Religion
Related: About this forumPsalm 133 King James Version (KJV) !
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
2 It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
3 As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
Blue Owl
(54,563 posts)1 Behold, how sad it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
2 It is like the precious orange mess upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Junior's beard: that went down to the skirts of Melania's garments;
3 As the Dew of Mountain, and as the dew that descended upon the golf courses of Zion: for there the Donald commanded the blessing, even life for covfefe more.
RussellCattle
(1,743 posts)stonecutter357
(12,767 posts)abqtommy
(14,118 posts)isn't even in the running for the most accurate. (It was, after all, written for King James.) The accuracy of a translation depends on 1) the literalness of the translation and 2) the Hebrew and Greek texts used to translate from.
The NASB/New American Standard Bible is regarded as the most literal/accurate translation.
Which, according to my information is moot since the Hebrew texts have been called a collection
of Sumerian and Egyptian myths. A lot of other criticism is available to the casual seeker for truth.
stonecutter357
(12,767 posts)abqtommy
(14,118 posts)stonecutter357
(12,767 posts)Igel
(36,010 posts)NASB is regarded by some (best to say who) as the most accurate.
The problem I've always had with regarding any ME culture as wholly derived from a cognate culture is simple.
Consider Ukrainian. It's similar to Russian. At one point it was considered a dialect of Russian. As being derived from Russian.
However, Ukrainian is every bit as old as Russian. As you go back in time, they look more and more similar until you're left with something that also includes Belorusian. Common East Slavic.
Go back further, and you find that all the Slavic languages merge. There are dialectal differences, but even those seem to have starting points. And you have Common Slavic.
Go back further, and there's no sense in which Slavic languages derive from Baltic languages, they simply started at the same point. A bit further back, and you lose the distinctiveness of Latin and Greek, Germanic languages, Indic and Iranian.
Which is older, Latin, attested a few hundred BC, or Russian, first attested in 1065, or Lithuanian, first attested in the 1500s? None of them. There is no "oldest language" because, as far as we can tell, they all go back to a common source. And that source was as much the origin of English as of Mandarin.
So you have legends attested early in Sumeria. Are they the source of other legends in the area? There's no evidence for this at all: It's unlikely that all the surrounding peoples had no legends at all and were waiting (like having all the Slavic peoples sitting around, without any language at all until a Baltic speaker came along and said, "Here, have my language"--or, borrowing Chomsky's analogy, it's like having a group of birds with wings and feather, able to fly but without knowledge of flight, until they see a bird in flight and think, "I can do that"--and take off as a fully-flighted flock).
What would be necessary is to show that the Sumerians innovated those particular legends. At best there's date of first attestation, which frequently just means, "This group had writing first." To which I say that there are Lithuanian words first attested in the 1600s that are directly and unequivocally descended from Indo-European, c. 4000 BC, that couldn't have been borrowed from any other language. But, since they're not attested, the easy (facile) and simple (simplistic) explanation is that they were somehow borrowed.
But that's okay. I've seen people try to claim that since there's the "Germanic interpretation" of Roman and Greek gods, and a set of analogies between Greek and Roman and Greek and Egyptian deities, that really all the Europeans were sitting around, godless, until suddenly Egyptian gods spread to them. Upon which, of course, it can only be concluded that each culture set up a commission to devise new names and different histories for them. Then again, these were scholars in the 1700s and 1800s. Nobody after 1920 would be so butt-brained as to try to make that kind of allegation.
We make an exception for Xianity. And, really, only Xianity.
Major Nikon
(36,899 posts)...whether they realize it or not. Many evangelical denominations refuse to adopt other translations because it is either omitted entirely or a footnote is added questioning the validity of it, or it is added by footnote with the disclaimer that it doesnt appear in Greek manuscripts before the 14th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannine_Comma
Without the Comma Johanneum, there is no reference to the holy trinity in the synoptic gospels, which is a huge problem for evangelicals. It means the entire concept of the trinity is merely doctrinal rather than biblical and invites debate on not just the concept of the trinity, but the divinity of Christ.
Cartoonist
(7,507 posts)If it's so goddamned precious, then how could they let it run down to his garments?