Originally Posted by mstone
No I think that in most languages other than English, words are not as ambiguous and have clear singular meanings with extended implications. Not in all cases but if in fact there were more than one word in Paleo-Hebrew for "create" and it was definitive that one of those words meant create from thin air and the other meant create from materials that preexisted and were on hand, that would make a substantial difference in the meaning.
I'm not saying that is the case but I've been told that may be the basis for a possible mistranslation.
And please let me add that there is no proof that a God didn't create the universe, which wouldn't surprise me at all if that were the case, as it is a rather spectacular creation. I just don't think such a powerful entity would bother to write such childish fairy tales as are found in the Bible.
Actually, such care has been taken in the translation of the Bible, more than any other book in history.
But... there have been errors. That's why it's helpful to go back to the earliest and majority manuscript text.
The words are translatable and, as in every language system ever, also must be taken into context with the surrounding thoughts present.
We can hope for having one word describe certain things just so, but more often than not, we don't have that. So we take the word in context, which forms thoughts.
Very few words actually have such complete meanings which normally take a sentence or so to communicate. The various Greek words for "love" are some that actually do fulfill this, but given the nature of this thread, I am not going to get into that. LOL