I've decided that instead of reading strictly the Christian Bible and posting my interests in it, that I would read the Hebrew Tanakh and the Bible at the same time and post both my interests in both and the differences between them. Most people believe that the Torah is the same as the Old Testament found in the Christian Bible. We'll soon find out if this is true.
The very first thing that caught my notice was the explanation of translation found in the preface of each holy book. The Tanakh starts with this:
"A court of the law relies on witnesses to establish the facts of a case. But for those who seek the "facts"of the original Biblical texts, no firsthand witnesses exist. We have only the testimony of various manuscripts, produced hundreds of years after the Bible's books were completed. And even if we had an autograph copy of, say, the Book of Ezra, it would not answer all our questions, for it was created at a time (2400 years ago) when writing was imprecise - even before the invention of punctuation.
Through the intervening centuries, scribes have figures out how to record the oral tradition more precisely. At the same time, during each transmission of the books from person to person, uncertainty has grown. For schools have sometimes disagreed on pronunciation. Handwriting has not always been legible. And eery scribe has occasionally made mistakes in copying.
Witnesses testifying in court often disagree. Little surprise, then, that the Bible's textual "witnesses" - father removed from the original "event" - differ from each other in a wide range of small ways: spelling, punctuation, layout of poetry, and so on. Sometimes entire verses appear in only a few manuscripts.
So which version is true? This was the first question we faces in preparing our Hebrew text."
They openly admit that throughout the transmitting of text throughout the ages things have been lost and things have been added. The next seventeen pages are dedicated to tracing the book's translation history, beginning in 930 AD. It also lists the changes they made in numbering, etc. It is a thorough history of the translation that they are presenting.
The Christian Bible lets me down a little in it's preface. I am reading a New King James Version Bible. It has half a page devoted to it's translation, which begins with this:
"The purpose of this most recent revision of the King James Version is in harmony with the purpose of the original King James Scholars. 'Not to make a new translation, but to make a good one better.' The New King James Version is a continuation of the labors of the King James translators, unlocking for today's readers the spiritual treasures found especially in the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible."
There is no reference after that paragraph about where the "Authorized Version of the Holy Bible" came from, so I did some wikipedia searching and found out that the Church of England brought Catholic scholars together to create a King James Version to beat out the popular Protestant version called the Geneva Bible (but often referred to as the Great Bible). I think its very interesting that my church, which is a protestant church, and all my protestant friends read a Bible that was created by the Church of England in a Catholic tradition instead of the Protestant translation.
As far as an objective view of both prologues is concerned, I think the point belongs squarely in the Hebrew Tanakh's court. I, by the way, am a devoted Christian, but I like the way the Hebrew Bible tracks the changes made in its Bible from farther back and includes pages of how the translation was changed. The New King James Version Bible has half a page that basically says that it's based on the 'Authorized Version of the Bible' (capitalization is taken directly from the book, btw). I had to research what that meant. The Christian Bible also doesn't make any room for problems based on how the books and possibly the meanings were changed during the time of oral tradition as well as how scribes changed it when they each created their own translations. This may be blasphemous of me to say, but I often think that Christians don't spend enough time thinking about the Bible and it's actual history. We are taught to believe that the Bible is the Word of God completely and totally as it's written in whatever translation we are reading, making no room for trouble in translating, differing views on women and slaves and other subjects in the time in which it was written, etc. I've always had some trouble believing that women shouldn't be educated and should never preach - which is something that the Christian Bible (and maybe the Hebrew Tanakh - I haven't read it yet) says. So I've always had the opinion that some of the things written in the Bible were no longer relevant because of the difference in times. I guess that's blasphemous to some people. But I have read the Bible more times than most of the Christians I know and I like to think about my beliefs instead of just believing them.
But I'm getting off topic. Another change in the two documents are the way they order the books. They are as follows in the Tanakh:
The Torah ( The Five Books of Moses)
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Nevi'im (The Prophets)
Joshua
Judges
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
Kethuvim (The Writings)
Psalms
Proverbs
Job
The Song of Songs
Ruth
Lamentations
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Daniel
Ezra
Nehemiah
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
The Old Testament is ordered as follows:
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
Rush
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
job
Spalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon (Song of Songs in the Tanakh)
Isaiah
jeremiah
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
For the purpose of comparing the different translations and any other differences there are, I'll be reading each book at the same time in each book.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Approaching the Bible
For my next book I'm going to read the old and new testaments of the Bible. I'll post about each book.
Friday, February 18, 2011
How To Read: The Egyptian Book Of The Dead Barry Kemp
Instead of reading the actual Egyptian Book Of The Dead I read a book that went through the spells and also explained them and their place in Egyptian communities. It describes itself as a Master's course to the book. I will go through and explain what I learned reading the book, which is not necessarily all from the Book of the Dead.
The author compares the Book of the Dead to the representation of the book in the movie The Mummy. In The Mummy the Book is used to bring the dead back to life. This is inaccurate. The Book, whose translated name is actually "Coming Forth By Day", is to guide and protect the dead through what they call the Otherworld. The Otherworld is the place that the sun god Ra travels through during the night. It is rife with dangers. The spells in the Egyptian Book of the Dead were written by many authors throughout the entire run of the ancient Egyptian community. In the Old Kingdom, the earliest segment of time in the Egyptian time, the spells weren't collected into a book - most of what we know comes from segments written on walls and coffins (referred to as coffin-texts). Most of the book was written and collected during the New Kingdom. It was written on scrolls and sold in stores for about the price of a bed. More elaborately illustrated Books were sold for more money to the richer community members. Some of the spells call for stylized and "fantasy" creations, which aren't to be found in the tombs that archaeologists have discovered. An example would be spell 137A:
"To be spoken over four torches of red linen smeared with the best quality Libyan oil in the hands of four men on whose arms are inscribed the names of the children of Horus..."
and spell 133 which calls for a 'sacred barque of four cubits made of pieces of Malachite..." Four cubits is two meters, and this was unlikely for a normal income family to be able to afford. So, not all of the spells were followed to the letter.
The Otherworld was said to be filled with mounds and caverns, but as the Egyptians were by and large a pre-cartographic society no map of the Otherworld is to be found. Egypt was largely ruled by scribes at this time, some of whom wrote spells for the Book, who ruled for the Kings and Pharaohs.
I'd like to talk about the relationship between the Egyptians and their God/s and Goddess/es and how it compares to Christianity. The author makes this comparison often in the book. The first thing about the Egyptian God/s is that they were actually all fragments of the same God. In the book the author says that this differs from Christianity and western religions, but it reminds me a little of the Holy Trinity in Christianity - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are distinct characters but all fragments of the same God. There are many more fragments in the ancient Egyptian religion and there are many more differences. Where faith is important in Western religions, in the ancient Egyptian religion acts were more important. When the soul was judged, in the often portrayed weighing against a feather, the actions of the soul were what lifted or dropped it not faith in the God/s. Faith was taken as a given and rarely thought about in ancient Egypt. Another interesting difference is that there was no concept of hell in ancient Egypt. If your soul was found lacking, or heavier than the feather, you would be eaten immediately by a waiting monster.
In the Book, it appears that there is a separate Otherworld for each person. There are no endpoints to the Otherworld except if your soul was found lacking. Many of the spells project the reader into a central position of authority - in fact replacing the God/s themselves in many cases (or more accurately, becoming the God/s). Ancient Egyptians believed in God/s much differently than Western religions because they imagined divinity to be present in all living things. So when they entered their personal Otherworld, they became Ra the sun god, who progressed through the Otherworld every night. In another spell, 79, they become the head of the tribunal of judgment of souls (although this didn't affect the judgment of their own soul), Atom, "Lord of All. Becoming a God did not mean that the reader could escape the judgment of his own soul nor did it mean he could act against the good of the living community. While he had the power of the God/s, he also had the serious responsibility.
Being a God also didn't protect the reader from the evil things that existed in the Otherworld. In fact it brought more enemies - the enemies of the reader and the God he or she became were now both after him/her. Many spells including 17 and 179 were for the protection of the reader from the evil that awaited them:
"Oh Kehpri, in the midst of your sacred Barque, primeval one whose body is eternity, save me from those who are in charge of those who are to be examined, to whom the Lord of All has given power to guard against his enemies, who put knives into the slaughter-houses, who do not leave their guardianship, their knives shall not cut into me, I shall not enter their slaughter-houses, I shall not sit down on their fish-traps, no harm shall be done to me from whom the gods detest.." Spell 17
Knives are a common fear for ancient Egyptians, which we can tell from their reoccurring mention in the spells. This is probably because a common punishment for live ancient Egyptians was having part of your face cut off - mainly the nose or the ears.
The spells cast the god/s in an interesting light. Instead of doing bodily harm when angered like the Gods of many other religions, the ancient Egyptian gods were more of bureaucrats, forming committees and writing angry letters to each other. I found that especially amusing. In the spells it seems as if the reader doesn't take them seriously. There are even spells to hide or obfuscate the wrong doings of the reader's soul from the god/s when their soul is weighed.
The final point I took from the book explained why bodies were mummified. It was because the Egyptians were terrified of the rot of death. There are several spells (89 and 122 among some of them) that tell how a body should be prepared.
The author compares the Book of the Dead to the representation of the book in the movie The Mummy. In The Mummy the Book is used to bring the dead back to life. This is inaccurate. The Book, whose translated name is actually "Coming Forth By Day", is to guide and protect the dead through what they call the Otherworld. The Otherworld is the place that the sun god Ra travels through during the night. It is rife with dangers. The spells in the Egyptian Book of the Dead were written by many authors throughout the entire run of the ancient Egyptian community. In the Old Kingdom, the earliest segment of time in the Egyptian time, the spells weren't collected into a book - most of what we know comes from segments written on walls and coffins (referred to as coffin-texts). Most of the book was written and collected during the New Kingdom. It was written on scrolls and sold in stores for about the price of a bed. More elaborately illustrated Books were sold for more money to the richer community members. Some of the spells call for stylized and "fantasy" creations, which aren't to be found in the tombs that archaeologists have discovered. An example would be spell 137A:
"To be spoken over four torches of red linen smeared with the best quality Libyan oil in the hands of four men on whose arms are inscribed the names of the children of Horus..."
and spell 133 which calls for a 'sacred barque of four cubits made of pieces of Malachite..." Four cubits is two meters, and this was unlikely for a normal income family to be able to afford. So, not all of the spells were followed to the letter.
The Otherworld was said to be filled with mounds and caverns, but as the Egyptians were by and large a pre-cartographic society no map of the Otherworld is to be found. Egypt was largely ruled by scribes at this time, some of whom wrote spells for the Book, who ruled for the Kings and Pharaohs.
I'd like to talk about the relationship between the Egyptians and their God/s and Goddess/es and how it compares to Christianity. The author makes this comparison often in the book. The first thing about the Egyptian God/s is that they were actually all fragments of the same God. In the book the author says that this differs from Christianity and western religions, but it reminds me a little of the Holy Trinity in Christianity - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are distinct characters but all fragments of the same God. There are many more fragments in the ancient Egyptian religion and there are many more differences. Where faith is important in Western religions, in the ancient Egyptian religion acts were more important. When the soul was judged, in the often portrayed weighing against a feather, the actions of the soul were what lifted or dropped it not faith in the God/s. Faith was taken as a given and rarely thought about in ancient Egypt. Another interesting difference is that there was no concept of hell in ancient Egypt. If your soul was found lacking, or heavier than the feather, you would be eaten immediately by a waiting monster.
In the Book, it appears that there is a separate Otherworld for each person. There are no endpoints to the Otherworld except if your soul was found lacking. Many of the spells project the reader into a central position of authority - in fact replacing the God/s themselves in many cases (or more accurately, becoming the God/s). Ancient Egyptians believed in God/s much differently than Western religions because they imagined divinity to be present in all living things. So when they entered their personal Otherworld, they became Ra the sun god, who progressed through the Otherworld every night. In another spell, 79, they become the head of the tribunal of judgment of souls (although this didn't affect the judgment of their own soul), Atom, "Lord of All. Becoming a God did not mean that the reader could escape the judgment of his own soul nor did it mean he could act against the good of the living community. While he had the power of the God/s, he also had the serious responsibility.
Being a God also didn't protect the reader from the evil things that existed in the Otherworld. In fact it brought more enemies - the enemies of the reader and the God he or she became were now both after him/her. Many spells including 17 and 179 were for the protection of the reader from the evil that awaited them:
"Oh Kehpri, in the midst of your sacred Barque, primeval one whose body is eternity, save me from those who are in charge of those who are to be examined, to whom the Lord of All has given power to guard against his enemies, who put knives into the slaughter-houses, who do not leave their guardianship, their knives shall not cut into me, I shall not enter their slaughter-houses, I shall not sit down on their fish-traps, no harm shall be done to me from whom the gods detest.." Spell 17
Knives are a common fear for ancient Egyptians, which we can tell from their reoccurring mention in the spells. This is probably because a common punishment for live ancient Egyptians was having part of your face cut off - mainly the nose or the ears.
The spells cast the god/s in an interesting light. Instead of doing bodily harm when angered like the Gods of many other religions, the ancient Egyptian gods were more of bureaucrats, forming committees and writing angry letters to each other. I found that especially amusing. In the spells it seems as if the reader doesn't take them seriously. There are even spells to hide or obfuscate the wrong doings of the reader's soul from the god/s when their soul is weighed.
The final point I took from the book explained why bodies were mummified. It was because the Egyptians were terrified of the rot of death. There are several spells (89 and 122 among some of them) that tell how a body should be prepared.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
The Book of Dead Philosophers
This book is called The Book of Dead Philosophers and it is by Simon Critchley. In his rather lengthy introduction he explains two main points:
1. That he believes philosophers have death on their minds all the time and spend most of their time reconciling themselves with their own annihilation. He has put together this book of 190 deaths of philosophers because he believes that the way in which a person's dies can illuminate their personal philosophy. He also writes about each philosopher's vision of death in the cases in which they have been written upon.
2. That religion and it's version of an afterlife is in fact an escapist way of running away from death. He believes that true happiness can be found only by embracing death because only then can you experience freedom in life.
The book starts in antiquity and follows on through modern philosophers with the only requirement of whom he includes in the book being that they interest him and that they have died. Some of the entries include lengthy explanations of what the particular philosopher believed and some are very brief - just a sentence or two about how they died. The ones that he goes into more in depth are the ones that are historically believed to have more significance (Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, etc) and those that have written texts on death.
I took special interest in the following philosophers:
Jean-Francois Lyotard, who translated and wrote a book called The Confessions of Augustine, referring to the saint. Lyotard, in my mind, must have been a spiritual man. It quotes a passage from the book:
"But do you, Oh Lord my God, graciously hear me and turn your gaze upon me, and see me, and have mercy upon me, and heal me. For in your sight I have become a question to myself, and that is my langour."
He says that translated the word for languor means limp - the kind of weakness of spirit and physicality that one would expect with old age. Lyotard died of leukemia, and shortly before dying he wrote:
"...that is my langour. Here lies the whole advantage of faith; to become an enigma to oneself, to grow old, hoping for the solution, the resolution from the Other. Have mercy upon me Yahweh, for I am languishing. Heal me, for my bones are worn."
Michel Faucault, who was active in the GLBT movement. He criticized Christianity versus being a pagan and said that the difference between being late antiquity and early Christianity could be reduced to the following: "The Pagan asks: 'Given that I am who I am, who can I fuck?' The Christian says 'Given that I can fuck no one, who am I?" He is pointing out that the Christian's identity begins with their knowledge of their own sinful nature and continues under that "bad conscience". Faucault was an early sufferer of AIDS, and died of that in 1984.
Jacques Derrida, who refuses that "to philosophize is to know how to die", thinks of death from the other end. He writes about the survivors of death and how the loss of a loved one means to them the loss of a piece of themselves.
At the end of the book is a fantastic bibliography that recounts some of the books from which Critchley found his information. I intend to use this bibliography as a "To Read" list.
1. That he believes philosophers have death on their minds all the time and spend most of their time reconciling themselves with their own annihilation. He has put together this book of 190 deaths of philosophers because he believes that the way in which a person's dies can illuminate their personal philosophy. He also writes about each philosopher's vision of death in the cases in which they have been written upon.
2. That religion and it's version of an afterlife is in fact an escapist way of running away from death. He believes that true happiness can be found only by embracing death because only then can you experience freedom in life.
The book starts in antiquity and follows on through modern philosophers with the only requirement of whom he includes in the book being that they interest him and that they have died. Some of the entries include lengthy explanations of what the particular philosopher believed and some are very brief - just a sentence or two about how they died. The ones that he goes into more in depth are the ones that are historically believed to have more significance (Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, etc) and those that have written texts on death.
I took special interest in the following philosophers:
Jean-Francois Lyotard, who translated and wrote a book called The Confessions of Augustine, referring to the saint. Lyotard, in my mind, must have been a spiritual man. It quotes a passage from the book:
"But do you, Oh Lord my God, graciously hear me and turn your gaze upon me, and see me, and have mercy upon me, and heal me. For in your sight I have become a question to myself, and that is my langour."
He says that translated the word for languor means limp - the kind of weakness of spirit and physicality that one would expect with old age. Lyotard died of leukemia, and shortly before dying he wrote:
"...that is my langour. Here lies the whole advantage of faith; to become an enigma to oneself, to grow old, hoping for the solution, the resolution from the Other. Have mercy upon me Yahweh, for I am languishing. Heal me, for my bones are worn."
Michel Faucault, who was active in the GLBT movement. He criticized Christianity versus being a pagan and said that the difference between being late antiquity and early Christianity could be reduced to the following: "The Pagan asks: 'Given that I am who I am, who can I fuck?' The Christian says 'Given that I can fuck no one, who am I?" He is pointing out that the Christian's identity begins with their knowledge of their own sinful nature and continues under that "bad conscience". Faucault was an early sufferer of AIDS, and died of that in 1984.
Jacques Derrida, who refuses that "to philosophize is to know how to die", thinks of death from the other end. He writes about the survivors of death and how the loss of a loved one means to them the loss of a piece of themselves.
At the end of the book is a fantastic bibliography that recounts some of the books from which Critchley found his information. I intend to use this bibliography as a "To Read" list.
This Blog's Purpose
I have of late become obsessed with world philosophy and religion. I've decided to dedicate the rest of this year to reading all the books I can get my hands on, on the subjects, and posting my book notes here.
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