"There are over 450 English New Testament translations; all riddled with inaccuracies that never referenced the original Greek scriptures. The Pure Word research project was started to fix this problem." ~ PRESIDENT, ONE PATH PUBLISHING.
The Pure Word is an unprecedented New Testament resource, over 20-years in the making, that reveals the original Koine-Greek depths-of-meaning from the time of Christ using breakthroughs in monadic-based hermeneutics. Discover why many consider The Pure Word an invaluable tool to be used alongside your favorite version of the Bible to experience deeper scriptural meaning that has never before been achievable in English.
WHAT IS THE PURE WORD?
English is an imprecise language that can easily cause misunderstanding. In contrast, one of the most complete languages that clarifies intent is Koine Greek, so it's no surprise that this the language chosen in the first century to record the books of the New Testament. In order to bring more depth of understanding to the scriptures, it's common practice for pastors and theologians to use the original Greek writings to reveal the full depth-of-meaning within the New Testament that has been lost in virtually all available English translations. This is known as Hermeneutics; the academic methodology of interpreting text.
With more than 20-years of research led by Dr. Harry Miller and Brent Miller Sr to develop more accurate processes for English translation, The Pure Word now offers the world's first and only hermeneutics-based monadic Greek to English translation that can save scholars, pastors and Bible students from the countless hours needed to re-translate the original Greek meanings for all 27 books of the New Testament. As a result, The Pure Word is not intended to replace your preferred version of the Bible, but rather to be used alongside it by anyone wanting to dive deeper into the New Testament scriptures.
Comparing John 3:16
King James Version:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
The Pure Word:
"Because, God has Loved in such a manner the satan's world, so that He Gave His Son, the Only Begotten Risen Christ, in order that whoever is Continuously by his choice Committing for the Result and Purpose of Him, should not perish, but definitely should, by his choice, be Continuously Having Eternal Life."
In this example, both the KJV and The Pure Word present similar messages regarding the gift of Salvation through Jesus Christ; however, the original Koine Greek to English translation found in The Pure Word provides more original depth regarding the meaning of "believeth" in Greek that was condensed by the scholars who translated the 1611 King James.
For the last 20 years, Brent Miller Sr., the co-founder of Ingenuity Films, has been on a mission. Together with a group of scholars, he has painstakingly produced the first "monadic" translation of the New Testament from the Greek manuscripts. Assigning specific meanings to each individual Greek word doesn't make their translation read quite like the "King's English," but it does add some surprising depth of meaning to God's Word. It makes the perfect companion to study alongside your favorite Bible translation. The Pure Word translation takes each of the 140,745 words which make up the 7956 New Testament Greek verses and determines the single, pure meaning that was originally intended for each of the 5,624 Greek root words.
Click here to watch Youtube video.
Transcript from the Youtube video :
Gary Stearman (GS) (host) : You know, a lot of people say that they can't understand the Bible. Well, we hear this all the time. And we have a man with us today who has understood the Bible, I think very deeply for a very long time, to the point that he has made a study of understanding the Bible. Brent Miller, welcome to Prophecy Watchers.
Brent Miller (BM) : Gary, it's a pleasure to be back. Thank you.
GS : We are going to talk about the Bible, the Word of God. The Bible is THE book in the history of the world. There's nothing else like it. It's unique. It's utterly believable because it was authored by God Himself , right?
BM : Yes, yes, it was. Every word. In the original language it's it is perfect for every single word.
GS : Let's look at the King James Bible. One of my favourite verses, Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Now you read that and it's beautifully formed in Jacobean English, the type of English that was spoken in the days of King James. But when it says 'the Word of God is quick and powerful' , you know, we don't use that word 'quick' in the way that they used the word 'quick'.
BM : Right.
GS : It's a whole different world. Well, that starts us off on a conversation.
BM : Right. In the form of life-giving quick. You see a lot of the ... when you transfer a very very complex Koine Greek to English, the complexities don't directly transfer. As a result, you get stripped away a lot of the intended meaning. In fact, today when we look at an English translation, it's more poetic and and less accurate.
GS : Hm
BM : Because of the way the English language itself is a much simpler language and actually cannot handle all the parsings, the tenses, the moods, the voices, and the aspects and forms that Greek have. It is for this very reason that there are so many different translations. In fact, today there are over 450 different English translations with over 80,000 different variations of meaning between the different translations.
GS : Now let's talk King James (version) only for a moment here. And I think a lot of Christians are familiar with the King James Bible. I myself was given a King James Bible when I was a teenager.
BM ; Yeah.
GS : I still have that same Bible. And when I first started to read it as a teenager the King James language kind of turned me off a bit as a young boy. And yet I saw in it, I kind of reverenced it. I thought, ' something was written at this level must have some superior form of meaning.' Still though I had to search and search to find out what verses exactly meant in the English that I speak which is not King James English. And you've gone a step and a half in that direction. You've gone beyond merely translate something into English, you have looked at the Greek grammar and you have tried to translate it not in terms of beauty and symmetry and poetry. But in terms of what it absolutely means.
BM : I would like to correct you that, in fact, I was part of a scholarly team for the last 22 years in translating the Greek, the complex forms of the Greek to English word for word.
GS : I stand corrected.
BM : Let's take King James. King James is, until now, has been considered one of the worlds, if not the world's most accurate English translations. And it's because when it was made in 1611by 47 scribes over a period of ten years. They had fourteen rules (*Note. See the King James's approved Rules, below this transcript) they had to translate, create a new translation from King James. But there was a goal. There was an agenda. King James didn't actually desire for a translation from the original language to give the most accurate translations of the Scriptures possible. What he wanted was peace in his land. He wanted unity. So in order to achieve unity he had two divergent constituents. He has the Catholics on one hand and he had the Protestants on the other hand. He needed a Bible, the King James Bible was the result that would unite his countrymen. So, one of the fourteen (14) rules he gave to the scribes was "Do not contradict anything in the Bishop's Bible." In other words, if they found contradictions from the original language into the English translation, they were not allowed to put in those contradictions. They had to replicate what was in the Bishop's Bible. So, right from the beginning, the very best translation we have is the King James, right until now is the King James Bible. I firmly believe that. Because they did a phenomenal job. They separated 5,000 documents, stripped away the 5% that did not fundamentally doctrinally agree with the remaining 95% of the documents. Those 95% then became the majority text because it is the majority of all the documents and coined the Textus Receptus , and they piecemeal-ed over a period of ten years, a really amazing scholarly work doing the very best they could under the guidelines of King James. However, it still did not meet the standard of going to the original Greek and translating word for word based on God's statement, Himself, that every word of God is pure. Every word has a single meaning not available by interpretation of man, because God used that word. A meaning that is not used by any other word. Now there are 5624 Greek root words in the New Testament gospel. And of those words, there are so many of them when you translate it to English, you strip away a lot of the original intended meaning. The word 'love', there are four(4) Greek words for love, meaning four separate things. We in English say the word 'love'. So, when we read the word 'love' in English we don't know really what it's referring to. Eight(8) words 'knowledge' and 'understanding', one in English. Ahh, I can give you dozens of examples. The contrary is also correct in what they did in the translations. There are over 800 of these Greek words, remember, all having a single unique meaning, but when translated to English over 800 of them are given 5 or more different English interpretations. So that you'll read that word in one place, it'll say one thing. You'll read it in another place, it'll say something else. Which is it? And honestly there is no other language on earth that does that. No language. Not Greek, not English, not any language.
GS : Right.
BM : Yet the King James does that the least and a lot of the Bible translations do that because they didn't go right to the root from the very beginning of the early church. If you'd like , I'd like to discuss the early church just for a moment.
GS : Sure.
BM : The early church is interesting, because for 300 years they had a single unified Scripture, the New Testament and the Old Testament. 300 years everyone had the exact same documentation. Everyone went off the same information. The church spread throughout the whole known world. In fact, it was so precisely stated that if you were to destroy within the first 300 years all the New Testament, every single shred of it, you could reconstruct the New Testament , 95% of it word for word, letter for letter, inflection by inflection simply based on the Early Fathers writings copying the Scriptures. Thousands and thousands of copies by thousands of Early Fathers. All of them using the exact same words, no contradictions, no ambiguity. They all used the same reference. But when Constantine in year 312 A.D. 'married' church and state, that's when the problems occurred. We started translating based on politics instead of what God's Word said. So, over the last, skipping forward two thousands (2,000) years, we have over 625 different renditions of the Scriptures up until the King James and 450 different English translations after King James. And incredibly rarely did they ever go back and look at even a few of the original Greek words. Never mind this project, The Pure Word , which took over 20 years and a major scholarly group looking at every single word in the Greek.
Gary Stearman (GS) (host) : Now I'm holding a leather-bound copy of The Pure Word, this is the New Testament, and it is translated for meaning
Brent Miller (BM) : Mhmm (nodding his head)
GS : For sense, let's just put it this way, what did the Greek really mean to say. That's what you were seeking after in this translation. What, what in the world does this complicated sentence mean? And I've heard for year, ever since I was a teenager I've heard people argue about what a particular verse means. And you're right. The King James version doesn't help us a lot. It sometimes obscured just a little bit by the language. And I've heard many, many discussions, endless discussion about what something really means.
BM : Yeah.
GS : And you've attempted to kind of produce a handbook here (The Pure Word) that is a companion. When you read the Bible, you can look at this The Pure Word and really go t the meaning, right?
BM : Right. Absolutely. The Pure Word was designed based on the premise that every word of God is pure, without mixture of meaning. So, for the first 20 years of the 22-Year-Project, every single one of the root words, 5624 root words, as I've previously stated was looked at, and every possible reference of those root words and every reference known to man was pulled together to determine the absolute true meaning
(video stop at 11:37 )
* Note: A few of King James’s approved rules for the new translation.
Rule 1 instructed the Translators to leave texts from their model, the Bishops’ Bible, “as little altered as the Truth of the original will permit.”
Rules 8 – 14 concerned accuracy.
Rule 8 required “every particular Man of each Company, to take the same Chapter or Chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their Parts what shall stand.”
Rule 9 added, “As any one Company hath dispatched any one Book in this Manner they shall send it to the rest, to be considered of seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this Point.” Rule 11 provided, “When any Place of special Obscurity is doubted of, Letters to be directed by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land, for his Judgment of such a Place.”
Rule 12 required “letters to be sent from every Bishop to the rest of his Clergy, admonishing them of this Translation in hand; and to move and charge as many skilful in the Tongues; and having taken pains in that kind, to send his particular Observations to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge, or Oxford.”
James wanted a popular translation that supported standard Church of England usages. So he insisted that the translation use old familiar terms and names. Rules 2 – 5 focused on this. About 90 percent of the actual translation used solid Anglo- Saxon words. Further, the whole was made readable (if formal) in the idiom of the day. Consistent with his conservative religious views against the radical ideas of the Puritans, James desired “the Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not to be translated Congregation &c.” The Translators were instructed, “When a Word hath divers Significations, that to be kept which hath been most commonly used by the most of the Ancient Fathers, being agreeable to the Propriety of the Place, and the Analogy of the Faith.” In addition, “the Division of the Chapters to be altered, either not at all, or as little as may be, if Necessity so require.” James wanted no biased notes included in the translation.
Rule 6 stated, “No Marginal Notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek Words, which cannot without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the Text.” James constantly pushed his committee to advance the translation with dispatch: “Your Majesty did never desist, to urge and to excite those to whom it was commended, that the work might be hastened, and that the business might be expedited in so decent a manner, as a matter of such importance might justly require.”
Precisely 451 years after the June 19, 1566, birth of King James I of England, one achievement of his reign still stands above the rest: the 1611 English translation of the Old and New Testaments that bears his name. The King James Bible, one of the most printed books ever, transformed the English language, coining everyday phrases like “the root of all evil.”
But what motivated James to authorize the project?
He inherited a contentious religious situation. Just about 50 years before he came to power, Queen Elizabeth I’s half-sister, Queen Mary I (“Bloody Mary”), a Catholic, had executed nearly 250 Protestants during her short reign. Elizabeth, as Queen, affirmed the legitimacy of her father Henry VIII’s Anglican Church, but maintained a settlement by which Protestants and Puritans were allowed to practice their own varieties of the religion. The Anglican Church was thus under attack from Puritans and Calvinists seeking to do away with bishops and their hierarchy. Eventually, in the 1640s, these bitter disputes would become catalysts of the English Civil War. But during James’ reign, they were expressed in a very different forum: translation.
Translations of ancient texts exploded in the 15th century. Scholars in Italy, Holland and elsewhere perfected the Latin of Cicero and learned Greek and Hebrew. The “rediscovery” of these languages and the advent of printing allowed access to knowledge not only secular (the pagan Classics) but also sacred (the Bible in its original languages). The new market for translated texts created an urgent demand for individuals capable of reading the ancient languages. Its fulfillment was nowhere better seen than in the foundation at Oxford University in 1517, by one of Henry VIII’s personal advisors, of Corpus Christi College — the first Renaissance institution in Oxford, whose trilingual holdings of manuscripts in Latin, Greek and Hebrew Erasmus himself celebrated. At the same time, Protestant scholars used their new learning to render the Bible into common tongues, meant to give people a more direct relationship with God. The result, in England, was the publication of translations starting with William Tyndale’s 1526 Bible and culminating in the so-called “Geneva Bible” completed by Calvinists whom Queen Mary had exiled to Switzerland.
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This was the Bible most popular among reformers at the time of James’ accession. But its circulation threatened the Anglican bishops. Not only did the Geneva Bible supplant their translation (the co-called Bishops’ Bible), but it also appeared to challenge the primacy of secular rulers and the bishops’ authority. One of its scathing annotations compared the locusts of the Apocalypse to swarming hordes of “Prelates” dominating the Church. Others referred to the apostles and Christ himself as “holy fools,” an approving phrase meant to evoke their disdain for “all outward pompe” in contrast to the supposed decadence of the Anglican and Catholic Churches.
In 1604, King James, himself a religious scholar who had re-translated some of the psalms, sought to unite these factions — and his people — through one universally accepted text. The idea was proposed at a conference of scholars at Hampton Court by a Puritan, John Rainolds, the seventh President of Corpus Christi College. Rainolds hoped that James would turn his face against the Bishops’ Bible, but his plan backfired when the King insisted that the new translation be based on it and condemned the “partial, untrue, seditious” notes of the Geneva translation.
A translators' notes for the King James Bible
A translators' notes for the King James Bible Image reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Though disappointed, Rainolds pressed on and was charged with producing a translation of the Prophets. He set about his work with a committee in his rooms, still in daily use today, in Corpus Christi College, as five similar committees elsewhere rendered different books of the Bible. These scholars examined every word to determine the most felicitous turns of phrase before sending their work to colleagues for confirmation. The process, which one historian called a progenitor to modern “peer-review,” lasted seven years. Rainolds, dying in 1607, never saw the publication of his great work four years later.
Organized to celebrate the quincentenary of Corpus Christi College (a secular institution in spite of its name), the new exhibition “500 Years of Treasures from Oxford” — now at Yeshiva University Museum at Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History — includes several Hebrew manuscripts almost certainly consulted by Rainolds and his colleagues, including one of the oldest commentaries by the great medieval rabbinical scholar, Rashi. A set of the translators’ own notes — one of only three surviving copies (seen above at left) — is also included. This precious text shows Greek, Latin and English lines, revealing the detailed craft behind the King James Bible — a testament not only to the tireless endeavor of John Rainolds, but to the importance of learning in one of humanity’s most prized religious works.
The Pure Word is an unprecedented New Testament resource, over 20-years in the making, that reveals the original Koine-Greek depths-of-meaning from the time of Christ using breakthroughs in monadic-based hermeneutics. Discover why many consider The Pure Word an invaluable tool to be used alongside your favorite version of the Bible to experience deeper scriptural meaning that has never before been achievable in English.
WHAT IS THE PURE WORD?
English is an imprecise language that can easily cause misunderstanding. In contrast, one of the most complete languages that clarifies intent is Koine Greek, so it's no surprise that this the language chosen in the first century to record the books of the New Testament. In order to bring more depth of understanding to the scriptures, it's common practice for pastors and theologians to use the original Greek writings to reveal the full depth-of-meaning within the New Testament that has been lost in virtually all available English translations. This is known as Hermeneutics; the academic methodology of interpreting text.
With more than 20-years of research led by Dr. Harry Miller and Brent Miller Sr to develop more accurate processes for English translation, The Pure Word now offers the world's first and only hermeneutics-based monadic Greek to English translation that can save scholars, pastors and Bible students from the countless hours needed to re-translate the original Greek meanings for all 27 books of the New Testament. As a result, The Pure Word is not intended to replace your preferred version of the Bible, but rather to be used alongside it by anyone wanting to dive deeper into the New Testament scriptures.
Comparing John 3:16
King James Version:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
The Pure Word:
"Because, God has Loved in such a manner the satan's world, so that He Gave His Son, the Only Begotten Risen Christ, in order that whoever is Continuously by his choice Committing for the Result and Purpose of Him, should not perish, but definitely should, by his choice, be Continuously Having Eternal Life."
In this example, both the KJV and The Pure Word present similar messages regarding the gift of Salvation through Jesus Christ; however, the original Koine Greek to English translation found in The Pure Word provides more original depth regarding the meaning of "believeth" in Greek that was condensed by the scholars who translated the 1611 King James.
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Click here to watch Youtube video.
Transcript from the Youtube video :
Gary Stearman (GS) (host) : You know, a lot of people say that they can't understand the Bible. Well, we hear this all the time. And we have a man with us today who has understood the Bible, I think very deeply for a very long time, to the point that he has made a study of understanding the Bible. Brent Miller, welcome to Prophecy Watchers.
Brent Miller (BM) : Gary, it's a pleasure to be back. Thank you.
GS : We are going to talk about the Bible, the Word of God. The Bible is THE book in the history of the world. There's nothing else like it. It's unique. It's utterly believable because it was authored by God Himself , right?
BM : Yes, yes, it was. Every word. In the original language it's it is perfect for every single word.
GS : Let's look at the King James Bible. One of my favourite verses, Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Now you read that and it's beautifully formed in Jacobean English, the type of English that was spoken in the days of King James. But when it says 'the Word of God is quick and powerful' , you know, we don't use that word 'quick' in the way that they used the word 'quick'.
BM : Right.
GS : It's a whole different world. Well, that starts us off on a conversation.
BM : Right. In the form of life-giving quick. You see a lot of the ... when you transfer a very very complex Koine Greek to English, the complexities don't directly transfer. As a result, you get stripped away a lot of the intended meaning. In fact, today when we look at an English translation, it's more poetic and and less accurate.
GS : Hm
BM : Because of the way the English language itself is a much simpler language and actually cannot handle all the parsings, the tenses, the moods, the voices, and the aspects and forms that Greek have. It is for this very reason that there are so many different translations. In fact, today there are over 450 different English translations with over 80,000 different variations of meaning between the different translations.
GS : Now let's talk King James (version) only for a moment here. And I think a lot of Christians are familiar with the King James Bible. I myself was given a King James Bible when I was a teenager.
BM ; Yeah.
GS : I still have that same Bible. And when I first started to read it as a teenager the King James language kind of turned me off a bit as a young boy. And yet I saw in it, I kind of reverenced it. I thought, ' something was written at this level must have some superior form of meaning.' Still though I had to search and search to find out what verses exactly meant in the English that I speak which is not King James English. And you've gone a step and a half in that direction. You've gone beyond merely translate something into English, you have looked at the Greek grammar and you have tried to translate it not in terms of beauty and symmetry and poetry. But in terms of what it absolutely means.
BM : I would like to correct you that, in fact, I was part of a scholarly team for the last 22 years in translating the Greek, the complex forms of the Greek to English word for word.
GS : I stand corrected.
BM : Let's take King James. King James is, until now, has been considered one of the worlds, if not the world's most accurate English translations. And it's because when it was made in 1611by 47 scribes over a period of ten years. They had fourteen rules (*Note. See the King James's approved Rules, below this transcript) they had to translate, create a new translation from King James. But there was a goal. There was an agenda. King James didn't actually desire for a translation from the original language to give the most accurate translations of the Scriptures possible. What he wanted was peace in his land. He wanted unity. So in order to achieve unity he had two divergent constituents. He has the Catholics on one hand and he had the Protestants on the other hand. He needed a Bible, the King James Bible was the result that would unite his countrymen. So, one of the fourteen (14) rules he gave to the scribes was "Do not contradict anything in the Bishop's Bible." In other words, if they found contradictions from the original language into the English translation, they were not allowed to put in those contradictions. They had to replicate what was in the Bishop's Bible. So, right from the beginning, the very best translation we have is the King James, right until now is the King James Bible. I firmly believe that. Because they did a phenomenal job. They separated 5,000 documents, stripped away the 5% that did not fundamentally doctrinally agree with the remaining 95% of the documents. Those 95% then became the majority text because it is the majority of all the documents and coined the Textus Receptus , and they piecemeal-ed over a period of ten years, a really amazing scholarly work doing the very best they could under the guidelines of King James. However, it still did not meet the standard of going to the original Greek and translating word for word based on God's statement, Himself, that every word of God is pure. Every word has a single meaning not available by interpretation of man, because God used that word. A meaning that is not used by any other word. Now there are 5624 Greek root words in the New Testament gospel. And of those words, there are so many of them when you translate it to English, you strip away a lot of the original intended meaning. The word 'love', there are four(4) Greek words for love, meaning four separate things. We in English say the word 'love'. So, when we read the word 'love' in English we don't know really what it's referring to. Eight(8) words 'knowledge' and 'understanding', one in English. Ahh, I can give you dozens of examples. The contrary is also correct in what they did in the translations. There are over 800 of these Greek words, remember, all having a single unique meaning, but when translated to English over 800 of them are given 5 or more different English interpretations. So that you'll read that word in one place, it'll say one thing. You'll read it in another place, it'll say something else. Which is it? And honestly there is no other language on earth that does that. No language. Not Greek, not English, not any language.
GS : Right.
BM : Yet the King James does that the least and a lot of the Bible translations do that because they didn't go right to the root from the very beginning of the early church. If you'd like , I'd like to discuss the early church just for a moment.
GS : Sure.
BM : The early church is interesting, because for 300 years they had a single unified Scripture, the New Testament and the Old Testament. 300 years everyone had the exact same documentation. Everyone went off the same information. The church spread throughout the whole known world. In fact, it was so precisely stated that if you were to destroy within the first 300 years all the New Testament, every single shred of it, you could reconstruct the New Testament , 95% of it word for word, letter for letter, inflection by inflection simply based on the Early Fathers writings copying the Scriptures. Thousands and thousands of copies by thousands of Early Fathers. All of them using the exact same words, no contradictions, no ambiguity. They all used the same reference. But when Constantine in year 312 A.D. 'married' church and state, that's when the problems occurred. We started translating based on politics instead of what God's Word said. So, over the last, skipping forward two thousands (2,000) years, we have over 625 different renditions of the Scriptures up until the King James and 450 different English translations after King James. And incredibly rarely did they ever go back and look at even a few of the original Greek words. Never mind this project, The Pure Word , which took over 20 years and a major scholarly group looking at every single word in the Greek.
Gary Stearman (GS) (host) : Now I'm holding a leather-bound copy of The Pure Word, this is the New Testament, and it is translated for meaning
Brent Miller (BM) : Mhmm (nodding his head)
GS : For sense, let's just put it this way, what did the Greek really mean to say. That's what you were seeking after in this translation. What, what in the world does this complicated sentence mean? And I've heard for year, ever since I was a teenager I've heard people argue about what a particular verse means. And you're right. The King James version doesn't help us a lot. It sometimes obscured just a little bit by the language. And I've heard many, many discussions, endless discussion about what something really means.
BM : Yeah.
GS : And you've attempted to kind of produce a handbook here (The Pure Word) that is a companion. When you read the Bible, you can look at this The Pure Word and really go t the meaning, right?
BM : Right. Absolutely. The Pure Word was designed based on the premise that every word of God is pure, without mixture of meaning. So, for the first 20 years of the 22-Year-Project, every single one of the root words, 5624 root words, as I've previously stated was looked at, and every possible reference of those root words and every reference known to man was pulled together to determine the absolute true meaning
(video stop at 11:37 )
* Note: A few of King James’s approved rules for the new translation.
Rule 1 instructed the Translators to leave texts from their model, the Bishops’ Bible, “as little altered as the Truth of the original will permit.”
Rules 8 – 14 concerned accuracy.
Rule 8 required “every particular Man of each Company, to take the same Chapter or Chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their Parts what shall stand.”
Rule 9 added, “As any one Company hath dispatched any one Book in this Manner they shall send it to the rest, to be considered of seriously and judiciously, for His Majesty is very careful in this Point.” Rule 11 provided, “When any Place of special Obscurity is doubted of, Letters to be directed by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land, for his Judgment of such a Place.”
Rule 12 required “letters to be sent from every Bishop to the rest of his Clergy, admonishing them of this Translation in hand; and to move and charge as many skilful in the Tongues; and having taken pains in that kind, to send his particular Observations to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridge, or Oxford.”
James wanted a popular translation that supported standard Church of England usages. So he insisted that the translation use old familiar terms and names. Rules 2 – 5 focused on this. About 90 percent of the actual translation used solid Anglo- Saxon words. Further, the whole was made readable (if formal) in the idiom of the day. Consistent with his conservative religious views against the radical ideas of the Puritans, James desired “the Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not to be translated Congregation &c.” The Translators were instructed, “When a Word hath divers Significations, that to be kept which hath been most commonly used by the most of the Ancient Fathers, being agreeable to the Propriety of the Place, and the Analogy of the Faith.” In addition, “the Division of the Chapters to be altered, either not at all, or as little as may be, if Necessity so require.” James wanted no biased notes included in the translation.
Rule 6 stated, “No Marginal Notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek Words, which cannot without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the Text.” James constantly pushed his committee to advance the translation with dispatch: “Your Majesty did never desist, to urge and to excite those to whom it was commended, that the work might be hastened, and that the business might be expedited in so decent a manner, as a matter of such importance might justly require.”
Precisely 451 years after the June 19, 1566, birth of King James I of England, one achievement of his reign still stands above the rest: the 1611 English translation of the Old and New Testaments that bears his name. The King James Bible, one of the most printed books ever, transformed the English language, coining everyday phrases like “the root of all evil.”
But what motivated James to authorize the project?
He inherited a contentious religious situation. Just about 50 years before he came to power, Queen Elizabeth I’s half-sister, Queen Mary I (“Bloody Mary”), a Catholic, had executed nearly 250 Protestants during her short reign. Elizabeth, as Queen, affirmed the legitimacy of her father Henry VIII’s Anglican Church, but maintained a settlement by which Protestants and Puritans were allowed to practice their own varieties of the religion. The Anglican Church was thus under attack from Puritans and Calvinists seeking to do away with bishops and their hierarchy. Eventually, in the 1640s, these bitter disputes would become catalysts of the English Civil War. But during James’ reign, they were expressed in a very different forum: translation.
Translations of ancient texts exploded in the 15th century. Scholars in Italy, Holland and elsewhere perfected the Latin of Cicero and learned Greek and Hebrew. The “rediscovery” of these languages and the advent of printing allowed access to knowledge not only secular (the pagan Classics) but also sacred (the Bible in its original languages). The new market for translated texts created an urgent demand for individuals capable of reading the ancient languages. Its fulfillment was nowhere better seen than in the foundation at Oxford University in 1517, by one of Henry VIII’s personal advisors, of Corpus Christi College — the first Renaissance institution in Oxford, whose trilingual holdings of manuscripts in Latin, Greek and Hebrew Erasmus himself celebrated. At the same time, Protestant scholars used their new learning to render the Bible into common tongues, meant to give people a more direct relationship with God. The result, in England, was the publication of translations starting with William Tyndale’s 1526 Bible and culminating in the so-called “Geneva Bible” completed by Calvinists whom Queen Mary had exiled to Switzerland.
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This was the Bible most popular among reformers at the time of James’ accession. But its circulation threatened the Anglican bishops. Not only did the Geneva Bible supplant their translation (the co-called Bishops’ Bible), but it also appeared to challenge the primacy of secular rulers and the bishops’ authority. One of its scathing annotations compared the locusts of the Apocalypse to swarming hordes of “Prelates” dominating the Church. Others referred to the apostles and Christ himself as “holy fools,” an approving phrase meant to evoke their disdain for “all outward pompe” in contrast to the supposed decadence of the Anglican and Catholic Churches.
In 1604, King James, himself a religious scholar who had re-translated some of the psalms, sought to unite these factions — and his people — through one universally accepted text. The idea was proposed at a conference of scholars at Hampton Court by a Puritan, John Rainolds, the seventh President of Corpus Christi College. Rainolds hoped that James would turn his face against the Bishops’ Bible, but his plan backfired when the King insisted that the new translation be based on it and condemned the “partial, untrue, seditious” notes of the Geneva translation.
A translators' notes for the King James Bible
A translators' notes for the King James Bible Image reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Though disappointed, Rainolds pressed on and was charged with producing a translation of the Prophets. He set about his work with a committee in his rooms, still in daily use today, in Corpus Christi College, as five similar committees elsewhere rendered different books of the Bible. These scholars examined every word to determine the most felicitous turns of phrase before sending their work to colleagues for confirmation. The process, which one historian called a progenitor to modern “peer-review,” lasted seven years. Rainolds, dying in 1607, never saw the publication of his great work four years later.
Organized to celebrate the quincentenary of Corpus Christi College (a secular institution in spite of its name), the new exhibition “500 Years of Treasures from Oxford” — now at Yeshiva University Museum at Manhattan’s Center for Jewish History — includes several Hebrew manuscripts almost certainly consulted by Rainolds and his colleagues, including one of the oldest commentaries by the great medieval rabbinical scholar, Rashi. A set of the translators’ own notes — one of only three surviving copies (seen above at left) — is also included. This precious text shows Greek, Latin and English lines, revealing the detailed craft behind the King James Bible — a testament not only to the tireless endeavor of John Rainolds, but to the importance of learning in one of humanity’s most prized religious works.
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