Thanks Slim for your contribution!
Wonderment
JoinedPosts by Wonderment
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Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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Wonderment
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John 1:1 in Coptic Translation
by slimboyfat inapparently there has been quite a stir in jw apologetic circles recently about the translation of john 1:1 in the early sahidic version of john.
i don't know if this has been discussed here before - if someone could give a link to a previous thread they know about on the subject that would be great.
here is what i gather: .
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Wonderment
acqwsed12345,
Your long posts just make it easier for us to spot wrong conclusions from your part. It has been said that the more we talk, the more we tend to introduce errors in our arguments. This can happen to anyone trying to outwork everyone else.
You keep saying that JWs have John 1.1c wrong. It just so happens that other translators have rendered the text likewise. So by honing on the mistakes of *one* version as you tend to do, it begins to tell a story about your personality, and the heavy bias you may be carrying upon your shoulders.
You keep saying that the term "God" applies to the true God, and to false gods, like Satan, in the main. But you fail to mention that other scholars acknowledge the term has various meanings, including one of strength and power. There can be more than one powerful person in the room. Your cursory mention of John 10.34 by Jesus gives you away.
You quote 8 Church Fathers in your post above, and repeatedly make reference to these as some sort of proof that your conclusions are correct. Are you kidding? These Church Fathers lived historically in a time period noted for its ambiguity and confusion. Do you really think that by giving so much authority to these guys of the past is going to decidedly help people of our times who have inherited a notorious, unstable state of religious confusion of past millenniums?
It seems that you want to have John 1.1 say that it supports a sort of Trinity. Without going back to Church Fathers, can you provide for us a text or two in the Gospel of John that clearly indicates a trinitarian dogma?
For some reason, some people push aside simple doctrines, and prefer complex reasonings, like those found in the Trinity dogma.
John 17.3 points to the Father [not the Son] as the true God, who we owe our lives to. This is simple. And Jesus even said, "The Father is greater than I am." Jesus thus said: 'Worship the Father.' (Jn 4.24) How simple! These words are basic language that can move anyone. But for ego-seekers, this may be way too simple. Greek philosophy disguised in complicated dogmas, like the Trinity, have taken over this world. (Jn 12.31)
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How about this?
by Wonderment innew world translation of the christian greek scriptures released in fon.
https://www.jw.org/en/news/region/benin/new-world-translation-of-the-christian-greek-scriptures-released-in-fon/.
wikipedia states under "fon language > machine translation efforts":.
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How about this?
by Wonderment innew world translation of the christian greek scriptures released in fon.
https://www.jw.org/en/news/region/benin/new-world-translation-of-the-christian-greek-scriptures-released-in-fon/.
wikipedia states under "fon language > machine translation efforts":.
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Wonderment
New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures Released in Fon
But how about this?
Wikipedia states under "Fon Language > Machine translation efforts":
There is an effort to create a machine translator for Fon (to and from French), by Bonaventure Dossou (from Benin) and Chris Emezue (from Nigeria). Their project is called FFR. It uses phrases from Jehovah's Witnesses sermons as well as other biblical phrases as the research corpus to train a Natural Language Processing (NLP) neural net model.
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Quality of jw.org translation?
by Wonderment insomeone asked the following question to an artificial intelligence (ai) website:.
how does the most translated website ensure accuracy of translations?.
answer: .
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Wonderment
Thanks for your illuminating comment.
It appears there is no consensus in whether all Bible translations should stick to a literal phrase like, break the bread in every text where it appears. I agree that by not using a consistent rendering some readers may end up misled as to the original intent of the Bible writer. Interpretive mistakes are perhaps more common with contemporary translations. I am satisfied that you are satisfied with the literal expression break the bread as it appears consistently in older versions.
At the same time, the trend in the last 50 years has been to replace many literal phrases in the Bible with contemporary wording that modern speakers can better understand. I believe there is a place for both translation principles.
I wonder what is your view on the following:
Acts 20:7 [NWT Study Edition]
to have a meal: Lit., “to break bread.” Bread was the staple of the diet in the ancient Middle East; hence, this expression came to denote any kind of meal. Bread was generally formed into flat loaves that were baked hard, so the bread was often broken rather than cut with a knife. Therefore, breaking the loaves to eat them was customary and something that Jesus often did. (See study note on Mt 14:19; see also Mt 15:36; Lu 24:30.) When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Evening Meal, he took a loaf and broke it. Since this was the normal way to divide a loaf, there is no spiritual significance to Jesus’ breaking the bread. (See study note on Mt 26:26.) Some claim that when this expression occurs in certain places in the book of Acts, it refers to the observance of the Lord’s Evening Meal. (Ac 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11) Every time the Lord’s Evening Meal is mentioned, though, breaking bread is associated with drinking wine from a cup. (Mt 26:26-28; Mr 14:22-25; Lu 22:19, 20; 1Co 10:16-21; 11:23-26) The two actions are equally significant. So when breaking bread is mentioned without any reference to drinking from a cup, this is a reference, not to the Lord’s Evening Meal, but to an ordinary meal. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate that Jesus intended the Memorial of his death to be observed more often than the festival it replaced, the Passover, which was observed just once a year.
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https://www.simplybible.com/f47a-notes-breaking-of-bread-a-distinction.htm
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Quality of jw.org translation?
by Wonderment insomeone asked the following question to an artificial intelligence (ai) website:.
how does the most translated website ensure accuracy of translations?.
answer: .
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Wonderment
First: careful, it is good to know that you are still around, and able to submit your valuable comments.
PetrW: I don't want to draw conclusions from two passages, but doesn't this suggest a declining quality of translation and proofreading work...?
Not necessarily. We all know by now that the WT has shifted their translation practice towards greater simplification. Although I don´t have any WT literature before me giving out specifics on translation practices, I dare mention some observations.
For years, I noticed the WT publications contained the same number of pages in the many languages I looked up. Now, I find this interesting because some languages display more verbosity than English does, say, Portuguese, Spanish and French, to name a few. This means, that the WT translator teams faced the challenge of squeezing the extra phrasing necessary to convey the original English message into these other languages within the same space. In part, the publishing arm of the WT would handle this automatically. As a result, the font size was made smaller in some cases. But I suspect that the WT translators also had the instruction to keep the translated text as short as possible as well, an observation I noted in various WT publications. Interestingly, a WT translator at Bethel mentioned this once.
This process would affect the translation product to some extent. It does not mean the translation teams did not know any better in their assignments. They had to work with some suggested limitations from the start. The same could be said perhaps of other non-WT publications when translated into other languages. In fact, I have noticed the same thing in Bible versions, be it, English, or other. With some effort, anyone can see which Bible versions in English kept the translation product as brief as possible, while others did not. (One ex., John 11.35, Jesus wept vs Jesus burst into tears. - KJV vs Moffatt)
Besides the verbosity challenge facing translators, there is the issue of language rightness in different countries. In Spanish for example, a language spoken in many different countries, a good word in Spain may be a bad word in Mexico, and viceversa. The WT used dozens of proofreaders from different countries (somewhere between 80 and 90 if I recall correctly) in preparing this edition.
Then you have the doctrinal interpretation issues in some areas of the world. In some cases, the WT has explained how they have had to adapt the wording in some texts to clear various traditional misunderstandings in the various countries they are present. Is this why they have translation teams scattered around the world, that is, to improve the translation process and message communication? If so, consistency will take a back seat at times.
Acknowledging, translation can be done with a literal, contemporary, or paraphrase mission. The WT left the literal-meaning translation behind for the most part, with the exception of the English NWT (even in its updated form), which still bears quite a bit of literalness. Other NWT versions from the English obviously had less restrictions in the translation process. Translation is not always rigid, and it is the translatorś duty to determine when to stick to a literal reading, and when not to. Of course, there is always a risk of deviating from the original document when dismissing a literal reading. But even in the most literal versions, translators in some situations had no choice but to take a guess as to what the original writer meant when he wrote something.
In the case of Acts 2.46, the Greek structure, although not uncommon, is a bit complicated for readers of other cultures. Furthermore, to translate this text correctly, one must undertake various exegetical problems at hand. From the modern standpoint, is the bread referred to here the type of unleavened bread used in the commemoration of Jesus' death, or is it a term related to a common meal during the first century?
Should the translator render the Greek phrase katʼ oiʹkon (from house to house) literally? Should this expression be understood in the sense that the believers in this context were doing the action at their homes (adverbial), or in the consecutive sense (physically, in walking distance, from house to house), or in the distributive sense, that is, from one house to another, distance apart, not physically together?
The NWT translators took the Greek phrase in the distributive sense: in different homes, that is, the believers met and shared meals together at different homes of fellow believers.
At Rev 5:14, it should be noted that some Greek texts do add: living to the ages of the ages, with no suffix, or pronoun. Jay P. Green has: (the) Living One living to the ages of the ages. The George Ricker Berry and the Newberry Interlinear read: and worshipped [him who] lives to the ages of the ages. (Brackets theirs)
Even in English, some translators (KJV, Young, Lamsa, Mace, Thomson, and others) add the vague him to end of the text which is missing in the Greek text.
It would be interesting to determine what the Czech, Slovak and Slovenian NWT translators had in mind by adding God to the text. I wonder if any Czech, Slovak and Slovenian version or popular commentary there include Jesus in the worship (Both God and the Lamb are mentioned in the chapter). Anyways, these are some of the things that translators encounter in their business, and readers frequently lack these details to form an accurate conclusion.
If done correctly, an accurate translation need not be literal everywhere. A somewhat loose translation in some scriptures can communicate better with a lot of people. Regardless, all translators must submit to a realm of uncertainty in numerous places. We the readers gain from all the sound labor these translators accomplish. -
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First Half of the Book of Hebrews (Study Edition) Now Available Online
by Wonderment inapril 11, 2024 (source: jw.org) .
first half of the book of hebrews (study edition) now available online.
the first half of the bible book of hebrews (chapters 1-7) is now available in the study edition of the new world translation of the holy scriptures on jw.org and in jw library.
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Wonderment
APRIL 11, 2024 (Source: jw.org)
First Half of the Book of Hebrews (Study Edition) Now Available Online
The first half of the Bible book of Hebrews (chapters 1-7) is now available in the study edition of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures on jw.org and in JW Library. This release includes over 200 new study notes along with some new media gallery items. The second half of Hebrews (chapters 8-13) will be published at a later date.
Read chapters 1-7 in the book of Hebrews.
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Quality of jw.org translation?
by Wonderment insomeone asked the following question to an artificial intelligence (ai) website:.
how does the most translated website ensure accuracy of translations?.
answer: .
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Wonderment
Someone asked the following question to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) website:
How does the most translated website ensure accuracy of translations?
Answer:
Based on the search results, there are a few key ways the most translated website, jw.org, ensures accuracy of its translations:
- Dedicated translation program: The Jehovah's Witnesses have a focused effort and program dedicated to translating their website and publications into as many languages as possible, including obscure and endangered languages. This dedicated translation program allows them to maintain quality and consistency.
- Network of volunteer translators: jw.org utilizes a large network of volunteer translators in over 350 remote offices around the world to handle the translation work. This distributed model with local language experts helps ensure high-quality localization.
- Prioritizing comprehensiveness over speed: Unlike commercial websites that focus on translating to their largest markets, jw.org aims for comprehensive global coverage, even if it means translating into smaller languages at a slower pace. This focus on completeness rather than speed likely contributes to the accuracy of their translations.
- Rigorous quality control: The search results indicate the Jehovah's Witnesses organization likely has robust quality control processes in place to review and validate translations before publishing them on jw.org. This helps maintain accuracy across the vast number of language versions.
- Translating religious content: As a religious organization, the Jehovah's Witnesses have a strong incentive to ensure the accuracy and fidelity of their translated religious content, which may contribute to the high quality of their translations.
Whatś your take on this? Do you think the AI website borrowed the content from a WT publication, or, is there is more to it than that? (On the NWT, the website was not as kind in its review, parroting language commonly found in evangelical publications.) -
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Will recent dress-code changes affect the WTS negatively?
by Wonderment inin a span of a few months time, we have had many unexpected changes announced by the jw organization.
some here have expressed the belief that a great number of witnesses will leave the religion.
in fact, there is a great probability the opposite will be true.. yeah, ancient hardliners will have a hard time assimilating these changes, but the younger generation will likely welcome these changes.
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Wonderment
In a span of a few months time, we have had many unexpected changes announced by the JW organization. Some here have expressed the belief that a great number of Witnesses will leave the religion. I am not so sure about that. In fact, there is a great probability the opposite will be true.
Yeah, ancient hardliners will have a hard time assimilating these changes, but the younger generation will likely welcome these changes. Letś take one issue at hand: Relaxed dress codes.
Dress Codes:
This alone will be a major incentive for some to reconsider going back to the meetings. Most men don´t like to wear ties. I don´t. Women in particular dread the restrictions imposed by the traditionalists. Women like the freedom to choose what to wear, and from what I have seen in the past, they give a lot of thought to it when going to weekly meetings, and in particular, to yearly Conventions.
The addition of slacks to their attire is a big plus. Northern countries are known to be brutally cold, and women wearing pants will keep them more comfortable. Also, many women prefer pants over dresses or skirts any time, so much in fact, that outside of the JW world, some women don´t have dresses or skirts to wear at all.
Another thing, we are talking about the female gender here. Many women like to attract members of the opposite sex, be that openly or quietly. The warning to use office slacks will work with some, maybe with most sisters, but not all. Other younger, bolder ladies will challenge the status quo some, and then some.
I recall an incident some decades ago, where I spoke with a recently married couple at a large Convention, and we went talking about the Convention material that evening. To my surprise, both were candid enough to tell me that they could not focus on the biblical discourse because they had a beautiful woman right before them with thin white pants showing her assets. It seems they both enjoyed the show (She even said so, I was stunned), for they stayed put in the same place for the whole day.
So this allowance of office slacks in meetings will turn to some exciting situations. I have heard from some men that they liked going to the meetings to see beautiful women. And women know that.
Of course, it is not only men, but some women like to meet interesting men at these meetings as well. They will want to look attractive to them. So how long can you keep office slacks as a standard of dressing? Have you looked lately at any social platform to see how far people are willing to go to show their bodies? Not only pants will get bolder, but even skirts and dresses will keep getting shorter. This may help Kingdom Hall attendance indirectly. Who knows for sure?
But, taking sexual attraction motives out of the equation, the fact is that relaxing dress codes may turn out for many to be an incentive to try the meetings again.
What do you think?
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What the Trinitarian perspective on John 8.28?
by slimboyfat inthis is not a verse that i’ve seen feature heavily in trinitarian debates but it seems to me it presents a problem for the trinity.
if there are any around i’d be interested to know your perspective, or anything you can find on the meaning and how it doesn’t contradict the trinity.
the verse says:.
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Wonderment
Vanderhoven7: If any of you are aspiring to be a Catholic priest you must be able to speak on the subject of the Holy Trinity for 5 minutes without making more than 17 heresies.
Interesting! Where did you get this?