Bible Translations - God Honest Truth Live Stream 06/09/2023

The transcript discusses the topic of Bible translations. It mentions that there are many translations available in various languages and provides information on the number of languages the Bible has been translated into. It also explains the structure of the Bible, including the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the Brit Hadashah (New Testament). The transcript discusses different types of Bibles, such as parallel Bibles and interlinear Bibles, and explains the importance of selecting a translation that is as literal as possible. It also mentions the pros and cons of the Scriptures 2009 translation. So, we're not going to get really, really in depth because this is a subject that can go very detailed as far as how far in the weeds you want to get. And it's very interesting for nerds like me. In fact, I just recently watched a 24-part series on how we got the Bible, and it focused on the manuscripts and the sources and the history, various translations, etc., etc. Very good, very in-depth, very detailed, if you'd like to find out more information about that. Those videos are linked in the notes that we have put on the post for this drosh. Just simply go to godhonesttruth.com, click on the post for translations, you'll see the notes right down there. Or an easier way is go down in the description right now, and you'll be able to find the link that goes directly to that post. Makes it a whole lot easier. Let me pull this up real quick. There we go. So, with so many translations out there, how do we navigate this, really, a sea of the translations available to us? I mean, back in the day, a thousand years ago, somewhere around there, you really didn't have all these various translations. A lot of people, just ordinary, everyday people, might have been illiterate anyhow, but as far as the number of translations, there was Latin Vulgate, you had, of course, the Greek text and the Hebrew text, but that was about it. Nowadays, we have way, way more than that, and probably languages you already know and can understand even. As of September 2022, there have been 724 languages that the Bible has been translated into. Now, that's the complete Bible. Partial, I'm sorry, just the Brit Hadashah, or AKA New Testament, has been translated into 1,617 languages, and even smaller portions than that have been translated into an additional 1,248 languages. Now, if you're looking for a lot of languages to compare to in translations, Bible.com is your place to go. They have over 2,877 versions, AKA translations even, in 1,918 languages, absolutely amazing. They have 900 versions in English, and more and more coming out every day, so keep up with Bible.com. We use that all the time. It's very, very good for making bookmarks and highlights and being able to copy-paste and share verses. That's what we use when we put up the Torah portions. I don't know if you've noticed that yet or not, but yeah, go check it out. We'll get into some more resources for study and translations at the end of the drash, so make sure to stay tuned for that. But before we get into the various translations and selecting a translation, let's try to understand just the very basics, and that begins with the structure of the Bible. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence here. Most of you probably already know this, but in case there's someone out there who doesn't, here is some of the basic structure of the Bible for you. Now, we have basically two parts. We have the Tanakh, or a.k.a. Old Testament, and those are the writings that are mostly in Hebrew with some parts in Aramaic. Then we have the Brit Hadashah, which is a.k.a. the New Testament or Messianic writings, and those are ones that are written in Greek originally, as far as we can tell at the moment. Now, there's theories and attempted research to show that some or even all of the Brit Hadashah books were written in either Aramaic or Hebrew originally. Some of the theory makes sense, but it has yet to be proven, so at the moment, what we can say is that the original documents of the Brit Hadashah were written in Greek. Now, the Tanakh, in case you're not familiar with that term, it stands for Torah, which means the first five books of the Bible, which is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Then the second part, the end part, is Nevaim, and that means prophets, and then you have the Ketubim, and that's for the writings. You have Torah, Nevaim, and Ketubim. This Tanakh is commonly included in definitely Jewish literature, or Jewish Bibles, because that's where they start, like just the Tanakh. It's also in Catholic Bibles and Protestant Bibles. Then you get into the intertestamental books called the Apocrypha a lot of times. Now this is included in the Catholic Bibles, and originally, it was in the 1611 King James Bible. Imagine that. It's been taken out of the King James and all other Protestant canons of the Bible. But then you get into the Brit Hadashah, and that's the part that's included with both Catholic Bibles and Protestant Bibles. Now here is the Protestant list of books for the entire Bible, 66 in all. If you look at a Jewish Bible, for instance, and you're looking at the Tanakh, you'll notice that there are a fewer number of books in the Jewish Bible than there is in the Protestant or Catholic Bible. So why is this? Do Protestants and Catholics add more books? No, not really. It's still the same exact content. Same exact verses, same number of verses, et cetera, et cetera. But what happens is when the Jews put their Bible together, they include certain books as one book a lot of times. For instance, the book of Kings, which we would call 1 and 2 Kings as two books. Same with Samuel, et cetera, et cetera. So still the same content, less number of books. But other than that, no difference whatsoever. Now when you're looking for a Bible translation to get for yourself, there are various things you can consider because they come in all different sizes and shapes and formats, colors even. But you can get it with all kinds of different enhancements that are added to it. For instance, chapters and verses. We take that for granted nowadays, but originally there were no chapters and verses and not even punctuation, okay? So granted, we call that enhancement, but you're probably going to find it in pretty much every Bible. But you get all kinds of things that can help you other than that, such as book introductions that tell you who wrote it, when it was wrote, the area around it, what was going on, et cetera, et cetera, which is helpful if you're someone who likes to do study and whatnot. There are certain versions, especially the one that comes to mind is the King James, which adds italicized words for words that the translators have added in that's not in the original text. That's very helpful. Now, most of these words are words like is, very simple things that would make the English part flow a lot better. If you didn't include it, it would sound really weird in English, okay? Generally, it's not something that's going to change doctrine or theology, just little stuff like that. But you can get all kinds of different enhancements to help with that, especially in study Bibles and whatnot. Also, another thing to note is that in the original text, both the Hebrew and the Greek, there was absolutely no punctuation whatsoever or capitalization either. There was one size font letter for everything. Now, that's something that can be used to mislead people nowadays. When you capitalize something or when you don't capitalize something, whenever you see something in your Bible, your translation of your Bible, that is capitalized, whether it's all caps or just the first letter is capitalized, that is a translator decision, okay? That's not from the original, but they're going from the original Hebrew or Aramaic into English, and it would look really weird in English if you did not start the sentence with a capitalized letter. The other words, like in the middle of a sentence, that's where you really got to watch out. Just a point right there to keep in mind when you're selecting a translation and also when you're doing your study. If something is capitalized, don't take it as gospel. Research in the background. Research into the originals, the Greek and the Hebrew, and see for yourself and decide whether or not that should be capitalized. And of course, as always with both Hebrew and Greek, context is king. Now, another thing to realize when translating from the original into another language like English, there are certain things you have to do when going from one language to another. Two of those major things are translation and transliteration. Now, many people assume transliteration is equivalent to translation. However, there are some significant distinctions. Translation, put in simple terms, gives you the meaning of a word that's written in another language. A transliteration doesn't tell you the meaning of the word, but it gives you an idea of how the word is pronounced in a foreign language. It makes a language a little more accessible to people who are unfamiliar with that language's alphabet, and that comes from the foreign tongues website. So, there's a difference there, and it plays an important role when going from one language to another. Translation is the activity or process of changing the words of one language into another so that you know what the meaning of the original word was, even though it's not in the same language as yours. On the other hand, transliteration is when you take a word from the source language and you rewrite it phonetically in the destination language so that when you pronounce it in the destination language, it's going to sound exactly like it sounds from the source language. And the general criteria for this is that when it comes to names and proper nouns, you transliterate, okay? You make it sound exactly like it was in the original language or the source language. When it comes to everything else, you translate, okay? The common reference I give is like when you're speaking in French and the French says, pomme de terre, okay? Pomme de terre, you don't want to transliterate that into English because it would still be pomme de terre. It wouldn't give you the meaning of the word. It's not a name. It's not a proper noun. So, you would translate it. In pomme de terre, translated means potato, okay? A literal translation would be apple of the earth, pomme de terre. But we would know it as potato. On the flip side, if we're taking something from America or from English and we go to another area of the world, say Korea, where they speak Korean, and we have something like Pepsi, that is a name or a proper noun, right? So, when you go into Korean, you would transliterate the word Pepsi so that when they say it in the Korean language, it would still be pronounced Pepsi. Does that make sense? This also goes for names of people, places, anything that's a name or a proper noun. So, what about some types of Bibles? This is another important thing to consider when you're out there. You can get a basic Bible where it has nothing but Scripture, and that's fine. I mean, that's good. It serves its purpose. But sometimes you want to get a little bit deeper, compare things, and one of the tools that you can use to compare is what's called a parallel Bible. Now, this is something that will have at least two, if not more. The parallel Bibles I have here have four different translations in each of those, and usually has a King James in there, and sometimes has a New International version. But they'll have each translation lined up side by side like you see it here on the screen so that you can go to a verse or a passage and you can compare how each translation translates it from that original language. It can be very helpful in comparing things, especially when you go from a more literal translation and you want to compare it to a more paraphrased translation. Another type of Bible that comes in handy too, especially if you want to get like really in-depth like I do, just one of those nerds, maybe there's other nerds out there. This is going to be an interlinear Bible, okay? And as you see on the screen right here, this is a screenshot from BibleHub.com. But an interlinear Bible is going to look very much the same. It's going to have the source language or the original language, and then under each one it's going to have a transliteration of that word. Whether it's a name or proper noun or not, it's just showing you how that word is pronounced. Say perhaps you can't read Hebrew, like an example here. We'll have the Hebrew word and then it'll have the phonetic spelling or the transliteration of that word, and then it'll have the translation of the word as well. So, this can get very helpful if you're wanting to look at some of the source stuff. And if you're looking at software, it gets even more helpful because you can click on the strong numbers and go to lexicons and definitions and dictionaries, etc., etc. So, this is an interlinear Bible. If you get a hard copy paper interlinear Bible, it's going to look very much like you see on your screen right here. And also, when choosing a Bible, take note that there are different philosophies behind how translators translate their particular version they're doing. You can go from one end of the spectrum, which is a literal kind of philosophy, a word-for-word, all the way up to the other end of the spectrum, which gets into the paraphrase, which is the paraphrase and we're going to go over this some more. But when you do a literal or a word-for-word or what's known as formal equivalence translation, that is way more closer to what the original text would have said. Okay. You get a literal or interlinear translation. A literal translation, let's put it that way. It's going to be hard to understand in English because in a lot of the source languages, the original languages, their grammar and their syntax is not what we're used to. So, when you say it in English, the way they say it, it's going to seem kind of odd. So, it could be kind of hard to read if you get all the way over to the left and get a strictly literal translation. But if you get all the way over here on the right, you get a paraphrase. The danger you run into here is that you get way far away from what the original words and original meaning was and now you're getting into more of an interpretation of the translators. Okay. If it's even a translation. A lot of these are paraphrases of other translations. Okay. So, if you want to get the truth, a paraphrase or something more along the line of a thought for thought or dynamic equivalence translation is not going to be the best for you. It's always advised to go with the most literal translation that you can understand and read. The one that we really like on the literal side is the ESV. Okay. From everything we've looked at and everything we've seen, it's got some good points to it, which we'll go over in just a minute. But the one we prefer and the one we always use is called the Scriptures 2009 edition. Now, before we go over some of these various translations, let's say this from the get-go. No translation is perfect. Each one of these translations has something wrong with it. That's not to say there's something wrong with Scripture. There's something wrong with the translation. Okay. And we'll go over some of these. But keep that in mind. There is no perfect translation. Because if you go on into another language, you're, well, it's not the original language. Let's put it that way. Let's put it that way. So you'll lose some of the nuance of the language and the culture of which it was originally written in, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not going to be perfect. And each translation is going to be different. So you need to find the one that works best for you. And it's not someone else's words in paraphrase. That's why you want to go with something more literal. Now, as far as the Scriptures 2009 goes, let's weigh the pros and cons of each of these that we go through. But the pros on the Scriptures 2009 is that it's on the literal translation side of things. In fact, it's a very literal translation. It does a wonderful and terrific job of transliteration and translation, which is one of the reasons we like it so much. It doesn't add to it. It just sticks to the original Scriptures. It goes with the original or, yeah, the original order as found in, like, Jewish Bibles, and especially the order of the books of the Tanakh, which we're speaking about here, is the books of the Tanakh, that order that was in place even before the time of the apostles. It's most true to the original, at least as far as we have found. Now, we have just this week discovered another translation we'll be talking about here in a minute. But a great thing about the Scriptures 2009 is that it is widely available. You can get it for free on Bible.com. You can download it as a PDF. You can get it on eSword for free. You can get it on MySword for free. You can get the audio recordings of the Scriptures 2009. It's very accessible. It's widely available, and that is definitely a pro about this translation. Now, one of the best things about the Scriptures 2009 is that it doesn't translate or transliterate either the name of our Heavenly Father, Yahweh, or the name of our Messiah, Yeshua. Hands down, that is probably the best feature and the number one thing that sets it apart from so many other translations. Some try to transliterate it. That doesn't really work out so well. Most of the other ones just simply translate it, and that's definitely not so well. So, this is definitely something that we love about the Scriptures 2009 translation. Now, the subsequent versions that came out after the original were done by a team. Now, at least in theory, when a translation is done by a team, that tends to make it more accurate and less susceptible to—makes it, like I said, in theory, less susceptible for the translator to put their own bias and doctrine into it. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes these teams are sponsored and run by a particular organization who enforces their doctrine on the translation. But in general, in theory, a team is better than a single person. Now, some of the cons about the Scriptures 2009 is that it's based on the Textus Receptus. And for those of you who don't know, the Textus Receptus is the Greek—or the compilation—oh, how should I put this correctly? It was a compilation of the Greek text that came out way back before the King James even came out, and it's got some errors, okay? It's been revised and updated since then, but the Textus Receptus is not based on the most current scholarship in archaeology, even, that we have to date. For instance, it doesn't take into account—well, I won't get into that. It gets into the weeds. Go look at the video series I suggested earlier about how we got the Bible with Sean Penn again. It goes into great detail about that, but just let it know that the Textus Receptus is not the most current Greek text that we have, or compilation of Greek text. We have newer ones now, which is based on more accurate and older manuscripts, things like the Nestle-Land, etc., etc. So, one bad thing, or one con, about the Scriptures 2009 is that it's based on the Textus Receptus, but it does consult other manuscripts as well that are not included in the Textus Receptus. Unfortunately, it does mistransliterate in some places. We'll go over that in just a minute, too. And originally, the very first translation version of the Scriptures 2000—or the Scriptures translation was done by one person. And like I said, when you do translations by one person, that can really open the door for personal opinion to creep in instead of what the text actually says. And some transliterated names could be difficult for some people. If you have listened to the tour portions that we do every week, some of those names you might not have heard before, and it could be confusing, hard to pronounce, etc., etc. So, that's definitely a con for some people. Now, I will say my background is Baptist, so obviously, I'm not a Baptist. My background is Baptist, so obviously, I come from a King James background. And when I first come across the Scriptures translation, they were—some of the names in there were kind of odd and weird. But you get used to it, okay? A little bit of practice, you pick it up in no time. Now, let's take a look at some verses from the Scriptures translation. At Exodus 315, it reads, And Elohim said further to Moshe, Thus you are to say to the children of Yisrael, Yahweh, Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Yitzchak, and the Elohim of Yaakov, has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my remembrance to all generations. Now, this is a good example of some of the prose that we illustrated earlier. It's got the name of Yahweh here, and it's not replaced. It's not translated. It's not even transliterated. It puts it up there from the original, the Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. This is wonderful because it doesn't change or omit the name of our Heavenly Father. Puts it up there in an original, and lets the reader go about pronouncing it the way they want to. Pronounce it Yahweh. Pronounce it Adonai. Pronounce it Hashem. Pronounce it God, Lord. It's up to the reader, but the translators did not dictate how you pronounce this, and that is absolutely awesome. A great point. Another point you see here, it says Elohim. For those of you who don't know, Elohim is the Hebrew word that means God. The title God. Elohim is a title, just like God is a title. Another point here, you see the names like Abraham or Avraham, rather, Yitzhak and Yaakov. These are transliterations of the Hebrew, the way you're supposed to do it, for names and proper nouns, right? But again, this could be something that is difficult for some people, so pro-con, decide for yourself. Decide for yourself. But that is the proper way to go from one language to another. You transliterate names and proper nouns. Now a problem verse. Let's look at Revelation 22, 19. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, Elohim shall take away his part from the book of life and out of the set-apart city which are written in this book. What's wrong with this verse? Well, this comes from that Textus Receptus tradition. When Erasmus was putting together the Textus Receptus, he didn't have the last portion of the book of Revelation. He couldn't find original sources, and he was trying to get it out and get it published and whatnot, the whole story behind that. So what he did is he went to the Latin Vulgate and back-translated from the Vulgate, from the Latin, into Greek, which makes it inaccurate, okay? You don't do that. You don't back-translate. You start from the source. And as a result, Textus Receptus has book of life. Textus Receptus has book of life. But we have since found through scholarship and archaeology and whatnot that this verse does not say book of life in the oldest Greek manuscripts we can find, which way predates what the Textus Receptus was relying on. It actually reads tree of life. So this is one thing you can check when selecting a translation. Turn to the very last chapter of the book of Revelation and see whether it says book of life or tree of life. If it's book of life, it's based on the Textus Receptus tradition, and if it says tree of life, it's based on more accurate source material. A point in their favor is that the Scriptures translation does put a footnote, as you can see here, and lets you know that some manuscripts read tree of life. Well, the older manuscripts, the oldest we have, read tree of life, which is more than likely the most accurate. Another problem verse is you see here in, I'm sorry, Genesis 19.18, and it says, And Lot said to them, O no Yahweh. So what's the problem with this? Didn't you just say it's good to have the Heavenly Father's name in there? Well, it is where appropriate and where it actually occurs in the Hebrew text. Unfortunately, in Genesis 19.18, Yahweh doesn't occur here. This is the story of the angels going to Lot and the angels getting Lot out of the city, et cetera, et cetera. And when it says here, And Lot said to them, Lot is speaking to these two angels. And the word here in Hebrew is Adonai, not Yahweh. Whatever your doctrinal take on this is, it doesn't matter because Yahweh is not in the Hebrew text here. So therefore, you should not put Yahweh in the translation. You should have Adonai here or whatever it is you're translated into for your particular translation, whether that be Lord or what have you. But in the original Hebrew, it does not say Yahweh. So don't say Yahweh in your translation either. Another problem, just so you, I mean, we're going to fully admit the problems with the version we prefer, but we still prefer it because it's the most accurate that we have found and the best that we have found so far. In Exodus 3.10, it reads, And now come, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Mitzrayim. Again, this may be a word a lot of people don't know, but Mitzrayim is the Hebrew word for Egypt. It's also the name of one of Ham's sons. In Genesis 10.6, it reads, And the sons of Ham, Cush and Mitzrayim, and Put and Canaan. Okay? So they're doing good here in this translation. It's a proper name, right? So they're transliterating it from the Hebrew. So it sounds exactly like it would sound in Hebrew, Mitzrayim. However, when they get to the Greek text in the Brit Hadashah or New Testament, for instance, in Acts 7.15, it reads, And Yaakov went down to Mitzrayim and died, he and our fathers. Okay, well, isn't that right? Isn't that what you've just been saying? Well, no, not really. The Greek text does not say Mitzrayim. It says, Agiptos. That's the Greek word for the land of Egypt. Okay? So they should have transliterated Agiptos and not put in Mitzrayim. If you're going to stick with the rules of translation here and go with, you know, the whole concept of translation versus transliteration. I don't know for sure why they did this in the Brit Hadashah. Because I haven't asked them. But most likely what they did is to avoid confusion. They just went ahead and used the same word they had been using in the Tanakh. That's just my guess, though. But coming from a nerdy technical point, it should have been transliterated from the Greek as Agiptos. Now, let's look at the fan favorite popular King James version. The most sold and probably still most sold translation of all time. So, some pros and cons. Well, on the pro side, the King James version is a little bit more complicated. So, some pros and cons. Well, on the pro side, the King James version is a literal translation. Okay? So, you're getting closer to the original source than you would be with, like, a paraphrase translation. It's extremely and widely available. It's in the public domain now because it's from 1611. You can get it for free on the internet. You can get it for free from a lot of churches, especially Baptist churches. It's available on MySword, eSword, Bible.com, Sidepost, et cetera, et cetera. Openly and widely available, which is a good thing. It's very poetic in its reading. Elizabethan English is rather beautiful in its own way. Maybe it's just a novelty of how I grew up, but it's poetic in its reading. And it was produced by a team and not a single person. Some cons of the King James version. It blots out the name of the creator and pretty much our Messiah, but not as much as our creator. Right? It takes the name of Yahweh, blots it out, and replaces it with God. Everyone just knows this. Like we said before, it's based on the Textus Receptus, which has its own issues. Therefore, when you translate from a flawed source material, you have a flawed translation. It mistransliterates in a lot of places. It kind of gets close. Like it says Moses, and it's actually Moshe. Some places it's not as far off as other places, but it does mistransliterate. And then in a lot of places, it translates where it should have transliterated. So, for instance, our Messiah Yeshua, our Heavenly Father Yahweh, et cetera, et cetera. Now, even though when you read through it, it's poetic and it's beautiful in its own way, it still uses outdated archaic language, which we'll look at that in just a minute, too. And it also includes incorrections that have since been discovered. Some of those that are found in Textus Receptus, others that are not. Now, one quick story. I went to a Baptist church one time. It was one I had never been to. They noticed me as a newcomer. This was way back when. But as part of being warm and welcoming, like most churches are, they gave me a King James Version Bible. And they said, here, son, here is a original 1611 King James. And I was so enamored. I was elated. They were being just this warm and welcoming. And it gave me a 1611 King James. It's awesome. Just amazed at this. But then I got more educated and I found out that, no, it wasn't an original 1611 King James. This is an excerpt from the original 1611 King James. And, yes, this is English, okay? If you take your time and you look at it hard, you can read it, okay? But it's very, very difficult to read. It wouldn't have been for them back in the day. But this is what the original 1611 King James actually looked like. So, if your King James doesn't look like this, then you don't have an original King James. It was updated in 1769, which is probably the King James you're familiar with, with all the vowels and whatnot that you can actually read. It was then updated again for the new King James, but in modern language and words. And then there's modern King James, etc., etc. What we see on the screen right here is the original 1611 King James. So, again, if you can read your King James Bible, you've got, it's not a 1611. So, let's look at some verses real quick, like we did with the previous translation. Exodus 315, and God said moreover to Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial, and this is my name forever. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. So, on the pro side, kind of familiar with it, kind of easy to read, but on the con side, it mistransliterates, it replaces and blots out the name of Yahweh. So, definitely not good on that aspect. Look at Revelation 22, 19 again, and here it has book of life, whereas the original and the most ancient sources we have says tree of life. Then we look at Leviticus 2, 11, and it reads here, No meat offering which you shall bring unto the Lord shall be made with leaven, for you shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, and any offering of the Lord made by fire. Okay, so, you're kind of wondering what's wrong with this? Well, you know about leaven and leavening from Pesach, right? That's the kind of thing you put into bread that makes it rice. So, why would he be talking about leaven here and not putting it into a meat offering? Because you don't put yeast on meat, right? You don't get meat to rice. Well, this is part of the archaic language point that we made earlier. Back then, meat meant pretty much any food, whereas nowadays meat means flesh, right? Something from an animal. Words have changed since then, obviously. And this is one of the downsides of the King James, is that when you read through it, you think you might know what you're reading, but in all actuality, you really don't, because what they meant back in 1611 is way different than what you mean now when you say the exact same words. So, this really raises the potential for danger here. Then, we look at 1 John 5, 7. Quote, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one, end quote. So, what's wrong with this? Well, this is actually a major error that comes from the Texas Receptus, okay? This is something called the Comma Johannium. And this part in red here where it says, in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. This is an addition that was added by scribes or copyists or who have you. This was added to the Greek to make it say what they wanted it to say. They were changing scripture. They were adding to scripture. Since then, it has been realized that this is an addition, and modern translations do not have this in there. And that stays more true to the original scriptures. So, another version that some of you out there in the Messianic movement may be familiar with, I know it kind of seems like it's starting to gain popularity, but I don't know. I don't really have the stats on it, is the Tree of Life version. Now, the pros and cons here. It's a literal translation. It's more on the side that's closer to the original sources, which is a good thing. It's based on more accurate ancient texts like the Nestle Align, okay? It's not based on the Texas Receptus. So, that's a good thing. It's produced by a team instead of just one person. That's a good thing. Some cons. Well, it blots out the name of the creator with the word Adonai, okay? They go ahead and tell you what to say themselves. Again, it's like the King James when it says God. It's the same concept. But the Tree of Life translators, they put in Adonai, and it's totally blot out the name of Yahweh and replaces it with Adonai. Blot out the name of Yahweh and replace it with something different. They also transliterate when they should have translated, and they do this a lot. And this can make things very hard to not only read, but it can also a lot of times make things hard to understand if you're not really familiar with what the text is actually saying and if you're not familiar with Hebrew. We'll go through some examples here. Exodus 3.15, and here in the Tree of Life version, it states, God also said to Moses, you are to say to B'nai Yisrael, Adonai, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever and the name by which I should be remembered from generation to generation. Now, you should already be seeing some of the issues here where it says, B'nai Yisrael. If you don't know what that means, it's going to be absolutely confusing, and you're not going to get anything out of this verse. So, this is not a name or a proper noun, so it should not be transliterated. It should actually be translated into either Sons of Israel or Children of Israel, but not transliterated. Point number two, Adonai, okay, that's replacing and blotting out the name of Yahweh, and that's not a good thing. Now, you may be looking at the word God here and wondering whether that's a good thing or not. Well, this is actually either way. Whatever you want to look at it, it's fine. The word God here they use in the Tree of Life translation is actually where the word Elohim is in the Hebrew. Elohim is a title. God is a title. So, if they want to use God here, that's perfectly all right. It's a title. It's not a name or proper noun. So, translation acceptable. In Revelation 22, 19, unlike the translations that are based on the text of Receptus, the newer versions like Tree of Life uses – yeah, the Tree of Life version uses the phrase Tree of Life instead of Book of Life because they use some of the more – well, I'm beating a dead horse here, but they use more accurate text like the Nestle-Alan, et cetera, et cetera. Now, going on to the English Standard Version, which we mentioned earlier, some of the pros. It's a literal translation, okay, which is on the good scale or spectrum of things. It's produced by a team, which is also a good thing. We've gone over it before. It's based on more accurate ancient text, again, like the Tree of Life version. It's based on the Nestle-Alan, et cetera, et cetera. Based on the Nestle-Alan, et cetera, et cetera. Some of the better text that we have now. Some of the cons. Like a lot of English versions, it blots out the name of the Creator and replaces it with Lord and God. And then it translates when it should have transliterated, like with names and proper nouns. We'll look at Exodus 3.15. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel. The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Well, you can already see the points here, okay? It replaces Yahweh and blots out his name with the name Lord. Another point, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those are the modern, anglicized ways of pronouncing those names. It's not a transliteration or not a strict transliteration from the Hebrew, okay? Number one, there is no J sound in Hebrew, or at least in biblical Hebrew. Then we go look at Revelation 22.19, and here, since it's based on the more accurate and updated Greek text, it has tree of life and not book of life, like you find from those translations that are based on the Texas Receptus tradition. Another translation that's slightly different is Revelation 22.19, and it's based on the somewhat popular amongst Messianics. It's called the Complete Jewish Bible. I have one. I had all these sitting out here, and then I forgot to show them to you guys. But this is my copy of the Complete Jewish Bible. Now, I'm a collector of translations. I love these things, and I've got some there that would, well, they're fairly amazing. But this is the Complete Jewish Bible, and like I said, this is somewhat popular amongst a lot of Messianics and whatnot. It's formatted a little bit differently, the way they place words and paragraphs than some other translations, but that's really another here and there. But some of the pros and cons about the Complete Jewish Bible. It's a somewhat literal translation, but not really. Maybe more on the middle of the scale. We'll talk about that in a minute. It's got a better book order. It's like the Scriptures translation that puts it in the order that the Jewish canon was around the time of the apostles and whatnot. Some of the cons. This also, like the Tree of Life and most English versions, blocks out the name of Yahweh and translates it and replaces it with something else. In this case, it's Adonai. It transliterates when it should have translated and does this a lot. Same issues like we had with the Tree of Life version. It gets into the issue of not understanding what you're reading, not knowing what that word means, et cetera, et cetera. Complete Jewish Bible is a translation that was produced by one person. So, there's a lot of opportunity here for that one person's own doctrine and way of interpretation to creep into the translation. Unfortunately, the Old Testament part, or the Tanakh part of the Complete Jewish Bible is not actually a translation at all. It's a paraphrase because the person who put together the Complete Jewish Bible really didn't know Hebrew. So, a paraphrase that's not from the Jewish Publication Society's translation. So, those are the pros and cons of the Complete Jewish Bible. So, let's look at some verses. Exodus 315. God said further to Moshe, say this to the people of Israel. Yehud-heh-vav-heh, Adonai, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Yitzchak, and the God of Yaakov, has sent me to you. This is my name forever. This is how I am to be remembered generation after generation. So, some things to point out here is they transliterated, not the word Yahweh, but the letters, right? You see here it says Yehud-heh-vav-heh. It actually spells it out phonetically, but then in brackets, it doesn't say Yahweh. It replaces his name with Adonai. So, yeah. Another thing, the word Israel, okay, that's not too bad, but in Hebrew, it does start with a Yod, which is a Y sound. Okay, that's kind of, not that big of a deal, but look here where it says Moshe, that's more true to the Hebrew, so good on them for that. Abraham, that's even more true to the Hebrew than the Scriptures translation. Yitzchak, same way. Yaakov, same way. Where in the Scriptures translation for Abraham, it's actually got a B there instead of a Let me rephrase that. In the Scriptures translation, it has a B in Abraham instead of a V, and when you're pronouncing the Hebrew, it's more of a V sound instead of a B sound. So, good on the Complete Jewish Bible for that. But, look at some other things, and we'll look at Revelation 22, 19 yet again, and it says, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, Yitzchak, and here it reads Tree of Life, so good on them, instead of Book of Life, but some things they changed, instead of calling it Revelation, they call it Revelation of Yeshua to Yohanan. Okay, I have absolutely no idea why they changed the name of the book, and that's more of an interpretation than it is translation there. But, again, it's the title of the book, so maybe it's not that big a deal, but in other places, it does exactly like the Tree of Life version did, and it'll have words like Shekinah instead of glory. Okay, that's hard for people to read and understand and know what they're reading. Shekinah is not a name or proper noun. You would actually translate that into glory and other such examples, which I should have put up here, but I didn't get to. Anyways, that is the complete Jewish Bible. Now, let's go way, way, way to the left, get away from literal translations and get to a paraphrase translation called The Message. This is a rather recent one. The pros and cons. Well, on the pro side, it's overly easy to read. I mean, it's like you'd read something very easy for a fifth grader. So, I mean, it's easy to read, but overly so. Some of the cons, again, like most English translations, it blots out the name of the Creator. The entire thing of The Message is a complete paraphrase and even bordering more on a commentary than a translation. It's produced by one person, and you can definitely see in The Message where that one person's doctrine and theology and interpretation comes in, because it's less Scripture and more interpretation of the translator. It omits certain texts, and it changes the meanings of other texts. Let's look at some examples real quick. Exodus 315, again, God continued with Moses. This is what you're going to say to the Israelites. God, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob sent me to you. This has always been my name, and this is how I will always be known. Okay. That one, not too much different than a lot of other English translations, but again, it blots out the name of Yahweh and replaces it with God. Looking again at Revelation 22, I'm sorry, 2219, good on them for using Tree of Life instead of Book of Life, but one of the bad things about The Message is that it groups a lot of these together into clusters, and it's hard to find a specific verse, like a single verse in a lot of these. Like here, this is just as it came from Bible.com, like you would get out of The Message book if you had it right here in front of you. It's all one cluster, and the beginning of that cluster says 18 to 19, so you don't know where verse 19 starts. This may seem kind of pedantic and whatnot, but that can get important sometimes, especially when you're trying to do some kind of deep study, and The Message is definitely not for any kind of deep study. Look at Matthew 6, 9 through 13. On the left here, you have the King James Version, and the reason I use the King James is because this is the Lord's Prayer, what we know as the Lord's Prayer, or the Our Father Prayer, and it's probably the version or translation that most people know best when thinking about the Lord's Prayer. In the King James, it states, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. We're fairly familiar with that, right? It's fairly similar in other good translations. However, The Message, for those of you out there in the audio world listening to audio podcasts, this is how The Message has the Lord's Prayer. Our Father in heaven, reveal who you are, set the world right, do what's best, and set the world right, do what's best, as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you, and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the devil. You're in charge. You can do anything you want. You're a blazing beauty. Yes, yes, yes. And not to brag on myself, but if you're listening to an audio podcast, I read that exactly correct as it came from The Message. I did not add anything to it. You'll look it up for yourselves. Go watch the video of this drosh. You'll see it's a little bit different, but it's a little bit similar to The Message. I did not add anything to it. You'll look it up for yourselves. Go watch the video of this drosh. You'll see that's exactly how it comes from The Message. And that's what you get from a paraphrase quote unquote Bible. Again, let's look at 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 10. In the scriptures translations, which is the one we prefer, it states, Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the reign of Elohim? Do not be deceived. Neither those who whore, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor greedy of gain, nor drunkards, nor revelers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the reign of Elohim. Okay? It's fairly in line with most of the English translations you might know. Now, The Message for 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 10 reads like so. Don't you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don't care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don't qualify as citizens in God's kingdom. Yeah, again, not to brag, but I read it exactly correctly from the way The Message has it. Obviously, you can see how they completely changed this passage to fit their own doctrine and interpretations. They took parts out, like the adulterers, the homosexuals, and effeminate, and thieves, and greedy of gain, drunkards, revelers, and swindlers. Okay? And the only thing they put in there is those who use and abuse each other. What does that mean? Okay? In most translations, like the scriptures, King James, ESV, etc., etc., they put the specific vices, right, whoring, adulterers, etc., etc. Here in The Message, it's all general. When it says in The Message, use and abuse each other, what does that mean? That's open to interpretation in every situation. Those who use and abuse sex, okay, again, that's in general open to everyone's own interpretation in every single different situation. Now, look at this. It also has in The Message those who use and abuse the earth and everything in it. Now, it's throwing in radical environmentalism into the scriptures, which wasn't ever there. This is the problem you get with these paraphrased, quote, unquote, translations. It's so rife and open to their own personal changes in their own theology and doctrines. So, 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 19, the scriptures 2009 states, flea whoring, every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits whoring sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the dwelling place of the set-apart spirit who is in you? What you have from Elohim and you are not your own? Now, in The Message, it reads like this. Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever, the kind of sex that can never become one. Yeah, right out there in plain sight, you put them together like that, you can see exactly what it is they changed and why they personally wanted to change it. And this is a benefit of a parallel Bible, too, by the way. You can compare various translations. Then we'll go on to 1 John 3, 4, and it's the last example of the Bible. 1 John 3, 4, in the Scriptures, it states, everyone doing sin also does lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. This is important because this is where Scripture defines what sin is. So, you can understand exactly why this is so, so important. However, 1 John 3, 4, it says, everyone doing sin is lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. 1 John 3, 4, in the message, reads as such, all who indulge in a sinful life are dangerously lawless, for sin is a major disruption of God's order. Yeah. They say that those who indulge in a sinful life are dangerously lawless. Okay, what does that even mean? It has nothing in there about sin being the breaking of the Torah. So, how are you supposed to know what sin is? Well, you don't from the message. And that gets dangerous. Very, very dangerous. If you can't define terms from Scripture, when Scripture actually does define the terms, that gets you off the rails bad. And this is one reason why I would highly suggest not going with a paraphrased translation like the message. Now, some resources to help you in your study and whatnot. We'll pause right there for just a moment. As far as translations go, we're not going to tell you which translation to go use. Again, we fully admit that as of right now, we think the Scriptures 2009 translation is by far the best and most accurate translation that we have been able to find that follows the way you're supposed to go from one language to another and all that. As far as you, you do you. Okay? If you like the Tree of Life, that's a literal translation. So, go with that. If you're not so much into, you know, the transliteration stuff, then go to something like the ESV, which is a literal translation. That's why we put the ESV up there when we're doing our tour portions. Put it on screen so you can go with that if it's easier for you. But at least it's a literal translation and not a paraphrased translation. But in the end, choose which translation works best for you. Again, go with a literal translation, which is on the literal side of things. That's going to be the most help and give you the most accurate Scriptures. I would highly suggest to get more than one translation. Okay? And get it from different perspectives. Get something like the Scriptures. Then get something from like a Jewish Bible. So, you can compare things in the Tanakh. One thing that I have, which is kind of neat, this is the Humash and it's the Torah. It's not the whole Tanakh, but it's the Torah and the five Megillas. One thing I like about it is I can help practice my Hebrew because on one page, it's got Hebrew, it's got the translation into the English. So, that's really nice too. But get different translations like that and that will, there we go. That will help you to get closer even to the original source text as well because then you get it from multiple angles and hopefully get closer to that original. Parallel Bible is good, but Parallel Bibles, you can't get the Parallel Bible you want, put it that way. They already pre-select the translations for you. If anyone out there knows how to get a custom Parallel Bible where you get to choose the translations, let me know. So, I would love to have something like that. What I would suggest is getting, if you're doing physical copies like those books, is getting multiple translations, then you can sit there on your desk and you can compare back and forth and do it that way. The way I like to do it is through various software, okay? Now, for instance, Esword is good because you can click on a verse and then you can compare it to various things. Let me bring up mine real quick and I'll show everybody. Yeah, there we go. Now, something else, oops, wrong screen. There we go. It's called Zyphos. Now, Zyphos is like Esword, sort of. It's not as powerful as Esword, but it's very, very similar. Now, I don't have this on Windows, but I used Zyphos a lot when I was on Linux and getting used to Linux because Esword is kind of hard to get up and going on Linux, or at least it was in my situation. But Zyphos is more software similar to Esword. Then you have Mysword, and this is on Android. And there you can have your strongest concordances, you can have your lexicons, commentaries, dictionaries, various translations, interlinear Bibles. You can do a parallel, et cetera, et cetera. Very, very powerful Bible study tool. It's called Mysword. As far as iOS goes, as far, you know, like iPhone, iPads, stuff like that, I don't really know because I don't use Apple products. I'm not sure if you can get Mysword for Apple or not. But anyway, that's the software side of things. Then you go to bible.com. Let me pull that up real quick. Let me pull that up real quick. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. And this, I absolutely love bible.com. I don't know if anyone has ever run across this before, but I came across it this week and was blown away. but I came across it this week and was blown away. This is absolutely, I don't want to say amazing, This is absolutely, I don't want to say amazing, but it's extremely interesting. but it's extremely interesting. And this thing contains not only the bible that we would be used to, And this thing contains not only the bible that we would be used to, And this thing contains not only the bible that we would be used to, it's in King James, but that's beside the point, it's in King James, but that's beside the point, but it also includes various things like Jewish writings. but it also includes various things like Jewish writings. It contains the Apocrypha. It contains historical documents. It contains writings from other places in the world, It contains historical documents. It contains writings from other places in the world, like from Egypt, from India, from China, from Islam. like from Egypt, from India, from China, from Islam. Unfortunately, it also contains things like the Koran. Unfortunately, it also contains things like the Koran. But like some of the Jewish writings, But like some of the Jewish writings, it's very interesting also because it contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. it's very interesting also because it contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. it's very interesting also because it contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. It contains a list of the 613 mitzvot. 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