At the top of that list of shortcomings, IMHO, would have to be the fact that the name of God is rendered as LORD, even though the translators knew that His name is not LORD, as evidenced by their rendering of Exodus 6:3.Originally Posted by Hbert997
Strangely, Martin Luther did the same thing in his German translation, where he translated the name of God as "Herr" which is even more awkward than Lord, because every man is a Herr in German.
Considering the controversy surrounding the name of God, perhaps a case can be made for substituting LORD or Herr after all.
In the NT the name of Yahushuah, Yehovah Saves, is rendered as Jesus, or He-Zeus.
Then there are the numerous puzzling word choices, such as charity for agape, testament for diatheke, ghost for pneuma, and many others.
Using a Concordance and a lexicon will fix this problem of course.
I also have a Bible with marginal notes which sometimes gives a helpful alternate translation for certain words.
Another unfortunate result of translation is the fact that the beauty and power of the original language is lost. In the case of the Bible that amounts to many word plays, idiomatic expressions, alliterations, rhymes, etc, which cannot be reproduced in translation.
It makes for a fun Bible study to do a web search on "mistranslations in the KJV" or similar search terms. All kinds of stuff comes up and tempers run high with some scholars.
It gets even deeper when one compares the Textus Receptus to other sources.
Because of the translational oddities in the KJV and the German Martin Luther Bible, I really like to study with the Blue Letter Bible interlinear, set to the KJV default setting. With the help of Strong's concordance and Gesenius Lexicon and all the other study aids there I can learn a lot about God's written Word, as long as I submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
In some sense, the written Word is just so much ink on paper, or pixels on a screen, and that's where the living connection with my Elohim comes in. If I don't get "it", all I have to do is ask, and He will show me personally, through nature, dreams and visions, and His servants on earth.
"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper [in the thing] whereto I sent it."
Isaiah 55:11
All the glory belongs to Him!
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