Actually, the world needs multiple, divergent translations of the texts we
have received, as well as a variety of commentaries, which detail why
authors / commentators / translators have opted for the conclusions they
choose. This is the only means by which we can combine the creative
experience of each generation, and draw upon it (them) as a resource.
Further, they (we) need divergent studies of genre, intent, story-telling,
narrative, and historiographies (to name just a few). After all, the best
interlinear, and the best lexicon, won't captivate anyone the way the
narrative texts landed upon the ears of the original hearers, in an oral
vein, or the original readers, as the case may be.
So, if you wish to help, provide a new translation, with commentary, and
justify your take. It will join the pool of collective wisdom, and the
reader will be the final judge of its worth.
Don't assume that the BIBLE (your caps continued for emphasis) is
something different than the texts, it isn't. Neither is it something
different than the divergent translations, it isn't. What is needed (from
even the most fundamental perspective) is a transformative event, and this
is the operation of something (someone) outside the text itself as text.
Further, it is futile to imagine that somehow a purer text will provide a
purer transformative event, or purer doctrinal presumptions. Folk will
constantly make what they will of any text, and Godde will constantly do
the best she can with the results <wink>. I think the emphasis should be
on the heart of Godde and the heart of the hearer / reader coming to terms
with their appropriate place / space in the world of Godde. I would be
surprised to discover, in a far off distant galaxy, that Godde should one
day say "I wanted you to understand this, but the translators just never
got it right." Rather, understanding is something that comes with the text
as impetus, but not as source, and with the text as the window, but not as
the view. Absorb the source. Absorb the view. From as many different
angles as possible in your lifetime. It still won't be complete -- there
will always be another corner, another turn. That's what makes the journey
worth undertaking, and worth pursuing, until we know as we are known.
--- Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face. - Margaret Mead