In this corner… weighing in at a mighty 36 words, hailing from the King James Version of the Holy Bible, it’s the third commandment, the word of the lord, our God… It’s Exodus 20:4!!!
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
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And in this corner, hailing from Vatican City, weighing in at a menacing 185 thousand tons, the product of over 8 years of painstaing work by one of the world’s most famous painters, beloved and adored for over 520 years by literally tens of millions of neck straining tourists, it’s the chapel with a chip on it’s shoulder. Is got the likeness of both man and God! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, in all it’s blasphemous glory… the Sistine Chapel!
Oh, also it is insulting to people who are Muslim. So if you do know someone who is, and praticies (unlike you an while you are Catholic, you do not practice…just giving an example), it is very rude and insulting. I have friends who would be very insulted by that and probably never speak to me again if I did that.
(The short form is: Solomon put cherubim (which are “heavenly”) in his temple and God didn’t get pissed so we figure it’s ok)
Deut. 4:15 – from this verse, Protestants say that since we saw “no form” of the Lord, we should not make graven images of Him.
Deut. 4:16 – of course, in early history Israel was forbidden to make images of God because God didn’t yet reveal himself visibly “in the form of any figure.”
Deut. 4:17-19 – hence, had the Israelites depicted God not yet revealed, they might be tempted to worship Him in the form of a beast, bird, reptile or fish, which was a common error of the times.
Exodus 3:2-3; Dan 7:9; Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32; Acts 2:3- later on, however, we see that God did reveal himself in visible form (as a dove, fire, etc).
Deut. 5:8 – God’s commandment “thou shall not make a graven image” is entirely connected to the worship of false gods. God does not prohibit images to be used in worship, but He prohibits the images themselves to be worshiped.
Exodus 25:18-22; 26:1,31 – for example, God commands the making of the image of a golden cherubim. This heavenly image, of course, is not worshiped by the Israelites. Instead, the image disposes their minds to the supernatural and draws them to God.
Num. 21:8-9 – God also commands the making of the bronze serpent. The image of the bronze serpent is not an idol to be worshiped, but an article that lifts the mind to the supernatural.
I Kings 6:23-36; 7:27-39; 8:6-67 – Solomon’s temple contains statues of cherubim and images of cherubim, oxen and lions. God did not condemn these images that were used in worship.
2 Kings 18:4 – it was only when the people began to worship the statue did they incur God’s wrath, and the king destroyed it. The command prohibiting the use of graven images deals exclusively with the false worship of those images.
1 Chron. 28:18-19 – David gives Solomon the plan for the altar made of refined gold with a golden cherubim images. These images were used in the Jews’ most solemn place of worship.
2 Chron. 3:7-14 – the house was lined with gold with elaborate cherubim carved in wood and overlaid with gold.
Ezek. 41:15 – Ezekiel describes graven images in the temple consisting of carved likenesses of cherubim. These are similar to the images of the angels and saints in many Catholic churches.
Col. 1:15 – the only image of God that Catholics worship is Jesus Christ, who is the “image” (Greek “eikon”) of the invisible God.
I still don’t like it that they repealed a commandment. Which one do you think is next?
(reminds me of Mel Brooks as Moses, “I bring you these 15… [Moses stumbles and one of the three tablets falls and shatters] 10, I bring you these 10 commandments!”)
Well, if you really want to get technical…Thou Shalt not kill…
God no sooner emblazoned it upon the tablets and sent Moses down then he wanteed to kill 3000 people having their party with the Golden Calf.
God does what he wants. He tells man to do what he wants, but if he violats it, prepare to be punished.
So for all we know God hates it, but is biding his time for folks to make their appearance at the Gates so he can smack them in the back of the head and send them on their burning in hell way…
(I had to do some homework to answer this so if it seems like I’m partially answering my own question… well, I am. And Melis, it was particularly funny that you mentioned the story of The Golden Calf. It’s practically a punch line to this analysis. Read on…)
I’m guessing that the scholarly answer about not killing comes down somewhere around the idea that the New Testament God is nicer than the old. I remember something about that in high school Theology class. Old-God was more wrathful so he could kick ass whenever he wanted to.
But that still doesn’t answer the real difference between “graven images and “don’t kill”
“Graven images” was created and then recinded in the old Testament and we haven’t gone back. But “don’t kill” was similarly recinded… actually even more forcefully; in the story of the Golden Calf, God got pretty pissed and had thousands of Israelites killed for… wait for it… wait for it… worshiping a graven image! [ba dum bum, (cymbal strike)]
actually he was protrayed as a warrior God similar to “pagan” type gods, trying to slide him in, plus explain all the cruel and suffering of those early recoded times…
As for the graven images, that was not why God killed 3000. It was because they were worshipping a DIF God then him…yeah he was also a jealous and vengeful God and best of all, he admits to it…
God admits to flaws many times int he old T, he is almost as flawed as the man he created, which is nice. He is also always trying to please certain people, never asking them to do much in return, not even worship, but he rewards them constantly.
Hell with Abram, GOD made the covenant with him, as opposed to making A make the cov with God…
Oop. You’re right, the calf isn’t an image of God, it’s some new god.
It doesn’t sound like neat stuff to me. There are so many silly holes in the story. Moses convinced God not to kill everybody because it would be bad Public Relations? This from the omnipotent and omniscient one?
Looking at the bible from a skeptics point of view makes it look like bad pulp fiction.
Someone once remarked that reading a translation is like feeling the back of a tapestry (threads, knots, no colors). We, translators, take short cuts (my confession). Some words we aren’t certain about. Incorrect words have been kept owing to strength & conviction of tradition. Nuances are frequently entirely lost-some are wordplays & have multiple meanings. I get caught between lyricism/imagery/concrete meaning — Hard to unweave even in English. Picking one word/angle means sacrificing others. We can’t be very certain about context or political slant. It is a bit difficult attempting to interpret much of the old T. How it all went down, or what it means — is anybody’s guess.
Golden calf, sounds like a Chinese restaurant dish, “Spicy Golden Calf” or perhaps “Unusual Sezchuan Golden Calf”…if you want a semi-pulp interpretation of the bible–a friend of mine was in this great show–bible battles (filmed in Alrington!) on the history channel. Fun and watchable.
I like the picture–charming & suitable for framing.
actually I have been reading it from a literature point of view, thanks to my class. It is really kind of hard to go from questions God and powers to reading it like a book. You really have to let go of the inaccuraces because this story covers thousands of years so if they wrote about everything it would be HUGE.
Plus, look how many times this has been translated from one language to another to another…
it is ike that game…take a few verses of your favorite song, enter it into baelfish, then go from english to spanish to russian to french to portugese to japanese to italian to english THEN try and read what the hell the song was….
go ahead…translate it into any 6 dif languages and see what happens…no imagine that with a book written a few thousand years ago that actually began as an oral tradition for thousands of years before that…
Jessh, even James Pattersons pulp has holes like a mutha at times…
The idea that Momses stops God is to show that Moses is one worthy to stand up to God.
Seriously, I wish you could take this class, it is really neat to look at the bible from a book point of view with the main charachter happening to be God.
It is really much more difficult to let go of the religious stuff then people think and God’s power, then to look at God as a character like one from LoTR
Once that is finally done (heck mths in we still have folks argueing about God’s powers and why he does things, rather the let it go and accept he is a character in this book and nothing true or real more then that) it almost turns into a dif book then the bible as we know it from school or church…
I finally read the actual story of the Golden Calf, Exodus 32:5. As morality, punishment and rewards go, it sends a pretty harsh (and yet messed up at the same time) message. Aaron was the chief sinner here and he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, not from Moses who confronted him directly, not from the people who got slaughtered because of him, and not from God who knew first-hand who created the calf.
As for translations being imperfect: Yes, they are often quite imperfect. But at the same time, each translation usually changes the spin according to the wishes of the spinmeister/storyteller of the day. 2 millenia ago, PR and Marketing people didn’t work for Coca-cola and Burger King, they worked for the scripture translation services.
I went and tried to find the most original text of the story I could. I came up with some interesting results.
Interestingly, I found that The Straight Dope says that in 450 BC the five books of Moses were interpreted by the Redactor, never to be changed again. The Dead Sea Scrolls are almost the same word-for-word. So while there was 600 years of oral storytelling, the story has been pretty firm for the last 2,500 years.
>did you know one of the authors was a woman?
J.K. Rowling? ;-) (I mention that only because I know that she is known as “J.K.” because she knew that boys would be less inclined to read a book written by a girl)
In oreder to better understand God and his nonpunishment of brother of Moses, God chose him. He also has respect for lineage. When Abram (later Abraham) was told by God his children would be as many stars as there are in the sky and they would eventually go on to become the tribes (yep 12 tribes), he warned they would go through tough times, but they would always over come. God rewards blood lines of his chosen, while anyone who goes against them have their decendents suffer for the fathers crimes.
I see this as God knowing this is Moses’ brother, knowing that he would go against Moses (heck he warned Moses when he got there that this would happen)
Without these problems God would not have been able to establish himself as God adn not able to have lessons taught to hose who follow.
He also likes to show that he can forgive, those who are worthy.
At this same time he had to show how Yes is a vengeful and warrior like God, it is time for him to change and be different then other Gods people worshipped at that time, showing an evolution of him, as it were.
Just how he was determined to break Pharoah, is a representation of God on Earth to Egyptians, he fought against another God to win his people and save them from the evil other gods.
Sorry, this is not coming out very well, have a child demanding a hot dog and trying to write something about the EU and the danish cartoon…
actually I am a full time college student…I can tell you, I get practically no sleep…I work after she has gone to sleep, and what makes it even more fun, my husband tends to leave for 30 days for work every now and again, so in times like now, I have no family around and I am pretty much alone…I get cabin fever!
WOW! Argh. There aren’t any campus orgs for that? If you need a time sink, I think the site is Hipmama.com edgy tales of moms. It helped a friend of mine from going completely bonkers while her husband was away. I never surfed the message boards, but she found them enjoyable.
yeah but then I will get sucked in by moms telling their sotires when I should be doing school work or being with child…
today I am off as is she so I am trying to do both, this, while a nice mini distraction, actually helps with studying as you can see above by the answers…
Usually I find bemoaning to relatives is best for me as it also is multitasking since I am already talking to them anyway!
I try to master multitasking, it is a dream of mine, then again Martha Stweart is an idol of mine, sick bitch that she is!
Question for the bible as lit scholar…which translation does your prof recommend? Does he give you a break down/list of words of which they are not too certin what they were? A friend of mine told me that the Israelites were day workers in Egypt–not slaves and the Pharoah came after them for other reasons.
I find it quite bothersome that “original” texts are not available to commoners. BibleGatway (and every other source I’ve ever seen) does not disply the oldest available texts. They’ve got 50 (yes, 5-0) translations but not any original scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are piecemeal and hard to read because they’re so faded but it would make for a perfect scholarly study to put images of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other old documents along with word for word (in Hebrew?) transliteration, next to English literal translation, next to English translation. Is such a thing available? Maybe I’ll answers.google.com for it. If I remember correctly, King James’ scholars gathered together all their references but they didn’t archive them.
kidding…actually she prefers we use KJV since it is written in a poetic form, but we suppliment that with the Oxford Annotated Bible AND a text book on the Bible as well!
Yeah so basically for our one class alone we use three versions, thought the KJV is the one we mainly work form becaue it is so poetic sounding, even when people are dying or killing animals, it sounds so darned pretty!
So what about original texts? Could you ask the prof about it? “darned pretty” is nice but “darned accurate” might get us further along.
This whole conversation is suddenly striking me as silly. I’m trying to find out what God -actually- said while there are all these interpretations in the way. While I’m pretty well convinced that God didn’t say anything. If he did, he could have written down his words on atomantium plaques with the words etched in 10 mile high script and placed the plaques in orbit around earth for all to see.
And imagine iF the originals were avaiable to the public, they are so old, look what they have to go through to preserve papers from a few hunder years ago, much less scrolls (rolled and unrolled over years damaging, and forget the dryness factor)
And think of the fanatics whose mission would be to destroy them. Yeah there are those….
So what are you wanting me to ask her? I will ask her anything…if she can she is more the happy to answer!
You want me to ask if she has copies of the original texts?
Is that what you want me to ask her, cause if so I am gonna put money on the fact that she will not. She is not a Harvard Theology professor, she is a lit prof at centenary…
And I doubt they release photocopie since the bright light probably damages the items, jsut like you are not allowed to take a picture of Dec of Ind and it is kept in a darkened room….climate controlled, and that is one sheet of paper…
ah so you want to know if there is a literal translation of the scrolls (dead sea)? That is the question….my head is killing me today so trying to read through the statements then a question is killing me with the background on your page.
Ok, the question remains…Israelites in Egypt–which word is it–day laborer or slaves? They coerced the Egyptians into forking over travel supplies or stole stuff & Pharoah came chasing them. Is the apple really an apple? That snake image is all about discreditng and displacing fertility religions…supposedly.
>ah so you want to know if there is a literal translation of the
>scrolls (dead sea)? That is the question…
Read comment 23 again when you’re head doesn’t hurt.
>.my head is killing me today so trying to read through the statements
>then a question is killing me with the background on your page.
What are you talking about? It’s black text on a very light gray backgound? It’s about the easiest reading text I could make. And the black repeating pattern in the far backgound is very hard to find on the page. It is not killing your eyes.
What I really want to know is if John Milton was a pufta.
no the background, that design is making my eyes go wonky adding to the lovely headache piercing my brain….
And this is what the question is…no?
“The Dead Sea Scrolls are piecemeal and hard to read because they’re so faded but it would make for a perfect scholarly study to put images of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other old documents along with word for word (in Hebrew?) transliteration, next to English literal translation, next to English translation. Is such a thing available?”
You want to know if there is a literal translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in english from Hebrew from the dead aramaic (I think it is originally written in aramaic, thank you Mel Gibson)? Correct?
“Ok, the question remains…Israelites in Egypt–which word is it–day laborer or slaves? They coerced the Egyptians into forking over travel supplies or stole stuff & Pharoah came chasing them. Is the apple really an apple? That snake image is all about discreditng and displacing fertility religions…supposedly.”
As far as the apple goes, that was actually added in later. That we did cover, how it was never mentioned the kind of fruit in earlier translations, but it became and apple in KJV.
As for slaves, I will ask her, but I think we did cover that, some of the AA folks in the clas got a bit up in arms when she discussed slavery. It was supposedly foretold they would be slaves for Pharoah.
I know that what was once considered slavery amongst actual Egyptians thought to have built the pyramids has since been shown to be just peasent workers, not slavery, but it was customary for them to have slaves from other nations work side by side with them. It was very common for those who win battles to take the towns or soldiers slaves, but slavery then is also not what we consider it to be now. Heck even in Roman times slaves could vote.
So maybe that was what they menat, because I could see why people would think that, but them being Israelites and not believers int he same God, chances are they rtruly were slaves, but that the definition of what type of slaves they were to what we think of slaves as now is different. I hope that came out better, and I do have more info on this on my slow laptop that must soon be burnt as an offering to the OS gods who shall bless me with a new one that will run at any speed faster then the speed of suck.
I want a literal, one for one, word for word (as near as can be done, I realize it will be tremendously verbose because word meanings change over time and I’ll need definitions) transliteration of whatever biblical texts are available from the oldest sources available in English.
Next to the transliterated version, I want a translated version, for example, the King James version. The difference between “transliterate” and “translate” being that the former tells us precisely what is being said in the original text, archaic idioms and all. I ask this because the individual words are very important. For example, at one point, Abram says either “Here is your… god”, “gods”, “God”, “Gods”, or “image of God”. The differences are very important to determine what sin he was committing and whether the third commandment was recindind in 1400 BC or not.
Without valid source material, bible study turns into some wishy-washy “what it means to me”-fest. Unfortunately, it’s likely that there is no getting around the fact that it is just a big “what it means to me” party.
see, and this is not a bible study class with a theology professor. This is a Literature class with an english professor.
We are not trying to define the literal meanings, we are reading KJV as a piece of literature, not one mystical meaning to it be implied.
That is a huge problem many folks are currently also having with the class, being bogged down in the wishy washy when that is not for us to care about, read this like Iliad or any classical piece of literature, and God is simply a character in it. Yes he is the main character, but it is only to be read as lit, nothing more into it.
If you want to serioously go that deep, and I doubt you will find something along those lines that you seek, then go for it, but I knwo when I ask Elliott, she will probably laugh at me.
On top of that, the original texts that were filtered down to what we currently have were huge, volumous pieces, which is why some stories go on forever, but others skimmed over. It was left to a group to decide what stays and what goes.
Also, The Bible is to be taken personally and literally, at the persons decision, that is a part of the study. I know that logically you can see that because if it were one solid translation for all to work from we would not have so many versions out there currently, each of which is allowable by dif religions as THEIR bible to work from.
So to bring it home Melis, Muslims take the “no graven images” clause to heart as The Word of God as part of the 10 commandments and that Muhammed was deified (even though he was only a prophet… (and to deify him is technically a sin)) so that images of him are harkened to images of Him. Of course, the rest of the Old Testament, which is also The Word of God, renegs on that; negating the graven images clause because some important people didn’t get in trouble for violating the clause. The Jewish and Christian committees got together and said that it wasn’t really a sin anymore. But the Muslim committee disagreed and kept those parts out of their Good Book.
>We are not trying to define the literal meanings, we are reading KJV
>as a piece of literature, not one mystical meaning to it be implied.
It sounds like you’re saying that yours is a literature class and not a bible study course and at the same time, you disagree with me that wording matters (IE “god”, “gods”, “God”, “Gods”, “image of God”. That makes no sense. I’ll add to my previous statement of “Without valid source material, bible study turns into some wishy-washy ‘what it means to me’-fest”. I’d also like to say, “Without valid source material, literature study turns into some wishy-washy ‘what it means to me’-fest.”
I can’t see how you can study it as literature when
1- A very careful reading is vital (IE “god” vs “God” makes a BIG difference, above)
2- You are drawing on multiple sources for your source material (IE KJV & New American…) which often disagree with one another.
I suppose you could have a comparative literature class… comparing how each version is rooted in the day and time of it’s editorship. But you can’t talk about the stories themselves without falling into a quagmire of contradictions since there is no “original”. At a much higher level, I could also see one doing a cross-analysis of all the versions and trying to interpolate information about the original text. But that sounds like it would be a highly specialized field… doctoral thesis material.
>The Bible is to be taken personally and literally, at the persons
>decision, that is a part of the study.
Literally? Literally?? Literally???!
Do you believe the world is 6,000 years old? That Noah put all the animals on a 450′ x 75′ x 45′ boat? That the Jews roamed the desert for 40 years, leaving no trace in any literature except the bible? That the gospels that are recognized as canon didn’t make the bible because they’re “almost”(?) the word of God? That God said gays should be put to death (Lev 20:13)? That God said rebelious teenagers should be stoned to death (Lev 21:21)? That God said selling your daughter into slavery ain’t so bad (Exodus 21:7)? That God said if you work on the Sabbath you should be PUT TO DEATH (Exodus 35:2)? Long hair is shameful (Corinthians 11:14)?
If God said it, then God said it. If he didn’t it makes for very interesting, possibly profound literature. But nothing more. You can’t take parts of His Word as fact and leave out others at a whim. The only way you could would be if there were tags on each chapter saying “Fiction” and “Non-fiction”.
And people are willing to riot and kill other people over one tiny bit of this? Put humorously: phew, there was never such a stink when Valley of the Dolls came out. Put straightforwardly: That’s stupid. No… frighteningly stupid to the point where I want to arm myself against it.
it is too late for me to get into this huge response now, BUT literally, yes, some parts of it….
Ten Commandments ring a bell again?
And are there not some people who DO live it literally, not shaving and covering their heads and try to live as the bible tells them.
We are studying it as a piece of LIT, stop trying to make this into more then that. Jeesh we have only 3 months to cover it as a lit class, we read it like a story. This is why I keep telling you I am not trying to discuss it from a mystical point of view, I know how you feel about the religious aspect and that is for you to deal with…
I am taking this as a book written about a guy named god.
no religion please, it is about stories…the reason we use dif texts is because if you only use KJV it is difficult to read straight through. The one text is the historical aspects of the time and other things going on influencing the writings….
Oxford is a more laymans version, so the thee and thous and so on are not there, making it easier for some people to use, plus the annotated notes help in defining some of the terms and tells us things like the apple was added intpo the KJV, before that it was simply called fruit.
The end is this, we are reading a story about a guy named God. You can choose to read it is real or fiction in the calss, but it is to be discussed as a piece of text, not as a mystical magical item.
You keep pushing for an argument with me over topics when I don;t really care….you have issues with the bible as lit, you take it and then argue with the teacher. I personally am finding it interesting to see the bible from a dif point of view then as the BIBLE.
there is a lot of neat stories there, you don;t like it fine, but please just stop trying to argue with me over literal meanings and such, I don;t care, this is being read as a book, plain and simple, not as the Bible and God and I am going to hell for not doing it or doing it or whatever…
This is not Catholic School, you want literal translations, go find them and read them. My prof is not a priest, she is an eng prof…she does not want to discuss the mystical side because this is a lit class.
seriously, stop trying to make me look at this as anything other then a LIT class, because it isnot going to work.
And Literature IS a wishy washy what it means to me….any writings ever written are what the individual takes out of it…
what source do you need to study to know how Kafka makes you feel or think? You take it, read it, and take from it what you will, that is the great thing about reading, a million people can read the same thing and each takes something else away from it.
What source material do you need for any book to read to know…and so I forget to capitalize God god so on….even the Jews don’t mind if they tpye out God instead of G-d because pixels are not considered writing…
let it go…seriously, it is a lit class and I can treat it as such, why can’t you? and this is now all rhetorical as I am seriously done with this topic.
You can keep going on, but I will not respond tot his anymore…cripes I have typed more here then on a paper I am working on, this topic is over, if you cannot accept this is LIT not theology, then you need to go on and do your own research I do not claim to be anywhere near a biblical expert, just a student who is enjoying reading the bible from a different aspect then I was originally taught, and once you let that go and read it simply as that, I have found it to be a very differnt and interesting book…
hell for someone who read LotR and Hitchikers guide, you sure seem to have a ahrd time understanding that a book can be just that, a book…and it can be enjoyed or not for being just that…
In this corner… weighing in at a mighty 36 words, hailing from the King James Version of the Holy Bible, it’s the third commandment, the word of the lord, our God… It’s Exodus 20:4!!!
—-
And in this corner, hailing from Vatican City, weighing in at a menacing 185 thousand tons, the product of over 8 years of painstaing work by one of the world’s most famous painters, beloved and adored for over 520 years by literally tens of millions of neck straining tourists, it’s the chapel with a chip on it’s shoulder. Is got the likeness of both man and God! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, in all it’s blasphemous glory… the Sistine Chapel!
Maybe not to you, but in Islam that is. One of the rules written is the prophet is NEVER to be drawn or represented.
It is a part of the strick adherence to worshiping no idols or icons…
So yes, there are people who will kill you for that.
Oh, also it is insulting to people who are Muslim. So if you do know someone who is, and praticies (unlike you an while you are Catholic, you do not practice…just giving an example), it is very rude and insulting. I have friends who would be very insulted by that and probably never speak to me again if I did that.
I am going to ask Dr. Elliot, the prof of my Bible as Literature class about that.
I thin it applys to God, not Jesus.
The only one picture I can think of doing so is the Ceiling.
Which is strange, but I will ask her on Wednesday about that loophole….
I am sure, as with so many things, the New overrides the Old.
by the way, while googling “picture of god”
the one on the far right in the images search was the NASA picture I love of the Irnoized image of the sun!
very cool…
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA03150.jpg&imgrefurl=http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/target/Sun&h=1067&w=1067&sz=107&tbnid=1Wrzg1rvwyG8JM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=150&hl=en&start=4&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpicture%2Bof%2Bgod%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en%26sa%3DN
I found the scholarly answer:
From ScriptureCatholic.com
(The short form is: Solomon put cherubim (which are “heavenly”) in his temple and God didn’t get pissed so we figure it’s ok)
I still don’t like it that they repealed a commandment. Which one do you think is next?
(reminds me of Mel Brooks as Moses, “I bring you these 15… [Moses stumbles and one of the three tablets falls and shatters] 10, I bring you these 10 commandments!”)
Nice resource.
Well, if you really want to get technical…Thou Shalt not kill…
God no sooner emblazoned it upon the tablets and sent Moses down then he wanteed to kill 3000 people having their party with the Golden Calf.
God does what he wants. He tells man to do what he wants, but if he violats it, prepare to be punished.
So for all we know God hates it, but is biding his time for folks to make their appearance at the Gates so he can smack them in the back of the head and send them on their burning in hell way…
and WHY does Jesus have more hair then me?
and why is Jesus so much larger the M? Seems you have a subconscious bias to Jesus! He also has more hair as well…
AND YOU…you have quite a bit going on yourself…but thanks for making me skinny!
(I had to do some homework to answer this so if it seems like I’m partially answering my own question… well, I am. And Melis, it was particularly funny that you mentioned the story of The Golden Calf. It’s practically a punch line to this analysis. Read on…)
I’m guessing that the scholarly answer about not killing comes down somewhere around the idea that the New Testament God is nicer than the old. I remember something about that in high school Theology class. Old-God was more wrathful so he could kick ass whenever he wanted to.
But that still doesn’t answer the real difference between “graven images and “don’t kill”
“Graven images” was created and then recinded in the old Testament and we haven’t gone back. But “don’t kill” was similarly recinded… actually even more forcefully; in the story of the Golden Calf, God got pretty pissed and had thousands of Israelites killed for… wait for it… wait for it… worshiping a graven image! [ba dum bum, (cymbal strike)]
actually he was protrayed as a warrior God similar to “pagan” type gods, trying to slide him in, plus explain all the cruel and suffering of those early recoded times…
As for the graven images, that was not why God killed 3000. It was because they were worshipping a DIF God then him…yeah he was also a jealous and vengeful God and best of all, he admits to it…
God admits to flaws many times int he old T, he is almost as flawed as the man he created, which is nice. He is also always trying to please certain people, never asking them to do much in return, not even worship, but he rewards them constantly.
Hell with Abram, GOD made the covenant with him, as opposed to making A make the cov with God…
pretty neat stuff..
Oop. You’re right, the calf isn’t an image of God, it’s some new god.
It doesn’t sound like neat stuff to me. There are so many silly holes in the story. Moses convinced God not to kill everybody because it would be bad Public Relations? This from the omnipotent and omniscient one?
Looking at the bible from a skeptics point of view makes it look like bad pulp fiction.
Someone once remarked that reading a translation is like feeling the back of a tapestry (threads, knots, no colors). We, translators, take short cuts (my confession). Some words we aren’t certain about. Incorrect words have been kept owing to strength & conviction of tradition. Nuances are frequently entirely lost-some are wordplays & have multiple meanings. I get caught between lyricism/imagery/concrete meaning — Hard to unweave even in English. Picking one word/angle means sacrificing others. We can’t be very certain about context or political slant. It is a bit difficult attempting to interpret much of the old T. How it all went down, or what it means — is anybody’s guess.
Golden calf, sounds like a Chinese restaurant dish, “Spicy Golden Calf” or perhaps “Unusual Sezchuan Golden Calf”…if you want a semi-pulp interpretation of the bible–a friend of mine was in this great show–bible battles (filmed in Alrington!) on the history channel. Fun and watchable.
I like the picture–charming & suitable for framing.
actually I have been reading it from a literature point of view, thanks to my class. It is really kind of hard to go from questions God and powers to reading it like a book. You really have to let go of the inaccuraces because this story covers thousands of years so if they wrote about everything it would be HUGE.
Plus, look how many times this has been translated from one language to another to another…
it is ike that game…take a few verses of your favorite song, enter it into baelfish, then go from english to spanish to russian to french to portugese to japanese to italian to english THEN try and read what the hell the song was….
go ahead…translate it into any 6 dif languages and see what happens…no imagine that with a book written a few thousand years ago that actually began as an oral tradition for thousands of years before that…
Jessh, even James Pattersons pulp has holes like a mutha at times…
The idea that Momses stops God is to show that Moses is one worthy to stand up to God.
Seriously, I wish you could take this class, it is really neat to look at the bible from a book point of view with the main charachter happening to be God.
It is really much more difficult to let go of the religious stuff then people think and God’s power, then to look at God as a character like one from LoTR
Once that is finally done (heck mths in we still have folks argueing about God’s powers and why he does things, rather the let it go and accept he is a character in this book and nothing true or real more then that) it almost turns into a dif book then the bible as we know it from school or church…
did you know one of the authors was a woman?
I finally read the actual story of the Golden Calf, Exodus 32:5. As morality, punishment and rewards go, it sends a pretty harsh (and yet messed up at the same time) message. Aaron was the chief sinner here and he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist, not from Moses who confronted him directly, not from the people who got slaughtered because of him, and not from God who knew first-hand who created the calf.
As for translations being imperfect: Yes, they are often quite imperfect. But at the same time, each translation usually changes the spin according to the wishes of the spinmeister/storyteller of the day. 2 millenia ago, PR and Marketing people didn’t work for Coca-cola and Burger King, they worked for the scripture translation services.
I went and tried to find the most original text of the story I could. I came up with some interesting results.
Here is a classic interpretation
Interestingly, I found that The Straight Dope says that in 450 BC the five books of Moses were interpreted by the Redactor, never to be changed again. The Dead Sea Scrolls are almost the same word-for-word. So while there was 600 years of oral storytelling, the story has been pretty firm for the last 2,500 years.
>did you know one of the authors was a woman?
J.K. Rowling? ;-) (I mention that only because I know that she is known as “J.K.” because she knew that boys would be less inclined to read a book written by a girl)
In oreder to better understand God and his nonpunishment of brother of Moses, God chose him. He also has respect for lineage. When Abram (later Abraham) was told by God his children would be as many stars as there are in the sky and they would eventually go on to become the tribes (yep 12 tribes), he warned they would go through tough times, but they would always over come. God rewards blood lines of his chosen, while anyone who goes against them have their decendents suffer for the fathers crimes.
I see this as God knowing this is Moses’ brother, knowing that he would go against Moses (heck he warned Moses when he got there that this would happen)
Without these problems God would not have been able to establish himself as God adn not able to have lessons taught to hose who follow.
He also likes to show that he can forgive, those who are worthy.
At this same time he had to show how Yes is a vengeful and warrior like God, it is time for him to change and be different then other Gods people worshipped at that time, showing an evolution of him, as it were.
Just how he was determined to break Pharoah, is a representation of God on Earth to Egyptians, he fought against another God to win his people and save them from the evil other gods.
Sorry, this is not coming out very well, have a child demanding a hot dog and trying to write something about the EU and the danish cartoon…
brain working too hard…
Congrats, A. Lit course and child. I am never quite sure how people with kids manage to get anything accomplished! It blows my mind…
actually I am a full time college student…I can tell you, I get practically no sleep…I work after she has gone to sleep, and what makes it even more fun, my husband tends to leave for 30 days for work every now and again, so in times like now, I have no family around and I am pretty much alone…I get cabin fever!
WOW! Argh. There aren’t any campus orgs for that? If you need a time sink, I think the site is Hipmama.com edgy tales of moms. It helped a friend of mine from going completely bonkers while her husband was away. I never surfed the message boards, but she found them enjoyable.
yeah but then I will get sucked in by moms telling their sotires when I should be doing school work or being with child…
today I am off as is she so I am trying to do both, this, while a nice mini distraction, actually helps with studying as you can see above by the answers…
Usually I find bemoaning to relatives is best for me as it also is multitasking since I am already talking to them anyway!
I try to master multitasking, it is a dream of mine, then again Martha Stweart is an idol of mine, sick bitch that she is!
Your relatives don’t tell you how to raise your daughter? Lucky!
Mine drove my sisters crazy for the first few years.
Question for the bible as lit scholar…which translation does your prof recommend? Does he give you a break down/list of words of which they are not too certin what they were? A friend of mine told me that the Israelites were day workers in Egypt–not slaves and the Pharoah came after them for other reasons.
I find it quite bothersome that “original” texts are not available to commoners. BibleGatway (and every other source I’ve ever seen) does not disply the oldest available texts. They’ve got 50 (yes, 5-0) translations but not any original scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are piecemeal and hard to read because they’re so faded but it would make for a perfect scholarly study to put images of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other old documents along with word for word (in Hebrew?) transliteration, next to English literal translation, next to English translation. Is such a thing available? Maybe I’ll answers.google.com for it. If I remember correctly, King James’ scholars gathered together all their references but they didn’t archive them.
Oh sexist assumption it is a male professor!
kidding…actually she prefers we use KJV since it is written in a poetic form, but we suppliment that with the Oxford Annotated Bible AND a text book on the Bible as well!
Yeah so basically for our one class alone we use three versions, thought the KJV is the one we mainly work form becaue it is so poetic sounding, even when people are dying or killing animals, it sounds so darned pretty!
So what about original texts? Could you ask the prof about it? “darned pretty” is nice but “darned accurate” might get us further along.
This whole conversation is suddenly striking me as silly. I’m trying to find out what God -actually- said while there are all these interpretations in the way. While I’m pretty well convinced that God didn’t say anything. If he did, he could have written down his words on atomantium plaques with the words etched in 10 mile high script and placed the plaques in orbit around earth for all to see.
maybe I am not sure what you are asking?
And imagine iF the originals were avaiable to the public, they are so old, look what they have to go through to preserve papers from a few hunder years ago, much less scrolls (rolled and unrolled over years damaging, and forget the dryness factor)
And think of the fanatics whose mission would be to destroy them. Yeah there are those….
So what are you wanting me to ask her? I will ask her anything…if she can she is more the happy to answer!
Photocopies would do.
You want me to ask if she has copies of the original texts?
Is that what you want me to ask her, cause if so I am gonna put money on the fact that she will not. She is not a Harvard Theology professor, she is a lit prof at centenary…
And I doubt they release photocopie since the bright light probably damages the items, jsut like you are not allowed to take a picture of Dec of Ind and it is kept in a darkened room….climate controlled, and that is one sheet of paper…
Now that I am thinking about it anyway, chances are the old testament is probably not int he hands f the Christians but the Jews…
Yes, I was wondering if your professor had the original Dead Sea scrolls and if she wouldn’t mind making a photocopy for me.
No, that’s not what I asked. Please reread comment #23, starting out with “I find it quite bothersome…”
ah so you want to know if there is a literal translation of the scrolls (dead sea)? That is the question….my head is killing me today so trying to read through the statements then a question is killing me with the background on your page.
Ok, the question remains…Israelites in Egypt–which word is it–day laborer or slaves? They coerced the Egyptians into forking over travel supplies or stole stuff & Pharoah came chasing them. Is the apple really an apple? That snake image is all about discreditng and displacing fertility religions…supposedly.
>ah so you want to know if there is a literal translation of the
>scrolls (dead sea)? That is the question…
Read comment 23 again when you’re head doesn’t hurt.
>.my head is killing me today so trying to read through the statements
>then a question is killing me with the background on your page.
What are you talking about? It’s black text on a very light gray backgound? It’s about the easiest reading text I could make. And the black repeating pattern in the far backgound is very hard to find on the page. It is not killing your eyes.
What I really want to know is if John Milton was a pufta.
no the background, that design is making my eyes go wonky adding to the lovely headache piercing my brain….
And this is what the question is…no?
“The Dead Sea Scrolls are piecemeal and hard to read because they’re so faded but it would make for a perfect scholarly study to put images of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other old documents along with word for word (in Hebrew?) transliteration, next to English literal translation, next to English translation. Is such a thing available?”
You want to know if there is a literal translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in english from Hebrew from the dead aramaic (I think it is originally written in aramaic, thank you Mel Gibson)? Correct?
“Ok, the question remains…Israelites in Egypt–which word is it–day laborer or slaves? They coerced the Egyptians into forking over travel supplies or stole stuff & Pharoah came chasing them. Is the apple really an apple? That snake image is all about discreditng and displacing fertility religions…supposedly.”
As far as the apple goes, that was actually added in later. That we did cover, how it was never mentioned the kind of fruit in earlier translations, but it became and apple in KJV.
As for slaves, I will ask her, but I think we did cover that, some of the AA folks in the clas got a bit up in arms when she discussed slavery. It was supposedly foretold they would be slaves for Pharoah.
I know that what was once considered slavery amongst actual Egyptians thought to have built the pyramids has since been shown to be just peasent workers, not slavery, but it was customary for them to have slaves from other nations work side by side with them. It was very common for those who win battles to take the towns or soldiers slaves, but slavery then is also not what we consider it to be now. Heck even in Roman times slaves could vote.
So maybe that was what they menat, because I could see why people would think that, but them being Israelites and not believers int he same God, chances are they rtruly were slaves, but that the definition of what type of slaves they were to what we think of slaves as now is different. I hope that came out better, and I do have more info on this on my slow laptop that must soon be burnt as an offering to the OS gods who shall bless me with a new one that will run at any speed faster then the speed of suck.
I want a literal, one for one, word for word (as near as can be done, I realize it will be tremendously verbose because word meanings change over time and I’ll need definitions) transliteration of whatever biblical texts are available from the oldest sources available in English.
Next to the transliterated version, I want a translated version, for example, the King James version. The difference between “transliterate” and “translate” being that the former tells us precisely what is being said in the original text, archaic idioms and all. I ask this because the individual words are very important. For example, at one point, Abram says either “Here is your… god”, “gods”, “God”, “Gods”, or “image of God”. The differences are very important to determine what sin he was committing and whether the third commandment was recindind in 1400 BC or not.
Without valid source material, bible study turns into some wishy-washy “what it means to me”-fest. Unfortunately, it’s likely that there is no getting around the fact that it is just a big “what it means to me” party.
see, and this is not a bible study class with a theology professor. This is a Literature class with an english professor.
We are not trying to define the literal meanings, we are reading KJV as a piece of literature, not one mystical meaning to it be implied.
That is a huge problem many folks are currently also having with the class, being bogged down in the wishy washy when that is not for us to care about, read this like Iliad or any classical piece of literature, and God is simply a character in it. Yes he is the main character, but it is only to be read as lit, nothing more into it.
If you want to serioously go that deep, and I doubt you will find something along those lines that you seek, then go for it, but I knwo when I ask Elliott, she will probably laugh at me.
On top of that, the original texts that were filtered down to what we currently have were huge, volumous pieces, which is why some stories go on forever, but others skimmed over. It was left to a group to decide what stays and what goes.
Also, The Bible is to be taken personally and literally, at the persons decision, that is a part of the study. I know that logically you can see that because if it were one solid translation for all to work from we would not have so many versions out there currently, each of which is allowable by dif religions as THEIR bible to work from.
Thank you for your response.
So to bring it home Melis, Muslims take the “no graven images” clause to heart as The Word of God as part of the 10 commandments and that Muhammed was deified (even though he was only a prophet… (and to deify him is technically a sin)) so that images of him are harkened to images of Him. Of course, the rest of the Old Testament, which is also The Word of God, renegs on that; negating the graven images clause because some important people didn’t get in trouble for violating the clause. The Jewish and Christian committees got together and said that it wasn’t really a sin anymore. But the Muslim committee disagreed and kept those parts out of their Good Book.
>We are not trying to define the literal meanings, we are reading KJV
>as a piece of literature, not one mystical meaning to it be implied.
It sounds like you’re saying that yours is a literature class and not a bible study course and at the same time, you disagree with me that wording matters (IE “god”, “gods”, “God”, “Gods”, “image of God”. That makes no sense. I’ll add to my previous statement of “Without valid source material, bible study turns into some wishy-washy ‘what it means to me’-fest”. I’d also like to say, “Without valid source material, literature study turns into some wishy-washy ‘what it means to me’-fest.”
I can’t see how you can study it as literature when
1- A very careful reading is vital (IE “god” vs “God” makes a BIG difference, above)
2- You are drawing on multiple sources for your source material (IE KJV & New American…) which often disagree with one another.
I suppose you could have a comparative literature class… comparing how each version is rooted in the day and time of it’s editorship. But you can’t talk about the stories themselves without falling into a quagmire of contradictions since there is no “original”. At a much higher level, I could also see one doing a cross-analysis of all the versions and trying to interpolate information about the original text. But that sounds like it would be a highly specialized field… doctoral thesis material.
>The Bible is to be taken personally and literally, at the persons
>decision, that is a part of the study.
Literally? Literally?? Literally???!
Do you believe the world is 6,000 years old? That Noah put all the animals on a 450′ x 75′ x 45′ boat? That the Jews roamed the desert for 40 years, leaving no trace in any literature except the bible? That the gospels that are recognized as canon didn’t make the bible because they’re “almost”(?) the word of God? That God said gays should be put to death (Lev 20:13)? That God said rebelious teenagers should be stoned to death (Lev 21:21)? That God said selling your daughter into slavery ain’t so bad (Exodus 21:7)? That God said if you work on the Sabbath you should be PUT TO DEATH (Exodus 35:2)? Long hair is shameful (Corinthians 11:14)?
If God said it, then God said it. If he didn’t it makes for very interesting, possibly profound literature. But nothing more. You can’t take parts of His Word as fact and leave out others at a whim. The only way you could would be if there were tags on each chapter saying “Fiction” and “Non-fiction”.
And people are willing to riot and kill other people over one tiny bit of this? Put humorously: phew, there was never such a stink when Valley of the Dolls came out. Put straightforwardly: That’s stupid. No… frighteningly stupid to the point where I want to arm myself against it.
it is too late for me to get into this huge response now, BUT literally, yes, some parts of it….
Ten Commandments ring a bell again?
And are there not some people who DO live it literally, not shaving and covering their heads and try to live as the bible tells them.
We are studying it as a piece of LIT, stop trying to make this into more then that. Jeesh we have only 3 months to cover it as a lit class, we read it like a story. This is why I keep telling you I am not trying to discuss it from a mystical point of view, I know how you feel about the religious aspect and that is for you to deal with…
I am taking this as a book written about a guy named god.
no religion please, it is about stories…the reason we use dif texts is because if you only use KJV it is difficult to read straight through. The one text is the historical aspects of the time and other things going on influencing the writings….
Oxford is a more laymans version, so the thee and thous and so on are not there, making it easier for some people to use, plus the annotated notes help in defining some of the terms and tells us things like the apple was added intpo the KJV, before that it was simply called fruit.
The end is this, we are reading a story about a guy named God. You can choose to read it is real or fiction in the calss, but it is to be discussed as a piece of text, not as a mystical magical item.
You keep pushing for an argument with me over topics when I don;t really care….you have issues with the bible as lit, you take it and then argue with the teacher. I personally am finding it interesting to see the bible from a dif point of view then as the BIBLE.
there is a lot of neat stories there, you don;t like it fine, but please just stop trying to argue with me over literal meanings and such, I don;t care, this is being read as a book, plain and simple, not as the Bible and God and I am going to hell for not doing it or doing it or whatever…
This is not Catholic School, you want literal translations, go find them and read them. My prof is not a priest, she is an eng prof…she does not want to discuss the mystical side because this is a lit class.
seriously, stop trying to make me look at this as anything other then a LIT class, because it isnot going to work.
And Literature IS a wishy washy what it means to me….any writings ever written are what the individual takes out of it…
what source do you need to study to know how Kafka makes you feel or think? You take it, read it, and take from it what you will, that is the great thing about reading, a million people can read the same thing and each takes something else away from it.
What source material do you need for any book to read to know…and so I forget to capitalize God god so on….even the Jews don’t mind if they tpye out God instead of G-d because pixels are not considered writing…
let it go…seriously, it is a lit class and I can treat it as such, why can’t you? and this is now all rhetorical as I am seriously done with this topic.
You can keep going on, but I will not respond tot his anymore…cripes I have typed more here then on a paper I am working on, this topic is over, if you cannot accept this is LIT not theology, then you need to go on and do your own research I do not claim to be anywhere near a biblical expert, just a student who is enjoying reading the bible from a different aspect then I was originally taught, and once you let that go and read it simply as that, I have found it to be a very differnt and interesting book…
hell for someone who read LotR and Hitchikers guide, you sure seem to have a ahrd time understanding that a book can be just that, a book…and it can be enjoyed or not for being just that…