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Comment by bentley | Hacker News Reader

A lot of work in Bible translation over the millennia has been motivated by translators’ desire to make the most important document in history, the stuff of salvation and life itself, accessible to the common man.

Luckily, there is room in the world for (and demand for) countless approaches to Biblical translation, from the hyper‐literal to the simple paraphrase.

Any person who’s participated in a group Bible study (except in those kooky KJV‐only cults) has experienced reading Bible passages out loud in a circle of people, each of whom happens to be quoting a different translation of the same text.

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The version I use is superior though ;)

*what they believe it's the most important document in history (because most have been indoctrinated from a very young age to believe so)

I was describing these people’s motivation. It goes without saying that that’s what they believe.

No it doesn't go without saying, specially because it means the translations are extremely biased towards showing a positive view of the texts and towards translations likely to reinforce their existing believes.

“Bob Johnson’s fundraising efforts for John Smith’s campaign were motivated by a desire to seat the best candidate as President.”

Does that sentence say that Smith is the best candidate? No, it says that Johnson thinks that.

Would it be better if it were reworded to “…were motivated by a desire to seat who he thought was the best candidate as President”? No, that would just be redundant.

Does the original sentence imply that Johnson holds an unbiased, objective opinion of Smith? Of course not. If anything, it implies the opposite!

In your example "a desire" is unambiguously "the desire of Bob Johnson", but in your initial comment "a desire" is not part of a sentence or even paragraph that mentions an individual or a group, therefore is likely to make the readers assume the author (in this case you) is the one making the claim (in this case that means assuming you are the one who believes it's the most important document)

Well, you assumed wrong. To make it clearer, I’ve amended “a desire” to “translators’ desire” in the original comment.

If you search online it is easy to find parallel texts showing, say, the Koine Greek and English side by side. I think you should try to see what you make of them.

> the translations are extremely biased towards showing a positive view of the texts

That's certainly not true of reputable translations - you can easily verify this by just glancing at something widely available like e.g. an annotated version of the NIV - the scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail is evident.

The critical apparatus on the NET Bible is massive. The notes are well worth reading and probably unparalleled for anyone interested in ancient document translation.

Agreed - I find them fascinating.

Since a lot of people put a lot of faith in these texts, their importance is not just a mere belief.

The word that I meant to emphasize there was "most", as in of course there is a practical importance involved in any document people give importance, but "importance" in 2 very different contexts, one from the metaphysical/spiritual knowledge they believe it has vs the behaviors it incites among it's believers.

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