171–180 of 205 posts
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it.
This is just dogma and factually wrong.
The cornerstone of Western Culture is Greek Philosophies/Texts added-to/modified-with Indian/Chinese/Islamic/etc. philosophies/texts.
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I've only ever read KJV and haven't heard of the others. Is the downside that KJV is 1600s English? That particular line: KJV: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. NRSV: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. NIV: For I know that…
The NIV has as a stated goal to preserve the "infallibility" of the Bible, which means their translation opts for internal consistency over accuracy. I personally think it's the least trustworthy translation, a product specifically of the American evangelical movement in the Boomer heyday. The generation that really hates. The one that supercharged the anti-abortion movement as a direct response to the Supreme Court…
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The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."
My Hebrew education didn't extend to the future tense, but according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%AA#Conjugation תָּמוּת is either second person masculine future, or third person feminine future. But according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%A9 נֶפֶשׁ is feminine. So it seems that only the third person form could agree with the subject noun, right?
But those are the older translations — those quotes are from Luther Bible (1534) and Gdansk Bible (1632); you can find newer translations that use the wording of "let me perish with the Philistines" variety as well.
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The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."
That sounds like a person resigned to his death. The other line sounds like a plea to others. I can't help but wonder about LLM translations... will they do it better or worse or just different? I can wonder if it might be with less bias, or with a better body to pull from, but I can see it can be slop too.
Well, yes, precisely. Just two verses earlier Samson prayed to God, asking to grant him a last bout of strength to take revenge at the Philistines for blinding him: "And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes."
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> 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 histori…
Agree: Intellectual dishonesty just sucks, period. In any area I think, but the more emotional a topic, the harder so. Changing the axioms of how one views the world when it fits ones point is often either decieving, or the person is not aware of doing it, both options are suboptimal.
Here is the "But" or maybe better, the "but also": What I often observe where atheist + theist conversations go wrong is that the atheist has a preconcived notion of how certain beliefs have a causal relationship with other beliefs, which might not be necessarily true, and the intellectually honest would be to confirm that mental model first before jumping to conclusions. Let me make a, depending on the person, controversial example:
Imagine atheist A and theist T being in an ongoing dialoge, 10m, 15m in, and the topic comes to how Ts faith affect their marriage, what role is does play. T makes the statement that "... and one other thing is that I really like we are both partipating in this beatiful symbol of womand and man being created seperately and for each other ..." - now, what I often observed in real life and online:
A might infer that
- T things that women that are single are less worth or doing it wrong
- T thinks that homosexual couples are less worth or doing it wrong
- Underlying assumption: T thinks less of people that don't try to practise the christian faith
All of that might or might not be true, but by getting angry about their own interpretation of reality rather than asking about it first, the conversation is unlikely to become productive.
Some notes:
- The opposite if of course possible as well, i.e. a T assuming that an A has no morals because they don't believe in God or stuff like that
- In case one wonders how T can be able to believe that the proper thing in Gods eyes is to do X, yet they are at peace with people doing Y, does this not cause cognitive dissonance? Yes, but only under additional assumptions that T might not have all - for example: Society should be structured based on christian values. People should be evaluated on their deeds whether they actually want to work towards God rather than against him. And so on...
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Some might raise the point that it is rare that T voices a strong belief in X, but is compatible with a diverse, inclusive society. To this I counter: I don't care and neither should you! When it comes to me, I will get annoyed fast because I am fine with someone being interested in an exchange between two individuals, but when I am viewed as a representative of some group, then put on your sociology hat and do a survey, I guess. When it comes to you (as in: anyone else): This mindset cements notions that you have about a group - if you do not talk to Ts at all, or be open to their existence, how would you ever be able to correct the (possibly wrong, possibly right) notion that strong conviction and compality with a diverse society is possible?
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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'…
> El (an israelite deity that eventually merges with some others into the monotheistic god) It's my understanding that both Baal and El were Canaanite deities and that the Israelite cults brought their storm god Yahweh with them to Canaan and eventually he absorbed features of the Canaanite gods.
We don't really know much about these entities. There are fragments of inscriptions that could be read as 'lord of the city' for example just as easily as naming some deity.
Israel means roughly 'lords' struggle': Isra El.
Like I mentioned elsewhere, we know very little and what evidence we have is fragmentary. Thinking about possible interpretations of and links among what evidence we have is fascinating and every so often we might see a constellation of data points shedding light on events of 2500 years ago or so, but it's important to realize that the gaps in our knowledge of what happened in the iron age are much, much bigger than what we actually know.
> For example, Moses is easy to recognize at lower right, because of the glowing horns I'm sorry, what? Why is Moses depicted with glowing horns?
Yeah, I thought he was easily recognizable because he's holding stone tablets. But apparently it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_of_Moses > The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light.[1] The idea comes from a translation, or mistranslation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin…
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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 outside…
You've got me thinking that it might be nice to get a translation of _Līlāvatī_ by Bhaskara II to put there. Thanks!
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Yeah, I thought he was easily recognizable because he's holding stone tablets. But apparently it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_of_Moses > The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light.[1] The idea comes from a translation, or mistranslation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin…
He didn't carry the stone tablets around all the time.
If you asked random strangers in the street what Moses is most well known for, I'd wager bringing the stone tablets down would be #1.
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it. > I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible. Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already ov…
Could we get a version without the neologisms ("Amerika", "Afrika", "theirstory")? I was willing to spend five or ten minutes looking into something that I knew I had tremendous disagreements with, and then it ... started intentionally misspelling everything on the first page. I mean, I'm sure there are many different senses in which I'm not the target audience for this work, but it immediately feels like it's active…
Afrika is actually the correct spelling: https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/692
The key takeaways from the book are that the white underclasses were the foot soldiers in the genocide of indigenous people and while they had hard, labor filled lives, they were still the driving force behind manifest destiny.
A couple of areas it shed light for me that I didn't know much about:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Chinese_massacre_o...
I would argue that the cheap real estate that existed in the US up until the early 2000s was the tail end of the land theft and manifest destiny. The increased prices we're seeing may actually be closer to the true value of the land that was artificially depressed by being handed out for free to white settlers. The boomers were basically the last generation of settlers to enjoy this.
FWIW I mostly agree with Stallman and definitely agree with Sakai (the author of Settlers). The bible however, I find to be triggering in the way you describe.