, Deep Thinker, #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Avid traveller. Hollywood Magazine Film Festival Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider's Most Influential Influencer in Africa, 2022.
Category: World-News
Tag: Reno Omokri holy bible versions and
Written by Omooba Alekuwodo (omoobaalekuwodo)
Published 10/18/2023 12:04:28 PM