Better Bibles than those of Jesus or other Jews

The boys at Better Bibles Blog have said a number of consistent things about what makes and what does not make for better bibles.  Quite generally, they ignore what I call the feminist rhetorical translating that goes on with, around, and in much of the Jewish texts.  The bible of Jesus, and by Jesus too, for example, they don't always agree with.  Ironic stuff, huh?  My contention is that they are (unwittingly) influenced by Aristotle and by Aristotle's logic, his view of and practice with language (as "linguistics" if you will).  I'll have to come back to this in another post or more.  For now, I just want to recall some of the things that my blogger friends have said exactly:

"[W]e should not follow the practices of the authors of the N.T. or translators of the LXX when they translated." -- Wayne Leman

"I accept that in the original Hebrew there was very likely a deliberate word play....  My scepticism is about whether the LXX translators or the thinker Paul, pre-modern people ... would have recognised this word play and ... translated ... in order to preserve the word play." -- Peter Kirk

"He [God] just has to see that the writer He is inspiring gets point of the communication accurate. This is what gets us out of having stand on our heads theologically to deal with 'misquotes' from the LXX or questions about whether Jesus’ parables were true stories....  if you understand how humans actually communicate [as I do understand.... ]" -- Richard Rhodes

"Jesus was speaking to be understood and so we should expect a Bible translation of this passage to be understandable. If he used idioms of his era, they were used to bring impact to his message not mystery." -- David Ker

" I personally am not convinced by the argument that the Old Testament was Jesus’ Bible so it should be ours as well." -- David Ker

"the original is an idiom and so is the translation [e.g., 'Let this be a word to the wise']. Is the meaning accurate? If not, in what ways is it not accurate? In what ways is 'he who has ears to hear, let him hear' not accurate?" -- Mike Sangrey

"Thanks Mike, I think you’re on the right track, because I think you’re striving for a better Bible, which unfortunately I can’t say for some of the other commenters....  presumably all of Jesus’s listeners both had ears and were hearing him loud and clear… I wonder if it was almost a veiled insult. But [this] does not mean that the original words must stay, unless someone has evidence that in the Greek they too were odd and awkward!" -- Dannii Willis

"I wonder if the original phrase had the same authoritative sound. It’s very, very hard to determine that (which argues for as well as against!). You say that Jesus goes on to urge his hearers. That also works for your point as well as against it. If the idiom is quite confrontational to begin with, then why the extra effort to make the point even more authoritative?" -- Mike Sangrey

Good Friday and Pesach: the Right Personality and the Right Cup

On Good Friday and during Pesach, here's from Anne Lamott and from Amy Stone:

[Good Friday 2005]

     I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.
      In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives.
      What is there to do in such difficult, violent times?  I try to follow my own advice to take short assignments, and do shitty first drafts of my work, and most of all, to take things day by day.  Today I am going to pray that our soldiers come home soon.  I am going to pray for the children of American and Iraqi soldiers, for the innocent Iraqi people, for the POWs, for humanitarian aid, and for our leaders.  I am going to pray for the children and youth in Oakland and East Palo Alto and Palestine and Israel.  I am going to pray to forgive one person today -- to give up a soupçon of hostility....  

--Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (pages 140-41).

.......

(April 8, 2009)

I am fuming. [yes, Moi.]  I was just in West Side Judaica (Manhattan’s Upper West Side) where a little boy was saying to his grandparents, “We need a Miriam’s Cup.”

Grandfather (60-something, could pass for a liberal-congenial-spirit): “No, we don’t.”

Moi (seething): “Yes you do.”

Grandfather: “What did Miriam do?”

Moi: “She provided the well of fresh water that kept the Jews alive in the desert.” (I was so enraged, I didn’t even mention Miriam led the women a song of rejoicing after the crossing of the Red Sea.)

Grandfather: “That was after Passover.”

Moi: So angered [was I that], it didn’t even occur to me to say So was Elijah.

But final shot: Grandmother taking Kos Miriam selected by the little boy to the cash register, where the Orthodox male will ring up the sale.

Hag sameach.

–Amy Stone, "Pesach dead hand of the past"

This Riddle Fooled Aristotle Twice

ἄνδρ’ εἶδον πυρὶ  

χαλκὸν ἐπ’ ἀνέρι 
κολλήσαντα

See his Poetics (1458a) and his Rhetoric (1405b). 

Go figure; it's April 1.