Talk:Bible (Wikisource)/Matthew

Sources

Matthew 1-9, sources are unknown.

For Matthew 10-12, which I'm translating, I used Robinson-Pierpont's Greek Text as the basis. For comparison, I looked at a variety of English Translations, including the King James, Young's Literal Translation, Darby's Literal Translation, and Walter Porter's Conservative Version.Fontwords 18:34, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

It looks, based on the length of time Matthew 1-9 has been up, that no one is going to come forth with source information. Should we clear these chapters because of possible copyright issues and redo them, or should we just leave them be a bit longer? Fontwords 15:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I can post my version of Matthew 1-9, if that's what people want. Let me know... Jonathan Jonathan Gallagher 13:04, 4 June 2008 (UTC))

Yes, that would be great Jonathan! I think Fontwords is right, and we are never going to find any source info on it.--Jdavid2008 18:45, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Please wait. These chapters were the first added to the project, as far as I can see, so I wouldnt like to see them "replaced" unless it is believed that they are copyright violations. It looks like the contributor is active on Wikipedia, so I have asked the contributor to get in contact with us.[1] John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:40, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Just checked in and saw the invitation to replace Matt. 1-9. Then saw the above. Are we still waiting, or do we want to move ahead? Jonathan Gallagher (talk) 10:47, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

No, we are no longer waiting. John's been trying to contact him since June, and I have tried long before then.--Jdavid2008 (talk) 22:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

In that case I have just uploaded my translation of Matt 1-9 as requested. The same sources as previously apply--just the Nestle-Aland Greek NT. Have not done the formatting, and I'm sure there are some typos/glitches that will need fixing. Jonathan Gallagher (talk) 22:48, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sure the footnoting is shot too! Jonathan Gallagher (talk) 22:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Progress report

I worked a little on this passage (which I thought was a good translation, by the way):

I added verse numbers and subject headings, both which I find very helpful for bible study and, of course, translation.

I did light editing of chapters one to six but tried to respect translation decisions and not change anything major.

I fixed some tense issues for better English. I also tried cut down on so many sentences starting with conjunctions which is generally to be avoided in English. --cAlan 05:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't "GENEALOGY OF JESUS" read "GENEALOGY OF JOSEPH"? - the Gospel doesn't claim that Joesph was Jesus's father.Lo2u 22:20, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

OK ignore that comment. I didn't read the chapters properly.Lo2u15:30, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I added again the accidentally deleted Chapter 9, and part of Chapter 8, and am going through and standardizing the verse numbers according to the new system. I'm also putting the headings in lowercase. I also changed Genealogy of Jesus to Genealogy of Joseph--hopefully that's ok with everybody. There was one edit in Chapter Nine: "^9.20And look, a woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years approached from behind and touched the fringe of his prayer shawl, ^9.21for she said to herself, "If only I may touch his prayer shawl, I will be saved."" that I did not transfer. If people think it should be changed they can do so--I haven't checked the Greek.--Jdavid2008 06:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Matthew 5:3-12

I am wondering if perhaps "fortunate" is a better word then happy for this. Those people aren't necessarily happy I think. Does anybody have any ideas? Or how about "lucky"? or well off? --Jdavid2008 07:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Ditto. The root Greek word translated here as "happy" is makarion (in a different alphabet though, of course). It is generally translated "blessed" and speaks not of emotional feeling but of a gift from God. The Latin vulgate translation reads "felix" which means happy or lucky, but lucky has negative religious connotations for some people. If I were translating, I'd stick with the more traditional rendering "blessed" which is less likely to cause confusion. --Fontwords 17:44, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Ok, if anybody would have had a strong objection to us changing it they had plenty of time, and if they have good reasons they can still debate it. I'm going to go ahead and change it to blessed. Please join this conversation if you disagree.--Jdavid2008 17:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Matthew 9:38

Changed push to send for ἐκβάλῃ 03:29, 19 December 2007 --Jonathan Gallagher

Matthew 20-28

Added these chapters, but in a very raw form, since I I'll be travelling for a while and won't be able to get to this for some time. Thought it would be best to post this and leave the editing and formatting to others! Jonathan Gallagher 14:49, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Matthew 13-19

Added these chapters--need formatting. Jonathan Gallagher 22:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Matthew 15:18

The word translated here as "mind" is "kardias," literally "heart". Could we just translate it as "heart"? Fontwords 14:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I guess I'll be bold now and amend mind to heart, seeing as I haven't heard any objections. Heart has the advantage of being more literal, and it still makes good sense in the culture of modern English. Fontwords 16:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

This raises a wider question than just this instance. In general the Biblical writers had their anatomy off somewhat. For them, your heart was where you did your thinking, your bowels where you did your feeling. However for us, it's the heart where you do your feeling, and your head/brain/mind where you do your thinking. This leads to some erroneous conclusions if we read heart as meaning emotions, when the Biblical writers were meaning thought. Here's the making of a good debate! Jonathan Gallagher 01:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh...maybe I should have thought through that one a bit more. Well, if you'd like to revert, feel free. Fontwords 16:34, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Matthew 5:5

This verse seems to have a mistake... "5 Blessed are the modest, Because they will inherit the earth." I think the standard translation is meek. That is a bit old English though, perhaps a better word would be submissive, yielding or something like that? --Jdavid2008 18:39, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Time to move to completed book status

Maybe it's time to move this to the completed book status, since all the chapters are done... Jonathan Gallagher 02:02, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Matthew 6:27

"add one foot to his height"? Really? I sincerely doubt it. The accepted meaning appears to be "add one moment to his lifespan", or similar. However, maybe the original did not have words for these terms, and so used length measurements instead, with the lifespan as the implied meaning. In this case, if we want to be more literal than actually saying "lifespan", we could use "add one measure to his length", to facilitate both readings. But "height" just seems wrong. --193.11.177.69 10:19, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Matthew 5:28

I just made an unorthodox change to the translation of Matthew 5:28. I was bold, I know. However, I'm not looking for an edit war, so if someone has issues with my changes please discuss them here. Thanks. --SadanYagci (talk) 14:00, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Come on!

The first part of this book has a lineage of Jesus through Joseph, which is clearly referring (at least in Greek) to Mary's husband. But an unsupported (in my mind, idiotic) theory of textual corruption has it that this is a mistranslation of an Aramaic word which was supposed to mean "father" rather than husband.

Why this theory is beyond stupid:

1. The geneology of women as well as men appears in Semitic texts in similar ways, tracing up through the father-line with the exact same word for fathered appearing for both men and women.
2. The only reason you would adopt such a tortured conspiracy theory is for theological reasons--- because Jesus is not the son of Joseph, but the son of God. You should keep your religious beliefs out of this project, otherwise how can we make progress?
3. This is assuming, with no supporting evidence, and much evidence to the contrary, that there was an actual guy called "Matthew" that wrote this text. There is about as much reason to believe that as there is for believing that a guy called "Moses" wrote the Pentateuch, namely none. Like all of the bible, this is a work of divine inspiration, written originally in Greek.

I hope that the rest of the text is more faithful to the Greek.75.24.127.154 00:04, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

• Who ever wrote it doesn't matter. The writer could count to 14. He did it twice. So either you believe a name was lost from the list, when no historical document backs that up, or you believe the writer was an idiot that couldn't count. This is not an ordinary genealogy, and does not need to be written in the ordinary manner. If you believe this is of divine inspiration, then why is there error? And why does Luke's genealogy differ? And why does Luke's speak as if it is by adoption, and this one speak by blood, if it is indeed the other way around? At the very least Jesus' genealogy was not originally Greek. That would have been translated into Greek at some point. The Greek is wrong. SadanYagci (talk) 07:10, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Dude, the text says "Husband", as you agree. You are the translator, not the editor, so you say husband. It's as simple as that.

This holds no matter how wrong you think that word is, and no matter if it seems to contradict the latter part of the text. Your pet theory about the guy's intentions are not useful. I read about this for about two seconds yesterday, and there is a claim out there that this geneology (not the gospel) was derived from an Aramaic original with two consecutive very similar names, and that one of them was dropped accidentally. It is not at all clear that the author could count to 14, and it is always a question about whether you include the first guy in the list as part of the 14. But a geneology though Mary is useless for purposes of inheriting a birthright. which is what geneologies were all about.

Things written with divine inspiration are not particularly accurate, they're usually half-deranged. People who sit there recieving messages from God hardly ever get anything right.75.24.127.154 17:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

• The Greek text says husband. People have all sorts of theories about what was written first, but the fact of the matter is that historical testimony says that Matthew wrote first, in Aramaic. I am saying nothing about textual corruption. This is a translation problem from Aramaic to Greek. You looked this up for a few seconds. I've spent much more time on this subject than that. This is not a pet theory about intentions. When a small, missing section of Kings was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls was that a "pet theory"? No, it was not. This is something written. Why would everyone "translate" the word one way into Aramaic, and one translator render it a different word? And that just happens to be a version of the NT with a history of people saying that it was the original. Everyone else uses one word in that place, obviously translating from Greek to Aramaic. One version uses another word that just happens to back-translate to reveal this issue. This is no pet theory. This is no invented name that never existed. Even the genealogies themselves speak as if the Luke one is from Joseph and that means this one is not from Joseph, meaning it is from Mary. Why does this not make sense to you? SadanYagci (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe your words are coming from divine inspiration. Bully for you, but I would rather stick to the text:

• the "testimony" that Matthew was written in Aramaic is next to worthless--- it is designed by church people to make this document look like historical eyewitness testimony rather than a work of literature.
• many, if not most, scholars believe there is no aramaic original to this or any other gospel, or any new testament text.
• Maybe there was an Aramaic geneology or two, maybe a "Q document", but personally, I don't think so. This text is about as Semitic in style as the Book of Mormon.
• Even if there were an aramaic original (which is very unlikely), we don't have it available! The word for "father" and the word for "husband" are not the same in Aramaic, except in some possible tortured locutions invented for the purpose of fixing Matthew's geneology. So we can't possibly check if the original said "father".
• This theory requires that you translate a straightforward Greek text based upon a hypothetical, nonexistent, Aramaic text which you are claiming to reconstruct. Any translator will tell you that it is impossible task.

The point is simple: stop "fixing" the text, the text says "husband", Joseph was the name of Mary's husband, Mary's father is nowhere else mentioned and is irrelevant to property inheritance anyway, and Mary wouldn't work as a geneology for Jesus because she is a woman.

The Greek original, the only text we have, explicitly says husband, not father, and you are not allowed to fix the text under any circumstances. Even if you think that this is a mistake, your note deserves a footnote at best.75.24.127.154 12:11, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

"Christ" or "Messiah"

I understand that Matthew is translated from a Greek source, but should we perhaps consider use of the term, "Messiah" or perhaps "anointed one"? One of the things I've noticed is that people tend to gloss over the expression "Jesus Christ," almost as if Christ were a surname. When Matthew calls Jesus "Christ," especially in Matthew 1:1, he is making a specific claim for the benefit of a Jewish audience. While I recognize that Bibles almost uniformly translate Cristos as Christ, I would like to see either a) phrasing to make it obvious that this is a title (such as "Jesus the Christ" or, imo preferably "Jesus the Messiah") or b) a translation of the expression, e.g., "Jesus the Anointed One" or similar. If we make "slave" in Romans 1:1 into "completely devoted" (not that the idea is wrong, but it seems to me more interpretation than translation), then could we not do this here for the sake of clearly conveying meaning? --Braindrain0000 (talk) 23:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)