The Context and What We Write

Every book we read every movie we see and song we listen has a context and is therefore affected by it. Gilgamesh was affected by the context of Uruk and how life there was. Don Quixote was affected by the context in which Miguel de Cervantes had lived in and finally the bible was affected by, not only the context it had been written in but also the context in which it had been translated.

James was a king from Scotland, a poor country with not as much support of the church as he would have wanted. Then he was to go in to the land of riches and civilization that was England. This change I believe would have marked any human being for life. The context in which this Bible was translate I believe was a period of change, of renewal for the country. Although a translation is supposed to be objective and try to express the same thing the author of the original language did those who translated it were influenced and couldn’t be completely objective for no human can. “Can there be a book without there being interpretation?” I believe the answer to this question is now and because of this James’s bible has a point of view although slightly hidden and not very straight out. I believe this because the translator team wouldn’t want it to be a new bible according to James and although they would make sure that none would go too subjective this still exists. It is a bible written under the point of view of British people of the time. Now this is assuming that there was no direct pressure from the king to the team of people who worked on this. Since I don’t speak Hebrew nor have I read the original version of this, there is no way for me to know how they have changed it.

It may be something like Don Quixote which is a reflection of Cervantes’s life and opinion not only about knight’s books but also reflects parts of what he lived. This may be partially the case of this translation. Because of the anonymity of those who did the work it is impossible to know how it was written and if the time affected what they did.

The political time where changing constantly and this most likely affected them. The new religious politics and the attempted union of the two countries were very stormy times especially if all of this was made by a new king. We can’t really understand the situation each of the people that did this were living only an approximation based on what the general public had to go through. They weren’t bad time in fact it was the other way around. England was going through some of their best times with the hope that a new reign brought. Because of this we can determine that there was some sort of extra support towards the king. Because it was probably him who set them to the task (It’s a guess but very plausible I believe) they were most likely in his favor and because the bible is one of the books that are sold the most they may have tried to do some slight changes to favor him and to include him in some sort of way even if it were very subtle.

Because there is not one impartial way to look at a situation and everything we see we do by a window with limited range of sight it is very likely that this is what happened to the translators and what we see there isn’t really anything other than a version of the bible adapted to the time and seen through the eyes of people who lived the situation. Unless we actually live the story there is no way we will know exactly what happened. The only story that remains is written under points of view and we can only interpret based on that. Because of this no matter how holy the bible is it is still written by humans and therefore can’t be expected to be perfect.