With all this emphasis on the economy and union issues, I have not had much religion to talk about…until now.
A new bible translation is coming out on Ash Wednesday. This is a new Catholic Bible translation and it has been in the works for 17 tears according to the publisher.
The aim of the new translation was to modernize the language and make it clearer for today’s readers especially the younger ones.
A good example is the word “booty” which for older people means something a pirate gets after plundering a ship or a town. Today, many people are familiar with “shake your booty” which obviously has nothing to do with “spoils of war” which is what the word “booty” will now be translated as “spoils of war”. There are many other examples such as this one.
The one translation that interested me the most was ISAIAH 7:14 of the Old Testament which foretells the coming of Jesus from a virgin. Most scholars have always maintained that this was a mistranslation from the original Greek. Some say that this error was known to the earliest Christian scholars including St. Augustine
The passage in Isaiah should have read “young” woman and not a “virgin” woman. To many, the Church’s teaching that Mary was a perpetual “virgin” came in part, from this erroneous translation so I am surprised that the new Bible is admitting that the word “virgin” is not the correct word. The Church points out quickly that this does not change the Church’s teaching that Mary, mother of Jesus was a perpetual virgin and is venerated as the Virgin Mary Mother of God.
I just want to point out here that the doctrine of the IMMACULATE CONCEPTION (made dogma in 1854 by Pope Pius IX) is actually about the conception of Mary herself by her parents as being “without original sin” and not about the conception of Jesus.
The term “virgin” has always been problematic for the Catholic Church because the Bible refers to Jesus and his siblings (brothers and sisters) some of whom were older than Jesus.
I have always found this issue to be quite interesting and understand that the Catholic Church can never reverse itself on core beliefs even though it has apparently admitted that the original use of the word “virgin” instead of “young” woman was an error of translation.
This is a heavy issue which usually does not matter to anybody except religious scholar nuts like me…but it does add credence to the concept that religion was “developed” through the ages based on information that was not always “correct”…the emphasis here is on developed by humans as opposed to a “divine” creation.
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