Tuesday Top Seven

For this weeks (belated) Tuesday Top Seven, I have chosen a short, sweet and opinionated list:

My Top Seven Translations of the Holy Scriptures

1. New World Translation - literal, precise, translators had great knowledge of original languages

2. New American Bible - very literal, but try and get the 2nd version that gets rid of most of the "inclusive" language used in the 1st, 3rd & 4th versions

3. Jerusalem Bible - a poetic, "dynamic equivalence" translation, features God's name in the Hebrew Scriptures.

4. New Jerusalem Bible - update of the Jerusalem Bible, uses some "gender inclusive" language

5. American Standard Version - based on the King James Version, but updates the speech and common errors, very accurate for its time, and one of the most literal Bibles of all time.

6. New English Bible - relatively free translation with some interesting renderings

7. The Bible in Living English - The eccentric Byington's own translation, features the divine name, modern language, and faithful renderings.

Tuesday Top Seven

Seven Reasons not to believe in Young-earth creationism

1. The original Hebrew translated "day" means more than a solar day The Hebrew word translated day is "yohm" and this word not only is restricted to a solar day, it can also refer to a period of time, a year, the daylight hours, or twenty-four hours.

2. All six days are referred to as one day
Gen 2:4 says "in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven."
How strict can we be about the literalness of the days considering this?

3. The seventh day has evidently not ended
The preceeding six days concluded with the phrase "an evening and a morning, the first day", etc. but the seventh day did not. Gen 2:2 states "he proceeded to rest on the seventh day from all his work that he had made". Here "rest" is in the imperfect state which means incomplete or continuous action. Also in Heb. 4:3-11, Paul states that the seventh day was still continuing in his day.

4. "Evening" and "Morning" also have figurative uses.

Thou causest man to return unto dust, And hast said—Return, ye sons of Adam! For, a thousand years, in thine eyes, are , As yesterday, in that it passed away, Or as a watch in the night. Thou hast snatched them away, A sleep, do they become, In the morning, they are like grass that shooteth up, In the morning, it sprouteth and shooteth up, By the evening, it is cut down and
withered - Psalms 90:3-6 (REB)

Now, the revelation of the evening and the morning which hath been told, faithful, indeed it is,—but, thou, close up the vision, because it is for many days. - Daniel 8:26 (REB)

5. The Sun
If you take the Genesis account literally, for every spot on the earth to have a "morning and a night" would take 48 hours, not 24 hours.Also, a Jewish day begun at evening. The evening that marks the new day is sundown, but the Sun was not visible until the fourth creative day.

6. Jehovah's viewpoint
"However, let this one fact not be escaping your notice, beloved ones, that one day is with jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day" (2 peter 3:8, NWT)

7. Time
The events portrayed in the creative week cannot be restricted to solar days. For instance, the growth of vegetation in Day 3 would take alot longer than twelve hours of daylight would allow for. To have literal solar days would also require Adam to be able to get comfortable in his new garden home, name all the animals and get married to Eve in less than 12 hours after coming out of his deep sleep.

Tuesday Top Seven

Top Seven Reasons why the Coptic John 1:1c should be translated "a god"

This Tuesday Top Seven courtesy of Memra who has a wealth of information on the ancient Coptic translation of the New Testament on his blog. Trinitarian apologists have long been dumbfounded by this Coptic text which as an ancient witness, translates John 1:1c as "a god", in line with the modern New World Translation. Still they try and "muddy the waters" by introducing abstract issues. So we are presenting seven, solid reasons why John 1:1c should definitely be translated "a god."

1. Grammatical

ne.u.noute pe p.Saje , which is is literally:

ne = indicates past tense of what follows;

(o)u = a (indefinite article);

noute = god;

pe = was;

p = the (masculine singular definite article);

Saje = Word;

Which gives us interlinearly - "a god was the Word."

2. Grammatical and syntactical
The Coptic word "noute" (god) is not an abstract noun or noun indicating substance, in which case the indefinite article could go without translation in English. Rather, it is a regular or count noun, in which case the English indefinite article "a" is customarily utilized in translation, as in the English translation of the Coptic New Testament by George Horner, and in numerous English translations of other Coptic works, such as the Gnostic gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Judas.

3. Faithful to underlying Greek text
Greek anarthrous pre-verbal predicate nouns are often translated as indefinite in English, utilizing the English indefinite article "a."

4. Understanding grounded on the underlying Greek text
Apart from theology, and on the basis of grammar alone, the ancient Coptic translators of the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE obviously understood the Greek construction of John 1:1c to be indefinite, and translated accordingly in the Coptic. If they had understood it to be definite ("the Word was God"), they had no indication of such a meaning in the Greek text, which does not have the Greek definite article here. If they understood it to be "qualitative," ("the Word was deity or divine") they could have translated it by means of Coptic adjectival prefixes. They did not, but utilized the Coptic indefinite article instead: ou noute: "a god."

5. Timeline
While we cannot know with specificity the theological presuppositions of the Coptic translators, or even if those presuppositions guided their translation of John 1:1c, it should be noted that their translation was most likely made before Trinitarianism became the established church dogma. The translators would have had no need to translate John 1:1c according to any Trinitarian formula that equated Jesus Christ with God Almighty.

6. Theology
Several early Church fathers contemporaneous with the Coptic translators distinguished between God and His Son, and were subordinationist in outlook, i.e., the Son was subordinate to the Father, and not equal in either eternity or in ontology with the Father. To understand John 1:1c as saying "the Word was a god [or, a divine being]" would not have been out of harmony with the hermeneutics of the time.

7. New Testament Harmony
Like any other accurate translation of the New Testament, the ancient Sahidic Coptic New Testament preserves all the verses which show that Jesus Christ is a god, a divine being, the divine Son of God, the Image of God, God's firstborn, etc., but not God Himself.