Saturday, April 10, 2010

Daily happenings

It is Saturday. The second Saturday of the month is the time we get together for Secular Singers. So at 2:00 today I was at Gail's to play piano while the others (and sometimes myself) sang. I was the first to arrive. Gail and I went immediately to her piano to practice the piece we will be playing tomorrow at CoR. Soon Randy arrived; Bea was overburdened with other obligations and had to beg off. Once again, there were just three people for Secular Singers. I suggested we suspend Secular Singers until September. The other two agreed. It is sometime like pulling teeth to get others to participate in activities.

I have received three responses to my calling attention to the contradiction between two verses in the Bible, namely, I Kings 4:26 and II Chronicles 9:25. Each explanation differs from the other two. My wife J (she won't let me refer to her by name; therefore the initial) says the variance is due to the use of differing number bases - a different way of counting. We in this country are accustomed to counting in base 10. Number totals would look different in, say, base 7 or base 2. She majored in math in college.

Marti, on the other hand, points out that there is no contradiction in the two verses in her New International Version. And she is right. I own a copy of the NIV and checked for myself. The two verses agree completely. But this raises another question: How did the quote from the KJV which dates from 1611 and refers to forty thousand stalls of horses get morphed into four thousand stall of horses in the NIV, which dates from the twentieth century. It is as if the publisher was aware of the contradiction and decided to bring the two verses into agreement by fiat. This is conjectural on my part, but it is one possible explanation. Marti also points out that the number 4,000 is most likely not meant to be explicit. It is a number rounded, say, to the nearest hundred. The actual number could have been 4021 or maybe, 3978. But still, that is quite a way off from 40,000.

Galen took a close look at the Hebrew in both verses and discovered that there is a slight difference in the Hebrew words for "stall." He says our translations may contain "translation errors because the translators were not perfect, but the original manuscripts do not contain errors or contradictions." Of course, the original manuscripts are no longer extant. All we can say is, maybe yes, maybe no.

This raises the question of why, if God went to the trouble to inspire the original writers, he did not also do the same for the translators work? Did he not anticipate this problem?

I thank my three respondants for taking the time to mull over this problem. Thanks also for not getting together to get your stories "straight" before sending them to me.

3 comments:

Pastor Galen said...

Sadly, you left out the most significant part of my explanation about the words "stalls" and "stables." You chose a line that has the word "may" in it to take it to the extreme that it is a "reality." Bad logic and it still points to your bias. You did not find a flaw in my explanation, apparently.

Pastor Galen said...

Also, I always try to answer the questions you pose. I still wonder why you still refuse to give me your "personal" definition of the word "good." That is so significant, but yet you still have not given me an answer. Are you still working on your answer?

Dan Nerren said...

I wrote answers to your questions but set it aside. The file is in my CPU which is in the shop for repair. (I'm on a laptop right now.) When I get it back, assuming the file has not been wiped out, I will send it to you. If it has been wiped out, I will answer the questions once again.

I will take a second look at you stalls/stables explanation.