What a fascinating thing to consider that at the time of Jesus Christ,
Greek was a universal language (the New Testament was written in Greek) and
today English is a universal language.
"The English language, in its structure, in the way it works
in its grammar and in the way the words are formed and the ideas are
communicated, is comparable to the accuracy, structure and power of the Greek
language," explains Jordan.
"There are some reasons those languages became universal and
it has nothing really to do with the power of the Greek Empire or the British
Empire, because in the First Century the Greek Empire had been done away with. The
Roman Empire with its Latin was the world's empire and yet Greek was still the
universal language of commerce."
*****
One the keys to the Protestant Reformation was the popular belief
that God not only wrote His Word and preserved it through time but intended for it to be translated into the languages of the nations.
While there are many who say scriptural authority lies only in the
"original manuscripts," or in the extant Hebrew and Greek
manuscripts, and therefore only language scholars can interpret the
"inerrant" scriptures, Scripture itself shows how this is not the
case.
"God's Word is designed to be translated into the languages
of the people reading it and when someone says you can't successfully perfectly translate from one language to another, you can say back, 'Well, God
did!' " says Jordan.
“When scholars and seminary-types say no one can really understand
the Bible unless they know the Greek language, they're really just pushing the
false Roman Catholic notion that, ‘Well, if the priest can read it but I can't,
then I'll have to go to him for all my information.’
"Isn't that what Rome's been saying for over 1,500 years? So
it's really just another sneaky Protestant popery idea and not what the
Scripture gives you to understand."
*****
A great personality profile on the power of the King James Bible
appeared in the New York Times several years ago.
Viktor Sukhodrev is a Russian man who for three decades was the
Kremlin's chief language interpreter, including at superpower summit meetings
and other occasions involving seven American presidencies, ranging from
Eisenhower to George Bush Sr.
"Throughout the cold war, Mr. Sukhodrev was there in the
middle—low-key, reliable, professional, the English-language voice of every
Soviet leader from Krushchev to Gorbachev," writes the Times.
". . . He was present but not present, emptying himself of ego, slipping
into the skin of the man who was speaking, feeling his feelings, saying his
words."
Viktor first learned English as a young boy living in London
during the 1940s. His mother, who was separated from his father, was a member
of the Soviet Trade Mission, and while she was at work during the day,
six-year-old Viktor would tag along on the walking route of a postman who lived
upstairs.
"It was from the postman and his wife, he said, that he learned
the British manners that gave him his special grace as an interpreter,"
reports the article. ". . . When at the age of 8 he entered the
Soviet Embassy school in London, he found himself translating for school
officials on public occasions, and he liked the feeling."
Viktor says of this time, "That is when I really believed,
and never lost that belief, that when I grew up I was going to be the man in
the middle. I was going to be an interpreter. And if I was going to do that, I
felt, I was going to be damn good. Maybe the best."
He returned to Moscow at age 12 and later went on to graduate from
the city's Institute of Foreign Languages, quickly climbing to the highest
level of the Kremlin.
"He found that the interpreter, as cool as he may seem, is
often sweating much harder than the men on either side. Here at the pinnacle,
where every nuance has a nuance, the mind is a constantly whirring computer,
cleared of thought, making instant decisions."
Most importantly, there's no margin for error on the job, as
Viktor testifies: "An interpreter at that level cannot—not 'should
not'—simply cannot make a mistake. He cannot. No way. Well, if he did he'd be
out and rightly so."
Even though Viktor is now retired, living with his wife, Inga, in
their country home near Moscow, he says translating has become so much a part
of him over the years that he can't seem to stop unconsciously translating even
when reading or watching TV. When he witnesses an inexact translation made by a
lesser interpreter on television, for example, he says he wants to shout out,
"No! No!"
One of Viktor's pastimes is to take his English Bible, a Gideon KJV
he stole from a hotel room on a trip to the U.S. with Foreign Minister Andrei
Gromyko, and randomly open it to compare passages with a Russian translation of
the Bible.
"It's been stunning!" Viktor's quoted saying. "I've
been stunned by the magnificence of the translation. I feel that the Bible is
perhaps the greatest work of translation that ever appeared in the world."
As the Times revealed, "The Bible
may have held other hidden treasures for him. Formally, he was an atheist like
everyone else in the Kremlin. But, perhaps, not alone, he said, 'I was not an
unbeliever, let's say.' "
*****
Jordan tells of a missionary in Venezuela, later expelled from the
country, who worked on translating the Bible into the languages of tribal
people without a written language period.
"Families in Bolivia, too, have spent their whole lifetime
going in to a tribe in the jungle in the hills that had no written language and learning the language and developing a grammar and a
written language for them so they could then translate God's Word into their
language. We should never fail to appreciate the
heritage of the men and women who have gone before us to put the Bible into our
language."
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