@VoxofGod @wdlindsy @corbden yoooooooooo! WTF. how did, i miss that‽‽‽

i have my Vatican II bible. will check this out sometime today. i wouldn't put it past the RCC to have obfuscated the translation to Spanish.

btw reading one of those hotel bibles as a kid is what got me curious about the wack world of bible translations (enough that i worked translation gigs all throughout my time in academia).

with bibles, it's a wild west out there. really fascinating.

@blogdiva

Even Joseph Smith took a crack at a retranslation, from the KJV, from English, with magic prophet powers. Other than some very imaginative rewrites of parts of what I think were supposed to be Genesis, and a few snippets that now exist as footnotes in LDS-published Bibles, he got tired and gave up I guess.

@VoxofGod @wdlindsy

@corbden @VoxofGod @wdlindsy fwiw, my gigs weren't translating the bible, LOL. what i meant is that it got me into translation and to do it. at first it was mostly legal docs. then philosophy & literary works. i studied with Edith Grossman. she’s famous for her translation of El Quijote. learned so much with her about why ethymology matters when choosing synonyms. am really greatful. she made me a better reader and listener.

twas victim of automation. google translate used to be b2b software.

@blogdiva

Oh sure, I was replying to what you said about the Wild West of Bible translations, which in JS’s case was literally in the Wild West šŸ˜‚

Ethymology is a cool word for a concept I’ve thought about but didn’t have a word! Search engines are choking on it (they insist that I mean etymology), but I can tell what it means from context and roots. We lose so much in translation because words aren’t just units that can be directly swapped out across languages without context and meaning loss.

That’s one of my big gripes about a god who thought it a good idea to give his words in just a few times and places, and expected the billions of people living elsewhere and elsewhen to understand letter-perfect what it meant OR ELSE! Like he’s never heard of epistemology [especially hermeneutics] or even just basic neurology.

@VoxofGod @wdlindsy

ā We lose so much in translation because words aren’t just units that can be directly swapped out across languages without context and meaning loss. āž

you sound like Prof. Grossman 😊

i wonder if she ever wrote a book about translation. she passed away recently, that's why she’s been on my mind.

@corbden @VoxofGod @wdlindsy

@blogdiva @corbden @VoxofGod @wdlindsy

Saul of Tarsus was the greatest product hacker of all time.

The first three centuries of the faith system were more interesting than anything that happened after: https://youtu.be/0cYs7IYN9qg?feature=shared

Noam Chomsky on the heresy of liberation theology

YouTube

@paninid

Yeah my semi-joking-but-kinda-serious conspiracy theory is that Paul was an intentional Roman plant and that he faked his whole conversion ā€œmiracleā€ on the road to Damascus. It’s an easy miracle to fake, and everything the Christians at the time wanted to hear. Then he completely rebooted the doctrines.

@blogdiva @VoxofGod @wdlindsy

@corbden

I have one theory for Saul, and recently heard another.

Mine: he’s a trained Hellenized rabbi and a Roman citizen who was the cause for the first martyr of the faith, Stephen. That heavy conscious of persecution weighed on him. On the road to Damascus, he ate a magic mushroom and hallucinated the vision which changed his life.

Someone else: he suffered from a form of epilepsy which resulted in the same hallucination.

#history #SaulOfTarsus

@blogdiva
@VoxofGod
@wdlindsy

@paninid

Apparently there’s some solid evidence that the prophet Joseph Smith also benefited from shroom visions, but I’ve not dug into it. A small panel presented that idea at a Sunstone conference I attended, and I poked my head in, but I wanted to see something else more.

@blogdiva @VoxofGod @wdlindsy

@corbden @blogdiva @VoxofGod @wdlindsy

TIL

ā€œIn the Greek world, the word saulos carried a negative connotation when it came to males and meant something like ā€œprancing.ā€ It seems likely that someone in Antioch gave Saul some valuable advice before he went out among the peoples of the Roman world. Calling oneself ā€œPrancerā€ when standing before the likes of philosophers and Roman governors would probably not generate a great first impression.ā€

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/when-did-saul-become-paul/

When Did Saul Become Paul?

Did Saul of Tarsus change his name to Paul when he became a Christian? Was it a break from his Jewish cultural identity?

Biblical Archaeology Society
@paninid I knew a Damascene named Paul and I always joked that this story defined our relationship. Sadly I could never get him to try mushrooms
@corbden @paninid @blogdiva @VoxofGod @wdlindsy Hyam Maccoby's 'The Mythmaker' has a road to Damascus theory quite similar to this (and the whole book is about Paul's appropriation of Christianity from Jesus and the followers who actually knew him and his original message).

@20centuryliterarymystery @corbden @blogdiva @VoxofGod @wdlindsy

Appropriation is a great term. Geza Vermes’ Christian Beginnings: Nazareth to Nicaea was also eye-opening.

It’s why I refer to Paul as a product hacker.

He never met Jesus, took his message, broke with the actual Apostles, and then conducted product-market fit A/B experiments in Asia Minor, tweaking with each trip out.

James in Jerusalem was pissed.

Paul was like Elon Musk claiming to have founded Tesla.

@paninid

Totally, and when I used the word ā€œcolonialismā€ in my original reply, that was carrying a lot of water, including (mis)appropriation. Post-Roman Europe learned colonialism from the Roman Empire, which it passed along through (its version of, starting with Paul) Christianity, upon which this American Empire was eventually built. Many of my European ancestors were converted by force. (Arguably all of them depending on how we define ā€œforce.ā€)

Most of these basic tools were first developed in Rome (or before that perhaps, but certainly advanced by Rome), and they’re only kept alive within American democracy by Christian forces, the only setting in which the word ā€œLordā€ can still be uttered without being entertainment, roleplay, or farce.

This is my current working model.

@20centuryliterarymystery @blogdiva @VoxofGod @wdlindsy