How can someone who doesn't know the language..translate a book?

Judas I.

I see people all the time trying to interpert the scriptures for other people who don't understand it. My question is:

A simple word like "fire" or "burned" in the Bible. How do we know what these seemingly simple words really mean to Him?

Someone today said that all vines who don't bear fruit should be gathered together and "burned". He took it and interperted that to mean destroyed if they would not obey His commands. But I also recall Holy Spirit being described as a "burning fire". So does it mean destroyed or babtised with Holy Spirit?

Are we leaning on our own understanding too much?

Only the Author knows the truth about fire...and who He chooses to tell.

How in the hell can someone interpert this book without knowing these basic meanings of these words Did I say KNOWING? Not guessing.

Has anyone else noticed this? Or am I crazy?

juni

Judas -

You might want to PM Moggylover. He has a lot of knowledge w/Greek language and also how impaired the writers are of the WT society when it comes to knowing the Grk language.

Juni

Judas I.

I am not talking about the greek language...I am talking about God's language.

Know someone who can help me understand that language?

I can't seem to find anyone with a clue.

Has nothing to do with greek...english..spanish etc.

Country Girl

Judas I:

I am a Greek. Sometimes, when I am talking to my relatives in Greece, the word that I have said is totally wrong, even though in English it's what I meant it to say.

I understand what you are saying. Words change meaning over decades of usage, and that's hard to decipher for modernistas. I would say that your best bet in finding the meaning of a word in a certain era, as used by a writer, would be to examine the culture, the OTHER writings during that time period, and scholarly texts on such. it's really difficult when there is multiple meanings to a word, and when that word used in a certain inflection, or voice usage, means something differnt. That is the hard part of a linguists job. Good luck to you..

Cg

poppers

"I am talking about God's language."

Huh? Just what language would that be? One of my favorite quotes goes something like this, "God's language is silence, everything else is a poor translation."

snarf

You are not crazy at all. I have also wondered the same thing. Take for example the word "record" in english. To a d.j. their first impression would be a record that is played on a record machine. To a detective they would assume to record, as in record a phone conversation. Two different words, but yet spelled the same.

greendawn

What Judas is saying the translation may be correct but the meaning may not be as it appears. However on the example you mentioned about the fire it's pretty clear that it means anihilation and nothing else.

lawrence

Judas-

Find a spirit medium and call up Fred Franz and voila - no more questions! What God didn't know, Freddie Franz knew!

stapler99

If I understand your question right, supposing God inspired the Bible, why would he assign different meanings to the way those words are otherwise used to the words he used? Then no-one would know what he really meant which would be pointless.

lovelylil

Judas,

you are right that some of the words in the bible mean something other than we would think today. Like everlasting fire - means total destruction or being removed forever with no chance of being resurrected again. Sometimes destruction actually means judgement or chastisement. There are a lot of examples of this in the bible.

One book that can help and I use this is the "Strongs Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible" - if you buy the book there will be a cd for the computer too. This book works well with the KJV of the bible. Every word is assigned a number and you can look up the number in the concordance to find out what it actually means in the biblical text. Hope this helps, Lilly

How can someone who doesn't know the language..translate a book?

Share this