The Bible

And if ever you thought finding a good translation of the bible was hard, have a crack at finding one of the Tao Te Ching.

I think I have two different version because I needed it for two different classes in subsequent semesters taught by the same professor (who is Chinese herself) who couldn’t find a translation she was really happy with. It was informative to compare the editions, something we did in class.

A wizard did it.

The Oxford Annotated is as good as it gets for what you’re looking for. It has copious footnotes with historical cross references, textual histories, etc… It’s the New Revised Standard translation, which is generally regarded as the most faithful English translation. I would avoid the paraphrased versions like the Living Bible and such, as they tend to inject a great deal more of the translator’s doctrine into the translation (by their very nature) than those aiming for a more literal translation.

Having a copy of the King James Bible is worthwhile for referencing quotes, as lots of historical references quote from it, but as a translation of the Biblical texts, it’s very lacking by any modern standard.

This question you ask – “Which Bible?” – is, to me, one of the most interesting parts of the Bible. Because how people came to define what they call "The Bible," and how they interpret what they then get, fascinates me.

There are doctrines that are essentially based on mistranslations, (e.g., the virgin birth, from the Greek word for “young girl” having connotations that the Hebrew word did not). There are books within the existing, accepted Bible that directly contradict each other, because they were written for different purposes (e.g., the story of David’s ascension to the throne in Samuel/Kings vs. in Chronicles). There are books that were highly controversial when added, but are unquestioned today (e.g. James).

Mixed within that, there’s some interesting and legitimate history. You get to see the expansion of Babylon and Assyria – from the loser’s point of view. You get to read about the earliest beginnings of a religion in Acts – albeit, from that religion’s point of view.

Did you make that up just now?

As someone who read the bible IN MAH YOUF, don’t bother. It seemed somehow informative at the time, but in retrospect, the memorable phrases and concepts of the bible are already floating around in pop culture, and the obscurity of the obscure parts prevents them from being influential in religion or art. I might add that it’s all too clear the bible was written and edited for purposes of politics rather than entertainment.

I suggest more recent works of fantasy fiction instead.

No. I did not. Check the link in my post. Along with many other sources.

The NT authors were using the Septuagint as a source of OT scripture. Hebrew was almost completely forgotten among those able to read and write, thanks to Alexander the Great and Hellenization from centuries before. IIRC, it wasn’t until The Enlightenment that scholars began learning Ancient Hebrew again. But by that time, the virgin birth had become irrevocably become part of Christian identity.

There’s this common myth, held by both non-believers (e.g. Mr. Unicorn above) and believers (e.g. any Fundamentalist you may happen across), that the Bible is somehow some kind of single, coherent work. It isn’t. And how it came to be, and the different messages at different times, fascinates me.

I’m not aware of any “Virgin Birth” passage that originates in Hebrew. What passage do you have in mind?

I’m referring to the prophecies of the Messiah that NT authors and later early Christian theologians used when constructing the story of Jesus’ conception. They refer to the Messiah being born of a young woman in Hebrew; however, in the Septuagint (that the NT authors were using) used a word that’s an ancestor of our word “virgin” for “young woman”, with all that connotes.

I’m out of the house this second, so I can’t look up the precise pages.

Well, if you can post a short summary or excerpt of that section, I’d be interested to read it.

Will be happy to. I can’t recommend the book enough. It loses its punch some in the middle, but the first quarter, where he talks about the beginning of writing in religion, and the last quarter, which is a devastating history of the origins of modern Christian Fundamentalism, are incredible.

I don’t remember the exact passage (although I’d bet it comes from Isaiah, because most of the Messiah prophecies do), but it stems from the word “betulah” (young girl), which in Greek became (I think) parthenos, which Matthew misconstrued as a virgin; the Greek can mean either one.

Yeah, that’s it exactly.

From the book above, in the chapter “Moses Speaking Greek.” And please pardon any typos, as I’m transcribing this from a book:

Peculiarities of the Septuagint

It is even more certain that the translation was not produced all at once but over a period of a century or two or even more, beginning at first with only the Tora, the Five Books of Moses. Considerably less certain are many of the other questions raised by the translation, some of them important even today. Because the Greek word for a “messenger” of any kind was angelos and the word for “wind” could also mean “spirit,” the sentence in the Psalms “He makes the winds His messengers” comes out in the Greek translation as “He makes His angels spirits.” It is quote that way in the New Testament as part of a discussion of the angels, as well as in Christian liturgies to this day, even though that is not what the Hebrew original is saying. Where the Hebrew has “Look, the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel,” without specifying the status of the young woman any more precisely, the Septuagint uses the word parthenos, “virgin,” which the Gospel quotes (in Greek), with the formula “All this happened in order to fulfill what the Lord declared through the prophet,” for the virginal conception of Jesus from his mother, Mary. Later in the Book of Isaiah, the Septuagint’s “And I saw two mounted horsemen, and a rider on an ass, and a rider on a camel” became an embarrassment to Christian apologists but a welcome support to Muslim disputants, because it seemed to be prophesying not only that Jesus would enter into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday riding on a donkey, as the Christian Gospel described him doing in the New Testament, but that he would be followed (almost exactly six centuries later) by the prophet Muhammad, who was a camel driver.

(Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It?, ©2005 Jarsolav Pelikan, The Penguin Group, New York, ISBN 0-670-03385-5, pp. 58-59)

In the end notes he references the various scriptures:

“He makes the winds”: Psalm 104:5; Hebrews 1:7.
“virgin”: Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22-23
“And I saw two mounted horsemen”: Isaiah 21:7; Matthew 21:5

The stuff about how these things were discovered later is several chapters later.

Anyway… great starter’s book if you’re interested in this sort of thing.

I’m half-expecting Jason McCullough to come in here, telling me my quote isn’t valid because I don’t have a link for it. ;)

Just kidding, Jason… :)

I’m sorry, being a biblical scholar never seemed like a good use for my time!

You’d probably enjoy the book, actually, since – like I said – it gives a truly devastating history of modern Christian Fundamentalism. You seem to be into that sort of thing.

Obviously I don’t have the book, but how does he reconcile this (not translation issues, but the conclusion) with Luke 1:34? Genuine question, we can take it to PM if you want.

Well, in the above passage he’s not denying that Mary was a virgin specifically; rather, he’s pointing out that if she was, it doesn’t fulfill the prophecy Matthew claims it does.

In my opinion, the central theme of is book is that there’s very little in the Bible that can be treated as literal truth. He begins with that claim and works his way through the book, starting with the first few stories put to paper and working his way all the way to modern-day attempts to retranslate it. By the end, he’s very thoroughly established that. For me, this has increased the value of the Bible as a source; a lot of the difficulty we have with the Bible today has to do with its endless contradictions and apparent moral failings – e.g., the commandments to the Israelites to commit genocide as they invade the Holy Land. If you understand that these commandments were written after the peoples they’d failed to commit genocide against had been a thorn in their side for centuries, after their kingdoms had been ransacked by the Assyrians and Babylonians and the Israelites were dislocated and scattered, and that this was an attempt by the people of God to show understanding of how they had ended up that way… it makes sense.

The point is, it’s not important whether Mary was a virgin or not. Seems to me she was a fun girl.

Now I know that since then we’ve got quite a bit of mythology sprung up around Mary being a virgin. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” mentioned in the Bible (before Jesus says, “All who do this are my brothers and sisters”) were actually cousins, that Mary gave birth to Jesus and never had another kid with Joseph.

I find this to be… ridiculous. Which is more likely; that the Bible originally said “brothers and sisters” but meant to say “cousins,” or that a paternalistic, male-only, don’t-even-get-married-to-women sect, that just happened to dominate Western civilization for a thousand years, made it that way?

I’m going to try to read the whole Bible this year, hopefully in the next couple of months; i suppose i haven’t read every book in the Bible to be honest.