As I see it, there are not many downsides of the fields of Bible and ancient Near East, however, they are a magnet for really crazy ideas and products (everyone knows of the crazies that come out of the woodwork when you talk about the Bible, but if you’ve done any Google searches on “sumerian” or other ANE terms it’s not long before you find stuff on bizarre cults and ufo abductions).
Claude Mariottini had an interesting looking post about a new Bible translation, the Ancient Roots Translinear Bible. So, I followed the links and here is a snippet from the translation site:
The ARTB restores hundreds of specialty ancient words missing from other versions. Each English word matches a unique Hebrew root and the Strong’s number 99+% of the time. The text format even captures the double word use unique to biblical Hebrew.
Basically, the person (yes that word in in the singular) who produced this translation dusted off his/her (is Frances a guy or girl?) Strong’s concordance and matched up every Hebrew/Aramaic root in Strong’s with its supposed English equivalent.
As all of my students know very well, Strong’s concordance is useful for two things: a door stop and providing my printer with recycled paper (every time the students want to get my blood pressure up they tell me that they arrived at a definition for their translations by looking at Strong’s).
I could go on for quite a while about the myriad of fallacies that lie behind this “translation” but I think already I’ve tipped my hand at what I think of it.
Oh, how could you pour scorn on this most ACCURATE ever English translation? Why the ESV pales into a mere shadow of the KJV by comparison, and to think it only took half a millennium for someone to recognise the possibility, and of course the lexicographical input of the late great Dr James Strong, to produce it! The millennium has at last arrived, and we poor Bible teachers can pack our bags and slink off into the sunset.
That is very funny!
Wow, Charles, you sure know how to dredge up some wacky stuff. My trip through the ARTB website was truly an experience.
So if this Frances individual is correct, I suppose we might as well just throw away all other translations, perhaps even our beloved MT (I mean, now that he/she has it all figured out, why waste our time?). On the other hand, what will happen to those conservative KJV-adoring churches? I can’t imagine a switch, can you? Ancient Roots Translinear Bible Baptist just doesn’t have the ring of its KJV predecessor.
Charles, you laugh, but do you realize that the word “strong” appears in exactly 239 verses in the KJV. But, that’s not all. The number 239 translates to the Hebrew letters resh-lamed-chet. The coincidences don’t stop there, though. There are NO attested words in Hebrew or Aramaic with the root resh-lamed-chet, proving that it is a sacred word, not to be uttered by mortals.
Next time, think twice before you so quickly dismiss Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible!
Kyle, I have been duly chastened.
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I have used both NKJV and KJV in my interpreting work. I believe I would, however, find the same results using other translations.
However, here’s some interpreting work that might interest you:
I(Genesis) Adam/man (Hebrew-synonyms) = ‘ruddy’, rosy, the flush of red blood
‘man became a ‘living soul’ ‘ (Genesis):
soul (Hebrew & Greek) = animal principle/breathing creature
- does not suggest a ‘human’ being but rather a ‘ruddy’ creature (as coming from the ‘red’ earth -dust/ground-primordial soup)
Adam/man was not initially a ‘human’ being as many believe but rather a ‘ruddy creature of earth’, an animal (which must have been a chimpanzee because of recent human genome DNA mapping).
Religious tendencies are observed strictly in the ‘human’ species. If human beings are in part ‘soul (primate/mammal)’ then why aren’t such tendencies evident in other primates? Could it be because we have something that primates don’t have?
animal = soul
human being = soul + spirit
soul = mortal (of earth)
spirit = immortal (otherworldly, aura, transcendent, supernatural)
Prior to being put into the garden, ruddy did not have ‘spiritual’ ability, he only gained that ‘after’ he entered the garden; ‘…and the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had made.’ (Gen. 2:8)
It was the gaining of this other element that enabled ‘one’ primate to change from ‘animal/primate’ to human, and unless he had gained this other element, he could not have changed – thus the reason we don’t see primates in various stages of change.
I have done a synopsis of my 15 yrs of study of the anomaly and its interpreting method, without which I could not have unravelled this information.
Let’s clear up the easy question: I’m a female.
Now the tougher one. You have a strong (sorry for the pun!) dislike for Strong’s work. But for the vast majority of people, they do not have the ability to read in the original language and are stuck with Strong’s contribution to help them study.
I am well aware of Strong’s limitations–and the Ancient Roots Translinear Bible captures all of them, for better or for worse.
How can we fix the “worse” part? I’m committed to getting the right answers.