Amazing! Although the draft is actually of 1 Esdras and Wisdom of Solomon, part of the intertestamental Apochrypha and not found in many editions that have only the New and Old Testaments. What happened to the translation drafts of the other 66 books? Does this mean we have more information on J. R. R. Tolkien's work (12 volumes) than we do of the original translators of the KJV bible (a fact that probably would have astonished and annoyed Tolkien)?
I meant he would be dismayed more because of his love of language and ancient translation, and contrasted to the distaste of his fans' excesses. But I looked it up, and I was surprised to find that he did read the KJV. "The exact Bibles in Tolkien's library are not publicly known, but he probably used the Catholic Douay Version, as well as the Authorized (King James) Version" [1]. "Tolkien knew well the King James Bible of 1611" [2].
[1] (https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA63&lpg=P...
[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=O5WvohegkLcC&pg=PA76&lpg=P...
Could someone explain how it is that someone discovers something that is already in a University archive? It seems people are discovering these kinds of things every few years.
Fun fact about archives: a lot of the time, people have no idea what's actually stored in them. Obviously the University didn't know they had the bible or didn't know what it was because of a lack of bookkeeping. Now they know.
I feel compelled to mention here that archives and libraries aren't the same thing.
Libraries do (or should do) collections management, whereby the librarians go through the records and find out which resources aren't being used and weed them. Ideally, if it isn't used, it's taking up space, and it's gone. This is balanced by acquisition, such that the net effect is a constant churn of what's there, so there shouldn't be much chance for anything to sit and molder where nobody knows where, let alone what, it is.
Archives don't do collections management of that sort. They do preservation, and ideally they never get rid of anything. Moldering (in a metaphorical, but hopefully not physical!) sense is very possible in an archive.
In this case, the notebook was long known to be there, but the relevant section had been cataloged as a "verse-by-verse bible commentary". What was discovered was that the verses are part of a draft for a new bible, instead of just being verses copied from an existing bible.
well, the University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and presumably their libraries have been collecting moldy old books ever since (it is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, after Oxford).
It's not exactly surprising that they might have forgotten or misplaced a few things.
Religion is a fantastical illusion of foolish beliefs.
The sooner civilization rids itself fanatical, magical thinking, the sooner there will be fewer fools blowing themselves up for 473 virgins that don't exist and telling others their happy-clappy means something. Replace all that nonsense with logic and humanism, hear and now.
Sure it is, and yes it does. And please note that I say this as an agnostic.
The King James Bible is a part of modern Western history. In fact, if you'd read the article, you would've discovered that this bible was intended to act as a bulwark against puritanical influences in England, which I'm sure you'd agree is a good thing.
Like it or not, religion is a major component of our history—and our modern world.
I'd say, modern English-speaking history. The KJV has little relevance to German-speakers, French-speakers, etc. In German, Martin Luther's translation established, more or less, what is now Hochdeutsch (or Standard Germany), and significantly predates the KJV.
Former Seminary Student here. Not really that significant for religious reasons. This is purely a Historical and Literacy finding regarding the Middle Ages.
Is it not significant because of the content (ie very similar to other texts), or because theology has such inertia that it couldn't be changed?
Suppose it definitely was the first KJB, and said something that strongly contradicted modern theology. Wouldn't modern theocrats just ignore or discredit it?
[possibly worth noting I am as cynical about politics. Suppose Americans found a "true" first version of the Constitution that clearly outlawed private citizens gun ownership* (versus miiltia). Wouldn't most gun advocates simply ignore / explain away that text? Thought experiment also requires the pretense that the differences were due to transcription changes, not actual belief changes]
* instead of "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," imagine it read, "Private citizens may own firearms if and only if, and while registered and paid entirely by a state-run militia, may access guns, but cannot use them except in their active attempts to overthrow a tyrannical government."
"Suppose it definitely was the first KJB, and said something that strongly contradicted modern theology. Wouldn't modern theocrats just ignore or discredit it?"
Only a minority of a minority of English-speaking Christians regard the KJV as having any particular authority. For most of us it's a historical translation that is culturally, and sometimes sentimentally, important.
But I doubt even KJV-inerrantists would regard a draft as authoritative. And that's what makes this document interesting -- it's a draft; we have early editions of the KJV, but surprisingly few of the translators' notes.
Firstly, this notebook contains the translation for 1 book, and the partial translation of another, neither of which are considered "scripture" by most protestant Christians.
The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have never had any particular connection to the King James bible, so there are very few churches that use (or previously used) these particular books from the King James version. Hence, it is hard to imagine that anything that would found in this notebook would be of particular theological relevance to almost anyone.
That said, if someone were to find a similar notebook for a "mainstream" book, it would still be of only minor consequence.
Even within strongly evangelical protestant churches, there is not a lot of specific theological reverence for the King James Bible. It was a remarkable achievement and did a lot to aid in the accessibility and spread of the bible in Western Europe and the colonies, but it is - in most churches - viewed as simply another translation. It was done by good people with the best of intentions, using the best manuscripts and technique available to them at the time, but that does not make it perfect, nor does it make it "scripture" in a way that another translation isn't.
We know what source material they used, and we know what they produced as output. These notebooks help understand the process by which they did that, but that's more of historical interest than anything else.
Plenty of people have undertaken the process of comparing the source material with the KJV output, so that the christian church is well aware of the relative strengths and weaknesses of that translation.
It is discovery of early source material that has the potential to cause ripples in modern christian theology - the discovery of the dead sea scrolls had a far bigger impact on modern bible translations than any KJV notebooks ever could.
There are a small number of Christian churches who believe that the KJV is "the true bible". If we found that the draft versions of the bible were greatly different than the final version, that might cause some angst for them, but generally their views are based on a form of the idea that "God protected his church by providing this bible translation" so they would simply accept that God was at working directing the translators to reject the draft version and accept the final version.
It is not "significant" because the KJV text has not changed (other than grammar or spelling) in 400 years. The KJV was translated from known sources. The only clues to be found in old KJV stuff would be how the overall translation process was laid out (which is what the article talks about)
The KJB is a (famous) English translation of the Bible, it is not some kind of original scripture or source document. So if an alternative draft was found which differed theologically it would and should have exactly zero theological implication. But it would of course be quite interesting for historical reasons.
You do realise that the King James Bible is just a fairly recent translation of a bunch of much older stuff and that we have much older Bibles written in various languages, right?
Now, a first draft of the Koran, that would put the cat among the pigeons...
> These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
> "They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam," said David Thomas, the university's professor of Christianity and Islam.
> "According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death."
> Wouldn't modern theocrats just ignore or discredit it?
If they did, so what? It isn't like they could suppress it.
> Suppose Americans found a "true" first version of the Constitution that clearly outlawed private citizens gun ownership* (versus miiltia).
Interesting hypothetical; utterly and fantastically unlikely, to the point of requiring something like time travel to achieve, but interesting nonetheless.
My answer is that it should be ignored, not because I'm a huge gun fan (I'm somewhat indifferent to them myself) but because a system of laws requires a system of stable laws subject to revision through normal legal processes, not laws subject to sudden and discontinuous revision through a process of digging up new documents.
Law is many things. One of the things it is is predictability: People are presumed to know the law, so the law is presumed to be relatively stable over time. Changes are announced, go through a process, and are then enacted. They aren't sprung on people willy-nilly because someone looked behind the right filing cabinet.
[possibly worth noting I am as cynical about politics. Suppose Americans found a "true" first version of the Constitution that clearly outlawed private citizens gun ownership * (versus miiltia). Wouldn't most gun advocates simply ignore / explain away that text? Thought experiment also requires the pretense that the differences were due to transcription changes, not actual belief changes]
* instead of "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," imagine it read, "Private citizens may own firearms if and only if, and while registered and paid entirely by a state-run militia, may access guns, but cannot use them except in their active attempts to overthrow a tyrannical government."
Compare to the New Testament, which per my limited study wasn't immediately committed to writing, and several centuries later the Church had to decide which books and which versions were canonical.
Then there's the translation problem, the original is in the common dialect of Greek from 300BC to 300AD per Wikipedia. You can read the above copy of the Bill of Rights (in person if you make the trip to D.C.) and the only issue is how the definition of words have changed (militia) or have had additional connotations added (regulated).
We also have original source texts explaining the context and details that went into drafts and then final versions, e.g. the initial justification clause, common in state constitutions of the time, was a sop thrown to the subset of the founders who were justifiably suspicious of centralized and especially standing armies, but were overruled by military leaders like George Washington, who, of course, won the Revolutionary War with the latter sort of army and wasn't at all fond of the militia system for those sorts of extremes.
Then there's all the contemporary records that make it clear that to our Founders the right to self-defense was a natural and unalienable right; compare the language of the 2nd to the language of the 1st, which was much more limited. Getting back to religion, it starts:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....
Only the Federal government is constrained (prior to the 14th Amendment), it certainly wouldn't have been accepted by states like Massachusetts which had an official state (established) religion at the time. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion#Former_state_ch...
- The colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and New Hampshire were founded by Puritan Calvinist Protestants.
- The colonies of New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were officially established under the auspices of the Church of England.
- The Colony of Maryland was founded by a charter granted in 1632 to George Calvert, secretary of state to Charles I, and his son Cecil, both recent converts to Roman Catholicism. Under their leadership many English Catholic gentry families settled in Maryland. However, the colonial government was officially neutral in religious affairs, granting toleration to all Christian groups and enjoining them to avoid actions which antagonized the others. On several occasions, low-church dissenters led insurrections which temporarily overthrew the Calvert rule. In 1689, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they acceded to de...
It's actually very significant for both religious and literary reasons. And you've also got your historical periods wrong—the King James Bible was produced in the Early Modern period, not the Middle Ages.
I was 100% wrong in time period (It was late is my only excuse)
Theologically not important find. There are no doctrines that are followed by King James version that is refuted in other versions. No doctrine is founded upon a specific version.
Also they are books in the Apocrypha which are not used by Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant for making doctrine. They are more like suggested reading except with Eastern Orthodox which canonized 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.
Former Seminary Student here. Not really that significant for religious reasons. This is purely a Historical and Literacy in the Middle Ages finding. King James version is not very important at all in academia for theology besides historical understandings (My main focus and where I was going to do my PhD). We have the original documents that the King James used and we also have MUCH better originals than the KJ.
The ESV has a lot going for it, particularly that it is both modern and embraces the "word-for-word" translation philosophy which I believe is more accurate than the "dynamic equivalence" methodology ("thought for thought" or functional, like the NIV).
(Also) Not the OP, but the Holman [http://www.hcsb.org/] has become my translation of choice.
As mentioned by other, the NASB and the ESV are also both good choices. I really like the NASB for study, but find the language choices make it a little jarring (compared the ESV or HCSB), so I tend not to use it for regular personal reading.
If you want to read the Bible smoothly there's the NLT (New Living Translation) reads very nicely for today's day and age. There's different translations for different purposes, I enjoy reading many of them. If you want to read the New Testament from a different source (most translations use Greek) there is Aramaic New Testament in Plain English (from the Peshitta Script written in Aramaic) which clears up some confusing verses in the New Testament. Such as the famous camel through the eye of a needle becomes a rope passing through the eye of a needle which reads clearer.
The NIV gets a lot of flack for not being terribly accurate, but for a translation that tries to strike a balance between reasonable accuracy and good readability, I like it. It definitely does smooth over a lot of difficulties in the original languages (see, e.g., its indefensible confusing of what exactly the Midianites and Ishmaelites are getting up to in Gen. 37:25-28), but just know that going in.
I have studied 2 years of Greek and Hebrew and some Aramaic. The more I learned of these languages the more I realized how good our own translations are. All the modern translations are good but I do have two recommendations.
New Living Translation is the best reading bible. It just is well written in sentence structure and word choices.
New Revised Standard is the best "study" translation. To me it has the best "word for word" though I must say my old Hebrew teacher HATES this version's Old Testament version's word choices. (For example NIV translate the Greek word SOMA (flesh) sinful nature, I have an issue with that. In the Old Testament there are similar things that are merely differences in opinion)
As a Linux and Open Source (Free Software) person I hate these copyrights so there are a few open license projects that I haven' dug into yet.
It's such a poor translation, it's unfortunate so many people still hold it as the one. My feeling is that being exposed to the KJV turns away a lot of people who might otherwise be interested in reading the Bible. There are so many others that are more accurate, use modern modern language, and are more accessible at the same time.
As I understand it, there are sects for whom the supremacy of the KJV is actually a matter of doctrine. If so, then it becomes the truth relative to that particular sect.
Yes, you're talking about the "KJV-Only" movement adopted by some primitive Baptists and other fundamentalist sects.
There's a big difference between KJV-onlyism and preferring the KJV over other translations. The former insists something that the KJV translators themselves never did: that the KJV is the only legitimate Bible translation, and specially favoured and preserved by God over other translations.
It's also ironic because the translation of the bible into people's native tongues from the Vulgate Latin bible was a major part of the Protestant movement in that it exposed a lot of issues in the Vulgate version which enabled the Protestants to attack Catholic doctrine.
My church/denomination (A Presbyterian denomination mostly in Scotland, but my congregation is in North America) uses the KJV as the main Bible in the pulpit. Part of this is to have a standard translation throughout the churches (while the pastor uses other translations to clarify) and partly conviction, without being KJV-only.
We prefer the Byzantine tradition manuscripts to the Alexandrian tradition. The KJV is a good translation mainly based on the Byzantine tradition, with some more sticky cases. There isn't as much work being done with the Byzantine tradition these days, as most editions being published, whether evangelical or mainline, use the Alexandrian tradition texts primarily.
I don't pretend to know or especially care about accuracy, but the semi-archaic language of the King James Version gives it a certain authoritative-sounding zing that others may lack.
"Thou shalt not kill" sounds a whole lot better than "Don't kill" even though the former has two words missing from modern English.
I agree. This is much the same as Shakespeare's plays having more impact due to their archaic language. I have seen several of his plays both in modern and original form. I thought the originals would be impossible to understand. Interestingly enough, after a few minutes, not only was I able to follow along, I enjoyed hearing my mother tongue with a strange twist. It gave the work much more impact.
Along those lines, from a literary and cultural perspective, I think most folks who want to participate in English-speaking nations would be good to have a solid literary background in the KJV. There's just too much allusion and metaphor scattered about to forgo it. There are also a bunch of second-tier texts to know, but as far as cultural impact, as far as I can see, the KSV is way out ahead of the rest.
I do not know if the same can be said of the Bhagavad Gita and Indian culture, although from what I can tell, the Koran plays a huge role in many other societies. Understanding mythical and mystical works gives interlocutors a huge common metaphorical and allegorical reserve that just isn't possible without them.
I think if you read the Sermon on the Mount (and indeed the rest of the Bible) in most languages it will carry just as much weight. The original hearers of Jesus were amazed because he taught as one who had authority, not because he used words that were "authoritative-sounding".
The message of the Bible is mind-blowing:
"Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."
It was meant to; the language of the King James Version was archaic and formal even in its own time, and for precisely the reason you mention. Of course, it's become so ingrained in our culture that the language of the KJV sounds religious precisely because it's the language of the KJV.
This is interesting to me mostly because my favorite translation is often criticized for being difficult to read because of archaic word choice. Though in this case, a lot of that may be the 'directness' of the translation from the source language (Latin).
I suppose there's a sweet spot between how authentic-sounding the translation is and how complex the diction is.
> This is interesting to me mostly because my favorite translation is often criticized for being difficult to read because of archaic word choice. Though in this case, a lot of that may be the 'directness' of the translation from the source language (Latin).
The only English Bible translation that I've ever heard criticized for readability because of the directness of its translation from a Latin (intermediary, obviously, as its not the original language of any of the books of the Bible) source is the original (before the mid-18th Century revision) Douay-Rheims.
Irrelevant to your comment, but I would like to get in touch with you to talk about settlement/closing software that you mentioned a few months ago. How can I reach you?
> I don't pretend to know or especially care about accuracy, but the semi-archaic language of the King James Version gives it a certain authoritative-sounding zing that others may lack.
I'd agree that that is among the more serious problems of the KJV (and others with a similar approach to English, e.g., the Douay-Rheims).
Several years ago, when putting together a script, we needed a biblical citation in part of it. We found the same verse, looked it up in a dozen different bibles, and found that the KJV was by far the best one to read out loud.
It's not that it's semi-archaic, I think, but rather that it was explicitly designed to be read out loud. Good text for reading out loud requires particular, natural rhythms (and pronunciation guides for those troublesome Hebrew names), and a hyper-accurate translation would favor the more accurate word choice over those that fit rhythmic flow better.
Except that they (non-KJV) are all copyrighted and thus you better not get caught reading them out loud in public or cutting and pasting quotes online.
I agree, the KJV is not the easiest to read and a new Christian might want to start on something a little easier. But it is my advice that one hopefully outgrow the easier version as quick as possible.
The KJV authors were genuine people as well. They were not bent on making a name for themselves which is what the basis for every modern translation is (other than money).
I disagree that new translations are somehow "more accurate". From a handful of older manuscripts, that disagree not only with the originals used in the KJV but they also disagree amongst themselves, we get a hodgepodge of missing sentence fragments, and re-wordings that for what ever reason where backported into the Nestle greek from which most modern translations are derived. There are plenty of books written on the topic, the most recent being: http://amzn.com/B00KTV5GM2 (note I am not advocating any particular one,nor have I read any. What I speak of is from my own personal study).
And the worst thing of all is none of the "modern bible" movements were ever lead by Christians. It was the complete opposite; lead by secularists and skeptics alike who's only goal seemed to be how many verses they could get away with removing. Verses were never added, only removed.
In the end, there was no reason for the Christian community to be involved in this. The Christians already had a bible that had proved itself to be trustworthy and well liked.
The American Standard Version is a slightly more modern revision of the KJ and is out of copyright and widely distributed online. The Standard Version and ESV build on it with successively more modern language and are in copyright.
Personally, I don't think that any edition written in English (or latin for that matter) can be close to a canonical version of the Bible... nor do I think it is necessary that one is.
There is a project, called the World Edition Bible (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_English_Bible), that is attempting to rectify this with an open-source, scholarly translated Bible. I have generally been impressed by what they're trying to do, and I think they're mostly an unequivocal step up from the ASV, but they've got a ways to go yet. If you speak Biblical Greek or Hebrew, you might take a look at volunteering; I believe they've largely updated the Gospels, but the translations for a lot of the Hebrew Bible were still a bit wanting last I looked.
Peers have mentioned updates to the ASV, and the Bibliotheca project is also updating the ASV. Interestingly, the rationale for editing the ASV given in the Kickstarter campaign [0] does not mention copyright as a factor, instead it focuses on literary factors. However, in the comments on the last update [1], amidst general grousing about the translation choice (and mainly how long the editing effort is taking) someone speculated about copyright, so maybe we'll hear more about that angle in a future update.
Hope that's not the case. Or, if it is the case, I hope it doesn't delay things further. I'm more excited by the idea of the Bibliotheca than any other thing I've backed on Kickstarter.
I currently have four sets on order. One for myself and three as gifts for some close friends. They'll be for Christmas 2016 now, which is too bad, but oh well.
I didn't meant to imply there's any potential legal issue bearing on the schedule beyond what the editing is taking for literary reasons. The comment (from someone ostensibly not in the know) suggested that out-of-copyright was a reason the ASV was selected. Whereas that hadn't been mentioned officially, my curiosity is whether that's true. I have posted a comment asking about copyright intentions for their edition.
There is no such a thing as ideal translation of the bible, simply because there is no single bible. Each tradition has a different set of sources for the biblical text. Just for the old testament you can choose between Septuagint and Massoretic texts, and we know these two traditions existed for centuries already at the time of Jesus. For the new testament, you will learn that all existing copies differ from each other, sometimes with entire chapters or even books being added or removed. Modern translations use the so-called Text Receptus, which is an invention of Erasmus. So, a translation of the bible is just like the picture of a unicorn. Most people will agree on the general shapes, but when it comes to the details there is no way to determine if it is true or not, because there is no original to compare.
Well, yes and no. We definitely have better manuscripts now, much better textual apparatus to organize and assess their variations, and much better research into what the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic words would likely have meant to their original hearers. It also suffers from some horrible printing decisions: why folks continue to print the KJV with proper names in italics, and each verse as a separate paragraph is beyond me. But the KJV was a ground-breaking translation at the time: kind of like ALGOL or something like that. Nobody uses it anymore, but its ideas were what everybody has built on. And unlike nearly any modern translation, its English style means that it has rightly become a literary classic on its own rights. Yeah, it's not the Bible I read. But for certain uses (memorization, for instance, where rhythm and style is more important than every word coming across as familiar), it can hardly be beat.
I agree with everything you say here, especially about the manuscripts, except that it isn't true that "nobody uses it anymore." AFAICT, it's still the most popular English Bible by a wide margin.
The KJV isn't perfect, and we do have better manuscripts now, but it's still a very popular Bible translation worldwide.
I know that there are various random churches and/or pastors who continue to advocate the use of the KJV, usually because of some (so far as I can tell) imaginary belief in the superiority of the Textus Receptus. But I would have thought that they were very much in the minority these days.
Still, you seem to have a point about its popularity. According to this list, it's #2 (behind the NIV) in sales. That's a lot higher than I would have expected, given how rarely I see it used or quoted in my circles.
"Allow the little children"; the original text is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." which is much clearer.
I love this kind of thing, as it reminds me of English literature classes, where the meaning and origin or words changes so much depending on word class, point in history, social story, but at some point there was a common bond.
A few weeks ago at an ATM, having keyed-in the amount I wished to withdraw, I was presented with 3 options:
Cancel
Confirm
*Correct
All of the above are verbs, but I instinctively clicked 'Correct' taking the adjective meaning "This number is correct". The machine then asked me to re-input a withdrawal amount. The machine was focused on it's action; I was focused on the context of the number.
A jarring reminder that even for everyday words, context is important. This is relevant for a historic text such as the Bible, and for our work interacting, and creating or using systems that create interaction for others.
The only modern usage of "suffer" in this sense is the phrase "to suffer fools gladly", as in "he doesn't suffer fools gladly", which means "he won't put up with fools."
I have studied 2 years of Greek and Hebrew and some Aramaic. The more I learned of these languages the more I realized how good our own translations are. All the modern translations are good but I do have two recommendations.
New Living Translation is the best reading bible. It just is well written in sentence structure and word choices.
New Revised Standard is the best "study" translation. To me it has the best "word for word" though I must say my old Hebrew teacher HATES this version's Old Testament version's word choices. (For example NIV translate the Greek word SOMA (flesh) sinful nature, I have an issue with that. In the Old Testament there are similar things that are merely differences in opinion)
As a Linux and Open Source (Free Software) person I hate these copyrights so there are a few open license projects that I haven' dug into yet.
When I'm doing scholarly work, I think that the New Revised Standard version for the Gospels and other Christian writings is hands-down the best option. Its translations can be a bit stilted, since they try as hard as possible to go word-for-word with the original, but that's exactly what you want if you're trying to do a historical analysis.
That said, I agree with your Hebrew teacher that it's not my top scholarly choice for the Hebrew bible. For that, I prefer the New Jewish Publication Society translation. Just as the NRSV, it's very easy to find with full scholarly commentary and without best-guess emendations (i.e., if the Hebrew makes no sense, or the meaning of a word has been forgotten, they will clearly mark it, rather than reaching to the Septuagint/Vulgate/Targum for a translation), but in my personal opinion, the NJPS translation is a bit more accurate.
It's hard for me to take that seriously. I'm on page 1 of chapter 1. I have a real interest in Earths' creation, but I'm also a logical person like many HN readers here.
The bible says day and night were created several days before the Sun (and each day has an morning, daylight, evening, and night period). Educated humans now know this is because of the Earth's rotation where the side of the Earth facing the sun is in daylight. The SAB I listed points out this flaw. The link you listed states "Obviously there were photons before there were stars" as it's rebuttal. I'm sorry but it's hard for me to even proceed any further. It's almost laughable.
So am I, as a logical person, supposed to believe that god is shooting various amounts of photons from his/her fingers creating these beautiful periods of morning, day, evening, and night for three days or so for no apparent reason? God hasn't created humans yet. God hasn't created plants yet. It serves no function. It's not like he's doing testing before it goes into production - the production environment uses a star (our Sun) and the Earth's rotation to create periods of day and night.
Finally, a few verses later the bible says "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." The SAB rightfully points out that the moon does not emit light - it only reflects the Sun's light. The link you provided offers the following rebuttal: "obviously the author of the SAB hasn't spend much time outside at night at full moon. That's a lot of light". Hehe..
I do find the link you provided amusing but also a bit depressing honestly. People want so much to believe that they're willing to accept a rebuttal like the one you provided without even thinking for themselves.
Those responses are made in direct response to the theological arguments made by SAB, along the lines of "This is a contradiction". "No it isn't, because X".
If you're a hard empiricist, you will find nothing in the bible of interest to your life, save for historic/anthropological curiosity. There's no point in getting into such a discussion on Hacker News, interesting as that might be.
But the specific thing you mentioned - as an omnipotent being, the very idea of our existence "has no point", let alone the order elementary building blocks of the universe came into existence (at least as described by bronze-age scribes).
Be very careful with the "this has no reason to be this way" argument, it could very well be that you don't know the reason, or that there really isn't one.
Taking pot shots at fundamentalists is fun, but is really too easy. The skeptics would be better off aiming at a really difficult target like Augustine - who (they might be a little worried to discover) can still shoot back some 1600 years later. Like most other real theologians of that time and since, Augustine was very clear that the opening chapters of Genesis were making theological statements and were not really intended to describe literal, chronological events.
Genesis 1 is like software development. Each day is a milestone, and God knows how long a day is regardless of having the sun there or not. We can nitpick all we want, but He wouldn't be God if He didn't know more than we did. Even in the small things He humbles people. In any way, I suggest what someone else mentioned, read John instead of Genesis and start from there.
Every time I read someone complaining about Genesis I feel sad because it would seem that they never even made past the first couple of pages.
A better "first time" reading plan would be to start in the book of John and through that and Acts, and Romans (they are all back to back). John shows Christ as God.
Acts shows the founding of the church and the early works, including an interesting argument in Acts 15 about some thinking that in order to become "Christian", one must first convert to Judaism.
And Romans gives a better understand of the position of the Jew, the moralist, and the Gentile before God. (and the book of Hebrews expounds on this more too)
But back to your question. There are many views to the first couple of books in Genesis. Here is my take:
In verse 3: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
Ok, "light" is created. Everything good there.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Yep, no light means, well no light.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
So "Day" and "Night" spelled with a proper capitalization. And we have the phrase "evening and the morning" mentioned with no context as to how long the "evening and the morning" are or how long a "Day" is.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Next up we clearly see the timing and "setting" of the mathematics behind our solar system, using the elements mentioned above "Day", and "Night", and even expounding into months and years.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
This is not a separate event from the last verse, this is the solution to how our days and years are timed. Instead of "And God made two great lights", think of "And so God made two great lights".
This is how I've always taken this chapter. Perhaps it is terrible, or perhaps not. But clearly, the days and evenings mentioned in the earlier verses are not in the same context or definition as we (people that live on Earth) would normally think of them as. This is also where "gap theory" comes in, but I personally reject that as well.
"So am I, as a logical person, supposed to believe that god is shooting various amounts of photons from his/her fingers creating these beautiful periods of morning, day, evening, and night for three days or so for no apparent reason?"
Just because you don't know what the reason is, doesn't mean that there isn't one.
"God hasn't created humans yet. God hasn't created plants yet. It serves no function."
Again, just because you see no function, doesn't mean there isn't one. But there are logical explanations that scholars have suggested which do make sense.
One thing you might take into consideration is that the Bible says that in Heaven there is no sun and moon, but that it is illuminated by God Himself. There is no reason that in the midst of His creating the Earth, the same could not be true. Some scholars have proposed that the reason God set the pattern of the days and nights before creating the sun and moon was because He knew some men would tend to worship the sun and moon themselves, and He wanted to make it clear that it is He who sustains the Earth, not the sun and moon. I don't know if that was the reason, though it seems quite logical to me. I am content to believe God had a good reason, and He doesn't have to tell me what it was.
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when reading the Bible, is that if something isn't explainable by natural phenomenon, they discount it entirely. But that doesn't make any sense. If you do not believe in the supernatural, then God doesn't make any sense. The whole point is that the creation is something He created, and that all of the "natural" norms we see from day to day are something that He put in place, and that He sometimes suspends for His own purposes (for instance, when Moses parted the Red Sea, or when God made the sun and moon stand still for Joshua). Even in that last example, I can hear people protesting about all the side-effects that would happen if "the sun and moon stood still". But again, the point is that everything is under God's control, and all of the interactions of matter in our universe operate as He has decided they will -- and He's under no obligation to make them always work one way. He can make it work however He wants, and that includes suspending the normal interaction of matter (normal side-effects and all) for however long and for whatever purpose He decides.
BTW, I'm not saying you are necessarily discounting anything because it requires the existence of the supernatural. I merely bring it up because I think it is relevant to the discussion.
(edited for formatting -- I keep forgetting to not indent the first lines of paragraphs :-D )
No, SAB is the worst thing ever. I have attended a few street preaching sessions near universities. Many times students would shout the most bizarre doctrines at us trying to trick us, or show how "stupid" we are. And as most "skeptics" are, they were always extremely prideful and it was very hard to get them to divulge where they got there strange ideas from, but when they would, it was always from SAB.
The people behind SAB simply went through the bible and picked out things to make fun of, completely devoid of any context, background, or doctrine.
If you are a skeptic, "bible apologetics" is what you should be googling. Not SAB, you will not learn anything from that.
I enjoy the New American Standard Bible (NASB).
It's easy to read and is very similar to the King James Version (KJV). Others I know enjoy the New King James Version.
I recommend starting in the new testament and reading Matthew through Romans if you are a first time reader. Read those several times through and see what the Bible (the Word of God) has to offer!
Whilst I'm happily a Christian, I've always believed the same about that KJV mishap, somebody somewhere did something wrong. They are mere men after all.
I think it was one of those "typo" issues we see today that really screwed up the final output. Like a tired scribe (or translator I guess) who totally didn't write an entire word, and then when they copied it over to be printed (I'm not entirely sure the way they did it, but I imagine they handwrote it first) it totally missed a word, but that's just my own view, I never truly researched it. Would be tough to figure out how and why without some sort of journal(s) from the translators themselves.
"The King James Bible is the most widely read work in English literature, a masterpiece of translation whose stately cadences and transcendent phrases have long been seen, even by secular readers, as having emerged from a kind of collective divine inspiration"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
"In 1611 the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the Old Testament 76%."
Regarding this discovery, I would argue that debates about the quality of the KJV translation are beside the point. This is a tremendous historical discovery, especially for historians of the early English Reformation. The KJV formed the mind of British Christianity for centuries, which in turn formed the mind of the British Empire. In other words, the KJV translation is important not merely for early Reformation studies, but for world history more generally. Anything that could give historians greater insight into the process of the KJV translation, as well as the theology (theologies?) of its translators, is a great discovery.
(A side-note regarding the Empire and Christianization: in the early centuries of the Empire, the British were primarily interested in trade and conquest, but not so much in evangelization and conversion of native peoples. The East India Company (EIC) was a good example of this: as long as profits and goods flowed in from India, the leaders of the EIC were content not only to leave native religions alone, but even to intermarry with native Muslims and Hindus and allow each wife to raise her children in her own particular faith tradition. Hence the creation of a new ethnicity: the Anglo-Indian. However, in the 19th century, an evangelical revival effected a sea-change in British Christianity, and thus the Empire became a vast instrument of evangelization and conversion. At this point, I think, the KJV became important for world history, rather than British history in particular.)
107 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadLibraries do (or should do) collections management, whereby the librarians go through the records and find out which resources aren't being used and weed them. Ideally, if it isn't used, it's taking up space, and it's gone. This is balanced by acquisition, such that the net effect is a constant churn of what's there, so there shouldn't be much chance for anything to sit and molder where nobody knows where, let alone what, it is.
Archives don't do collections management of that sort. They do preservation, and ideally they never get rid of anything. Moldering (in a metaphorical, but hopefully not physical!) sense is very possible in an archive.
It's not exactly surprising that they might have forgotten or misplaced a few things.
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newton/ http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/libraries
Religion is a fantastical illusion of foolish beliefs.
The sooner civilization rids itself fanatical, magical thinking, the sooner there will be fewer fools blowing themselves up for 473 virgins that don't exist and telling others their happy-clappy means something. Replace all that nonsense with logic and humanism, hear and now.
The King James Bible is a part of modern Western history. In fact, if you'd read the article, you would've discovered that this bible was intended to act as a bulwark against puritanical influences in England, which I'm sure you'd agree is a good thing.
Like it or not, religion is a major component of our history—and our modern world.
I'd say, modern English-speaking history. The KJV has little relevance to German-speakers, French-speakers, etc. In German, Martin Luther's translation established, more or less, what is now Hochdeutsch (or Standard Germany), and significantly predates the KJV.
Suppose it definitely was the first KJB, and said something that strongly contradicted modern theology. Wouldn't modern theocrats just ignore or discredit it?
[possibly worth noting I am as cynical about politics. Suppose Americans found a "true" first version of the Constitution that clearly outlawed private citizens gun ownership* (versus miiltia). Wouldn't most gun advocates simply ignore / explain away that text? Thought experiment also requires the pretense that the differences were due to transcription changes, not actual belief changes]
* instead of "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," imagine it read, "Private citizens may own firearms if and only if, and while registered and paid entirely by a state-run militia, may access guns, but cannot use them except in their active attempts to overthrow a tyrannical government."
It is of historical interest though. (And in the grand scheme of things, this story isn't that popular, plus Sunday is a slow news day.)
Only a minority of a minority of English-speaking Christians regard the KJV as having any particular authority. For most of us it's a historical translation that is culturally, and sometimes sentimentally, important.
But I doubt even KJV-inerrantists would regard a draft as authoritative. And that's what makes this document interesting -- it's a draft; we have early editions of the KJV, but surprisingly few of the translators' notes.
The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have never had any particular connection to the King James bible, so there are very few churches that use (or previously used) these particular books from the King James version. Hence, it is hard to imagine that anything that would found in this notebook would be of particular theological relevance to almost anyone.
That said, if someone were to find a similar notebook for a "mainstream" book, it would still be of only minor consequence.
Even within strongly evangelical protestant churches, there is not a lot of specific theological reverence for the King James Bible. It was a remarkable achievement and did a lot to aid in the accessibility and spread of the bible in Western Europe and the colonies, but it is - in most churches - viewed as simply another translation. It was done by good people with the best of intentions, using the best manuscripts and technique available to them at the time, but that does not make it perfect, nor does it make it "scripture" in a way that another translation isn't.
We know what source material they used, and we know what they produced as output. These notebooks help understand the process by which they did that, but that's more of historical interest than anything else.
Plenty of people have undertaken the process of comparing the source material with the KJV output, so that the christian church is well aware of the relative strengths and weaknesses of that translation.
It is discovery of early source material that has the potential to cause ripples in modern christian theology - the discovery of the dead sea scrolls had a far bigger impact on modern bible translations than any KJV notebooks ever could.
There are a small number of Christian churches who believe that the KJV is "the true bible". If we found that the draft versions of the bible were greatly different than the final version, that might cause some angst for them, but generally their views are based on a form of the idea that "God protected his church by providing this bible translation" so they would simply accept that God was at working directing the translators to reject the draft version and accept the final version.
Now, a first draft of the Koran, that would put the cat among the pigeons...
And there's this one too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33436021
> These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
> "They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam," said David Thomas, the university's professor of Christianity and Islam.
> "According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death."
If they did, so what? It isn't like they could suppress it.
> Suppose Americans found a "true" first version of the Constitution that clearly outlawed private citizens gun ownership* (versus miiltia).
Interesting hypothetical; utterly and fantastically unlikely, to the point of requiring something like time travel to achieve, but interesting nonetheless.
My answer is that it should be ignored, not because I'm a huge gun fan (I'm somewhat indifferent to them myself) but because a system of laws requires a system of stable laws subject to revision through normal legal processes, not laws subject to sudden and discontinuous revision through a process of digging up new documents.
Law is many things. One of the things it is is predictability: People are presumed to know the law, so the law is presumed to be relatively stable over time. Changes are announced, go through a process, and are then enacted. They aren't sprung on people willy-nilly because someone looked behind the right filing cabinet.
* instead of "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," imagine it read, "Private citizens may own firearms if and only if, and while registered and paid entirely by a state-run militia, may access guns, but cannot use them except in their active attempts to overthrow a tyrannical government."
This would be pretty hard to arrange, seeing as:
We have the original source texts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, see http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_downloads...
Compare to the New Testament, which per my limited study wasn't immediately committed to writing, and several centuries later the Church had to decide which books and which versions were canonical.
Then there's the translation problem, the original is in the common dialect of Greek from 300BC to 300AD per Wikipedia. You can read the above copy of the Bill of Rights (in person if you make the trip to D.C.) and the only issue is how the definition of words have changed (militia) or have had additional connotations added (regulated).
We also have original source texts explaining the context and details that went into drafts and then final versions, e.g. the initial justification clause, common in state constitutions of the time, was a sop thrown to the subset of the founders who were justifiably suspicious of centralized and especially standing armies, but were overruled by military leaders like George Washington, who, of course, won the Revolutionary War with the latter sort of army and wasn't at all fond of the militia system for those sorts of extremes.
Then there's all the contemporary records that make it clear that to our Founders the right to self-defense was a natural and unalienable right; compare the language of the 2nd to the language of the 1st, which was much more limited. Getting back to religion, it starts:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....
Only the Federal government is constrained (prior to the 14th Amendment), it certainly wouldn't have been accepted by states like Massachusetts which had an official state (established) religion at the time. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion#Former_state_ch...
- The colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and New Hampshire were founded by Puritan Calvinist Protestants.
- The colonies of New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were officially established under the auspices of the Church of England.
- The Colony of Maryland was founded by a charter granted in 1632 to George Calvert, secretary of state to Charles I, and his son Cecil, both recent converts to Roman Catholicism. Under their leadership many English Catholic gentry families settled in Maryland. However, the colonial government was officially neutral in religious affairs, granting toleration to all Christian groups and enjoining them to avoid actions which antagonized the others. On several occasions, low-church dissenters led insurrections which temporarily overthrew the Calvert rule. In 1689, when William and Mary came to the English throne, they acceded to de...
Theologically not important find. There are no doctrines that are followed by King James version that is refuted in other versions. No doctrine is founded upon a specific version. Also they are books in the Apocrypha which are not used by Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant for making doctrine. They are more like suggested reading except with Eastern Orthodox which canonized 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.
As mentioned by other, the NASB and the ESV are also both good choices. I really like the NASB for study, but find the language choices make it a little jarring (compared the ESV or HCSB), so I tend not to use it for regular personal reading.
If you want to read the Bible smoothly there's the NLT (New Living Translation) reads very nicely for today's day and age. There's different translations for different purposes, I enjoy reading many of them. If you want to read the New Testament from a different source (most translations use Greek) there is Aramaic New Testament in Plain English (from the Peshitta Script written in Aramaic) which clears up some confusing verses in the New Testament. Such as the famous camel through the eye of a needle becomes a rope passing through the eye of a needle which reads clearer.
I have studied 2 years of Greek and Hebrew and some Aramaic. The more I learned of these languages the more I realized how good our own translations are. All the modern translations are good but I do have two recommendations. New Living Translation is the best reading bible. It just is well written in sentence structure and word choices. New Revised Standard is the best "study" translation. To me it has the best "word for word" though I must say my old Hebrew teacher HATES this version's Old Testament version's word choices. (For example NIV translate the Greek word SOMA (flesh) sinful nature, I have an issue with that. In the Old Testament there are similar things that are merely differences in opinion) As a Linux and Open Source (Free Software) person I hate these copyrights so there are a few open license projects that I haven' dug into yet.
There's a big difference between KJV-onlyism and preferring the KJV over other translations. The former insists something that the KJV translators themselves never did: that the KJV is the only legitimate Bible translation, and specially favoured and preserved by God over other translations.
We prefer the Byzantine tradition manuscripts to the Alexandrian tradition. The KJV is a good translation mainly based on the Byzantine tradition, with some more sticky cases. There isn't as much work being done with the Byzantine tradition these days, as most editions being published, whether evangelical or mainline, use the Alexandrian tradition texts primarily.
"Thou shalt not kill" sounds a whole lot better than "Don't kill" even though the former has two words missing from modern English.
Along those lines, from a literary and cultural perspective, I think most folks who want to participate in English-speaking nations would be good to have a solid literary background in the KJV. There's just too much allusion and metaphor scattered about to forgo it. There are also a bunch of second-tier texts to know, but as far as cultural impact, as far as I can see, the KSV is way out ahead of the rest.
I do not know if the same can be said of the Bhagavad Gita and Indian culture, although from what I can tell, the Koran plays a huge role in many other societies. Understanding mythical and mystical works gives interlocutors a huge common metaphorical and allegorical reserve that just isn't possible without them.
>"Hitchens called the contemporary version "pancake-flat" and more suited for 'a basement meeting of A.A.'"
The message of the Bible is mind-blowing:
"Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."
Isaiah 1:18, circa 700 years before Christ.
I suppose there's a sweet spot between how authentic-sounding the translation is and how complex the diction is.
The only English Bible translation that I've ever heard criticized for readability because of the directness of its translation from a Latin (intermediary, obviously, as its not the original language of any of the books of the Bible) source is the original (before the mid-18th Century revision) Douay-Rheims.
I'd agree that that is among the more serious problems of the KJV (and others with a similar approach to English, e.g., the Douay-Rheims).
It's not that it's semi-archaic, I think, but rather that it was explicitly designed to be read out loud. Good text for reading out loud requires particular, natural rhythms (and pronunciation guides for those troublesome Hebrew names), and a hyper-accurate translation would favor the more accurate word choice over those that fit rhythmic flow better.
I agree, the KJV is not the easiest to read and a new Christian might want to start on something a little easier. But it is my advice that one hopefully outgrow the easier version as quick as possible.
The KJV authors were genuine people as well. They were not bent on making a name for themselves which is what the basis for every modern translation is (other than money).
I disagree that new translations are somehow "more accurate". From a handful of older manuscripts, that disagree not only with the originals used in the KJV but they also disagree amongst themselves, we get a hodgepodge of missing sentence fragments, and re-wordings that for what ever reason where backported into the Nestle greek from which most modern translations are derived. There are plenty of books written on the topic, the most recent being: http://amzn.com/B00KTV5GM2 (note I am not advocating any particular one,nor have I read any. What I speak of is from my own personal study).
And the worst thing of all is none of the "modern bible" movements were ever lead by Christians. It was the complete opposite; lead by secularists and skeptics alike who's only goal seemed to be how many verses they could get away with removing. Verses were never added, only removed.
In the end, there was no reason for the Christian community to be involved in this. The Christians already had a bible that had proved itself to be trustworthy and well liked.
Comparison between the three:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+1&version=...
Personally, I don't think that any edition written in English (or latin for that matter) can be close to a canonical version of the Bible... nor do I think it is necessary that one is.
It is based on the ASV but is being translated to avoid copyright.
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/530877925/bibliotheca/d...
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/530877925/bibliotheca/p...
I currently have four sets on order. One for myself and three as gifts for some close friends. They'll be for Christmas 2016 now, which is too bad, but oh well.
The KJV isn't perfect, and we do have better manuscripts now, but it's still a very popular Bible translation worldwide.
Still, you seem to have a point about its popularity. According to this list, it's #2 (behind the NIV) in sales. That's a lot higher than I would have expected, given how rarely I see it used or quoted in my circles.
http://thomrainer.com/2014/12/top-ten-bible-translations-201...
"Suffer little children"
Singing "Suffer little children" in church always struck me as odd. As a kid, I'd puzzle over why Jesus would say "suffer".
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19%3A14...
A similar usage in the KJV is "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live", which means "You shall not allow a witch to live".
http://biblehub.com/kjv/exodus/22-18.htm
> tolerate.
> "France will no longer suffer the existing government"
> synonyms: tolerate, put up with, bear, brook, stand, abide, endure, support, accept, weather; More
"Those children aren't annoying, they're welcome in my churchy stuff"
A few weeks ago at an ATM, having keyed-in the amount I wished to withdraw, I was presented with 3 options: Cancel Confirm *Correct
All of the above are verbs, but I instinctively clicked 'Correct' taking the adjective meaning "This number is correct". The machine then asked me to re-input a withdrawal amount. The machine was focused on it's action; I was focused on the context of the number.
A jarring reminder that even for everyday words, context is important. This is relevant for a historic text such as the Bible, and for our work interacting, and creating or using systems that create interaction for others.
http://1828.mshaffer.com/d/search/word,suffer
>"To allow; to permit; not to forbid or hinder. Will you suffer yourself to be insulted?"
:)
New Living Translation is the best reading bible. It just is well written in sentence structure and word choices.
New Revised Standard is the best "study" translation. To me it has the best "word for word" though I must say my old Hebrew teacher HATES this version's Old Testament version's word choices. (For example NIV translate the Greek word SOMA (flesh) sinful nature, I have an issue with that. In the Old Testament there are similar things that are merely differences in opinion)
As a Linux and Open Source (Free Software) person I hate these copyrights so there are a few open license projects that I haven' dug into yet.
That said, I agree with your Hebrew teacher that it's not my top scholarly choice for the Hebrew bible. For that, I prefer the New Jewish Publication Society translation. Just as the NRSV, it's very easy to find with full scholarly commentary and without best-guess emendations (i.e., if the Hebrew makes no sense, or the meaning of a word has been forgotten, they will clearly mark it, rather than reaching to the Septuagint/Vulgate/Targum for a translation), but in my personal opinion, the NJPS translation is a bit more accurate.
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
The author of SAB fell into the snarky dismissal trap in more than a few places. It cheapens the work greatly.
The bible says day and night were created several days before the Sun (and each day has an morning, daylight, evening, and night period). Educated humans now know this is because of the Earth's rotation where the side of the Earth facing the sun is in daylight. The SAB I listed points out this flaw. The link you listed states "Obviously there were photons before there were stars" as it's rebuttal. I'm sorry but it's hard for me to even proceed any further. It's almost laughable.
So am I, as a logical person, supposed to believe that god is shooting various amounts of photons from his/her fingers creating these beautiful periods of morning, day, evening, and night for three days or so for no apparent reason? God hasn't created humans yet. God hasn't created plants yet. It serves no function. It's not like he's doing testing before it goes into production - the production environment uses a star (our Sun) and the Earth's rotation to create periods of day and night.
Finally, a few verses later the bible says "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." The SAB rightfully points out that the moon does not emit light - it only reflects the Sun's light. The link you provided offers the following rebuttal: "obviously the author of the SAB hasn't spend much time outside at night at full moon. That's a lot of light". Hehe..
I do find the link you provided amusing but also a bit depressing honestly. People want so much to believe that they're willing to accept a rebuttal like the one you provided without even thinking for themselves.
If you're a hard empiricist, you will find nothing in the bible of interest to your life, save for historic/anthropological curiosity. There's no point in getting into such a discussion on Hacker News, interesting as that might be.
But the specific thing you mentioned - as an omnipotent being, the very idea of our existence "has no point", let alone the order elementary building blocks of the universe came into existence (at least as described by bronze-age scribes).
Be very careful with the "this has no reason to be this way" argument, it could very well be that you don't know the reason, or that there really isn't one.
A better "first time" reading plan would be to start in the book of John and through that and Acts, and Romans (they are all back to back). John shows Christ as God.
Acts shows the founding of the church and the early works, including an interesting argument in Acts 15 about some thinking that in order to become "Christian", one must first convert to Judaism.
And Romans gives a better understand of the position of the Jew, the moralist, and the Gentile before God. (and the book of Hebrews expounds on this more too)
But back to your question. There are many views to the first couple of books in Genesis. Here is my take:
In verse 3: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
Ok, "light" is created. Everything good there.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Yep, no light means, well no light.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
So "Day" and "Night" spelled with a proper capitalization. And we have the phrase "evening and the morning" mentioned with no context as to how long the "evening and the morning" are or how long a "Day" is.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Next up we clearly see the timing and "setting" of the mathematics behind our solar system, using the elements mentioned above "Day", and "Night", and even expounding into months and years.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
This is not a separate event from the last verse, this is the solution to how our days and years are timed. Instead of "And God made two great lights", think of "And so God made two great lights".
This is how I've always taken this chapter. Perhaps it is terrible, or perhaps not. But clearly, the days and evenings mentioned in the earlier verses are not in the same context or definition as we (people that live on Earth) would normally think of them as. This is also where "gap theory" comes in, but I personally reject that as well.
Just because you don't know what the reason is, doesn't mean that there isn't one.
"God hasn't created humans yet. God hasn't created plants yet. It serves no function."
Again, just because you see no function, doesn't mean there isn't one. But there are logical explanations that scholars have suggested which do make sense.
One thing you might take into consideration is that the Bible says that in Heaven there is no sun and moon, but that it is illuminated by God Himself. There is no reason that in the midst of His creating the Earth, the same could not be true. Some scholars have proposed that the reason God set the pattern of the days and nights before creating the sun and moon was because He knew some men would tend to worship the sun and moon themselves, and He wanted to make it clear that it is He who sustains the Earth, not the sun and moon. I don't know if that was the reason, though it seems quite logical to me. I am content to believe God had a good reason, and He doesn't have to tell me what it was.
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when reading the Bible, is that if something isn't explainable by natural phenomenon, they discount it entirely. But that doesn't make any sense. If you do not believe in the supernatural, then God doesn't make any sense. The whole point is that the creation is something He created, and that all of the "natural" norms we see from day to day are something that He put in place, and that He sometimes suspends for His own purposes (for instance, when Moses parted the Red Sea, or when God made the sun and moon stand still for Joshua). Even in that last example, I can hear people protesting about all the side-effects that would happen if "the sun and moon stood still". But again, the point is that everything is under God's control, and all of the interactions of matter in our universe operate as He has decided they will -- and He's under no obligation to make them always work one way. He can make it work however He wants, and that includes suspending the normal interaction of matter (normal side-effects and all) for however long and for whatever purpose He decides.
BTW, I'm not saying you are necessarily discounting anything because it requires the existence of the supernatural. I merely bring it up because I think it is relevant to the discussion.
(edited for formatting -- I keep forgetting to not indent the first lines of paragraphs :-D )
The people behind SAB simply went through the bible and picked out things to make fun of, completely devoid of any context, background, or doctrine.
If you are a skeptic, "bible apologetics" is what you should be googling. Not SAB, you will not learn anything from that.
Now does the draft contain the famous "Thou shalt commit adultery"? I bet they just blamed the typesetter but really ... :-)
I would of course be very surprised anyone meant to put it in maliciously.
"The King James Bible is the most widely read work in English literature, a masterpiece of translation whose stately cadences and transcendent phrases have long been seen, even by secular readers, as having emerged from a kind of collective divine inspiration"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale "In 1611 the 54 scholars who produced the King James Bible drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as from translations that descended from his. One estimate suggests the New Testament in the King James Version is 83% Tyndale's and the Old Testament 76%."
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1619318.ece
It's certainly interesting to get a view into a the processes behind a a four hundred year old, geographically distributed, 50 scholar collaboration.
(A side-note regarding the Empire and Christianization: in the early centuries of the Empire, the British were primarily interested in trade and conquest, but not so much in evangelization and conversion of native peoples. The East India Company (EIC) was a good example of this: as long as profits and goods flowed in from India, the leaders of the EIC were content not only to leave native religions alone, but even to intermarry with native Muslims and Hindus and allow each wife to raise her children in her own particular faith tradition. Hence the creation of a new ethnicity: the Anglo-Indian. However, in the 19th century, an evangelical revival effected a sea-change in British Christianity, and thus the Empire became a vast instrument of evangelization and conversion. At this point, I think, the KJV became important for world history, rather than British history in particular.)
I've read this many times, but is it true? Are there real sources to support this claim?