“When [Ronald] Knox translated the Old Testament in 1947, he remarked that the scholars surrounding King James in the seventeenth century had taken thirteen different Greek words and subsumed them under the single word “righteous.’ In the course of doing so, they set back ethical distinctions by almost two millennia—i.e., distinctions that had been carefully thought out sixteen hundred years before were lost.” –William F. Buckley, Jr.
This is disturbing. Does this mean that the Bible as we know it today is not what it was intended to be?
I think what he’s getting at is more about how we tend to use imprecise language, even when more precise words will unpack the meaning more fully. As a very basic example, think of how we use the word “hot” to mean different things; how we often use it instead of, say, “spicy,” which means something very different. Imagine if there were 5 different Greek words meaning “justice,” each of which had a slightly different meaning and usage, and instead of bothering to master those we just heaved them overboard and said “justice” is good enough.
Thank you for taking your valuable time to give me this explanation which does help. I think politicians are the fathers of imprecise language, but this is for another day. Thanks again.