Oh, sorry. I keep using the wrong term. I meant that the copies of the original manuscripts never say "If anyone should add to this book...ect." I accidentally say original manuscripts all the time.
No, this translator, Jeff Benner, and the scholars he's sourced are Christians, some from the 1800s, 1900s, and today. Benner is more about teaching people how to translate and how to research translation for themselves rather than trying to convey his beliefs. I'll explain here shortly.
And what I'm talking about is the actual 1611 translation of the KJV, not the 1633.
Basically, what happened was, Jeff Benner, a Christian, was reading the Bible back in 1996 and noticed that something didn't make sense with the translation. So he started looking into the original Hebrew language and it started to make more sense. He realized that the translators had not conveyed the message very well from one culture to another. As he research translation more, he found that translation isn't just about translating one word from one language to its equal word in the next language. The words in one language identify that culture's way of thinking and their concepts to another language. And if a culture thinks completely differently than our culture, and they have completely different words than our culture, it will be very difficult to convey their ideas and their thinking into our culture's ideas and thinking. Why? Because our concepts are different than their concepts, which means our word meanings are very different than their word meanings.
My wife is from Taiwan (she's Caucasian, but she was a missionary kid from age 0-12). She tried to tell me this Chinese saying one time. She said that this tiny little phrase in Chinese is not translatable into English. She said the best she could do is give me an idea what what it meant. When she was finished trying to explain it, she said, "I didn't do a very good job. English just doesn't have the words and concepts for me to convey what this saying means." That's what I remembered when I started reading Jeff Benner's stuff.
He said that he got tired of reading translators' opinions and wanted to learn the language for himself. Once he learned Biblical Hebrew, he started learning the Ancient Hebrew culture, because he realized that the great scholars of translation all said that if you truly want to know what a word means, you need to forget the Strongs and go back to the original culture's way of life and learn how they wrote, how they thought, etc. So he started studying the scholars' work on the ways, the thinking, and the writing styles of the Ancient Hebrews. He realized that a language is how a culture expresses their way of thinking, which is entrenched in their lifestyle. Once a person realizes this, they understand how incredibly hard it is to understand the manuscript ideas, then try to convey them into a different language. I don't want to go too deep into this in a chat forum. It's something one must learn for oneself.
Benner encourages people to learn the picture language for themselves, and learn the Abrahamic nomadic culture, and then read it for themselves and come to their own conclusions. He said that he did his very best to get rid of his old beliefs, and entrench himself in the mind of an Ancient Hebrew of Abraham's time while he translated. He and those who help him translate do their best to see the world from the Ancient Hebrew's eyes, roaming nomadically as sheep herders and all the other things that culture was. They translate from that foundation rather than any preconceived ideas of religion like most people do (like the translators you're describing have done--really, that's what nearly all translators have done).
When we've talked on the phone in the past, I saw that you're a smart guy who's really seeking truth. Me telling you this stuff isn't actually going to help much. If you want to go look at Benner's stuff yourself, that's where you'll start to see his background in translation and how he does it. He does a great job with his videos on YouTube. They're nearly professional level documentaries. Great stuff. It's a very quick way to learn some foundations of translation. What I did was started reading the original Hebrew Word meanings from Benner's website. When I saw how loving a God they painted, and how much sense that made with how Jesus treated people, I began realizing where I'd gone wrong in my research.
Benner is more about teaching how to translate, and what words mean, and what the culture was like back then. He does this so other people can learn to translate objectively rather than through their religious teachings. Or if a person isn't interested in that, he tries to educate a person enough to know what the original words meant so they can figure this stuff out as they read. I like that about him. He doesn't seem to be pushing a certain belief on anyone. He seems to be trying to educate people about how to translate. That's very refreshing.
Real quick, I'll give you an example of something Benner translated and discusses that's pretty cool. He says the word "create" in Genesis 1:1 and the word "made" in Genesis 1:24-28 (the making of Adam) is the same Hebrew word. We think of that word in Genesis 1:1 as "creating" out of nothing, and yet in Genesis 1:24-28, we think of God "making" Adam out of clay that already exists. So, our concept of the word may be off. So he goes and finds the word used later in scripture. The word "fatten"--in scriptural context, the Bible talks about fattening the calf for a meal--is the same word as "create" and "make." Benner says that when you research the Ancient Hebrew picture language, you start to see where that word came from, and you start to understand what it means. He says that the word is associated with filling of something that exists, like fattening the calf. That's where it came from. It means to fill something up. So, when Adam had a spirit put into him, he was "filled up" with God's "image," or more accurate, God's "shadow." At least that's how the Ancient Hebrew put it. A shadow of the original. He truly tries to educate people on the word origins and meanings so they can learn this stuff, not so he can spread his ideas like other translations do. Here are some links if you'd like to watch some of his videos. It's like watching the History Channel kind of. lol I highly recommend the History of the Hebrew Language video Benner has. Great presentation of how the language came to be and how it evolved and what tough a tough job translators have translating this stuff. And I'll share one link to a very cool page on his website that gives the Ancient Hebrew picture language word meanings of 36 of some of the most important words in the Bible.
Jeff Benner's Website: Ancient Hebrew Research Center - Word Meanings: God
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/27_god.htmlJeff Benner's YouTube Page
A History of Hebrew: Its Langauge and Philosophy:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0E346CF634AD0E30 (just hit play all for this series)
Jeff Benner's YouTube Page (lost of stuff here to watch)
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6JJpa_DEnsRZEgGk7yEGAQEnjoy! It's very enlightening to learn how translation works, and to see through the eyes of the Ancient Hebrew instead of just having to trust the translators' opinions. Cool stuff.
