Bootstrap wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:40 am
How well do Amish actually understand the Luther translation and the King James Bible? I would like people to really understand the Bible and get engrossed in it, not just memorizing individual verses, but really getting caught up in the text and reading it. And translations can get in the way of that.
It would vary. When I visited a Hutterite colony, they were very serious about learning German. Some Amish schools take the time to instruct it, and others do not.
In modern German society, some regions have a regional dialect which is not mutually intelligible with standard German, and children learn German in school (or from TV). The Amish have, essentially, retained this system.
As far as understanding the KJV... well, see my comments below.
But I don't know how well they would understand the Pennsylvania Dutch Bible either. Or how widely used it is. I do think it was done by a competent translator, who was trying to do something good. It could be really helpful, it could miss the mark, I have no way of knowing. It might be a great resource that simply won't get used because the Amish will continue to use the older translations. Or maybe it is getting used, perhaps more by individuals than by congregations. I wouldn't know.
And here is why I think the PA Dutch Bible is not that useful. It uses, oddly enough, English orthography, so it is limited to people who can read and write English. PA Dutch is not a language which most of its speakers consider a written language. If they need to read or write something, they will simply use English, which most PA Dutch speakers possess native fluency in - particularly ones who are literate and can read or write.
So this is a book which has a bizarre orthography and is in a language they aren't accustomed to reading and writing, whereas they could just go read the KJV, or one of the many other English translations of the Bible - which are amongst the best in the world. So if they want to do serious Bible study, they would just do that.
More importantly, though, for Amish people who plan to retain PA Dutch and their Amish culture, they consider both the Lutherbibel, standard German, and Fraktur typography a very important part of their culture. They will go to the trouble to instruct in school both the standard Roman alphabet and also the Fraktur alphabet. And they will instruct children how to read both English and German.
Some don't feel this way - and they are comfortable switching to English. This would include many Amish-Mennonites. My own denomination made a decision around the 1920s that they should preach and teach in the language that is the majority around them, for evangelism purposes. So they stopped reading German Bibles and preaching in German. For our one congregation and one mission in a French-speaking area in North America, they preach in French. For our handful of missions in Spanish-speaking regions in North America, they sing and preach in Spanish.
At the same time, that has been accompanied with a tremendous loss of culture. The only people in my congregation who can speak Low German are a couple in their 80s and a girl who grew up in Bolivia.
Trying to impose the idea of a PA Dutch Bible onto Amish culture ignores a lot of Amish cultural realities, and ignores the realities of what it is to be a people who are literate, who choose to retain a traditional German regional dialect (specifically, the one still spoken in Pfälz), and who choose to retain the system of German literacy of learning to read standard German.
