"But the Bible says ..."

"But the Bible says ..."

Many have used the Bible to support a different view from the one I believe to be God's viewpoint. You may have heard them, or you may be one of them. It is easy to quote verses that don't appear to support what I've said. It is easy to find apparently opposing ones. I commend people for their desire to know God's will, and their diligent search and study of translations of what He has said.

Scripture NEVER contradicts itself.

Whenever we find apparent contradictions, it is our interpretation or translation of what God said that is wrong, not what He actually said or meant for us to hear. For those of you who went through a divorce, (and those of you who want to know what God desires) let's address those verses. First, let's remember a few things about God:

God is Love,
God is consistent, and never contradicts Himself.
God wants a more personal relationship than He already has with each and every one of us. For more on this, see my article section of articles on "God's Voice".
If we think that the Bible contradictions itself, we don't fully understand what God means! As humans, it is difficult for the mind of man to comprehend the will of God. You and I both want to do the best we can.

The Bible was written to ...

guide the Jewish people in their culture and as a nation,
guide us toward a closer, more intimate relationship with God,
let us know that we have eternal life,
inform us that our joy may be filled,
reveal God's desire for us as individuals and as humanity,
reveal God's character,
teach us how to be holy, and most of all
help us learn to glorify God.
Let's keep those reasons in mind, and pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance on the real meaning of these verses.

Let's also realize something about scripture:

It is a translation of the original, no matter what version you read. We then try to translate that 'translation' into our lives, sometimes forgetting that something may have been lost in the translation from the original language and culture.

Those of you who understand translation, know that to literally translate something is good, however, you often lose the original meaning. It is a very good way to translate the Bible, because so many people read it, and read it often. That does not mean our translations are in error. It means that the readers would better understand what is written if someone with the ability to translate assists them. Remember the Eunuch from Ethiopia in the book of Acts. Though sincere, without help he couldn't understand the scripture!

For example, you may translate a husband's words to his wife as either:

"You are a little kitten." or "You are a little cat!"

The words are almost the same, certainly they would translate the same way literally, yet one meaning can be opposite the other. In current American culture, the phrases have opposite meanings: one phrase is very tender and positive, while the other phrase is angry and negative. One would have to look at the rest of what the husband said, to get a picture of his mood, whether angry or intimate. The punctuation would also help, but ancient Hebrew had no punctuation! For that matter, it didn’t have vowels, or spaces between the words, either!

Let me write something in the same way that Ancient Hebrew was > written, and then you try to figure it out, okay?

Ltmwrtsmthngnthsmwythtncnthbrwwswrttnndthnytrtfgrttky?

Some of you will realize that all I did was repeat the above sentence!

Remember that idioms, or sayings, rarely translate their meaning very well if translated word for word.

For example, imagine the frustration you would have, if you tried to translate verbatim the following common American phrases, if you didn't know what they meant:

"We played bridge, and had a blast."
"He ran through them like a hot knife through butter."
"He was watching the boob tube."
"He was a gay fellow."
For those of you that don't know, in America a boob tube is a television, while in England it is a woman's sweater. So sometimes, we need to know the cultural origin of the speaker, not just the language!

Also, to complicate things even more, go back to number 4 above. In order to understand the statement, you must know when it was said. If said in 1900 A.D., it meant he was a happy man. If said in 2000 A.D. it meant he is homosexual. So we also need to know the time frame and more importantly, know what the word meant to the listeners when it was said.

In all the above, if they were in a story, one may be able to read the rest of the paragraph to find the real meaning before translating. Even then you'd probably have to add a few words to improve the translation.

My point is this, it is very easy to misunderstand what a speaker or writer was originally saying to their audience when you read a translation of the speech, especially across cultural lines. It is not enough to know the words to get their original meaning, it takes knowledge of the cultural norms, the idioms and more.

For example, I have carried out conversations in several languages, so I learned something about the words that I didn't learn in the classroom. Unfortunately, many biblical scholars that claim to 'know' Hebrew and Greek have never carried a conversation in that language with someone outside the classroom. (To be fair, it is hard to find someone that was raised speaking ancient Hebrew or ancient Greek, so let's not be too hard on them.) So they have what I call 'head knowledge' of a language, without having 'heart knowledge'.