I found this one quite interesting when it came out, because it was the most obvious recent evidence of something I'd been suspicious of since childhood...ce6 wrote:The Book - a translation of the Christian Bible into modern English (been working on this one about a decade now - it's one of my goals in life to get through the damn thing even though I gave up on religion long ago)
As soon as I became aware that there were "good" and "bad" translations of books written in other languages, and only "one" translation of the bible, I became suspicious. When this thing came out in the 80's, I seized on the opportunity to look for what I saw as qualitative differences between it and KJV. Sadly, my enthusiasm didn't last long, as I'd already studied the bible to my satisfaction by then and done all the "soul searching" I needed to free myself.
Every now and then I think I'd like to see a version, perhaps an Internet version, that compares different translations exhaustively... I know some comparative versions have been done, but I don't think any have been exhaustive.
I can see this bar chart in my head... one color for volume of information, starting with the "real, original" (and non-existent, in form) "bible"... Including all gospels and works, gnostics, dead sea scrolls, torah, etc... So we see how much is trimmed or added from one "version" to the next, then, within that bar, a secondary color showing how much of the new text is qualitatively different from the previous text...
I have no good reason why... I suppose it's an irrational hope that such a comparison would help people see how ridiculous it is to base one's life on such a "religious text"... But I know that wouldn't be affected on any appreciable level.
Still... it'd be an interesting undertaking.
