To Translate or Not to Translate

Continuing on with the KJV update, I've made it through the gospels and have started on Ephesians. It's relatively short, and I didn't want to jump into Acts right away. However, Ephesians is incredibly dense. The gospels seemed a lot looser linguistically, not that I'm an expert. They just seemed a lot easier to work with and understand. Paul had a professional doing his writing, so maybe that's the difference. I suppose I could look it up, if I get overly curious. Acts was written by Luke. Maybe it would have been easier after all.

As I'm going through this and updating the old-fashioned words to modern words, I keep finding things that need retranslation. I've mentioned this problem before and how that's not something I should be doing. I'm not a Greek expert. A good example of something I've found is John 21:8. In the KJV is says, And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. The word 'for' usually should be 'because'. I let it slide this time, at least so far. I may change it in the re-check. The problem is the phrase 'but as it were two hundred cubits'. In Greek the word translated 'but' means several things. The phrase 'as it were' is one word in Greek, and it means a lot of things: as, like, even as, which how, that is, that, to wit, etc. None of it is exactly 'as it were". Right after that is the word off, which also has a list of translations and was not translated into English.

What the KJV guy(s) put makes sense, but it's not quite what the words I'm looking up really mean. Every time I find something like this I struggle with whether to "fix" it or not. One thing I can do is check some of the other Textus Receptus manuscripts. The problem with those is they either copy from the KJV, or the KJV was copied from them, which doesn't help. This verse was partly copied.

This is one of the very rare times I went ahead and "fixed" it. In the update it says, And the other disciples came in a little ship; (because they were not far from land, notwithstanding as much as two hundred cubits off,) dragging the net with the fish. I went ahead and changed 'for' to 'because'. I think since would be a better word, but it's not in the lexicons I was just checking. It's in another one but would need more study, because of the conditions for usage. Offhand, it looks like since would only be correct if it came at the beginning of the sentence. Ugh. I know it's the right word, but. 'Little ship' could be rendered as boat, but I let it slide, since it's talking about professional fishermen.

Anyway, now it's updated to more modern English and is more literal to the Greek. It's pretty cool finding out what a lot of these verses actually say. This one wasn't a huge revelation, but it's easier to read and understand now. Although it's a good word, I may change notwithstanding later. :) Perhaps to 'nevertheless as much as two hundred cubits off'.

Did you know Yoda is a Hebrew name? It'll be in the update with a spelling of Yodah. Little Easter egg there. :)

Enough of that. I have something that could use some prayer support. A couple of weeks ago, it seemed like God showed me something for my life that doesn't seem to be for the near future. Not without drastic change anyway. I wasn't sure, so I prayed for confirmation. The answer seemed to be 'wait'. Hmm. I'm not sure what to make of that. Maybe God was showing me something that depends on something that needs to happen in someone else's life? The speculation could be endless. Without going into detail in case I'm completely mistaken about the whole thing, it would be an open door that doesn't seem to be the direction I was heading. I think it would require moving out of state, which would be a substantial disruption and a good reason for telling me ahead of time. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not 100% sure it's even God. Hence the prayer support. At the very least I need more patience for waiting. Thanks for anything you can do. If it is God and not a mistake, there will be more later and pics as soon as possible. hehe

Have a great weekend.

Finding the Humor

I've been continuing on with the KJV update. Quite a bit of it's tedious. They used the word unto the way we use to. Having to change 99% or more of those gets old after a while. But it's been pretty educational. I've been going verse by verse checking most of them against the Greek. It's been interesting to see the choices the KJV translators made and what they considered translation versus paraphrasing and such. Amid all that I found a verse that made me laugh, once I saw what it literally says. I'm up to John now. This is from back in Luke 24. The situation is after the crucifixion. The disciples are devastated. Mary is devastated. All of Jesus's followers and supporters are at the bottom. A group of mourners goes to the tomb to take the spices for when the body starts to decay and stink and all those death things. They're all completely devastated. They get there, and the stone over the entrance has been rolled back. They go inside. There's no body. What? And then in Greek it says this: 4 And it came to pass, as they were at quite a loss about this one indeed, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:

That Luke cracks me up. The chapter had a couple of more things like that. 18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said to him, Are you only a stranger in Jerusalem, and has not known the things that are come to pass there in these days? I'm not a Greek expert, but it looks like what he was really saying was, Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know what's going on? I think it depends on whether Cleopas said it sarcastically or not.

And, course, the KJV translated one of the funny lines. It's the reply to Cleopas's question. The he in this verse is Jesus. 19 And he said to them, What things? So, he was just beaten to a pulp, crucified, died and resurrected. Cleopas asks if he's the only person in town who doesn't know the things that have been going on, and he says tongue in cheek, What things? And the KJV guys had to leave it in, because it's literal. hehe I can't help but wonder if those three things are in there on purpose to show us how silly we can be sometimes, when we're not trusting like we should be.

What a long, strange week it's been outside of the update, which is taking massive amounts of time. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance it all regarding the next book. Changing all the older language to modern English will take to September or so, if I can keep pace. Not counting rechecking everything. It's really a huge project.

Have a great weekend.

The Generous, Rich Widow

I got an email from a rich widow in Germany whose husband was a minister and left her $5.6 million. She only has two months to live and wants to send it all to me so I can start a business. She gave me an email address where I can contact her. However, it has a domain suffix from Poland. That's a bit odd, I believe. I don't think Poland's been a part of Germany since 1945. Maybe her mind is playing tricks on her due to the illness.

$5.6 million is a lot for a minister. I can't help but wonder how he had so much. After a lot of thought, it occurred to me that he was probably friends with the Nigerian prince. Evidently, the prince was able at last to get some of his fortune out of his country. I'm glad it finally worked out for that fellow. I know how hard he's been working for years to achieve that dream. And who better than a minister to offer aid to the helpless? I'm glad he was able to render assistance before his unfortunate demise.

After some delayed feedback on Book 2, I decided to do something I've been thinking about for a while. I pulled it off Amazon. I've mentioned before that I took some risks. I've been second-guessing them all year. It started 3.5 years after the first book. That was really too long. There were things I wasn't completely sure worked, but I've finally concluded the biggest problem is that it didn't fulfill promises made in the first book. Between the time gap and the change of direction, maybe it was too much risk. So, the plan it to either rework it and use parts of it or start over directly after the events of Book 1 while following more closely in the footsteps of those events.

I don't know how I'm going to make all this work. I'm still working on the update to the English in the KJV, which is going well but very slowly. It's extremely time-consuming. I'm on Luke. I picked up a couple of shirts to use on the YouTube channel. I need to get some more videos made.

Have a great weekend.

More Updating, Unhiding a Bushel

This week has been more KJV updating. I finished Mark. Counting Jude and Matthew that makes three books. I did a dash of Philemon, but it was harder than it looked. Not being a Greek translator, I'm trying to limit myself to updating and not trying to translate, although there was one place I stretched myself a little, but more on that in a second. What is Greek like? Pretending to be sober, Yoda, on drugs. It's kind of like that. It's like Yoda but worse. Yoda is fun and understandable. Greek is neither. It takes some time to get used to.

Back to where I stretched myself. Matthew 15:26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

That word dogs is not quite correct and could be translated as puppies, so I updated that. The problem word was meet. I already knew it meant proper, but that didn't really fit the Greek lexicon, which had multiple ways to translate it, although proper was a word of last resort sort of. None of the other words really matched except suitable. I started substituting words to see how they sounded and whether they made sense in the sentence. As I was going through the list, it suddenly occurred to me what the word should be. Kosher. It's not kosher to take the children's bread and give it to their puppies. Unfortunately, kosher isn't one of the lexicon words for this, at least not the lexicons I'm using so far(Thayers, Strong's, LSJ and online resources). Inner conflict. I wanted to use kosher, but I'm limiting myself to the lexicons. That would be translating.

This problem pops up sometimes. The lexicons are not at all complete. On occasion the right word is not in a lexicon, and I can't use it. This verse and the matching one in Mark was the one place I made an exception. Suitable is in the list. The word fit means suitable. Fit is also another way to say kosher. So, I translated meet to fit. It's correct while still giving extra meaning to people who know what kosher means.

In other news, I bought a new laundry hamper. At the store I narrowed it down to two. They had different dimensions, so I couldn't tell which one held more. When I checked the labels, I found a surprise. I expected them to be in liters. They were in bushels! What? One held 2 bushels and the other 2.5 bushels. How can people still be using bushels in 2017? Am I sheltered? Am I unobservant? Is this going on all around me, and I've never noticed? Why are garbage cans in gallons/liters but laundry hampers in bushels? The world's gone mad.

Have a great weekend.

A Touch of Malware

I lost nearly three nights of work on the KJV update project after downloading some malware. I needed another Greek lexicon and found a trusted site to get it. It turned out not to be so trustworthy. When using Chrome, web pages started opening in another tab. I could click a place in a page or in a search box, and it would happen. Reimageplus is usually where it would take me. It's a known malware and not too difficult to get rid of normally. I did all the normal things, including a 3+hr full scan, but it didn't go away. It's supposed to show up under Programs in Control Panel. Not in mine. After the first good scan, my system showed clean. But I still had the problem. Normally, Firefox and Edge would be affected. Not for me, just Chrome. One of the first things I did was delete and re-download extensions. They seemed clean. I even uninstalled Chrome and deleted some of the things it left behind before reinstalling.

By the end of night two everything was working. Night three it was back. But scanning showed my system to be clean. I finally decided to delete extensions again but this time one by one, even though I had already deleted them all more than once. I picked one at random and deleted it. Problem solved. The scary thing is it had still been infected after I had synced the browser with Google. I had not reinstalled that extension. I had let it sync. So, hmm.

Anyway, the backdrop is nearly finished. It looks kind of like this. Sorry about the fuzziness of the cell phone pic. I don't have a non-video camera. It'll look better in the videos.

The big gap in the middle is where the chair I would be sitting in goes. All I need is to have the space around the chair filled in. I still need to finish titles and paint in the books on the sides and possibly do some more detail work on shadows and highlights that would add more dimensionality. I may not bother. This is going to be in the background and out of focus. As long as I get the details right, it should look okay. I can always tweak it later.

The malware was kind of encouraging. I've never had any. It was directly because of the KJV update work. It makes me think I'm on the right track with that. Most of Matthew is done as well as the entire book of Jude, the whole thing.

Have a good weekend.

Upadting the KJV to Modern English

This week saw some more painting of the backdrop for the studio. I got all the books for the bookshelves sketched in and more books painted on. I expect to get it done and be making more videos by next week. I could have finished it this week, but I spent some of the backdrop's time on a new project. Last week I mentioned this video about how corrupted modern paraphrase "translations" of the Bible are. I hope you were able to watch at least some of it. I hopped on the Google box and tried to find a modern translation based on the Textus Receptus. I could not find one.

I decided to do what I've thought about doing before, updating the King James to modern English. Where needed. It's out of necessity. I need a version that's in modern English but is still based on the KJV and the Textus Receptus and is still a literal translation and not a paraphrase. When I'm done, this is going to be my main Bible. I'm not retranslating the original texts. I'm updating the archaic words. To do this I have to identify a word as outdated, find the modern equivalent and compare the modern equivalent to the original language via multiple lexicons to make sure it's accurate. It's very time intensive. I've worked through Matthew chapters 1 to 15 so far and did a little on Genesis chapter 1. The plan is to do the NT first and then move to the OT, which I anticipate being easier and quicker.

This is for myself out of necessity, but I'm going to put it on Amazon for Kindle and in paperback. I'll put the NT up first and the OT at some future time. If I go at the present rate, the NT will take about 4.5 months plus proofreading. However, I still have books to write. I'll have to find a balance.

Skipping the genealogy of chapter 1, below is chapter 2 of Matthew. It may need some more proofreading and updating of certain words. You'll notice some of the sentence structure isn't completely modern. The reason for that is that the KJV translators followed the Greek word order as much as they could. It's not up to me to make structural changes except for small things like changing 'went he' to 'he went'. In other cases, if changing the word order to modern English made it closer to the Greek, I moved a word here or there. In those instances, this updated version is going to be more literal to the Greek than the KJV while still being more modern and easier to read. It's a win win.

Shall vs will. In school we were taught that shall was an older version of will. Shall actually means 'will have to', according to the dictionary. So, I left the shalls.. This is likely not the final version, but this is what I have so far.


Matthew Chapter 2

1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold,
there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, 2 Saying, Where is he who is born King of
the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. 3 When Herod
the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And when he
had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he asked of them where

the Messiah should be born. 5 And they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is
written by the prophet, 6 And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among
 the princes of Judah: for out of you shall come a Governor, that shall shepherd my people
 Israel. 7 Then Herod, when he had privately called the wise men, inquired of them diligently
 what time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search
 diligently for the young child; and when you have found him, bring me word again, that I,
 also, may come and worship him. 9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo,
 the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, until it came and stood over where the
 young child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. 11 And
 when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and
 fell down, and worshiped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented to
 him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh. 

12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed
 to their own country another way. 13 And when they had departed, behold, the angel of the
 Lord appears to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother,
 and flee into Egypt, and be there until I bring you word: for Herod will seek the young child
 to destroy him. 14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and
 departed into Egypt: 15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled
 which was spoken of the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I have called my
 son. 
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceedingly enraged,
 and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the boundaries of
 there, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired
 of the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet,
 saying, 18 In Rama a voice was heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning,
 Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. 19 But
 when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appears in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,
 20 Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for
 they are dead which sought the young child's life. 21 And he arose, and took the young child
 and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. 

22 But when he heard that Archelaus reigned in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was
 afraid to go there: but, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of
 Galilee: 23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which
 was spoken through the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

Have a great weekend. 
  

Painting the Shelves and Such

The backdrop for the YouTube studio is still in progress. It's a painting of a bookshelf. The top shelf is done. The other two shelves are over half done. It's taking way more time than I hoped it would. The top shelf is a set of books that look like encyclopedias. They're all one color. Only the bottoms of the books will show in videos. The detail work wasn't too bad. The hard part was the highlights to give them dimensionality.

I had to repaint the shelves to make those stand out. Painter's tape made it easier. The hardest part of the whole process is the individual, "random" books. I'm finding that I can start working on them, and a half hour or an hour will pass. I'll have maybe six books done and can't figure out where the time went.

It turns out it takes forever to do all the steps. I have to set the heights so they won't all be the same height, same for the widths. I have to draw the edges and the tops, which means I have to use a level and a ruler so they're not crooked. Because the backdrop is vertical and already put together, the process requires a lot of squatting. It's like painting on a wall. I have to mix the paint to get different colors while making sure I don't match the set on the top shelf or the 12-volume set on the second shelf or the books to each other. There's a bit of cleaning of brushes in between all of it. Added together, it takes forever, and I still haven't put the words on the spines or the logos, etc. The books aren't even all sketched in yet. It's a massive time sink. I'm having to do some of the edges left-handed, trying not to overlap the paint.

I found an excellent audio channel to listen to on YouTube. One audio in particular, I have to recommend. New Age Bible perVersions EXPOSED. It explains how modern Bibles are translated. It goes into which manuscripts are used and how they were created to begin with. For example, when you see a footnote in a modern Bible that some verse isn't in the earliest manuscripts, it's referring to corrupt manuscripts found in a Catholic monastery garbage dump. Whoa! And there's more than that. If you're not painting a wall, this is a really long video, too long for a normal person to listen to all at once. If you can make time here and there, it's well worth it all the way to the end. The picture of the book that goes with the audio is a good read. I have it. It's eye-opening, too, and has more details than the YouTube audio. One fact that's missing from the audio is that recent research has discovered that the Codex Vaticanus was corrupted by the Gnostics. That alone means nothing translated using the CV is scripture.

The plan on the book front was to do the detective book next, but I'm thinking I might go straight to the Biblical non-fiction. After this backdrop is done, of course.

Have a good weekend.