Biblical Mysteries: Mistranslations
"I Will Flood the Earth"
In the 6th chapter of the book of Genesis, we find one of the most familiar Bible stories of all time. God, seeing that his creation has begun to behave wickedly, decides to destroy the Earth with a massive flood. One man finds favor with God- Noah. Noah builds an ark, collects every animal and waits out the storm as per God's instructions.
To Biblical Literalists, the flood was a real, geological event. The effort to prove that a real global flood happened and that all of mankind are descended from Noah, his three sons and their wives is scoffed at by modern scientists. A real global flood would also mean that all the animals are descended from the animals in Noah's ark- every single animal on Earth.
However, the Hebrew word for "earth" in the Bible is also the word for "land" and "nation". If God flooded the whole land or whole nation instead of the entire globe, the story is a little different...and perhaps more plausible.
"Moses Parted the Red Sea"
It looks spectacular in the movies, animated or not. The saltwater blasts into the air in two mighty walls of rushing water. The Israelites- previously grumbling and uncooperative- walk away from captivity on dry land. It's a scene that makes us consider the awesomeness of God.
Unfortunately, the sea which Moses parted in the original Hebrew Bible is not the body of water located between Saudi Arabia and Eastern Africa. It's the "Sea of Reeds"- a phrase which makes us think of perhaps a seasonable dryness, with a sudden flood coming down on the wicked Egyptians.
"Jehovah"
The name of God was banned from the lips of the Jewish people for centuries. Whenever the Jewish people said the name of God, they would say "Ha Shem" (The Name) or "Adonai" (The Lord) You weren't allowed to utter the name of God for centuries- this was out of respect and reverence for the almighty creator of the Universe. An unfortunate side effect of this practice is that we don't know how the name of God was pronounced.
The name, if you remember, as given to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 3:14 via burning bush. AHYH ASR AHYH means "I will be who I will be". This is mistranslated in the Christian tradition as "I AM THAT I AM". The AHYH (I will be) was changed to YHWH (I am) to assure people, who were more comfortable with the idea of a "right now" God.
The Hebrew Alphabet had no written vowels- you added the vowel points yourself. In the Middle Ages, Bible translators used the vowel points for the word "Adonai" in the word YHWH, coming up with the word "Jehovah".
Which is the wrong name.
"Jesus, born in an Inn"
There isn't much wood at all in the arid land of the Middle East- not enough to build a whole traditional Western barn, anyway. So, it's pretty certain that here are no lowly wooden stables in the land of Israel. In fact, the word for "inn" in the Greek New Testament has a second meaning that makes a lot more sense.
In the Middle East, even today, many houses are built as three story cubes. The top floor is the roof where clear nights are spent sleeping, eating, talking and hanging out. The middle floor is for the same activities when the weather is problematic.
The stables are on the bottom. The animals are tucked into little rooms with the mangers carved into the dirt floor and lined with gravel. The word for "inn" also means "upper room".
Joseph, remember, was from Bethlehem.It's possible he had family there- being a thoughtful man, it's not likely he would have carried a pregnant Mary all the way to Bethlehem to give birth among strangers.
So,instead of the image of a humble carpenter banging on the door of every hotel, motel and Holiday Inn, we have an "upper room" of a family home with no space for a baby to be born. So, Mary went downstairs to the barn to have her baby and laid his sweet little head in a tiny in-ground manger.
Traditions aren't always right. We have a habit of imposing our ways of life (wooden barns, for example) into a culture that was completely different from our own. We forget that the King James Version of the Bible is not the original language of the text- Jesus did not speak English. Even King James' Englsih comes from a vastly different world than our own (compare NIV with KJV).
If people are going to view the Bible as the absolute, inspired word of God, then they have to read it as it is.
Sources:
"A SIMPLE OVERVIEW OF THE DIVINE NAME" http://www.yhwh.com/asimple.htm
Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman
The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill
Don't Know Much About the Bible by Kenneth C. Davis
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6 Comments
Post a CommentEven if our text is 98% accurate, that's still 2% inaccurate- and that's in comparison to copies, not the original.
Illuminating...
Thanks for commenting Alina,
Animals were (and still are, in some parts of Palestine) often stabled on the ground floor. The feeding troughs are often carved into the ground. So when it says there was no room in the kataluma (inn, upper room, common room) and she laid him in a manger, we can deduce their surroundings.
Joseph did come to Bethlehem for the census- he was from Bethlehem, which is why it's likely he would have been able to stay with family in a family home.
Obviously, these facts about the text aren't well known to many Christians. We still speak of the parting of the Red Sea, we still have the same Nativity plays and I have heard hours of preaching about the "Hebrew name of God" being Jehovah.
The debate is between secular scholars and literalists, because some people want to pretend that the people who translated the text couldn't have made mistakes. And they did.
We don't have the original text of the Bible. We have copies. Even if our text is 98% accura
cont... This is nothing new. Christians are often criticised for just believing everything they are told. This problem is not just confined to Christians. I would recommend that anyone interested in this subject should read the Bible for themselves in a good interlinear version (with original languages alongside English) rather than just reading books about it.
Actually, the Bible doesn't say that Jesus was born in a barn or a stable - it just says that the baby was laid in an animal feeding trough, giving rise to the nativity stables we see at Christmas. And Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem for a census - that's pretty clear, and not uncommon at the time.
These 'mysteries' are well-known by Christians. You have portrayed your version of the translation as fact, when in fact these issues are still being hotly debated by Christians and secular scholars alike.
The original language versions of the Biblical texts are easily available for anyone to buy (and the modern Greek/Hebrew versions are over 98% accurate to the earliest texts we have) and so it is easy for anyone to look at a Bible with the text in both languages and see for themselves the nuances of the original. When translating between any two languages, there will always be words that don't translate exactly or have many possible translations in the second language. Thi
Good article. There have been many mistranslations and misunderstandings in the Bible. Bart Ehrman has many of them in his books.