If you watch an old black & white movie, even though it's in the English language, you will notice that some of the language has fallen out of usage in our century.

I remember seeing “The Wild One” starring Marlon Brando for the first time. It was made in 1953, less than 70 years ago. What I vividly remember was that the dialog in this movie about tough, cool bikers, came across incredibly silly. Why? The actors and filmmakers were not trying to be silly. In fact, the movie-going audience of 1953 didn't think it was silly. I found it silly because the language that was cool in 1953 has fallen far out of favor.

If 70 years could do that to a movie, imagine how difficult it would be to translate a text that is between 2000 and 4000 years old, written in vastly different cultures, using languages that are not commonly in use in the world today.

SOME BACKGROUND ON THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGES

The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The Hebrew spoken by the orthodox Jewish community today is very close to the original Hebrew language used by Moses. The devout Jewish people have struggled to maintain this close connection in their language.

Aramaic is seldom used in Scripture. Some prophetic books, such as Daniel, were written in Aramaic during the Jewish captivity when Hebrew was not practiced by the ruling kingdom.

The New Testament is almost entirely composed of "street" Greek, which today we label Koine Greek. There is precious little comparison between contemporary Greek and Koine Greek. The language has changed significantly.

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