Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mr Trout]

Will you thump it on your rump a bit?

[jay-ell]

Aww, a-cap deleted the post that made mine make any kind of sense.

I wasn't trying to make fun of you, a-cap, though I can see how it might have come off that way. Hope that's not why you decided to delete your post.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Aww, a-cap deleted the post that made mine make any kind of sense.

I wasn't trying to make fun of you, a-cap, though I can see how it might have come off that way. Hope that's not why you decided to delete your post.

I decided that there was no way to say what I was trying to say without sounding like the person I didnt want to sound like.

[jay-ell]

I dunno, those of use who know you would have gotten it.

And everyone else can fuck off.

[Thomas Pain]

*pout*  I'm ripping out random pages of the last chapter of every book I send y'all.  y'all is mean to me. 

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Message-Bible/Eugene-H-Peterson/e/9781598594607/

okay that is whack.  I don't agree with that at all.  Personally I'm an atheist, but I dig that people reads the Bible for religious purposes.  But I mean, the Bible is really integral to so much of the world's literary history.  Reading the Bible helps one to have an appreciation for the etymology of so many words and ideas and concepts with which so much literature is replete, and so, translating the Bible into modern English will really put some distance between the reader and the concepts as they are expressed and represented in other literature.  So, basically, this "message bible" is like a URL shortener for the concepts in the Bible.  And we all know that URL shorteners are the inherently evil work for the Devil! 

For the record, I have yet to read more than a couple pages of the Bible.  And I think I own at least two copies that well-intending friends have pushed on me for religious purposes over the years.  Me, I tend to push intellectual ideas onto friends, pushing books at them. 

But yeah, this new messenger thing... I suppose it was inevitable, what with the decline of literacy in America.  It's simply natural selection at work - the survival and proliferation of the fittest version of the Bible in the current environment such as it is.  Ha!  isn't that irony for you...

As for book exchange idea, I don't trust to receive random books from people... my experience is people often not open to new ideas..  I knew one person, was in process of reading all of Tom Clancy's books... he got all of them collection at a flea market or something... I dunno how many.. some 50 books or something.

okay, that is ambition, but unfortunately, reading all of Tom Clancy's books doesn't seem like a very good way to spend what little time one has on this Earth.  So help me god, if someone send me a Tom Clancy book, I be so pissed off. 

[greenkoolayd]

books may be involved for my random giving tree exploits.

[jay-ell]

I like The Message for its purposes. It's not appropriate for theological study, but no translation is. What it's good for, though, is accessing the basic, general meaning of the work as a whole -- getting the message, as it were -- for someone who doesn't have the interest or inclination to wade through a bunch of high-falutin' language to find out what us Christians are on about. It's much more suitable as a piece of literature than the NIV version, and the translation comes from the original Greek and other assorted languages, not from earlier English works.

All translations are imperfect; I'm a fan of the Muslim concept that one should learn the language of the text if one wants to truly understand it. But since most of us don't speak several ancient languages (Bobby Isosceles excluded), if we're going to read a translation, which would you rather have?

Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces:) that in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace, in the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: when he shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty many days, even an hundred and fourscore days.

Or:

This is the story of something that happened in the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled from India to Ethiopia—127 provinces in all. King Xerxes ruled from his royal throne in the palace complex of Susa. In the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his officials and ministers. The military brass of Persia and Media were also there, along with the princes and governors of the provinces.

(Book of Ruth, 1:1-3)

[littlefallsmets]

I dunno.

I sorta enjoy the majesty and the wonder of the stodgier translation. Sorta builds you up toward the idea that this is a really important thing to learn.

Whereas the second kinda sounds like the USA Today covering a summit of global warming that isn't intended to lead to any binding agreements.

Of course, I read things like the Bible and the Koran as interesting cultural artifacts in search of explanations for why society is as it is today and as ripping yarns of early science-fiction that I take with as large a grain of salt as stories of dudes bedding green ladies and shooting blue fellas with zap guns. I am the kind of person who, if I get bored in a Barnes and Noble, starts moving bibles into the Religious Fiction section so maybe I am not the target audience for plain-words translations of religious texts.

Even all that aside, isn't religion just more EFFECTIVE when it has the power of the narration before a Conan The Barbarian movie?

The text you quoted is written like a ninth-grade history text book and a lot of why I didn't get into history was how awfully dull those text books were.

[jay-ell]

Most people don't read Shakespeare because it's too much work. Sure, it sounds Important, but if 75% of the population can't follow the storyline, it's not really doing its job.

I've no objection to people reading the Bible as fiction. It's certainly better than not reading it at all. I'm just saying, not everyone can deal with the bombastic tone of the KJV, and it's nice to have another option.

[AugustWest]

NO  you all DONT GET IT   I have a VISION to which you all are BLIND and I believe that this may well be WILLFULLY SO

COME ON already can't you SEE IT

I can be a DJ OF STUFF THAT DON"{T SUCK  I can do that

you're all SCARED of the tremendous POWER of LIGHT

I'll admit your message board isn't too shabby in places but I can bring it TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT

I'm not asking to take over your whole message board I'm just asking for ONE SMALL AREA to be devoted to the FUTURE OF QUALITY

you have to do R&D   

It's not always clear where R&D is taking you and the payoff may be a ways in the indefinite future but if you don't do R&D then you're just going to NEVER IMPROVE and soon you become IRRELEVANT and your children look at you and ask you DID JESUS MAKE YOU THIS STUPID OR DID YOU HAVE TO WORK AT IT??? 

Don't disappoint your children, look to the future, don't get stuck in the lazy recliner of the present eating nachos until you're so fat you can't fit out the doorway anymore

COME ON PEOPLE I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU HERE BUT YOU HAVE TO WANT TO MOVE FORWARDS AND ONWARDS AND UPWARDS what's WRONG WITH YOU people don't you have any HOPE for the FUTURE?

Quality.  All I'm asking is the opportunity to bring you some quality.  It won't displace your existing quality, it won't hurt, you may feel a little prick, but you will feel ooohhh so much better.

[AugustWest]

y'all is mean to me. 

And you're mean to us.  See how that works?

[littlefallsmets]

To be fair, though I am agnostic, my cultural background is nominally Catholic so that might lead me toward digging the bombastic interpretations.

Still, it is weird to try and imagine the dang ol' Revelation of John in such prosaic terminology.

"You see, there's this dragon..."

[jay-ell]

To be fair, though I am agnostic, my cultural background is nominally Catholic so that might lead me toward digging the bombastic interpretations.

Still, it is weird to try and imagine the dang ol' Revelation of John in such prosaic terminology.

"You see, there's this dragon..."

How blessed the reader! How blessed the hearers and keepers of these oracle words, all the words written in this book!

Time is just about up.

That about says it, I guess.

If anyone is really interested, the whole thing is available online: http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Message-MSG-Bible/

[Thomas Pain]

I guess here's the thing... okay...  you take someone with a USA Today 7th or whatever grade reading level... um... There's just not gonna get a lot out of the Bible or any work.  They're not gonna get a lot out of life.  Generally, in American society today, literacy is a good indication of one's overall grasp on culture, which is a fancy word for reality.  Yes there are exceptions, yes you can be an intellectual and have no common sense, but having common sense and having a sophisticated idea of reality are not the same things and do not have to co-exist... Further, you can also NOT be an intellectual and STILL have no common sense, and also have NO sophisticated sense either, and I think this describes the vast majority of Americans.  Culture is the ability to perceive reality beyond the immediate present, beyond your immediate surroundings.  

And I think really the Bible is trying to impart some of this culture to the reader...  The Bible is about more than myopic common sense, the Bible is about a sophisticated world view...  Okay.. so if the reader is totally incapable of grasping some of these more elaborate cultural concepts, then what does the reader take away from the Bible?  Answer:  The reader takes away a lot of ideas, without taking away the intended context for those ideas.  This is how ignorance is cultivated, and ignorance is dangerous as all hell.  So I don't think it's doing people any favors to bring something complex down to their simple level.  

I think that trying to give people giraffe for free is gonna tend to more often than not end in failure.  I think it would be better to attempt to teach people to giraffe, to teach them to be able to read the Bible themselves.  I'm not saying that translating the Bible into a more contemporary language would be automatically wrong - there might be some call for that, but it still needs to be a version of *sophisticated* contemporary language, not something that strips out all multisyllabic words and strips each sentence structure down to the comprehension level of a well trained parrot.

There was this one girl I worked with, and we would talk politics sometimes because her ignorance just fascinated me.  So I e-mailed her an article once that basically tore Sarah Palin apart, but the article was from Vanity Fair or something, so the writing was too much for her, and she actually interpreted it as endorsing Palin.  

I mean, we're talking... there's just so many people out there who have trouble with square peg in square hole kinda concepts.  When you try to layer a Biblical or Christian or any kind of education on top of that kind of foundation, who knows what you'll get, who knows what kind of dangerous idiocy it will morph into.

On a different subject:

And you're mean to us.  See how that works?

No...  I'm just misunderstood.  There's not a mean bone in my body.  And I'm still waiting for you to approve my facebook friend request.

out of time

[Mr Trout]

I also prefer the majesty off the good ol' KJV: It is what I grew up reading. Even if the religion doesn't speak to me the same way it did back in the day that translation brings back fond memories of my Dad reading stories to us kids on Christmas and other holidays.





I hope I didn't offend anyone with my crude joke above. I meant no disrespect.