davido (01/25/83)
I submit that even those people who *think* they have read the Bible haven't. What we do read is a translation. After all, the Old Testatment was written in biblical Hebrew and Aramaic and the New in Greek. Orthodox and Conservative Jews have portions of the Torah and Haftorah read to them each Saturday in the original Hebrew; however even here, very few Jews today have seriously studied *biblical* Hebrew. (I know almost no Hebrew, so read the translation in the prayer book which is different than the King James version which is different than the Revised Standard version which is different than the Reader's Digest Condensed version, etc., etc.) My brother-in-law, who is a rabbi, has been studying the New Testament using a book which prints a few words of Greek (he reads Greek) and then any where from a word to a paragraph in English discussing how that word or phrase could be translated. Also remember that the Bible was "written" by men over thousands of years and even given that God was directly involved in the writing, it was still necessary for the ideas and metaphors used to make sense culturally. The Bible was written during a time of frequent wars among male dominated societies. Concepts such as sexual equality would make as much sense to these people as LR(k) parsers. Even the conceptual change from "Our god is the most powerful of the gods" to "Our God is the only God" took a long time. Another point to consider is the long time between when events in the Bible took place and when they were recored on paper. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham became the first Jew about 2000 years BCE. The books of the New Testament were begun about 100 ACE. Prior to the actual writing, the stories of the Bible were carried as an oral tradition. I probably needn't remind people of the game of Gossip to suggest what could happen when stories are passed orally through several generations. Even today, in Jewish temples where the copy of the Torah is hand transcribed on scrolls, there are professional scribes who travel from congregation to congregation repairing and checking the scrolls. Typically they find an error or two in the transcription which has to be corrected. Summary: No, you probably haven't *read* the Bible.
aark (01/25/83)
The following message appeared here recently: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | I really wonder how many people have carefully read the Bible from | | beginning to end, both old and new testaments. I have. I'll bet that | | *very few* have. If you have some spare time, do it. And pay | | particular attention to the extreme anti-female slant and the | | incredibly vindictive god displayed throughout. Think about it. | | Stuart | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I, too, have "carefully read the Bible from beginning to end, both Old and New Testaments." The above remark makes me wonder that this person really read the WHOLE Bible. Anyone who would say that the God of the Bible is "incredibly vindictive" cannot have read the Gospels, the Gospel of John in particular, or Psalm 103, or Isaiah 53 through 55. Anyone who would say that an "extreme anti-female slant" is "displayed throughout" the Bible cannot have read the Gospel of John again, or the letter to the Ephesians. By taking only those parts of the Bible that suit your own pre- conceptions, you can make it seem to say whatever you want. Those who close their eyes to its full message might very well conclude that God is incredibly vindictive and the Bible is extremely anti-female. I, and many others who have studied the Bible's WHOLE message and have come to know the God revealed therein, know better. Alan R. Kaminsky Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL ...ihnp4!ihuxe!aark
jfw (01/26/83)
I have read the Bible (KJV) cover to cover, decided that most of the New Testament was fairly dreary stuff written by pompous clerics, and confined further ramblings to the first four chapters thereof (which form the "reference text" from which the later chapters diverge significantly). I have not read the Bible in the original language, but my brother learned Greek for that very purpose. He relates similar interesting examples of creative translation, none of which I can remember, alas.