Also lol at the Harper Lee chart. GP, The Rest Is noise is excellent.
This is excellent if you're already nervous and depressed about climate change and think you ought to be more so. And doubly so if you live anywhere near the Southwest. Makes me want to go get a tall glass of water to drink while I still have the chance. Seriously, though, it really is very well done. The jacket's comparison to John McPhee, one of my heroes, is appropriate.
"...like windows and daylight..." Too bad, I usually had Name of the Rose fantasies while exploring the shelves there. We had a store here in Grand Rapids that had a basement stuffed full of books, floor to ceiling, with several low-ceiling sub-basements which I am pretty sure ran under the street. It was quite the place to explore.
I love that kind of bookstore. There was one I found in England once that was in a sprawling old house full of tight staircases, narrow corridors, and small branching rooms in all directions, the kind of house where if you were a guest in one of the n=minor bedrooms you could get lost on the way to breakfast despite there probably being two or three ways to get there. Every room, corridor, and staircase was stacked floor to ceiling with old used books. Probably an unconscionable fire hazard, but great fun.
Seminary Co-op is certainly floor-to-ceiling books, but impeccably organized and almost entirely academic/scholarly. Not a mystery or bestseller in the place. ("Graphic novels," though.) Great for general browsing of fields you are generally interested in.
Have you ever been to Hay-on-Wye, GP? A number bookshops just as you describe - as you probably know, it is the second hand book 'capital' of the UK. Shopping on Amazon is just not the same experience!
In my pre-Christian days I once bought the King James (for 10p in a used bookstore) and started reading at the beginning to see what the fuss was about. Mistake. Gave up pretty quickly. Not the best way in.
Certainly not the King James! I did manage the New Testament (NIV) but have never got far with the Old Testament. 'Our' Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has arranged for every school in the UK to have a Kings James Bible, quite a large sized one. You can imagine some of the suggestions for its use that the teacher web boards have come up with. He even wanted to write the forward, but that was dropped so he wrote a letter to go with it. It says quite a lot about the traditional values that our privately educated (Eton, followed by Oxford) Education Secretary has, especially as he also did a History degree, and wants to put that on a level with English and Maths in the curriculum. If the Bible had been a modern version I think few would have bothered about it.
Wow. What an interesting notion. I presume this is some sort of late echo of the idea of the KJV as unifying British culture? Seems a bit late for that when most folk have never cracked a Bible of any kind and would have trouble decoding a third of the sentences in the KJV...
Being accustomed to the Tanakh, KJV burns my eyes.
However, on the surface KJV probably has literary value as a contribution to the English language. Indeed, the translated New Testament is foundational literature in many languages. I doubt, though, that all people would accept studying it as literature.
Oh, the KJV has lots of historic, literary, linguistic and cultural value, though the notion that buying a big one for every school is going to achieve a learning outcome seems odd. There's a lot of funny category issues around this stuff. Studying Scripture "as literature" tends to get taken (probably for intellectual/cultural history reasons) to mean studying it as if it is not true/inspired/scriptural/authoritative etc. It could mean that, but there is no inherent reason why it should. There is no inherent contradiction in believing a Psalm to be Scripture (etc) and believing it to be a poem (and believing that being able to read it intelligently as a poem might actually help you understand it). There are too many phobias on all sides of the debates when it comes to the Bible and classrooms.
The idea is that it should introduce children to the high point of English language (not my term!) even primary (4-11) schools. I'll find a web link. I much prefer New International Version where the translation is reckoned to be far more accurate from Hebrew/Greek etc. It is the 400th Anniversary of the KIng James, but that was just an update from earlier translations, not going back to the original languages as far as possible.
Growing up I heard a lot of debate between King James supporters and other version supporters, and the other version people always said that the King James was not taken from the Hebrew and Greek, and that it was taken from the Latin Vulgate. But last year there was an interesting article in National Geographic about the King James and that said that it was all taken from the most direct sources available, and only occasionally referred to the Vulgate. Wikipedia says the same thing, although I don't know how trustable that is. I've been slowly reading through the King James for several months, and I refer to the NIV whenever I find something confusing or weird; I haven't found anything that's not just a difference in phrasing I'm also coming to appreciate the King James language more and more. I'm convinced that the difference between the KJV and NIV is literary and Church political, but not substantive.
At BT: is there this level of debate about the value of different translations of the Tanakh? (and I will admit I had to look up what the Tanakh was) I think maybe once I finish the King James I should try the Tanakh.
I read the NIV for years, but have become a bit disillusioned with it. Or maybe just over-familiar. The problem with its quest for accessibility is that I keep finding instances as I read commentaries on the underlying original where it seems to flatten out the more startling imagery/turns of phrase. (e.g. Exodus 2:25 where God looked on the Hebrew slaves suffering under Pharaoh and "knew" them (ASV "took knowledge") - NIV's "was concerned about them" just feels weak to me, like he put it on his job list for the next free weekend (especially against the backdrop of "Adam knew Eve").
I have nothing against KJV per se. I have run into it generating a few misunderstandings because of changes in diction. For instance I remember some folk in a church I was in back in England understanding 1 Thessalonians 5:22, KJV: "Abstain from all appearance of evil", as meaning that you had to not only avoid doing bad things but also avoid doing anything that might look to someone else as if it were a bad thing. NIV's "reject every kind of evil." is closer - the sentence is about not letting evil appear, it isn't about avoiding appearing to be evil. Places like this there is some risk of archaisms generating misunderstanding.
I find translations like Robert Alter's (that focus on giving access to the imagery of the original even if that means you need commentary to figure out what it was saying) a helpful supplement. Dipping into this at the moment:
At amclark2: No, not really. Hebrew, of course, has been considered the primary over all translations (BTW, I read very little Hebrew). However, I think two other issues are more salient. First, it is not "truth" in the same way as the Bible is taken as truth. Being that the spiritual and physical are more strictly separated in Judaism, the Tanakh is understood (in part) as a product of human perception. (If I am not mistaken, the Talmud records that G-d rejected the Song of Songs but was overruled by the rabbis.) Second, and perhaps more importantly, interpretation sits comfortably alongside it. Talmud, Midrash, Rashi, RamBam, Chassidic Tales, etc., are more visible in the process of interpretation, making the layers of interpretation more obvious.
If you are interested in what is contained in the Tanakh, you might enjoy Marc Brettler's How to Read the Jewish Bible. He spoke about his book on Fresh Air a few years ago.
At greg: Minister Gove's intentions are dubious, but I tend to think that certain attitudes toward serious study of the Bible, and religion in general, have been solidified by high school. There is already a severe prejudice against understanding it as something other than moral instruction (whether to lead one to salvation or establish authoritarian control). I'd even say that students are generally unwilling to regard it as a record of actions, ambitions, values, etc., of ancient peoples. Even Esther, a book without the presence of G-d, tends to be interpreted in terms of ideals of submission/subservience.
I will concur that Alter is a good intro to the Psalms, I also recommend his Art of Biblical Narrative and an intro to the Hebrew Bible. Oxford prints a "Jewish Study Bible" which is the latest version of the HB from the Jewish Publication Society. If you are looking for a basic intro to the whole Bible, try Goheen and Bartholomew, The Drama of Scripture. I use this as a textbook for intro level freshman Bible classes, a very easy read and can be had cheaply enough. It also has a fair intro to the intertestamental (Second Temple) period, despite being Protestant.
First, it is not "truth" in the same way as the Bible is taken as truth. Being that the spiritual and physical are more strictly separated in Judaism, the Tanakh is understood (in part) as a product of human perception.
That's a fascinating concept that's distinctly missing from my history of hearing about the Bible, and that and the "ancient peoples" idea play in to why I'm currently enjoying the King James - I can, to a certain extent, divorce myself from the baggage and read it as an interesting piece of literature, which is about ancient people, and the translation itself is also an interesting and somewhat ancient piece of history too. That doesn't mean that I read it and find it not contain truth or be true, but I ca get away from the dogma, the TRUTH, that I grew up with, which in the end I think may have more to do with what certain modern people are trying to sell than with any translation.
For example, in the circles I grew up in, regardless of translation, the "appearance of evil" idea was always very strongly sold as exactly that; because, I think, that allows people to claim some right to control appearance, which is a much greater level of control than actions.
@kargatron that was kind of deliberate. I was in that moment groping unsuccessfully for a wording that sounded less as if I were assuming all readers of the sentence see the Bible as true; "were" sounded like that in my head but the "is" version was not an improvement.
That's assuming the chortle was at the grammar and not the idea?
"Laying out the pepperoni in a Christ-like pattern?"
I think Jesus was kosher, so no pepperoni. Cheese and vegetables only. (I did have pizza in Jerusalem in January with a meat-like substance on it, which the owner claimed was pepperoni, but I had my doubts.)
Comments
This is excellent if you're already nervous and depressed about climate change and think you ought to be more so. And doubly so if you live anywhere near the Southwest. Makes me want to go get a tall glass of water to drink while I still have the chance. Seriously, though, it really is very well done. The jacket's comparison to John McPhee, one of my heroes, is appropriate.
We've had this on emusers before, but I saw it in my Library again yesterday so thought I'd have another dip into it.
Just look at that bad boy. 2300 pages, and that's just the Old Testament. Holy Moses!
However, on the surface KJV probably has literary value as a contribution to the English language. Indeed, the translated New Testament is foundational literature in many languages. I doubt, though, that all people would accept studying it as literature.
Link
At BT: is there this level of debate about the value of different translations of the Tanakh? (and I will admit I had to look up what the Tanakh was) I think maybe once I finish the King James I should try the Tanakh.
I have nothing against KJV per se. I have run into it generating a few misunderstandings because of changes in diction. For instance I remember some folk in a church I was in back in England understanding 1 Thessalonians 5:22, KJV: "Abstain from all appearance of evil", as meaning that you had to not only avoid doing bad things but also avoid doing anything that might look to someone else as if it were a bad thing. NIV's "reject every kind of evil." is closer - the sentence is about not letting evil appear, it isn't about avoiding appearing to be evil. Places like this there is some risk of archaisms generating misunderstanding.
I find translations like Robert Alter's (that focus on giving access to the imagery of the original even if that means you need commentary to figure out what it was saying) a helpful supplement. Dipping into this at the moment:
If you are interested in what is contained in the Tanakh, you might enjoy Marc Brettler's How to Read the Jewish Bible. He spoke about his book on Fresh Air a few years ago.
That's a fascinating concept that's distinctly missing from my history of hearing about the Bible, and that and the "ancient peoples" idea play in to why I'm currently enjoying the King James - I can, to a certain extent, divorce myself from the baggage and read it as an interesting piece of literature, which is about ancient people, and the translation itself is also an interesting and somewhat ancient piece of history too. That doesn't mean that I read it and find it not contain truth or be true, but I ca get away from the dogma, the TRUTH, that I grew up with, which in the end I think may have more to do with what certain modern people are trying to sell than with any translation.
For example, in the circles I grew up in, regardless of translation, the "appearance of evil" idea was always very strongly sold as exactly that; because, I think, that allows people to claim some right to control appearance, which is a much greater level of control than actions.
Craig
That's assuming the chortle was at the grammar and not the idea?
Whatever, it's late.
I think Jesus was kosher, so no pepperoni. Cheese and vegetables only. (I did have pizza in Jerusalem in January with a meat-like substance on it, which the owner claimed was pepperoni, but I had my doubts.)
Jews can eat Jesus?
Perhaps the pizza you had was made with locust sausage (locusts are kosher in some traditions, but I don't know if they are pareve or not.