orthohawk:

webgovernor:

orthohawk:and what does the original Greek say? Translations are notorious for "saying" what the theologt of the translators says.

You're absolutely correct. Heck, Jesus could have been a two-headed cow for all we know, assuming he was real at all. Maybe God was laying down laws about women being less-equal than men all in jest, and the HEBREW interpretation states that fact. Makes perfect sense to me.

The thing is, if you say the "bad" was a misinterpretation, then, logically, so is the "good" and the whole thing is just a fairytale unless you read it in Hebrew or Latin (or, apparently to you, Greek as well).

Uh, dude, the New Testament is a set of GREEK documents. That you are apparently unaware of this.....well.

I apologize, I assumed that the new testament was written firstly in Latin, and that the old testament was originally in Hebrew. However, I believe my point still remains valid, why are only these specific translations the "misinterpreted"? Why is this version so widely accepted, if, as you say, it is incorrect in translation?

orthohawk:

Miland:

orthohawk:and what does the original Greek say? Translations are notorious for "saying" what the theologt of the translators says.

The quotations I used came from the NRSV, which is widely accepted..

This word was a Greek military term ...

To my mind, if someone cannot support an argument by using the consensus of widely accepted translations, then an attempted appeal to the Greek text is suspect. For the same scepticism that is directed to translations can be directed to anyone who appeals to the Greek text - for what makes him any more trustworthy as an interpreter than the professionals?

There are still more fundamental issues. The translator J.B. Phillips wrote that it was doubtful whether Paul was concerned with minutiae as much as analysts of the Greek text might give him credit for.

Apart from this, the real problem with arguments of this sort is that the disagreements are iiable to be about wider world views, in short the tradition of particular communities. They are not even possible where people begin with different starting points. Many readers of this forum, do not accept either Old or New Testaments as documents of faith that can be used in the way that fundamentalists do. Therefore one cannot use them to argue that adultery is wrong, for example; one would have to use reason and psychology, for example by pointing out that adultery can be devastating to a partner, and that marital breakups are harmful psychologically to children, even if it is true that outstanding characters can overcome such difficulties (like the current President-Elect of the United States).

Just found a nice Esperanto proverb in Marjorie Boulton's Faktoj kaj Fantazioj which may relate to some of the posts in this thread:

Virinaro subigita - popolduono rubigita!

Miland:

orthohawk:

Miland:

orthohawk:and what does the original Greek say? Translations are notorious for "saying" what the theologt of the translators says.

The quotations I used came from the NRSV, which is widely accepted..

This word was a Greek military term ...

To my mind, if someone cannot support an argument by using the consensus of widely accepted translations, then an attempted appeal to the Greek text is suspect. For the same scepticism that is directed to translations can be directed to anyone who appeals to the Greek text - for what makes him any more trustworthy as an interpreter than the professionals?

Sorry to resurrect a thread but I was going over some old posts of mine looking for an argument on an entirely different topic and decided I can't let this bit of polemics go unchallenged.
Would you say the same for a translation of, say, Anna Karenina, that described Anna's indiscretion as anything other than adultery? Why? Because *the Russian word Tolstoy used means "adultery" and nothing else*....in other words, when you have a text written in language X, (especially by a speaker of language X to an audience of language X speakers) to get the "proper" interpretation of a word in the text('s translation) you need to go see what the word means IN language X.....not some translation by some guy who may (or may not, granted) have an agenda to propogate his own view at the expense of the truth.