Religion

Topic 5:

We looked at various translations of the biblical texts ranging from the early English vernacular prose of William Tyndale to the King James Version in 1611. Focusing on the changes in each of the four versions of 1 Corinthians 13 provided in the text, discuss how Ciceronian or anti-Ciceronian sentences and the changing prose style affects interpretation. Does it open it?   Close it?

The translation of the New Testament, prior the reformation of England, was considered highly controversial and blasphemous according to the Catholic church.   In 1525, English Lutheran William Tyndale successfully translated the New Testament, giving rise to the first available English bible, dubbed “The Great Bible” (Norton Anthology 813).   Following the Great Bible, Mary I deemed it necessary to have a scholarly Protestant English bible and created the “Geneva Bible” (Norton 815), implemented in 1560.   Afterwards, when the Catholic Elizabeth came to the throne, she revised the Geneva Bible and created the Duoay-Rheims version of the New Testament. Lastly, King James I and multiple scholars fully revised the Duoay-Rheims version to give birth to the more modern “King James Bible”, still used to this day.   These multiple translations and revisions of the New Testament give rise to different interpretations of the Bible, with different sentence structure and words such as the Protestant's “love” set against the Catholic's “charity”.

William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament, named “The Great Bible”, from the original Latin scriptures contains a much more indirect sentence structure in comparison to modern prose.   This translation contains a very elegant and grand sentence structure compared to   later New Testament versions.   The usage of tripartite sentences is common (“ And though I could prophesy, and understood all secrets, and all knowledge” (Norton 619)) following the nature of Ciceronian sentence structure.   Perhaps the most important difference is the...