Category: Journal

Mealy-Mouthism

Why don’t we see more Bible translations that try to take the author’s style into account? Is it because we unconsciously wish to present a more coherent scripture than we actually have? Translations in English range in formality from the lofty King James to the down-home Cotton Patch version, but while the tone varies from translation to translation, it remains consistent within. Modern translations tend to all sound alike to me; they’re all mealy-mouthed Sunday School gruel.

Here’s a rather light-hearted stab at Mark:

The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Son of God

Isaiah the prophet prophesized: “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” So John the Baptist showed up from the boonies, preaching at people to change their ways, get baptized, and get their sins forgiven.

Everybody in Judea and Jerusalem went to see him, and they all got baptized down in the Jordan river, and confessed everything they did wrong.

John the Baptist wore a camel hair and a leather belt and ate bugs and wild honey. He preached that there was someone even more hardcore than him who was coming: “I’m not worthy to even carry his stuff,” he said. “I’ve been baptizing you with water, but he’s going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost!”

So Jesus came down from Nazareth, in Galilee, to get baptized. When he came up out of the water, he saw the sky split open, and the Spirit come down to him like a dove, and a voice from the sky said, “I’m proud of you, son, and I love you.”

Right away the Spirit sent him into the desert. He stayed out there for forty days, being tempted by the Accuser. Angels came and took care of him, out there with the wild animals.

When John the Baptist got put in jail, Jesus went back to Galilee and preached about God’s good news. “It’s time,” he said. “God’s Kingdom is coming. Make a change, and trust the good news.”

Down by the lake of Galilee, Jesus met Simon and his brother Andrew — they were commercial fishers. Jesus said, “Come follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.” Right away they dropped their nets and followed him.

A little further down he saw Zebedee’s James and his brother John in their boat fixing their gear. Right away he called them, and they left their old man Zebedee and the deckhands in the boat and followed him.

Right away…

I’m finding it difficult to translate some of the more refined parts of the NT into an appropriate formal English style, because the rather stilted periods of the usual translations seem to have gotten stuck in my brain.

Good Feelings

Inspired by my reading in the Austrian School lately, and this morning’s, er, interesting conversation with an “anti-war” pamphleteer, I offer the following from Ludwig von Mises:

To express wishes and hopes and to announce planned action may be forms of action in so far as they aim in themselves at the realization of a certain purpose. But they must not be confused with the actions to which they refer. They are not identical with the actions they announce, recommend, or reject. Action is a real thing. What counts is a man’s total behavior, and not his talk about planned but not realized acts.

Update: Mises on the uniformity of human reason:

Explorers and missionaries report that in Africa and Polynesia primitive man stops short at his earliest perception of things and never reasons if he can in any way avoid it. European and American educators sometimes report the same of their students.

How Many Souls Can Dance on the Head of a Pin

I annoyed not a few professors in seminary by bringing up edge cases in systematic theology, especially in thinking about bodies and souls. When cloning was denounced as theologically dangerous, I said I had two aunts who were clones — identical twins, in fact. Then I brought up Abby and Brittany Hensel. These charming girls are basically two heads on one body. Featured on Oprah and in Life magazine a decade ago, they’re now teenagers. I chuckle when I remember those theology classes, especially as it appears that the girls attend a Christian school. There’s lots of scope for juvenile humour here, especially as the twins share a single reproductive system.

Commuter Train Pet Peeves

– People who abuse the conventions of personal space. Especially girls who try to body-check their way onto an already crowded car and then look at you like you’re some kind of pervert for touching them.

– Little kids who press the emergency stop button on escalators.