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Seven books I keep close because I love them

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Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#131

Post by 0xcafefood »

agaj-nimm wrote: post #130
0xcafefood wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations I think you were emphasizing something beside this, but if you want to know _why_ the five Books of Moses often jump suddenly into genealogy or minutiae of interest only to priests, you might be interested in the Documentary Hypothesis. Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" is an approachable introduction to it.

Appreciate it but I'm already deeply into bible authorship. Many of my professors in college were bible scholars. Fascinating field really. Ancient history is much like astrophysics and cosmology. We know so very little and there are so many blanks. It sometimes catches me off guard that people think our past is well known.

Cool! In that case, let me ask you: what books would you recommend on the topic?

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#132

Post by agaj-nimm »

dev_dan_2 wrote: post #121
agaj-nimm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been eye opening to read books from the Old Testament in the word-by-word translation of ancient Hebrew. A lot of the semantic accretion over the millennia comes off and you get a more raw iron age tribal wisdom glowing through. One example is that often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations. It happens that words interpreted as names of people are also abstract noun…

> descriptions of genealogy That in itself would still make a lot of sense to me though; as far as I know, property and power was mainly transfered through the lines of first born males (so a patriarchy, in the literal sense). If that, social status and so on hinges on who your father, grandfather etc. was, then I think it makes sense for geneology trees to be something important enough to write down, especially in l…

That's a bit of an oversimplification. I understand the historical value of genealogy but don't assume all past societies were uniformly practicing some form of entail and primogeniture.

There is no definitive reading of scripture, there is no definitive version of any of the texts, and I enjoy finding new aspects of their history and interpretation. Realizing that some of the texts that read as genealogy might have been originally a form of poetic aphorism is something I wouldn't affirm to a bible scholar but I enjoy thinking about it.

Someone else said a lot of scripture was written as poetry. Imagine people in the year 4500 trying to figure out some fourth hand translation of clippings taken from books by Neruda, Chaucer and Hobsbawm.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#133

Post by ivrit-tirvi »

Ardren wrote: post #58
ivrit-tirvi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations). It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique! As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse thro…

> I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing? But you do?

Reading Hebrew is not about "opinion" or "theological insight".

Hebrew is all about INTUITION (knowledge that rises spontaneously from YOUR OWN heart).

The more you are SPIRITUALLY ALIVE, the more you will get out of every Hebrew sentence. It's a work-in-progress that lasts all of your lifetime.

And it's PERSONAL: every time you read (or re-read) a passage, it adds understanding to the level/dimension that you are currently capable of...

(You see, it's a never ending process: and that's exactly why I LOVE Hebrew and the Bible so much!!)

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#134

Post by Yizahi »

dev_dan_2 wrote: post #123
aaroninsf wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics. What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structu…

> Because it is, you know, divine. I am playing devils advocate here: Even if it were not divine because atheists happen to be right on that one... even then, the authors and the intended audience of the bible considered it divine - with pretty much the same outcomes when it comes to hermeneutics. That is why I think that both 1) atheists rejecting to do (at least temporary) suspension of disbelief even for the sake…

I suspect that majority of atheists would be fine with either literal reading of Bible (any other religious text) or with metaphorical and in-context reading of such text, whatever better suits the fancy of religious folks. Now the problem atheists have is the selective arbitrary literal or metaphorical passages of the same single book.

Are passages about killing infidels and the other xenophobic garbage is a historical metaphorical and nuanced stuff which must be interpreted very different nowadays? Fine. But then all the other things should be also interpreted heavily - like there is no need to saran-wrap women because "the intention" or "the author's meaning" was about simply protecting them from the desert sand a-la medieval hiking handbook. There is no need to avoid specific animal meat in the age of refrigerators. And so on it goes.

Or we need to literally believe in the resurrection/heaven/souls/miracles and literally follow some extremely outdated and thus absurd instructions to the letter? Well, then murder, sadism and xenophobia then should be taken literally too.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#135

Post by rsynnott »

frollogaston wrote: post #125
rsynnott wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One potential issue is that some English words have changed meaning since it was written, and sometimes in extremely confusing or misleading ways. For instance 'convenient' and 'prevent' used to have radically different meanings.

"Convenient" isn't that different, meant "fitting" back then

I mean I think that's _very_ different. It is _fitting_ to do good works, but it is _convenient_ not to bother.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#136

Post by Razengan »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #111
Razengan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're trying to fall asleep but there is too much noise in your head, I suppose :) Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that. But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.

I bought Redwall for my kids a few years ago, and was stopped by three different people while walking from the back of the store to the checkout who commented on how good the books are!

The audiobooks are narrated by the author himself! Along with a full other cast and some music. Great for all ages to doze off to

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#137

Post by agaj-nimm »

0xcafefood wrote: post #131
agaj-nimm wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate it but I'm already deeply into bible authorship. Many of my professors in college were bible scholars. Fascinating field really. Ancient history is much like astrophysics and cosmology. We know so very little and there are so many blanks. It sometimes catches me off guard that people think our past is well known.

Cool! In that case, let me ask you: what books would you recommend on the topic?

Ancient history scholarship is very accessible, most of it is published on periodicals that offer free download of articles.

I recommend searching books and articles about 'canaanite religion' - the cult of El, Baal and Yaveh have a lot in common. You need to understand the context of Israelite religion to realize that modern monotheism wasn't created in a vacuum, it matured out of a deep tradition of local cults. I'd also recommend looking into Mesopotamian religions. Egyptian religion is not as fundamental but it provides a lot of perspective. Once you see the influence, it sheds light on a lot of things. The relationship between the cults of Set and the conflicting beliefs of followers of El and Baal is a fascinating rabbit hole.

Greek mythology also acquires a whole new depth to it when you realize that Baal (a canaanite deity), El (an israelite deity that eventually merges with some others into the monotheistic god) and Zeus: all were storm gods. There's a lot more to it all I'm saying, again, look into that. Fascinating stuff.

There is an amazing channel on youtube I wholeheartedly recommend: Esoterica https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel

A couple of good books I still remember are Belief by Orsi and Ancient Israel by Lemche.

Some journals off the top of my head:

Religion Compass https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17498171/current

Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia https://lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/jaos

I'd say go on Semantic Scholar, Academia.edu, or some other academic search tool and start digging! Bible authorship is a minor branch of a deep well of scholarship that is the study of ancient history and ancient religion.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#138

Post by baruz »

criddell wrote: post #13
euthymiclabs wrote: post #3

Pleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.

I never knew Roget's was organized like that and I have had several different editions over the years. I'm one of those people who always used it as a compendium of synonyms.

A lot of books that call themselves Roget’s have abandoned the dual structure (classification-index) in favor of a single index structure built like a dictionary, basically constructed for people who want a different word than what they would normally use, as mjd writes, rather than people who are interested in the store-house (thesaurus) of the English language.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#139

Post by stevenwoo »

PeterStuer wrote: post #41
eliben wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also remember libraries having a very small limit back in the day, so I was surprised to find out that in the Bay Area libraries typically allow up to 100 books per card!

Mind blown. How can that work? I assume book rentals follow the usual Poisson distribution?

In addition to printed books, my library has audiobooks, dedicated audio players for single books, DVD movies, video games, audio books on CD that count in your rentals. For new digital releases when they see the queue get overly long, they license more copies.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#140

Post by roughly »

mjd wrote: post #102
roughly wrote: post #95

This is a solid collection, one that shows real intellectual curiosity. Something that would be interesting to add would be something that falls entirely out of the canon of Western philosophy - you have what is by all measures a diverse sampling of the various permutations of the intellectual procession of western thinking, but nothing reflecting traditions from outside that procession, eg Chinese, Islamic, Indian,…

I do own more than these seven books.

I mean, yeah, I'd presume, but you also describe these books in a way that bespeaks a deep familiarity with the western canon. I'm curious what you've got that's off that track?

(Genuinely, I'm not pushing this as a critique or thinking ill of you, your descriptions of those books get into some deep parts of the evolution of western thinking that most people don't approach or don't appreciate. I'm pushing the outsider angle because I think you see and appreciate the intellectual history there well enough that I'd be interested in what speaks to you from outside that tradition, or what you hear from works that are outside the tradition.)

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