The Bible is Not Prim

Suzanne McCarthy writes about squeamishness in Bible Translation:

I have been reading through Ann Nyland’s New Testament “The Source” since I now have my own copy complete with notes. There have often been times when I have thought of a way to translate a phrase but it is not found in any translation but hers. She has moments of extreme clarity and closeness to the meaning of the Greek. This is one of them. Sometimes her translation is more faithful than almost any other translation I am familiar with. Other times, not so much. That puts it on par with every other translation I read.

What I am really trying to say is that I feel that most of her translation is more or less as good or bad as any other, but sometimes it is significantly better. Tonight I read Mark 7:19 in her translation and wondered immediately what every other major translation had done with the toilet.

Because it doesn’t go into the mind but into the stomach, and then it goes into the toilet. Nyland

Now let’s look at the Greek.

ὅτι οὐκ εἰσπορεύεται αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν καρδίαν ἀλλ’ εἰς τὴν κοιλίαν καὶ εἰς τὸν ἀφεδρῶνα ἐκπορεύεται

Okay, Liddell Scott calls ἀφεδρῶν the “privy.” I believe that means the toilet. So how did so many versions come to leave it out?

I’ve read somewhere (can’t remember the source offhand) that ἀφεδρῶν is stronger than just “privy” — a better translation would be “shithole”.

A Question for Women

Read an article today whose point seems to be that (a) having children is becoming increasingly popular with the glitterati, and (b) it’s a shameful thing to promote having children, or even that having children can be a good thing.

Sinister motives are implied:

In her new book, The Terror Dream, the feminist Susan Faludi (also without child) argues that the procreation push is part of a creepy post-9/11 gender narrative, an extension of the ongoing, nationalist effort to promote hearth, home, and female fragility: “a concerted effort to promote this … idea that women would and should reproduce as a way of consoling the nation,” as she put it to The Observer.

“Consoling the nation”? Isn’t it more like “maintaining the continuing existence of the nation”?

Of course, being a man, what do I know?

I’m Shocked, Shocked, I Tell You!

Via Instapundit comes yet more evidence of the nefariousness of the current US incumbent, as if any more were needed!

But I feel it is imperative to spread the word that the Bush administration has now been conclusively shown to be in a massive cover-up. They are deliberately and wilfully covering up good news from Iraq:

Overall trends show a significant drop in violence over the last several months, according to previously unpublished military statistics obtained by NEWSWEEK. (Emphasis mine)

I call upon all right-thinking people to cast off the chains of neocon oppression and obfuscation, and declare for all the world to hear the truth that there is good news from Iraq!