News-Record.com

I find it interesting that when talking about the plethora of translations available for the Bible, a lot of folks miss a huge point: that language is far from being a perfect, reliable means to communicate. This is why the whole idea of divine revelation is fraught with practical difficulties. Language is imprecise and varies over time.

The Christians try to deal with this problem by cranking out new "translations" and "paraphrases" Muslims try to deal with it by insisting that all devotees learn the original language of the Qur'an and reading it in "unchanged" form. Though of course, the evidence exists that it, too, has changed over the centuries.

The bottom line is that this whole business points out a big problem with the concept of revelation: truly accurate, unambiguous communication using human languages is nearly impossible. Add in the problem of changes over time, both in text and in usage - not to mention the creation of entire new languages - and the process becomes a total mess. One would think that a perfect being would be able to arrange something better.

I agree, Namtac; there is also the awkward fact that even people using the same translation don't agree on what it means, and have no external source to tell them (because they'd disagree about that, too). Since Christians have found support in the Bible for asserting and denying every article in the Nicene Creed, one wonders what practical use the Bible serves as a communication of God's truth. Not to mention the hundreds of contradictions in it. The sheer mental energy needed to deny these obvious and pervasive errors could be used for a better purpose than self-delusion.