Blacksword said:
Speaking of mistranslations I have heard that the verse that is usually translated as something like if you divorce your spouse and marry another person you commit adultry, should be translated as you will be stigmatized as comminiting adultry.
If I recall correctly it has something to do with the fact that the greek verb is in the passive tense and was translated in the active sense or something like that.
Hehe...I know this one off the top of my head. Frightening, yes?
This is how the Catholic New American Bible (NAB) lists for Matthew 19:8-9:
"He said to them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the
marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery."
Now this is what the NIV translates (again, why I'm disgusted with the NIV):
"Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for
marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
The contentious word is "porneia," a Greek word that literally means "blood mixing." It is a reference, however, to Leviticus' purity laws, and, because Matthew is originally a Jewish Christian text (i.e., they believed in upholding the
entire Mosaic Law, including dietary restrictions), they were concerned with such things that would not necessarily apply to us Gentile Christians. The Catholic translation is ambiguous, but puts it the most correctly: this
is about Mosaic Law, not infidelity. If I had to translate this, I would have translated "porneia" as "incestuous," because the Leviticus purity laws literally read out like this: "A son cannot marry his mother," etc. But, again, because this is an argument of Mosaic Law, we are not subject to it anyway, due to our Pauline Gentile Christian ancestry.
So where did this adultery "exception clause" originate? The King James Bible, where they merely mistranslated "porneia." However, since this was the first English Bible for the masses, versus the Latin Bibles that clergy read to the masses, people actually believe in this "exception clause." However, it is terribly wrong. Jesus is against divorce in all instances of the Gospels, if translated correctly.
Melon