I do not know if this is related to this comments but if you are reading The London Review of Books so that you do not have to read the whole book, maybe it is. I do not watch movies much anymore. Sometime though I want to know what a movie is all about. So, I just read the wikipedia plot review on it. It saves me the time by not having to sit through much tedium but I get a scenes of what it is about.
I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
I am an atheist but I have read a little bit of the bible, mostly early OT. I recommend reading a scholarly / literal translation, because there is a lot of nuance in the Hebrew
The King James Version! I'd only recommend modern translations as a second point of reference when trying to interpret a difficult verse, or for looking at how modern critical editions of the NT differ from the traditional Byzantine NT. When a verse is difficult to read in the KJV, that's usually because the original text is difficult/ambiguous. Modern editions tend to pave over those difficult/ambiguous passages with a "clear" but opinionated reading, while the KJV provides a more literal rendering of what's in the source text.
My favorite example: see how all mainstream modern editions (NRSV, NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB, and even the NKJV) say "every man" (or something along those lines), rather than "any that pisseth against the wall" (literal rendering of the Hebrew):
<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Samuel%2025%3A22" rel="nofollow">https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Samuel%2025%3A22
I personally like the term "biblical English" as a description of the KJV's dialect. It's not really representative of early modern English, as it often uses non-standard grammar to preserve the word order and cadence of the source texts.
I would be less confident about that, there are false friends in EME and most modern readers would benefit from not having the added complication.
(I don't have a theology degree, but I do have an English degree. I have read parts of KJV, and it has literary significance, but it is not attempting to be a bare literal translation)
It's usually pretty obvious when a word means something different than what you think it means, because the verse won't make any sense. And stopping for a moment to resolve that confusion is always a good learning experience. You either learn something about English, about Hebrew/Greek, or about the text's cultural context or how it's been historically understood.
Tomte · · focus · HN ↗
tocs3 · · focus · HN ↗
I have been reading The Bible. It has been a long time project and I have a long ways to go. I am much more agnostic that a true believer but it has been interesting. Hearing popular views about it and Christianity vs. reading The Book is sort of like the difference between reading a novel and watching the based on movie.
zero_shift · · focus · HN ↗
tocs3 · · focus · HN ↗
I have been wanting to read Donald Knuth's "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated".
throwaway093020 · · focus · HN ↗
My favorite example: see how all mainstream modern editions (NRSV, NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB, and even the NKJV) say "every man" (or something along those lines), rather than "any that pisseth against the wall" (literal rendering of the Hebrew): <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Samuel%2025%3A22" rel="nofollow">https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Samuel%2025%3A22
zero_shift · · focus · HN ↗
throwaway093020 · · focus · HN ↗
zero_shift · · focus · HN ↗
(I don't have a theology degree, but I do have an English degree. I have read parts of KJV, and it has literary significance, but it is not attempting to be a bare literal translation)
throwaway093020 · · focus · HN ↗