Originally posted by lucifershammer
You're talking about punctuation. Most languages need some form of punctuation (at least the 'full stop' or 'period'😉; but not all languages need them.
Quite honestly, I don't know what your point is here. Are you saying that the original NT texts (or copies, as far back as we can get them) have punctuation marks that weren't in existence till cent ...[text shortened]... , not for the correctness of the translation.
EDIT: Sure, ask vistesd if you want.
"modern Bible's actually include a footnote in Matthew pointing out that the virgin birth is probably a mistranslation."
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/christianity_birthnarrative.html
"And yet their birth is due to a relatively simple mistake in translation. The Old Testament talks about almah 'young woman,' not bethulah 'virgin.' However, the scholars in the 3rd century BC translated the Hebrew almah as parthenos in Greek. Thus the 'young woman' in Hebrew metamorphosed into a 'virgin' in Greek—and she has remained a virgin ever since in translations across the world. The notion of 'virgin birth' was born, thanks to a mistranslation."
http://www.accurapid.com/journal/18review.htm
"There are two hebrew words usually translated 'virgin' in English. 'Bethulah' means virgin in the sense that we understand it. It was used, for example, in Isaiah 62:5. 'Almah' (the word used in Isaiah 7:14) simply means a young woman. Although it is sometimes used in the sense of a sexually pure woman, this is not it's exclusive usage. The context will usually point out the correct usage."
http://www.2think.org/hii/virgin.shtml
"Aside from this, the Torah does, in fact, have an explicit word for virgin (betulah or bethulah), which is always used where the context requires virginity. (For confirmation, see Genesis 24:16 , Leviticus 21:14 , and Deuteronomy 22:15-19 ). Even Isaiah used it in 62:5 . Its nonuse in the "Immanuel" passage is a rather loud hint that Isaiah spoke only of a young woman, not specifically of a virgin."
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1993/2/2virgi93.html
"Most modern liberal theologians have generally rejected the virgin birth, and classify it as a religious myth that was added to Christian belief in the late first century CE and was triggered by a mistranslation of the book of Isaiah. Its purpose was to make the religion more competitive with contemporary Pagan religions in the Mediterranean region, most of whom featured a virgin birth of their founder."
http://www.religioustolerance.org/virgin_b.htm
""Several distressed correspondents have queried the mistranslation of 'young woman' into 'virgin' in the biblical prophecy, and have demanded a reply from me. Hurting religious sensibilities is a perilous business these days so I had better oblige. Actually, it is a pleasure, for scientists can't often get satisfyingly dusty in the library indulging in a real academic foot-note. The point is in fact well known to biblical scholars, and not disputed by them. The Hebrew word in Isaiah is (almah), which undisputedly means 'young woman', with no implication of virginity. If 'virgin' had been intended (bethulah) could have been used instead (the ambiguous English word 'maiden' illustrates how easy it can be to slide between the two meanings). The 'mutation' occurred when the pre-Christian Greek translation known as the Septuagint rendered almah into .... (parthenos), which really does usually mean virgin. Matthew (not, of course, the Apostle and contemporary of Jesus, but the gospel-maker writing long afterwards), quoted Isaiah in what seems to be a derivative of the Septuagint version (all but two of the fifteen Greek words are identical) when he said Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 'Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel' (Authorised English translation). It is widely accepted among Christian scholars that the story of the virgin birth of Jesus was a late interpolation, put in presumably by Greek-speaking disciples in order that the (mistranslated) prophecy should be seen to be fulfilled. Modern versions such as the New English Bible correctly give 'young woman' in Isaiah. They equally correctly leave 'virgin' in Matthew, since there they are translating from the Greek."
http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/virgin.htm
On Punctuation
"Another hypothesis about the origin of the question mark proposes that it originated in the 9th century, when it appeared as a point followed by the curvy bit written slanted (similar to the tilde, although the tilde was tilted more upward to the right).[citation needed] Punctuation author Lynne Truss attributes an early form to Alcuin of York. [2] Truss describes the punctus interrotavius of the late 700s as "a lightning flash, striking from right to left." The name "question mark" was coined in the late 1800s. [3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark
"The Italian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder established the modern English practice of using the mark to separate words opposed in meaning, and to mark off interdependent statements.[1] The earliest general use of the semicolon in English was in 1591. Shakespeare's sonnets have semicolons; Ben Jonson was the first notable writer from England to use them systematically."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon
"The exclamation point was introduced into English printing in the 1400, and was known as the "mark of admiration" until the mid 1600s.[2] The mark was not featured on standard manual typewriters of the 1970s; instead, one typed a full stop, backspaced, and then typed an apostrophe.[3]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclamation_mark
"In early modern English, quote marks were used only to denote pithy comments. They first began to quote direct speech in 1714. By 1749, single quotes or "inverted commas", were commonly used to denote direct speech. Unlike modern usage, a single open quote was placed at the beginning of each line of multi-line quotations.[5]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#History
"Not all languages use spaces between words. Spaces were not used to separate words in Latin until roughly 600 AD – 800 AD. Ancient Hebrew and Arabic did use spaces, partly to compensate in clarity for the lack of vowels. Traditionally, all CJK languages have no spaces: modern Chinese and Japanese (except when written with little or no kanji) still do not, but modern Korean uses spaces."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_%28punctuation%29
Oh, and for your betterment, 11 different translations of the bible occurred during the 17th C alone - all different.
The wrong religions
16 Mar '07 11:37
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