Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.It is revised in the TNIV to:
Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.I consider this another example of an improvement of the TNIV over the NIV. The NIV is "literally" accurate, but to many readers today its wording can connote something along the lines of a Michael Jackson pajama party with children. And that was not what was going on in the setting of this story. In those days there was a common bed for poor families.
The NIV and translations like it which translate the Greek here literally communicate wrong connotation. And that is inaccurate translation. The TNIV communicates the essentials of the scene accurately and does not invite an unintended inference of a father's incestuous abuse of his children.
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8 comments:
I worry about you sometimes Wayne.
You are the only person I have ever come across to have come up with such an absurd imposition upon the text.
That you come up with the idea of "...a father's incestuous abuse of his children." from Luke 11: 7 should give you cause to search your own heart.
Also, have you not noticed that due to a certain desperation to 'prove' the TNIV a 'Better Bible' that Peter and now yourself seem to look for anything and everything that could possible be 'misunderstood', no matter how unlikely, and then go "see, we have avoided this possible misunderstanding" when in fact virtually no one (if any one) would have come up with it in the first place.
Glenn, I am confused by your apparent reference to me here. If you are referring to this BBB post, it refers to a real documented misunderstanding by someone I know nothing about except that he made a real theological error by misunderstanding NIV. If you look at my other BBB posts like this one, you will find that as often as not TNIV is one of the translations I criticise. I have not posted much on this blog largely because in recent months I have in fact found more things to criticise than to praise in TNIV. I still think it is a good Bible, one of the best available, but I am by no means desperate to prove its superiority.
Glenn wrote:
I worry about you sometimes Wayne.
I worry about you, too, Glenn.
You are the only person I have ever come across to have come up with such an absurd imposition upon the text.
How else can we explain the revision from the NIV to the TNIV? Don't you think that the TNIV wording sounds better?
No Wayne I don't think it sounds better because it is not what the text says.
No Wayne I don't think it sounds better because it is not what the text says.
Glenn, what does the text say that is not in the TNIV for Luke 11:7?
You said "The NIV is "literally" accurate" well if it is accurate then the TNIV is not "literally" accurate.
Glenn responded:
You said "The NIV is "literally" accurate" well if it is accurate then the TNIV is not "literally" accurate.
OK, fair enough, Glenn. But it's important to note the quote marks on "literally." They are there to help us pay special attention to the word "literally." "Literally" accurate is often not truly accurate. A translation is only accurate if it communicates the same meaning (including connotations, "embedded meaning") as did the original biblical text.
There are many cases where literal and essentially literal Bible versions are less accurate than less literal translations. Click here to read what I wrote about it several years ago, and others have written about it also.
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