There was a Daily Show guest recently who was a fundie, and was studying translations of the bible, and then became an agnostic when he discovered how completely different some copies were from others. Like a massive game of Telephone resulting in what we have today.

My minister Grandfather, on the other hand, had a bible that was six different translations. Each page had three columns, so when you opened the book to, say, Matthew 1 verse 3 you had it in six different ways right there in front of you.

And since he was learned and stuff he had some sense of the motivations behind each approach. And he could look over to the Greek column and see what the original word was and ponder for his darn self the various interpretations of it in prep for sermons or discussions or whatever.

Will you guys promise to write non-craxy amazon reviews for me if you read my book?

this bk suxx!!!1!!11! Allyson thinks she is ALL THAT bcuz some teevee writer is all in love with her and she used to have that lesbian witch's old smelly futon and she has friends with Mars rock robot arms and deadly pinkies and shit. SO WUT???? I wrote her begging to help my campaign for a brand new Farscape/Firefly/LOTR xover series which was BRILLIANT and she never even anserd my email! she sux!

But she has really pretty hair, so i give her book 4 stars.

Little weirded out thinking about turtles doing *turtles* to be honest. Can't picture..

To bring things full circle, I saw 2 BOY turtles going at it in my biology lab in college. Ahhh....gay turtle love.

Little weirded out thinking about turtles doing *turtles* to be honest. Can't picture..

I also had the memorable zoo trip, with the added adventure of hearing a mother try to tell her two children what the turtles were doing.

gah that was ugly. Will try again.

I like the guy who just wrote a poem about his cat.

"For I will consider my cat Jeoffrey..."

Britten used that as part of the text for "Rejoice in the Lamb." Crazy religious stuff is fun to sing.

For H is a spirit
And therefore he is God.
For K is king
And therefore he is God.
For L is love
And therefore he is God.
For M is musick
And therefore he is God

See, I see HKLM and I think hkey_local_machine, which I think means God must be Bill Gates.

Wolfram, don't you actually believe the moral duty lies with protecting my children? Aren't you conflating the duty itself with how you think I'll be able to fulfill it.

What if I have a giant gun in my hand, or what if the police are upstairs, surrounding my children who are dressed in bullet proof clothing, etc.? Do I still have a duty to lie, or do I just have a duty to protect my children, and stop the murderer?

That said, I do agree that the duty to protect my children is bound to be more urgent in a particular set of circumstances than ... well than pretty much any of my duties.

If you, like Abraham, would answer “Yes, I’ll kill my son for you because you are God and I know that the highest good is to follow your will,” then you probably will make a good Jew, Christian, or Muslim.

If you would say “Killing my son goes against all that I know about morality, so in the absence of clear evidence that there is a God and that this God has the highest moral authority in this situation, I must refuse,” then you probably would make a good agnostic.

Of course killing his son did not go against all Abraham knew about the world. Child sacrifice was not uncommon at the time in that region. That account of Isaac on the altar, and God providing another sacrifice was the beginning of monotheism, and the start of a child-sacrifice-free religion for Abraham and his descendents.

I wanted to pick up the book, but now can't remember the title or author, and the Daily Show site is giving me no love.

Could it have been by Robert Walter Funk, Allyson?

The changes are actually less than most people would imagine. There are some differences between the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures (called the Septuaguint--the Bible for Hellenistic Jews) and the Masoretic Text, which was the text for Jews who were able to retain copies of the scripture in Hebrew, and they're not too stark. They wouldn't lead to a whole new theology.

That's true for both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, actually. The stuff that's in question (which version is right) is usually not going to change doctrine, either way.

In the Christian scriptures, the biggest changes I can think of [apart from where they use the Septuaguint (or the Latin Vulgate which used the Septuaguint) or the Masoretic] are (a) the endings to Mark (and since Matthew and Luke tell the same story, it's not like the story isn't out there, no matter how Mark ends) and (b) one paragraph which doesn't appear in earlier manuscripts of John.

If you ignore intentionally paraphrased versions, most changes are simply updating the language, or in translation method (formal versus dynamic equivalence; that is more word for word versus thought for though). There is of course the differences between each of the four gospels, but I wouldn't expect four witnesses to tell me what they saw exactly the same.

And that's just the mistranslations (thank you, King James I). I'd love to find the bits they left out for "editorial" reasons, if I could read Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew, that is.

Most major editorial decisions are noted in modern translations. They'll have foot notes right on the page that explain the difference between the selected text, and the one(s) rejected. I'm right with you on wishing I had the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew under my belt, though. But I still love the poetry of the King James version, even though I don't think it's the most satisfactory translation. Mistakes aside, some words in English have taken on opposite meanings since that time.

But I still love the poetry of the King James version, even though I don't think it's the most satisfactory translation

KJ is good for reading aloud. For study, we tended to use one of the others.

Weren't some old texts recently found that required some reinterpretation of existing translations, or seemed to imply that some things we thught were original were later additions?

I'm sure I could vague that up a little more if I really tried