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ntdef 1 days ago [-]
The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible is by far the worst translation on almost any metric you can think of, except maybe understanding how evangelical Christians read the Bible in the 90s and 2000s.
The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a great catalog out there of the most egregious translations in the NIV [1]. One such example:
> Romans 7:18 — The NIV here translates σάρξ (sarx) as “sinful nature” even though this implies later Augustinian doctrine on original sin that is not intended by the original writer. In contrast, the NRSV correctly chooses to translate this tricky Pauline term more literally as “flesh”.
Are you interested in a readable Bible that flows well to modern English ears? The New Living Translation (NLT) is fantastic and very underrated. I recommend reading the Psalms in the NLT since much of the language of the Psalms being in a higher register in the NIV and other translations doesn't land as well, but reading the Psalms in NLT makes it much more relatable and human. I find the way it reads refreshing, and it's based on more modern scholarship.
Are you interested in latest scholarly understanding of the Bible? The NRSV is the consensus version (as much as there could be one).
Are you interested in understanding the Bible as American Evangelical Christians read it today? That's currently the English Standard Version (ESV), which many churches have switched to as the NIV has lost favor in Reformed circles.
It's been eye opening to read books from the Old Testament in the word-by-word translation of ancient Hebrew. A lot of the semantic accretion over the millennia comes off and you get a more raw iron age tribal wisdom glowing through.
One example is that often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations. It happens that words interpreted as names of people are also abstract nouns and these passages can also be read as aphorisms. I haven't looked deep into that but it makes way more sense to me that narrative is punctuated by such reflections on "Wisdom unites with Patience and beget Lasting Wealth than breaking into describing marriages and lineages then going back to the story...
ntdef 1 days ago [-]
Yes! In that vein, The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter[1] is great for folks who want to get a better sense of what the original Hebrew might feel like rendered in English.
> often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations
I think you were emphasizing something beside this, but if you want to know _why_ the five Books of Moses often jump suddenly into genealogy or minutiae of interest only to priests, you might be interested in the Documentary Hypothesis. Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" is an approachable introduction to it.
agaj-nimm 1 days ago [-]
Appreciate it but I'm already deeply into bible authorship. Many of my professors in college were bible scholars. Fascinating field really.
Ancient history is much like astrophysics and cosmology. We know so very little and there are so many blanks.
It sometimes catches me off guard that people think our past is well known.
0xcafefood 1 days ago [-]
Cool! In that case, let me ask you: what books would you recommend on the topic?
agaj-nimm 1 days ago [-]
Ancient history scholarship is very accessible, most of it is published on periodicals that offer free download of articles.
I recommend searching books and articles about 'canaanite religion' - the cult of El, Baal and Yaveh have a lot in common. You need to understand the context of Israelite religion to realize that modern monotheism wasn't created in a vacuum, it matured out of a deep tradition of local cults. I'd also recommend looking into Mesopotamian religions. Egyptian religion is not as fundamental but it provides a lot of perspective. Once you see the influence, it sheds light on a lot of things. The relationship between the cults of Set and the conflicting beliefs of followers of El and Baal is a fascinating rabbit hole.
Greek mythology also acquires a whole new depth to it when you realize that Baal (a canaanite deity), El (an israelite deity that eventually merges with some others into the monotheistic god) and Zeus: all were storm gods. There's a lot more to it all I'm saying, again, look into that. Fascinating stuff.
I'd say go on Semantic Scholar, Academia.edu, or some other academic search tool and start digging! Bible authorship is a minor branch of a deep well of scholarship that is the study of ancient history and ancient religion.
PretzelPirate 18 hours ago [-]
> 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.
agaj-nimm 11 hours ago [-]
El and Baal both mean something like 'lord'.
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.
dev_dan_2 1 days ago [-]
> descriptions of genealogy
That in itself would still make a lot of sense to me though; as far as I know, property and power was mainly transfered through the lines of first born males (so a patriarchy, in the literal sense). If that, social status and so on hinges on who your father, grandfather etc. was, then I think it makes sense for geneology trees to be something important enough to write down, especially in literature that was partially written to capture/produce a peoples cultural identity (i.e. parts of the creation story where written while the jews where forcibly integrated into the babylonian empire, and struggling to keep their own cultural identity. That's another good "use case" for genealogy, I would say.)
agaj-nimm 1 days ago [-]
That's a bit of an oversimplification. I understand the historical value of genealogy but don't assume all past societies were uniformly practicing some form of entail and primogeniture.
There is no definitive reading of scripture, there is no definitive version of any of the texts, and I enjoy finding new aspects of their history and interpretation. Realizing that some of the texts that read as genealogy might have been originally a form of poetic aphorism is something I wouldn't affirm to a bible scholar but I enjoy thinking about it.
Someone else said a lot of scripture was written as poetry. Imagine people in the year 4500 trying to figure out some fourth hand translation of clippings taken from books by Neruda, Chaucer and Hobsbawm.
dev_dan_2 4 hours ago [-]
Nono, I was refering specifically to the culture and time period in which the old testament was composed, not other cultures or time periods - those were clearly patriarchical, it would be a mistake to dismiss that when interpreting the old testament. Considering the culture in which a written artifact was composed is one of the main pilars that hermeneutics relies on (but obviously not the only one)
ButlerianJihad 1 days ago [-]
I've become intensely interested in the meanings of Biblical names. Of course, names are the words least likely to be translated into a plain meaning, and knowing a name's translation and connotations gives the opportunity to pierce the veil on some very important meanings, meanings that were patently obvious to anyone who actually spoke those languages.
Discovering that "Jonah" can mean "dove" was certainly eye-opening. And re-reading that book in light of knowing this, quite interesting!
In fact, the OT and NT alike sometimes even drop in-line translation/explanation of a name that they really want us to know. In that case, why not know all of them?
1 days ago [-]
burkaman 1 days ago [-]
It is still the most popular English-language version according to https://christianbookexpo.com/bestseller/translations.php?id..., so for his goal ("there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible") I think it's the right choice.
frollogaston 1 days ago [-]
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 good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
So KJV and NRSV agree.
jhbadger 3 hours ago [-]
Also there are things that are just bad translations even for the era -- the KJV mentions unicorns 9 times, often in weird comparisons like "the strength of a unicorn" -- whatever the Hebrew original meant (many scholars think it was referring to wild cattle known as aurochs), it certainly didn't mean a unicorn out of Western mythology.
n0dose 17 hours ago [-]
The downside is it was translated in the 1600s with the tools, knowledge and manuscripts available to them at the time. We just have a lot more now.
rsynnott 1 days ago [-]
One potential issue is that some English words have changed meaning since it was written, and sometimes in extremely confusing or misleading ways. For instance 'convenient' and 'prevent' used to have radically different meanings.
17 hours ago [-]
frollogaston 1 days ago [-]
"Convenient" isn't that different, meant "fitting" back then
rsynnott 1 days ago [-]
I mean I think that's _very_ different. It is _fitting_ to do good works, but it is _convenient_ not to bother.
1 days ago [-]
KPGv2 19 hours ago [-]
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 striking down racial discrimination in (private) schools that receive taxpayer monies.
This is all the same group. Bin the NIV.
psd1 15 hours ago [-]
Meh, the text isn't setting the attitude -hence, people railing against homosexuality while wearing polycotton slacks. The issue is susceptibility to dogma, which is an attack vector. An attacker uses this to gain root, then they can pivot by editing the creed.
Yizahi 1 days ago [-]
The Skeptic's Annotated Bible by Steve Wells would be better fitting HN :)
> knowing full well that [Delilah] will betray [Samson]
It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?)
I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically.
A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
judah 1 days ago [-]
Having just finished the book of Judges last week, this is fresh on my mind. Finishing the story of Samson, my first reaction, like the author of the post, is that Samson is just stupid. Delilah is likely a Philistine, the nemesis of Samson and the Israelites. Her intention to betray and destroy Samson is hardly hidden in her questioning him. How can Samson be so dumb?
But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him.
Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
Joker_vD 1 days ago [-]
> Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times seeking going outside of his community to find women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
Which, as I understand, is pretty much the lesson that most of theologists derive form the story of Samson: don't let your lust blind you and make you stray from your duties to the God.
ntdef 1 days ago [-]
I think it's a bit of both/and. The Samson story within the context of Judges is about people doing what "that which was right in [their] own eyes," and the people of Israel devolving into madness and dumbness because of their rejection of Yahweh and his law.
I think he's purposefully supposed to come off as a buffoon, but maybe a relatable one?
astral_drama 1 days ago [-]
I think it's more of a desire to be loved by the woman he falls in love with and not accepting that she is not going to love him back. His refusal to acknowledge the truth sets him on a course of self abandonment, he simps after a wife that treats him bad to use the parlance of our time. I think it shows physical strength can't guard you from a broken heart.
1 days ago [-]
aaroninsf 1 days ago [-]
> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading.
That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.
What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,
which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.
If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.
Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.
robocat 1 days ago [-]
Thanks. I'm reframing that as god playing 5D chess.
The same issue seems to occur with "deep" thinkers in other areas (e.g. trying to understand French intellectuals).
The trouble is that it can be worthwhile thinking about something without depth, or paying attention to a smart persons' thoughts on something shallow. And a priori we can't always know what is worthwhile.
E.g. I liked the blog, because here's a smart guy who has explained a little of what he gets out of a few divergent works.
aaroninsf 1 days ago [-]
In all seriousness, the "god playing 5D chess" framing, is exactly at the core of the last few thousand years of religious scholarship including everything from the Talmud to Aquinas and by extension most thoughtful sermons in most religious traditions today.
To an atheist, it seems very obvious that there is a intellectual whirlpool and cognitive error meta-pattern at work, which crudely summarized would be, "close attention to any subject and its context provides a fractal landscape within which infinite complexity and subtle relationships may be discerned" (the universe is reflected in a grain of sand; or, if you practice breath meditation, in the focus of breathing): this is interpreted as the signature of the divine. Because nothing we can produce with our human agency has such complexity. We are simple, serial, things; the world is parallel and multidimensional at every scale.
The world IMO is worthy of wondrous regard. But it's not because of design, not in any sense usually meant, bar those that Wolfram is pointing at with his "Rudliad" and the anthropic principle.
A deist is liable to say, ah ha, well, that is where the divine shows itself. But this is IMO the last of the gaps into which it might flee. Or, more charitably and ecumenically, one might say, this is where definitions of the divine converge for the atheist and the deist; what we mean when each say "the divine" is this, that the universe is wondrous and has deep orders and it betrays fractal similarity and order; and what a thing it is to be not just alive within it but aware of being so!
That is a cause for humility reflection and gratitude, for sure.
dev_dan_2 1 days ago [-]
> 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 of understanding the protagonists, or the authors, or the intension of the text, and 2) christians who just pick whatever forcibly-robbed-of-its-context oneliner fits their particular point view miss out.
Divine or not, this is a work that was composed a long time ago, edited, translated and interpreted by a diverse range of people spanning more than two millenia. Putting in less effort than one would into any other written source only guarantees one thing, the absense of surprises and learnings - if that is the goal, then reading two-three pages and discarding it because its plot seems worse than a C-move is surely the way to success.
Yizahi 1 days ago [-]
I suspect that majority of atheists would be fine with either literal reading of Bible (any other religious text) or with metaphorical and in-context reading of such text, whatever better suits the fancy of religious folks. Now the problem atheists have is the selective arbitrary literal or metaphorical passages of the same single book.
Are passages about killing infidels and the other xenophobic garbage is a historical metaphorical and nuanced stuff which must be interpreted very different nowadays? Fine. But then all the other things should be also interpreted heavily - like there is no need to saran-wrap women because "the intention" or "the author's meaning" was about simply protecting them from the desert sand a-la medieval hiking handbook. There is no need to avoid specific animal meat in the age of refrigerators. And so on it goes.
Or we need to literally believe in the resurrection/heaven/souls/miracles and literally follow some extremely outdated and thus absurd instructions to the letter? Well, then murder, sadism and xenophobia then should be taken literally too.
Amezarak 6 hours ago [-]
> Are passages about killing infidels and the other xenophobic garbage is a historical metaphorical and nuanced stuff which must be interpreted very different nowadays? Fine. But then all the other things should be also interpreted heavily - like there is no need to saran-wrap women because "the intention" or "the author's meaning" was about simply protecting them from the desert sand a-la medieval hiking handbook. There is no need to avoid specific animal meat in the age of refrigerators. And so on it goes.
I always find this mindset peculiarly baffling. From a secular perspective, we've understood since at least the 1800s that "morality" is simply the pro-social instincts that we've developed as a social species of apes, and that they are historically contingent on a million different factors for any particular group of humans, such that the exact manifestation of "morality" differs widely from culture to culture and over time. Yet comments like this invariably accept Christian moral realism as a given (and granted, it's obviously a large genealogical contributor to Western social norms today) but then sever its grounding from God and place it in...their personal feelings about right and wrong. So God using the Israelites/Babylonians/Romans/etc as his instrument of divine justice is evil "xenophobic garbage"...because divine justice is real (xenophobia is objectively evil) but the God described in religious texts actually has nothing to do with it, and actually its wrong because....uh...we say so and we're the final and ultimate arbiters of right and wrong I guess? Us, specifically, that is.
It really seems like this is the genealogical origin of the idea of "progress" you see throughout these comments as well - people are "better" now, because you can clearly see over time a large subset of people developing social norms closer and closer to our own! And unlike theirs, ours are objectively right and true, or at least closer to it. This is certainly a historically unusual view, which may have typically been rather provincial and close-minded, but which certainly did general not have this universalist, and dare I say, colonialist bent, that all must agree.
dev_dan_2 13 hours ago [-]
I both agree with you, but have a point I want to raise that I think is often overlooked:
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...
---------------------------
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?
1 days ago [-]
bdr 1 days ago [-]
Speaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.
sherburt3 1 days ago [-]
His book Higher-Order Perl was really good and introduced me to some interesting programming concepts, but it also helped me realize why no one uses Perl anymore
bonzini 1 days ago [-]
I feel the same about Haskell...
Joker_vD 1 days ago [-]
> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging.
A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
ivrit-tirvi 1 days ago [-]
I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations).
It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique!
As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
1123581321 1 days ago [-]
Through a glass darkly, if you will. :)
agaj-nimm 1 days ago [-]
Have you read Patton's poem by that title? It's not great but it's a fascinating window into the beliefs of a major historical figure.
In my experience there's a lot of support for reincarnation in judeo-christian scripture, when you read it open to that interpretation.
1123581321 1 days ago [-]
I hadn't read it until now. Interesting find! I wonder why he chose that title as the teleology of I Cor 13:12 seems straightforward.
agaj-nimm 1 days ago [-]
My read is that cor 13:12 is about seeing life from both sides, flesh and spirit. Some things are clearer on either side, and we learn from alternating.
Ardren 1 days ago [-]
> I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand
Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
But you do?
rurp 1 days ago [-]
Translations are inherently lossy, especially for cases like the bible that use less common dialects and have conflicting source versions. Are any biblical translators claiming that their work is a 100% reproduction of the original? I doubt it. Most I'm familiar with readily acknowledge that it's a very messy process and two experts acting in good faith will produce different translations in many cases.
dev_dan_2 1 days ago [-]
For starters, there are simply many possible goals one can achieve with a translation: Translating it as literal as possible (which can result in barely readable results in the target language, if the languages are far enough apart), translating it so that what thinks its meaning is is understandable, translating it assuming a particular worldview that might shape which alternatives to pick and so on.
A very loose translation could be how the "same program", as defined in its lambda calculus form, or as assembly code, is equivalent to dozens of programming languages, all with different goals and ways to reach their goal (declarative vs. imperative, functional vs. OOP, readable for beginners like Python versus APL, ...)
ivrit-tirvi 1 days ago [-]
Reading Hebrew is not about "opinion" or "theological insight".
Hebrew is all about INTUITION (knowledge that rises spontaneously from YOUR OWN heart).
The more you are SPIRITUALLY ALIVE, the more you will get out of every Hebrew sentence. It's a work-in-progress that lasts all of your lifetime.
And it's PERSONAL: every time you read (or re-read) a passage, it adds understanding to the level/dimension that you are currently capable of...
(You see, it's a never ending process: and that's exactly why I LOVE Hebrew and the Bible so much!!)
mejutoco 17 hours ago [-]
I am interested in examples of why Hebrew is as you claim in comparison to other languages. Very curious
eitally 21 hours ago [-]
I think it's arguable that this "intuition" you call knowledge could very easily also be called "opinion".
archonis 1 days ago [-]
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect also applies to the majority of translations.
jibal 1 days ago [-]
> Why do you assume a (sic) entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement (sic) for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
That assumption does not appear anywhere in their comment.
Your rude strawman question only makes sense if assuming that ivrit-tirvi is not a fluent speaker of Hebrew and is somehow translating the Hebrew into something else that they understand ... which is quite unlikely, since ivrit (עִבְרִית) is the Hebrew word for the English word "Hebrew".
And the NIV translation into English reflects ideological interpretation that one can avoid by reading the original Hebrew if one understands it.
SegfaultSeagull 1 days ago [-]
The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."
schoen 17 hours ago [-]
My Hebrew education didn't extend to the future tense, but according to
נֶפֶשׁ is feminine. So it seems that only the third person form could agree with the subject noun, right?
Joker_vD 13 hours ago [-]
Apparently, that's how Biblical Hebrew expressed the jussive. German uses 3rd person subjunctive ("Meine Seele sterbe mit den Philistern"), Polish (and other Slavic languages, I imagine) also uses 3rd person future but with explicit "let" thrown in: "Niech umrze dusza moja z Filistynami".
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.
m463 18 hours ago [-]
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.
Joker_vD 13 hours ago [-]
> That sounds like a person resigned to his death.
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."
blharr 1 days ago [-]
"Let my soul die with the Philistines" being the literal translation?
wofo 1 days ago [-]
I'm curious, what would you be your translation?
Mtinie 1 days ago [-]
I can't speak for the OP, but in my research, the translation works out to be:
"Let me die with the foreigners"
I usually see "foreigners" replaced with "Philistines" (as noted above). It's Samson's line just before he braces against the pillars and brings the building down on himself and the thousands of Philistines inside, so I understand why it is usually translated that way.
Also, ψυχή here renders Hebrew nephesh, which is closer to "life" or "self", but when I think about the attributed statement it just reads better with the personal attachment (vs. "Let my self|life|soul die with..."). Which is the fun of translation, as each translator seeks to reveal a meaningful rendition which will resonate with their audience.
jibal 1 days ago [-]
But the original Hebrew word is "פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒" which is "Philistines", not "foreigners".
P.S. My only reaction to the response is "whoosh!".
Mtinie 1 days ago [-]
I don't think that disagrees with what I said. I was translating the Greek, not the Hebrew. But you're right the Hebrew פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒ is unambiguously "Philistines."
The Greek quoted above is from the Septuagint, and those translators rendered that word as ἀλλόφυλοι, roughly "those of another tribe." So "foreigners" is the closest I have in English to the Greek word, and "Philistines" is who it refers to.
I'm no scholar here, just a dabbler, so I'm happy the discussion is happening at all.
schoen 19 hours ago [-]
It's funny to be randomly reminded of the phyles from The Diamond Age, also from φυλή (it's an English word borrowed directly from the Greek, but not a very familiar one in many contexts today).
"let my soul die with the Philistines" is the literal translation of the Latin.
I'm not an expert on Greek but I'd translate that as "let my soul die with the foreigners." ἀλλοφύλων more literally means something like "different people / people belonging to another group"
jibal 1 days ago [-]
But the original Hebrew word is "פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒" which is "Philistines", not "foreigners". The Greek has already suffered a translation.
Joker_vD 1 days ago [-]
Something like "let my life perish with the Philistines". As the sibling comment notices, the original Hebrew word doesn't really mean "spirit" in the "immortal soul" meaning.
jeffbee 1 days ago [-]
Yeah the comment is a bit of a cliffhanger. Wish they had given us their preferred translation.
schoen 1 days ago [-]
That's funny, I (not the poster) didn't stop to think that other readers might not understand the Latin and Greek here!
Both of those forms are third-person and say "may my soul" ( ψυχή/anima) "die with the Philistines". (Definite article in Greek but not in Latin because Latin doesn't have them.)
The original Hebrew has
תָּמוֹת נַפְשִׁי עִם-פְּלִשְׁתִּים
which is also third person "may my soul" (נַפְשִׁי) "die with (the) Philistines".
schoen 19 hours ago [-]
(Another poster also pointed out that the Philistines are replaced with "foreigners" or "outgroup" in the Greek, which I overlooked.)
euthymiclabs 1 days ago [-]
Pleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.
cryzinger 1 days ago [-]
I've never owned a copy of Roget's, and now I'm curious/tempted to get one, but my go-to digital word picking assistant has always been OneLook Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/
dougb5 1 days ago [-]
Hey, I'm the developer of OneLook. I'm so glad to see it here!
The concept clusters on the site are directly inspired by Roget's work. Like the author, I see a thesaurus less as a synonym dictionary and more as what the word literally means, a storehouse of treasure. I'm in the midst of a long-overdue data refresh across OneLook right now, so I'd be curious to hear your feedback once it's done.
keane 3 hours ago [-]
Twenty years ago, OneLook Reverse was how I took college papers from a B to an A through intimidating the TAs with absurdly specific yet exactly fitting three dollar words. That they thought I knew the field led to great friendships (and jobs) with some of them. I owe you big time and thank you!
euthymiclabs 1 days ago [-]
Very cool. This will likely become my default digital source. Much more extensive than the other online options. I still prefer the discrete clustering of Roget's, but this blows away anything else I've found.
Note that this version of Thesaurus-1911 has been supplemented with over
1,000 words not present in the original 1911 edition, but many modern words
are still missing. About 1500 verbs (out of 6500) which can be found in an
80,000-word spell-checker are absent from this work. The deficiency of nouns
is probably much worse, especially on technical topics. Of 40,000 unique
words contained in the original text, 12,000 are not recognized by a
spell-checker. Most of these are foreign words (primarily Latin), and many
are obsolete.
criddell 1 days ago [-]
I never knew Roget's was organized like that and I have had several different editions over the years. I'm one of those people who always used it as a compendium of synonyms.
baruz 1 days ago [-]
A lot of books that call themselves Roget’s have abandoned the dual structure (classification-index) in favor of a single index structure built like a dictionary, basically constructed for people who want a different word than what they would normally use, as mjd writes, rather than people who are interested in the store-house (thesaurus) of the English language.
leobg 1 days ago [-]
I was looking for it after reading the post, but there seem to be so many different versions and edtions. Harper, Penguin. College. The New. The Concise. The International. Some say they’re organized alphabetically. How do I know which one is the kind that the article talks about, if I buy used online and cant look into it?
darreninthenet 1 days ago [-]
Are you in the USA? It's because Roget as a title isn't trademarked there so it's accepted as a name for any thesaurus.
If you want the latest edition of the "real" Roget's, it's the one published by Longman.
mjd 1 days ago [-]
The one in TFA is Harper and Row, and the later 8th Edition, published by Harper Collins, is also organized the correct way. I think you'll be safe if you can get a Harper version.
euthymiclabs 1 days ago [-]
That's the one I have. I've had an older version in the past but misplaced it years ago. This one does the trick, but like the article author says: it is a weighty book. (I like that.)
rsynnott 1 days ago [-]
> I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness for the way that medieval Christianity strangled the human spirit for so long.
As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's.
Adding the Pseudodoxia Epidemica to my list of things to read if I ever have infinite time.
themadturk 22 hours ago [-]
It's good to read Ada Palmer's Inventing The Renaissance, because understanding whatever the Renaissance is (and Palmer says it is many different things), you need to understand the Middle Ages, since the Renaissance started with the fallout of Middle-Ages Christianity's love of Aristotle and ended with the beginning of real science.
Plus it's a fun book.
mjd 1 days ago [-]
One really nice thing about Pseudodoxia Epidemica is that you don't have to read it cover to cover. You can pick it up, read the bit about whether “a Diamond is made soft, or broke by the blood of a Goate”, or what he has to say about Pope Joan (a woman who supposedly tricked the college of cardinals into electing her pope) and put it down gain ten minutes later. It's great bathroom reading.
physicalecon 1 days ago [-]
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roughly 1 days ago [-]
This is a solid collection, one that shows real intellectual curiosity. Something that would be interesting to add would be something that falls entirely out of the canon of Western philosophy - you have what is by all measures a diverse sampling of the various permutations of the intellectual procession of western thinking, but nothing reflecting traditions from outside that procession, eg Chinese, Islamic, Indian, or even Mayan or others from the Americas. It’d be interesting to pull from something entirely outside the intellectual tradition you’re well steeped in, to take a play horizontally instead of vertically.
(Note this isn’t a knock on the author for staying within western tradition, which is both deep and interesting and also diverse in a way which provides a wide breadth of ways of thinking about the world; rather, getting outside the tradition entirely would provide yet another perspective on that tradition, eg its bounds and the lines it doesn’t realize its prescribing itself within even as it changes dramatically over different eras.)
mjd 1 days ago [-]
I do own more than these seven books.
roughly 23 hours ago [-]
I mean, yeah, I'd presume, but you also describe these books in a way that bespeaks a deep familiarity with the western canon. I'm curious what you've got that's off that track?
(Genuinely, I'm not pushing this as a critique or thinking ill of you, your descriptions of those books get into some deep parts of the evolution of western thinking that most people don't approach or don't appreciate. I'm pushing the outsider angle because I think you see and appreciate the intellectual history there well enough that I'd be interested in what speaks to you from outside that tradition, or what you hear from works that are outside the tradition.)
mjd 19 hours ago [-]
Since you asked, I took a survey around the office. I have the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the one edited by Wallis Budge. I have a Chinese translating dictionary, a Chinese etymological dictionary, and a Hawai'ian dictionary. I have the Yasmine Seale translation of the Thousand and One Nights. I have the Travels of Ibn Battutah. I have Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography. I have a book by Ichisada Miyazaki about the history of the infamous civil service examinations in China. There's a book of poetry by Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah and Weinberger's little book comparing 19 translations of the same poem by Wang Wei. I have "Erotic Art of the East" by Rawson, an illustrated edition of the Rubaiyat, and a history of Iran by someone named Axworthy. I have a couple of books about pedagogy by A. Ya. Khinchin, who was Soviet Russian; I don't know whether you'd consider that "Western".
Of those, only the Thousand and One Nights and the Book of the Dead are anything like canonical. But of the seven I talked about in the article, only the Bible and the Decameron are canonical. I wouldn't have mentioned the dictionaries, except that one of the books in the original article was a thesaurus.
But most of the books I keep in the office are technical (lots of mathematics) or are more or less contemporary Western fiction.
I think some people might see my reading habits as those of a dilettante with a lack of serious focus, and I don't think I would care to dispute that. As I said, my brain is full of stuff, and and what's in it doesn't always make sense or go together with the other stuff.
mjd 10 hours ago [-]
Incidentally, Ibn Battutah was on the at-my-elbow shelf for quite a while. The elbow shelf is not a static collection. Things move on, then they move off again, as Roget 8th edition did recently.
You've got me thinking that it might be nice to get a translation of _Līlāvatī_ by Bhaskara II to put there. Thanks!
I’ve been told the Legacy Standard Bible is one where the translators tried to not use the same English word when the original Greek or Hebrew words are different.
I discovered that when I want to find the translation of a German word, it is far quicker to open a dictionary and flip to the word than open google, select the language, and type in the word.
Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.
WalterBright 16 hours ago [-]
If I was designing an E-reader, flipping pages would be a problem I'd work hard to solve.
frollogaston 1 days ago [-]
Binary search is strong
schoen 17 hours ago [-]
Strong as a log, one might say!
UncleOxidant 1 days ago [-]
> It [The Bible] is full of great wisdom and great stories, and also cruelty, evil lies, and reminders that the world now is in many ways better than it was because people are better.
Are people better? And if they are what made them better?
PeterStuer 1 days ago [-]
Slightly off topic: The title hits home. When I was young, books were a luxury item. Less rich people just used the library. But the library had a strict 7 books rental policy. Not enough for the avid reader that also needed a small programming reference library. So I had 3 steady, occasionally 4th, library card pool from family members to keep my bookshelf operational.
eliben 1 days ago [-]
I also remember libraries having a very small limit back in the day, so I was surprised to find out that in the Bay Area libraries typically allow up to 100 books per card!
PeterStuer 1 days ago [-]
Mind blown. How can that work? I assume book rentals follow the usual Poisson distribution?
stevenwoo 24 hours ago [-]
In addition to printed books, my library has audiobooks, dedicated audio players for single books, DVD movies, video games, audio books on CD that count in your rentals. For new digital releases when they see the queue get overly long, they license more copies.
m463 18 hours ago [-]
Maybe it's a way for the libraries to have more overall books/deal with crowding, if a fixed % are out.
throw7 1 days ago [-]
NIV is what I grew up with and I kind of tired of it because of that... I have a soft spot for the KJV/NKJV.
i_am_a_peasant 1 days ago [-]
Same, not a believer, I appreciate KJV for its artistic value and it being referenced in so much literature and cinema.
bananamogul 1 days ago [-]
Am a believer, and appreciate the KJV for its language. However, it can be tricky, because words change over 400 years. So while there are many wonderfully translated passages that use very expressive language, you also have passages that are full of words that seem similar but actually are easy to confuse.
For example:
- "Prevent" in 1611 meant "go before, precede". Now it means "stop from happening".
- "Suffer" in 1611 meant "allow to happen". Now it means "experience pain".
- "Quick" in 1611 could mean "alive" (hence "the quick and the dead"). Now it exclusively means "fast".
And there are words that are completely archaic now - "anon", "bissam", etc. Or words that are just very rare - e.g., peradventure.
It's a wonderful read in many places if you want to revel in language, but modern translations are often better for understanding meaning. Not because they're "dumbed down" (as some claim) but rather because they reflect modern meanings and usage.
frollogaston 1 days ago [-]
I get that, but KJV is referenced so much that I find it's worth just dealing with it and learning the 1600s differences along the way. Plus those differences are interesting in of themselves.
timbit42 21 hours ago [-]
Almost no one is reading the 1611 version today though. Over 99% of the KJV bibles in existence today are the 1769 revision.
i_am_a_peasant 1 days ago [-]
I respect your beliefs.
I once tried to stick to Green’s Literal Translation but it got dry fast. I actually enjoyed reading the preface and made me appreciate the work Jay Green Sr put in.
jabl 1 days ago [-]
We read some passages from Decameron back in high school. Lovely book really, I should take the time to really read it cover to cover.
pavel_lishin 1 days ago [-]
There's apparently a pretty amusing adaptation on Netflix as well.
mjd 1 days ago [-]
The Netflix series is an "inspired by", not an adaptation. It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters.
I enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
swagmoose 1 days ago [-]
I loved the Netflix adaptation. I ignorantly missed the part about it being a book and am so excited to dive into it.
MrJohz 1 days ago [-]
It's very good, although it focuses mainly on the framing device and not on the stories themselves. I can imagine if you're a fan of the original book, it might feel quite shallow in comparison, but as someone who never read the book, I really enjoyed it as a black comedy about bad people in bad times.
madcaptenor 1 days ago [-]
I tried to read it at the height of the pandemic, inspired by the plague framing, and couldn't get into it. Might be time to give it another shot.
IncreasePosts 1 days ago [-]
A great feature of The Decameron is that it's easy to read and the chapters are short and largely self contained. It's not one of those books that you need to be in the right head space for, and have a big chunk of time where you can sit down and dig in. I read The Decameron over 6 months or so in random little moments, a chapter sitting on the subway, a chapter during lunch, while laying in bed, etc.
bonzini 1 days ago [-]
Reading it in Italian (my native language) is fascinating, as it's a weird mix of mostly modern Italian flexion and Latin sentence construction. It's incredibly taxing, enough so that I stopped after 70-ish stories, but it also makes it very clear that the whole thing was written 700 years ago.
reedf1 1 days ago [-]
was expecting umberto eco after the first few - I'm sure you've either read him or desperately should!
MezzoDelCammin 1 days ago [-]
Comenius! I'll be damned—this is the first time I've seen anyone actually reading his Orbis Pictus. There's a country whose educational system basically revolves around Comenius (the Czech Republic). And even there I don't personally know anyone who I'd be 100% sure has actually read the whole book!
Alien1Being 1 days ago [-]
"I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness"
Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy.
As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
I just need The Wind in the Willows :)
stiiv 1 days ago [-]
When is the best time of year to read it?
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
When you're trying to fall asleep but there is too much noise in your head, I suppose :)
Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that.
But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.
_whiteCaps_ 1 days ago [-]
I bought Redwall for my kids a few years ago, and was stopped by three different people while walking from the back of the store to the checkout who commented on how good the books are!
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
The audiobooks are narrated by the author himself! Along with a full other cast and some music. Great for all ages to doze off to
embeng4096 1 days ago [-]
Redwall mentioned!
Brian Jacques' other series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman is also very good.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
Oh I forgot to say "as an audiobook" for the falling asleep to part
navigate8310 22 hours ago [-]
Since you liked Orbis Pictus, you'll definitely appreciate The Way Things Work
mjd 20 hours ago [-]
Thanks! I'm a big fan of David Macaulay's other books, but I've never liked _The Way Things Work_.
_Castle_ and _Umderground_, though I love.
schoen 17 hours ago [-]
There are some impressive British children's picture dictionaries, especially the DK Children's Encyclopedia, but also some others that I can't quite put my finger on. A little closer to Comenius compared to that particular Macaulay: more direct and broader in scope and less jokey.
What I most appreciated in The Way Things Work is that he gives a complete working description of the boolean half-adder built out of logic gates, and I think how to connect them to make larger adders. Remember, in our very recent past, it was actually hard for little kids to find explanations of how to do arithmetic with logic circuits? Macaulay did his bit (so to speak) to fix that amidst tons of weird mammoth jokes.
By the way, I've been to one of Comenius's old schools (Herborn, Germany) and grave (Naarden, Netherlands).
20 hours ago [-]
mjd 1 days ago [-]
And I bet you won't guess what any of them are.
rzzzt 1 days ago [-]
Number #8 will surprise you!
I keep a computer graphics book that I'm reading over and over again, just one chapter that is concerned with physically-based rendering. By now the theory is getting so ingrained I could write a path tracer in my sleep! But then again, I don't want to.
mjd 1 days ago [-]
The current front-runner is “The Crazy Ape” by Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid.
It's about how war is perpetrated by the old against the young. I've carried it next to my heart since I was fourteen.
Also, it's quite short and will definitely fit in the space.
> The Bible (New International Version, large print)
> 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.
slowin 1 days ago [-]
> 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 over-exposed to this stuff as is. I'm an atheist and I hate that I've been subjected to Christian propaganda my whole life as someone born and raised in the US. It's been a constant parade of ignorance.
Want to really understand the true nature of the US in the 21st century? Drop the bible and read Settlers instead: https://readsettlers.org/
heresie-dabord 18 hours ago [-]
Stripped of religious rhetoric, political discourse in the US is best understood as the economics of brazen greed.
slowin 18 hours ago [-]
Yes, and racism and worship of fame.
mangodrunk 21 hours ago [-]
Have you tried living somewhere else or would you like to? For what it’s worth, several societies who were and are predominantly Christian have done quite well, such that most people immigrate to them as opposed to other countries.
slowin 20 hours ago [-]
I’ve lived in other Christian countries and also don’t like it. I’m actually more interested in indigenous American culture and history.
mangodrunk 19 hours ago [-]
Can you live in a majority indigenous area? Would that be appropriate if you are not indigenous? I say this because I do think many are too critical of Christian countries without ever experiencing another country. They don’t know how good they have it.
slowin 18 hours ago [-]
I think you’re confusing geospatial happenstance with religion. No, I don’t like living in a culture that believes a guy came back from the dead. Especially when it’s enriched via colonization. I don’t “have it good”, I literally live in an intellectual wasteland.
Have you ever been to the US? I’ve been to many countries and Christian culture is one of my least favorites.
What makes you think I’m not indigenous? I never said that.
schoen 17 hours ago [-]
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 actively leaning into "this book isn't for you" or "this book is meant to upset you".
On the other hand, I just realized that this is probably exactly what reading Richard Stallman feels like if you don't already agree with him. Like "I'm going to use lots of neologisms that I don't even explain, because I want to remind you of all my attitudes toward everything from the very first moment that you encounter my ideas."
slowin 6 hours ago [-]
Well, the author was an interned Japanese, so I'll forgive him for having a POV.
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:
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.
jamboca 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bbkane 1 days ago [-]
> 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?
pavel_lishin 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, I thought he was easily recognizable because he's holding stone tablets.
> 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 Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
11 hours ago [-]
madcaptenor 1 days ago [-]
He didn't carry the stone tablets around all the time.
pavel_lishin 8 hours ago [-]
No, but it's likely the event he's most associated with.
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.
alabhyajindal 1 days ago [-]
and the seven books I keep close: diary of a wimpy kid 1-7
Having read these outloud to my kids many times, they have genuine insight into psychology and the condition of the child as a developing person.
ck2 1 days ago [-]
> The four em-dashes were organically cultivated and sustainably harvested
1 days ago [-]
verelo 1 days ago [-]
Is no one going to comment on the goggly eyes or 8mm data tape? You people disappoint me.
jeffbee 1 days ago [-]
I assume the first one is "High Performance HTTP Servers"
jdkee 1 days ago [-]
Second Frege to Gödel. It is a great introduction to a study of the foundations of mathematics.
richtersand 1 days ago [-]
He lost me at Thesaurus
m463 18 hours ago [-]
but he explained his reasoning and roped me back in.
hnnbxu2nwi 1 days ago [-]
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apercu 1 days ago [-]
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hnfvovpje4 1 days ago [-]
Ah the classic
vehemenz 1 days ago [-]
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in [the Bible].
Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
dev_dan_2 1 days ago [-]
That is quite a bold claim you make there!
Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts?
Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in Western culture will we understand if we take you on your word and spend time into understanding those concepts?
Bullet points / pointers would be enough already!
vehemenz 1 days ago [-]
My convictions are pretty hollow because I'm demonstrating the pointlessness--or arbitrariness, if you like--of gatekeeping the ranks of the "well-educated," as the author tries to do here.
dev_dan_2 1 days ago [-]
Doh! Fell for it, I guess ;)
Hmm, while I agree that this particular book selection could come of as rather heady, and the author is obviously not doing an exercise in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English either - but just gauging from the post itself, I find it plausible enough that the auther indeed just loves those books.
My red flags: Putting others or other works down, pretending everyone is on the same level of knowledge ("everybody would agree that...", "It's pretty easy to see that...") and in putting the focus onto ones own (percieved or real) abilities. I see nothing wrong in engaging in complex, deep works, but I think some sense of humility should be at least subtly present; If that is not the case over and over again, I either assume that at least some form of signaling is going on, or that the author is genuinely that much out of my leage enough to make it hard for me to connect (I meet people like this in real life, they were often also nice people too, but I could simply not keep up - which is fine, not every crowd is for me and I am not for every crowd...)
On the bible itself: if we are strictly talking about the culture of the western world, I do not think it is controversial claim the bible has been and still is a fundamental element, for better or worse, and often also due to critics and their thoughts.
Trying to make sense of the western culture without the bible could be compared to trying to make sense of chinese culture without the writings of Confucius - or a maritine biologist trying to explain the oceanic ecosystem, while working on the hypothesis that geothermic energy cannot interact with oceanic life at all. There will simply be wide, gaping spots in knowledge, and plenty of hacks needed to fix them somewhat.
ejtaal3 1 days ago [-]
Well played sir, well played :)
ejtaal3 1 days ago [-]
Whoosh ;)
xerox13ster 1 days ago [-]
Get the data off those drives now, rather than later. The longer you hope to get the data, the more hopeless it will be.
The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a great catalog out there of the most egregious translations in the NIV [1]. One such example:
> Romans 7:18 — The NIV here translates σάρξ (sarx) as “sinful nature” even though this implies later Augustinian doctrine on original sin that is not intended by the original writer. In contrast, the NRSV correctly chooses to translate this tricky Pauline term more literally as “flesh”.
Are you interested in a readable Bible that flows well to modern English ears? The New Living Translation (NLT) is fantastic and very underrated. I recommend reading the Psalms in the NLT since much of the language of the Psalms being in a higher register in the NIV and other translations doesn't land as well, but reading the Psalms in NLT makes it much more relatable and human. I find the way it reads refreshing, and it's based on more modern scholarship.
Are you interested in latest scholarly understanding of the Bible? The NRSV is the consensus version (as much as there could be one).
Are you interested in understanding the Bible as American Evangelical Christians read it today? That's currently the English Standard Version (ESV), which many churches have switched to as the NIV has lost favor in Reformed circles.
[1]: https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resource...
One example is that often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations. It happens that words interpreted as names of people are also abstract nouns and these passages can also be read as aphorisms. I haven't looked deep into that but it makes way more sense to me that narrative is punctuated by such reflections on "Wisdom unites with Patience and beget Lasting Wealth than breaking into describing marriages and lineages then going back to the story...
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Books-Moses-Translation-Commenta...
I think you were emphasizing something beside this, but if you want to know _why_ the five Books of Moses often jump suddenly into genealogy or minutiae of interest only to priests, you might be interested in the Documentary Hypothesis. Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" is an approachable introduction to it.
Ancient history is much like astrophysics and cosmology. We know so very little and there are so many blanks.
It sometimes catches me off guard that people think our past is well known.
I recommend searching books and articles about 'canaanite religion' - the cult of El, Baal and Yaveh have a lot in common. You need to understand the context of Israelite religion to realize that modern monotheism wasn't created in a vacuum, it matured out of a deep tradition of local cults. I'd also recommend looking into Mesopotamian religions. Egyptian religion is not as fundamental but it provides a lot of perspective. Once you see the influence, it sheds light on a lot of things. The relationship between the cults of Set and the conflicting beliefs of followers of El and Baal is a fascinating rabbit hole.
Greek mythology also acquires a whole new depth to it when you realize that Baal (a canaanite deity), El (an israelite deity that eventually merges with some others into the monotheistic god) and Zeus: all were storm gods. There's a lot more to it all I'm saying, again, look into that. Fascinating stuff.
There is an amazing channel on youtube I wholeheartedly recommend: Esoterica https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel
A couple of good books I still remember are Belief by Orsi and Ancient Israel by Lemche.
Some journals off the top of my head:
Religion Compass https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17498171/current
Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia https://lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/jaos
I'd say go on Semantic Scholar, Academia.edu, or some other academic search tool and start digging! Bible authorship is a minor branch of a deep well of scholarship that is the study of ancient history and ancient religion.
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.
That in itself would still make a lot of sense to me though; as far as I know, property and power was mainly transfered through the lines of first born males (so a patriarchy, in the literal sense). If that, social status and so on hinges on who your father, grandfather etc. was, then I think it makes sense for geneology trees to be something important enough to write down, especially in literature that was partially written to capture/produce a peoples cultural identity (i.e. parts of the creation story where written while the jews where forcibly integrated into the babylonian empire, and struggling to keep their own cultural identity. That's another good "use case" for genealogy, I would say.)
There is no definitive reading of scripture, there is no definitive version of any of the texts, and I enjoy finding new aspects of their history and interpretation. Realizing that some of the texts that read as genealogy might have been originally a form of poetic aphorism is something I wouldn't affirm to a bible scholar but I enjoy thinking about it.
Someone else said a lot of scripture was written as poetry. Imagine people in the year 4500 trying to figure out some fourth hand translation of clippings taken from books by Neruda, Chaucer and Hobsbawm.
Discovering that "Jonah" can mean "dove" was certainly eye-opening. And re-reading that book in light of knowing this, quite interesting!
In fact, the OT and NT alike sometimes even drop in-line translation/explanation of a name that they really want us to know. In that case, why not know all of them?
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 good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
So KJV and NRSV agree.
This is all the same group. Bin the NIV.
https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/bible.php
It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?)
I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically.
A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him.
Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
Which, as I understand, is pretty much the lesson that most of theologists derive form the story of Samson: don't let your lust blind you and make you stray from your duties to the God.
I think he's purposefully supposed to come off as a buffoon, but maybe a relatable one?
That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.
What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,
which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.
If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.
Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.
The same issue seems to occur with "deep" thinkers in other areas (e.g. trying to understand French intellectuals).
The trouble is that it can be worthwhile thinking about something without depth, or paying attention to a smart persons' thoughts on something shallow. And a priori we can't always know what is worthwhile.
E.g. I liked the blog, because here's a smart guy who has explained a little of what he gets out of a few divergent works.
To an atheist, it seems very obvious that there is a intellectual whirlpool and cognitive error meta-pattern at work, which crudely summarized would be, "close attention to any subject and its context provides a fractal landscape within which infinite complexity and subtle relationships may be discerned" (the universe is reflected in a grain of sand; or, if you practice breath meditation, in the focus of breathing): this is interpreted as the signature of the divine. Because nothing we can produce with our human agency has such complexity. We are simple, serial, things; the world is parallel and multidimensional at every scale.
The world IMO is worthy of wondrous regard. But it's not because of design, not in any sense usually meant, bar those that Wolfram is pointing at with his "Rudliad" and the anthropic principle.
A deist is liable to say, ah ha, well, that is where the divine shows itself. But this is IMO the last of the gaps into which it might flee. Or, more charitably and ecumenically, one might say, this is where definitions of the divine converge for the atheist and the deist; what we mean when each say "the divine" is this, that the universe is wondrous and has deep orders and it betrays fractal similarity and order; and what a thing it is to be not just alive within it but aware of being so!
That is a cause for humility reflection and gratitude, for sure.
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 of understanding the protagonists, or the authors, or the intension of the text, and 2) christians who just pick whatever forcibly-robbed-of-its-context oneliner fits their particular point view miss out.
Divine or not, this is a work that was composed a long time ago, edited, translated and interpreted by a diverse range of people spanning more than two millenia. Putting in less effort than one would into any other written source only guarantees one thing, the absense of surprises and learnings - if that is the goal, then reading two-three pages and discarding it because its plot seems worse than a C-move is surely the way to success.
Are passages about killing infidels and the other xenophobic garbage is a historical metaphorical and nuanced stuff which must be interpreted very different nowadays? Fine. But then all the other things should be also interpreted heavily - like there is no need to saran-wrap women because "the intention" or "the author's meaning" was about simply protecting them from the desert sand a-la medieval hiking handbook. There is no need to avoid specific animal meat in the age of refrigerators. And so on it goes.
Or we need to literally believe in the resurrection/heaven/souls/miracles and literally follow some extremely outdated and thus absurd instructions to the letter? Well, then murder, sadism and xenophobia then should be taken literally too.
I always find this mindset peculiarly baffling. From a secular perspective, we've understood since at least the 1800s that "morality" is simply the pro-social instincts that we've developed as a social species of apes, and that they are historically contingent on a million different factors for any particular group of humans, such that the exact manifestation of "morality" differs widely from culture to culture and over time. Yet comments like this invariably accept Christian moral realism as a given (and granted, it's obviously a large genealogical contributor to Western social norms today) but then sever its grounding from God and place it in...their personal feelings about right and wrong. So God using the Israelites/Babylonians/Romans/etc as his instrument of divine justice is evil "xenophobic garbage"...because divine justice is real (xenophobia is objectively evil) but the God described in religious texts actually has nothing to do with it, and actually its wrong because....uh...we say so and we're the final and ultimate arbiters of right and wrong I guess? Us, specifically, that is.
It really seems like this is the genealogical origin of the idea of "progress" you see throughout these comments as well - people are "better" now, because you can clearly see over time a large subset of people developing social norms closer and closer to our own! And unlike theirs, ours are objectively right and true, or at least closer to it. This is certainly a historically unusual view, which may have typically been rather provincial and close-minded, but which certainly did general not have this universalist, and dare I say, colonialist bent, that all must agree.
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...
---------------------------
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?
A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique!
As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
In my experience there's a lot of support for reincarnation in judeo-christian scripture, when you read it open to that interpretation.
Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
But you do?
A very loose translation could be how the "same program", as defined in its lambda calculus form, or as assembly code, is equivalent to dozens of programming languages, all with different goals and ways to reach their goal (declarative vs. imperative, functional vs. OOP, readable for beginners like Python versus APL, ...)
Hebrew is all about INTUITION (knowledge that rises spontaneously from YOUR OWN heart).
The more you are SPIRITUALLY ALIVE, the more you will get out of every Hebrew sentence. It's a work-in-progress that lasts all of your lifetime.
And it's PERSONAL: every time you read (or re-read) a passage, it adds understanding to the level/dimension that you are currently capable of...
(You see, it's a never ending process: and that's exactly why I LOVE Hebrew and the Bible so much!!)
That assumption does not appear anywhere in their comment.
Your rude strawman question only makes sense if assuming that ivrit-tirvi is not a fluent speaker of Hebrew and is somehow translating the Hebrew into something else that they understand ... which is quite unlikely, since ivrit (עִבְרִית) is the Hebrew word for the English word "Hebrew".
And the NIV translation into English reflects ideological interpretation that one can avoid by reading the original Hebrew if one understands it.
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.
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."
"Let me die with the foreigners"
I usually see "foreigners" replaced with "Philistines" (as noted above). It's Samson's line just before he braces against the pillars and brings the building down on himself and the thousands of Philistines inside, so I understand why it is usually translated that way.
Also, ψυχή here renders Hebrew nephesh, which is closer to "life" or "self", but when I think about the attributed statement it just reads better with the personal attachment (vs. "Let my self|life|soul die with..."). Which is the fun of translation, as each translator seeks to reveal a meaningful rendition which will resonate with their audience.
P.S. My only reaction to the response is "whoosh!".
The Greek quoted above is from the Septuagint, and those translators rendered that word as ἀλλόφυλοι, roughly "those of another tribe." So "foreigners" is the closest I have in English to the Greek word, and "Philistines" is who it refers to.
I'm no scholar here, just a dabbler, so I'm happy the discussion is happening at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Phyles
Both of those forms are third-person and say "may my soul" ( ψυχή/anima) "die with the Philistines". (Definite article in Greek but not in Latin because Latin doesn't have them.)
The original Hebrew has
תָּמוֹת נַפְשִׁי עִם-פְּלִשְׁתִּים
which is also third person "may my soul" (נַפְשִׁי) "die with (the) Philistines".
If you want the latest edition of the "real" Roget's, it's the one published by Longman.
As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's.
Adding the Pseudodoxia Epidemica to my list of things to read if I ever have infinite time.
Plus it's a fun book.
(Note this isn’t a knock on the author for staying within western tradition, which is both deep and interesting and also diverse in a way which provides a wide breadth of ways of thinking about the world; rather, getting outside the tradition entirely would provide yet another perspective on that tradition, eg its bounds and the lines it doesn’t realize its prescribing itself within even as it changes dramatically over different eras.)
(Genuinely, I'm not pushing this as a critique or thinking ill of you, your descriptions of those books get into some deep parts of the evolution of western thinking that most people don't approach or don't appreciate. I'm pushing the outsider angle because I think you see and appreciate the intellectual history there well enough that I'd be interested in what speaks to you from outside that tradition, or what you hear from works that are outside the tradition.)
Of those, only the Thousand and One Nights and the Book of the Dead are anything like canonical. But of the seven I talked about in the article, only the Bible and the Decameron are canonical. I wouldn't have mentioned the dictionaries, except that one of the books in the original article was a thesaurus.
But most of the books I keep in the office are technical (lots of mathematics) or are more or less contemporary Western fiction.
I think some people might see my reading habits as those of a dilettante with a lack of serious focus, and I don't think I would care to dispute that. As I said, my brain is full of stuff, and and what's in it doesn't always make sense or go together with the other stuff.
You've got me thinking that it might be nice to get a translation of _Līlāvatī_ by Bhaskara II to put there. Thanks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C4%ABl%C4%81vat%C4%AB
FYI: https://m.youtube.com/c/legacystandardbible
Here's a brief comparison (Titus 1)
LSB: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus%201&versi...
NLT: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=titus%201&versi...
Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.
Are people better? And if they are what made them better?
For example:
- "Prevent" in 1611 meant "go before, precede". Now it means "stop from happening". - "Suffer" in 1611 meant "allow to happen". Now it means "experience pain". - "Quick" in 1611 could mean "alive" (hence "the quick and the dead"). Now it exclusively means "fast".
And there are words that are completely archaic now - "anon", "bissam", etc. Or words that are just very rare - e.g., peradventure.
It's a wonderful read in many places if you want to revel in language, but modern translations are often better for understanding meaning. Not because they're "dumbed down" (as some claim) but rather because they reflect modern meanings and usage.
I once tried to stick to Green’s Literal Translation but it got dry fast. I actually enjoyed reading the preface and made me appreciate the work Jay Green Sr put in.
I enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy.
As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that.
But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.
Brian Jacques' other series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman is also very good.
_Castle_ and _Umderground_, though I love.
What I most appreciated in The Way Things Work is that he gives a complete working description of the boolean half-adder built out of logic gates, and I think how to connect them to make larger adders. Remember, in our very recent past, it was actually hard for little kids to find explanations of how to do arithmetic with logic circuits? Macaulay did his bit (so to speak) to fix that amidst tons of weird mammoth jokes.
By the way, I've been to one of Comenius's old schools (Herborn, Germany) and grave (Naarden, Netherlands).
I keep a computer graphics book that I'm reading over and over again, just one chapter that is concerned with physically-based rendering. By now the theory is getting so ingrained I could write a path tracer in my sleep! But then again, I don't want to.
It's about how war is perpetrated by the old against the young. I've carried it next to my heart since I was fourteen.
Also, it's quite short and will definitely fit in the space.
A bit more about it: https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/116411220100252049
> 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.
> 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 over-exposed to this stuff as is. I'm an atheist and I hate that I've been subjected to Christian propaganda my whole life as someone born and raised in the US. It's been a constant parade of ignorance.
Want to really understand the true nature of the US in the 21st century? Drop the bible and read Settlers instead: https://readsettlers.org/
Have you ever been to the US? I’ve been to many countries and Christian culture is one of my least favorites.
What makes you think I’m not indigenous? I never said that.
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 actively leaning into "this book isn't for you" or "this book is meant to upset you".
On the other hand, I just realized that this is probably exactly what reading Richard Stallman feels like if you don't already agree with him. Like "I'm going to use lots of neologisms that I don't even explain, because I want to remind you of all my attitudes toward everything from the very first moment that you encounter my ideas."
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.
I'm sorry, what? Why is Moses depicted with glowing horns?
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 Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
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.
Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts?
Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in Western culture will we understand if we take you on your word and spend time into understanding those concepts?
Bullet points / pointers would be enough already!
Hmm, while I agree that this particular book selection could come of as rather heady, and the author is obviously not doing an exercise in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English either - but just gauging from the post itself, I find it plausible enough that the auther indeed just loves those books. My red flags: Putting others or other works down, pretending everyone is on the same level of knowledge ("everybody would agree that...", "It's pretty easy to see that...") and in putting the focus onto ones own (percieved or real) abilities. I see nothing wrong in engaging in complex, deep works, but I think some sense of humility should be at least subtly present; If that is not the case over and over again, I either assume that at least some form of signaling is going on, or that the author is genuinely that much out of my leage enough to make it hard for me to connect (I meet people like this in real life, they were often also nice people too, but I could simply not keep up - which is fine, not every crowd is for me and I am not for every crowd...)
On the bible itself: if we are strictly talking about the culture of the western world, I do not think it is controversial claim the bible has been and still is a fundamental element, for better or worse, and often also due to critics and their thoughts. Trying to make sense of the western culture without the bible could be compared to trying to make sense of chinese culture without the writings of Confucius - or a maritine biologist trying to explain the oceanic ecosystem, while working on the hypothesis that geothermic energy cannot interact with oceanic life at all. There will simply be wide, gaping spots in knowledge, and plenty of hacks needed to fix them somewhat.