“For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
- Hebrews 4:12
Instead, if you're really serious about the Word of God, you need to be studying it and becoming deeply familiar with the language(s) it is written in and the culture(s) it was written to.
This morning I read a lovely essay published on nostr by Liberty Gal; a wonderful reminder for all who follow Jesus, to read the Bible regularly.
Please take her article to heart:
I was inspired to write this brief—but vital—response.
As an English speaker, you read the Bible in one or more English translations. Sadly, the translations you are reading have been corrupted in subtle, but critically important ways.
For nearly a decade now, I've been writing "The Curmudgeon's Bible," a series of articles in which I bitterly complain about the many and egregious faults and flaws in ALL available English translations.
I have lovingly studied the Bible since my youth... But you don't need to be an academically trained "Bible expert" to discover that the devil has corrupted the English Bible. Check out these three major, easy to understand tricks that have been played on you:
If Jesus is truly our Lord and King, why in the world would we trust an edition of Scripture called "The Authorized King James Version?" Can you say "Conflict of Interest?"
Spend a few minutes listening to this gal's video revealing how "King" Jimmy has used his manipulated translation of the Bible to mislead millions:
The consequence of this obvious political control of translations is that English Bibles all have a distinct "statist" bias.
I was shocked when I realized how many words in our "English" Bibles have actually been left in Greek in a dodge known as transliteration. To emphasize how prevalent transliteration is, I'll list five examples alphabetically:
You have to ask yourself the questions:
"Don't these Greek words mean something different in English?"
...and...
"If these are Greek words, WHY didn't the translators bother to translate them? And why (even in virtually all 'modern' English translations) are these words STILL left untranslated?"🤔
You can learn more about unwarranted transliterations here.
Words often convey more than a single idea. This is called connotation.
When a carpenter builds a wall, studs are placed at sixteen-inch intervals. If the carpenter's ruler is off by as little as one-eighth of an inch, by the time he reaches the end of a ten-foot wall, the wall will be more than an inch too long or too short.
Similarly, when translators choose multiple English words that separately have plausible connotations, the effect is to skew the meaning, leading to serious misunderstanding.
You can learn more about "connotation stack-up" here.
I believe there is! As Liberty Gal encourages in her article, we need to be "Good Bereans."
"The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so."
- Acts 17:11
Remember, these Bereans were being taught by one of the greatest Christian scholars who ever lived, the Apostle Paul himself, and they still carefully examined his teaching in light of the Scriptures. Don't you think we ought to carefully consider and think through what we've been taught all our lives? Ask yourself the question: "Is this what the Bible itself says, or do I believe this because it's how we've always done and thought about things?"
There is an Open Source translation of the Bible that directly addresses the transliteration problem; while less than perfect (it still contains significant statist bias), at least the Greek words listed above are actually translated:
Stop (merely) reading your Bible, and start eagerly examining it as often as you can. Learn some Hebrew and Greek; you don't have to become a "professional" linguist to notice when "tradition" and bad translation are misleading you.
Jesus, the Living Word of God, will guide you into all truth by his Spirit who lives in us.
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