The Vulgate Bible was the first to unify the old and new testsments under a single language and was, by and large, the basis for the King James Bible.
Example, the Latin in the Vulgate is pretty easy to follow:
1 In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi: et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona: et divisit lucem a tenebris.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Wow, I don’t know more than a handful of Latin words and I only speak Drunk Hillbilly fluently and I could still get most of that.
I recommend the NRSV or the NRSVue.
New Jerusalem is my personal favorite. ;)
God is all powerful, but not powerful enough to preserve his own inspired writings… or talk to anyone plainly because, ugh, why would they create language then stoop so low to use it… I mean they are so busy with those cosmological constants and quantum fields and all. How could they possibly have the time to act like sane reasonable people, or write down any of those ontological and undisputable fundamental building blocks of the universe.
Many of them actually know that, but literally believe God guided the hand of the people doing it.
Which isn’t exactly a large leap if you’re a believer. If you believe God can do all the other stuff, divine inspiration isn’t exactly near the top of “well that’s just hard to believe”
Right, exactly. Not sure how it makes any sense to have those different translations and create one that way, but they just say he “works in mysterious ways.”
Something something my version I believe in is the one true one and the other ones are wrong and tests by God to mislead you. How do I know mine is the correct one? My belief of course.
Then there’s also in a sibling desert religion how “40 figs” became “40 virgins” and nobody remembers when or how it happened… or even that the switch happened, at all.
While we’re here, should also point out the fruit Adam and Eve ate in the garden was likely a fig. They do after all immediately after pick up fig leaves to cover themselves. Somehow it turned into an apple in the popular imagination…
I thought it was grapes, not figs?
If it was olives, we might have an explanation…
