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Originally posted by Dagnabit
I used the King James and then used the New International Version, which I found to be a much more natural translation and cleared up several confusing parts of the KJ.
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Just a comment on the translation you used. Most Christian translations of the Tanakh (what you call the "Old Testament") are at least two steps removed from the original Hebrew. The first step was the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek made by a commitee of 70 Jewish scholars (hence Septuagint). The second step was the Vulgate, the translation of the Septuagint into Latin during the early days of the Catholic Church. There may be other steps in between the Septuagint and the NIV and KJV, but at the very least neither is a direct translation, rather each is a translation of a translation of a translation.
Why does this matter? Because every time you translate, you also interpret. And when what you are reading is, in effect, an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation, you can't be positive that what you're reading is anything like what was originally written.
That's one benefit of being able to refer to the original Biblical Hebrew in a traditional Chumash, where a translation is presented face-to-face with the Hebrew text for cross-referencing. No, my Biblical Hebrew is far from fluent, but it's decent enough to allow me to get a gist for what is actually written in the Hebrew and what is presented in the English across from it.
All those years of Hebrew school paid off after all,
Z