151–160 of 183 posts
That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud, in its original language, three times a week and cycle over the whole thing in the course of a year.
> That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud Do you have any resources for someone who wants to learn Biblical Hebrew? I desire to be able to read the original languages.
That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud, in its original language, three times a week and cycle over the whole thing in the course of a year.
> That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud Do you have any resources for someone who wants to learn Biblical Hebrew? I desire to be able to read the original languages.
Start with Sefaria so at least you can see what it looks like: https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1?lang=bi&aliyot=0
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Islam is generally considered an Abrahamic religion. There is a lot of continuity; the (very very) short version of the Islam perspective is "Abraham explained God's will to us, then Jesus was sent by God to explain God's will better, and then finally God sent Mohammed and he communicated God's will perfectly". Three time's the charm I guess? Many of the figures you know from the Bible make their appearance in the Qu…
Yep, I know that, but it doesn’t offer anything else than a claim to authenticity, by posing as a continuation, while the previous revelations are then discarded. The mentions of Biblical persons and events, as I hinted in the previous comment, are cultural rather than theological, and can’t be used to establish theological continuity, no matter how hard the Ismaelite genealogy is pressed.
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> Faithfulness to an imagined "original text" is often asked for, often attempted, but wholly futile. I think this overstates the case, especially when it comes to the text of the Bible. Thousands of variants exist, but this is precisely because the text was so widely copied. The prevalence of manuscripts and pieces of them dwarfs every other ancient document by orders of magnitude. The abundance provides a means of…
I am fully on board with considering the value of the text regardless of its provenance, and with measured skepticism about all received documents, ancient or modern. Best evidence is that actual physical existence of a Jesus in Palestine is about 50% likely, but the likelihood that (such a) He said any of what is received is roughly nil.
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> It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture They... don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible
And who decided what the "New Testament" is? Hint, not the Protestants...
Since the article is kind of shallow, here are a few atypical approaches to Biblical translation I’ve found interesting over the years: • The Five Books of Moses, by Everett Fox, who attempts to retain in English the underlying poetry of the Hebrew like alliteration, meter, wordplay, and so on. ( https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/55160/the-five-book... ) • The Books of the Bible: not a new translation (it’s ju…
"The JPS Torah Commentary series guides readers through the words and ideas of the Torah. Each volume is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field.
Every page contains the complete traditional Hebrew text, with cantillation notes, the JPS translation of the Holy Scriptures, aliyot breaks, Masoretic notes, and commentary by a distinguished Hebrew Bible scholar, integrating classical and modern sources.
Each volume also contains supplementary essays that elaborate upon key words and themes, a glossary of commentators and sources, extensive bibliographic notes, and maps."
[1] https://jps.org/product-category/collections/jps-bible-comme...
A big challenge in translating "The Bible" is that it is an anthology collected over 100s or 1000s of years in many different and divergent forms. Thus there is no authoritative original version. All available versions were compiled, curated, and edited by their respective authors.
Another big challenge is the punishment for getting it wrong, which the article doesn't even mention. >For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,…
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I am fully on board with considering the value of the text regardless of its provenance, and with measured skepticism about all received documents, ancient or modern. Best evidence is that actual physical existence of a Jesus in Palestine is about 50% likely, but the likelihood that (such a) He said any of what is received is roughly nil.
For the interested do you have a set of sources?
https://independent.academia.edu/RichardCarrier
Unfortunately he really would rather you buy his books than read his blog posts, so they are hard to search.
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Yeah, it's actually one of the last sentences in the New Testament - Revelations 22:18. Jesus did his best to tone down the fire and brimstone, but the Abrahamic god is not a particularly forgiving one.
What's interesting about that is it's obviously only referring to the book of Revelations itself, since "The Bible" as such didn't even exist at the time, if it isn't a late addition. Yet Christians apply it to scripture as a whole. Also, IIRC, Revelations almost didn't even make it into the Biblical canon, like a lot of other apocryphal books it was considered too crazy for the mainstream.
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There was a beautifully made book from 1936 called "The Bible Designed To Be Read As Literature" that was set out and edited to be more like a normal book: https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.10239/ I picked up a copy secondhand years ago and I'm happy I did.
Bibliotheca looks like possibly a modern version of this, I recently ordered a copy so I'll know when it ships late 2023. https://www.bibliotheca.co/