Opus 2011-105, Koran Klarifications: Spelling Problems

What is the Koran?  It is the document that records the words that Mohammed claimed to receive from the mouth of the Angel Gabriel. 

"And we have parcelled out the Koran into sections, that thou mightest recite it unto men by slow degrees, and we have sent it down piecemeal."  Surah 17, “The Children of Israel,” verse 106

This makes it the most sacred book of the religion of Islam.  It would be the Bible of Islam or, from their point of view, the Bible is the Koran of Christianity.

If you spend any time reading you will notice that there are spelling problems.  I will use the spelling “Koran” because that is what I am used to.  You will also see “Quran” and “Qur’an” and possibly other versions.  You will see the same types of varieties with the spelling of the name Mohammed.  In my last software the computer gave me five accepted spellings of the name.  My current program gives me six. 

The basic problem is deciding how to represent the Arabic script in Roman letters.  You see the same problem in Chinese.  These languages have their own script that is based on a different system than Western Europe.  Over the ages different people have developed different ways to represent the sounds they hear.  Add to that different regional twangs.  As an example, how would you phonetically spell the word “oil” if you heard it pronounced by J. Vernon McGee?  I would go for “awl.”  That is different from the way Dan Rather would say it.  So get used to it.

Another issue is arrogance.  I am using a textbook that spells Mecca as Mekkah and Medina as Medinah.  These types of things come from “scholars” needing to impress people with their knowledge.  You always need to factor arrogance in.  The pronunciation of “Muslim” can also be a problem of arrogance.  I have people telling me how to say it.  They claim there is only one way.  When I ask Muslims they tend to shrug and say it doesn’t matter.

All Koran quotes are from the translation by Rev. J.M. Rodwell, M.A. provided by the Gutenberg Project.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-104, On the NRSV

Earlier this year I came across a post that talked about the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) as being openly “gender neutral.”  I engaged in a short discussion in the comment section and later wrote my own post on the subject.  I then realized I had a copy of the NRSV on my Bible shelf.  I decided to read it in one of my Perpetual Proverbs  cycles.  In the first chapter I begin to see the effects of the philosophy of being gender neutral.  The Hebrew word for “son” is replaced by the English word “child”.  This is an indication of what will continue through the entire book of Proverbs.

Sometime you should read through the introductory material on different translations.  This gives you a feel for the principles of translation.  I found what I wanted about this “gender neutral” idea in a section called “To the Reader.” 

“During the almost half a century since the publication of the RSV, many in the churches have become sensitive to the danger of linguistic sexism arising from the inherent bias of the English language towards the masculine gender, a bias that in the case of the Bible has often restricted or obscured the meaning of the original text.” p. xii

“Linguistic sexism?”  Is this an objective measure or a term to come out of a politically correct university office?  I don’t think it is a Biblical term.  I don’t think it was around a hundred years ago.  I will accept that using the masculine “he” in a generic way is a gender bias, but to act like this is some kind of modern weakness in the English language is an intellectual stigmatism.  If the same bias did not exist in the original Hebrew then it would not contain the word “ben” which clearly means “son”.  You learn that this translation's principles are coming from the sociology department not the theology department.

It is interesting to note that this is a change made in the “New” RSV that was not present in the RSV.  It then continues,

“The mandates from the Division specified that, in references to men and women, masculine-oriented language should be eliminated as far as this can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.” p. xii

So when we are talking about modern times it is a “inherent bias of the English language” but to protect themselves from people who think this is the word of God they will honor the “historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.”  Isn’t that an inherent bias of the ancient patriarchal culture?  Are they trying to say that the male dominance did not exist?

The slippery slope is hinted at in the final sentence in this paragraph.

“Of course, in narrative and in parable no attempt was made to generalize the sex of individual persons.” p. xii

Of course.  Not yet.  One of the principles of indoctrination is to make slow incremental changes.  How many “new” translations will it be before that happens?

One of the philosophies in the comments is that modern culture is more sensitive to the nuances of gender thus they do away with the masculine.  If that is the case then why does the KJV translate "ben" as “children” over a hundred times?

If you are going to write a survey of historical gender roles, go for it.  But don’t call it a Bible and don’t call it a translation.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1994.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-103, Koran Klarifications: Opening Understandings, Part 2

I said that the translation was endorsed “as much as possible.”  Muslims make a point of saying that the Koran can only be understood accurately when read in the original Arabic.  This means that no translation can truly be endorsed as accurate.  On one level this is a legitimate point.  This is true of any translation.  You always lose something.  For instance, in German there are two words for the English “to know.”  One is for knowing people, one is for knowing information.  This does not mean that you can only read Goethe in German but it helps to keep it in mind.

On another level this is a smoke screen.

First, it gives the impression that there is a unity in Islam that does not exist in Christianity.  This is not true.  Most people have heard of the two main divisions in Islam.  They are constantly brought up to explain the tension in Iraq.  You have the Sunni and the Shiite or Shia.  They are both Muslim in the same way that Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists are both Christian.  In addition to that you may have heard of the Sufi and Wahhabi groups.  They kill each other as readily as the English of Cromwell’s day killed the Irish.  Islam is not united.  It started to divide when Mohammed died and they argued about who would be his successor.

There is no unity in the Koran either.  This is well disguised, but there are different versions of the Koran.  The same issues exist that have created problems in translating the Bible.  These problems exist for any ancient texts.  Accept it.  Work with it.

Second, Muslims don’t understand the Arabic of the Koran either.  That may sound strange since so many of them speak Arabic as their first language.  I asked a student about this once.  He was Muslim and missed Friday mornings because he was at the mosque.  He was doing a report on Mohammed.  I asked him if he spoke Arabic.  He said he did.  I asked if he could read the Koran.  He said he could.  I asked if he understood what it said.  He said he didn’t.  This confused me, obviously.  He said the Arabic was very old and that the language had changed.  This conversation has been backed up by books I have read.

A light went on for me.  There are times when I have trouble understanding the King James Version and Shakespeare.  They are only 400 years old.  Imagine trying to understand something 1,300 years old.  It would be futile.  When I was in High School a teacher played a recording of a group of actors reading Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as it would have been read when it was written.  It was impossible to understand even though it was in English.

The point is, Muslims can read the words.  They learn how to pronounce the letters.  They can develop a cadence that sounds poetic.  The problem is, they don’t understand what it says.  This answered a question that had developed in my mind as I was teaching about Medieval West Africa.  In the same chapter it talked about how Islam had spread in the area and that the area had no written history.  Everything was oral tradition.  Since part of conversion to Islam is learning to read the Koran I could not understand how you could be literate and have no written history.  My current understanding of what it means to “read” the Koran explains this.  They learned to pronounce the words but they never learned to understand them and use them.  It fits the facts.  Another mystery solved.

It is at a level of Medieval Catholics understanding the Latin Vulgate.  They may have memorized it and even known what some of the words mean.  Since they could not read it for themselves they were forced to accept what the priest told them about it.  Muslims are in that situation.  They often only know what they have been told.

Third, you don’t need to understand every nuance to get the idea.  While there is always something lost in a translation you can still communicate.  You don’t need to know Greek and Hebrew to understand the Bible.  It does not make sense that you must know Arabic to understand the Koran. 

Forth, you can explain issues in footnotes. 

I would make the same recommendations about studying the Koran that I make about studying the Bible.  First, I would recommend that everyone get a copy of the Koran and read it.  Read the whole document.  When looking at a specific quote, read the context.  Don’t be satisfied with proof texting.  At times it is necessary, but you can always go beyond it as time allows.  Check different translations.  Be open to correction, it is a learning process.  Understand that people lie even while claiming the truth.  Don’t be afraid of it, truth will out.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-102, Koran Klarifications: Opening Understandings, Part 1

I am going to begin a series of posts on what the Koran has to say.  This interest began several years ago when a principal who hated the fact that I was a patriotic American and a Bible believer made a point of changing my assignment from eighth grade U.S. History to seventh grade World History.  She was what I would then call a “liberal,” a term that has been replaced by “progressive.”  She was also an open lesbian.  She was so open that she announced her “marriage” to another faculty member at a faculty meeting.  With me she was doing “damage control.”  She replaced me with an avowed socialist whose parents were born in the middle east, a non-religious Arab,  who hates America as it is.  He thinks that Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States is the ultimate resource.  He truly dislikes our system and is fluent in Arabic so he teaches U.S. History and the Constitution.  I love the Constitution and had never read the Koran so I was to teach the period covering the birth and development of Islam.  This is public education at work.

So I bought a copy of the Koran and read it that summer.  Other people’s opinions are nice but the primary sources are much better.  I also downloaded the translation available from the Gutenberg Project .  As I read I compared the two translations.  The one I bought was translated by a Muslim and endorsed by that religion (as much as possible, more on that later).  (The Glorious Qur’an Translation, translated by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, Elmhurst, New York:  Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc., 2003.)  The download was the classical public domain translation that was translated in 1861by an Oxford professor, J.M. Rodwell, who I assume was at least a cultural Christian.  I felt that comparing the two would give me a fair chance at understanding what the Arabic actually said.  I am not an expert on the Koran.  I can, however, read and understand the meaning of what I read.  I will try not to read things in that are not there.  You be the judge.  If you are a Muslim I am open to correction if my facts are wrong but don’t forget that I can also judge what it says.  I am used to dealing with “Christians” telling me what the Bible says and means when anyone who knows which side of the page goes up can see that they are wrong. 

Many of the points of doctrine taught in Islam are not from the Koran but the Hadith.  The Hadith is a second book that contains the words of Mohammed as opposed to the Koran which is the word of God delivered to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel.  My understanding is that the Hadith is an extensive body of literature like the Hebrew Talmud, much longer that the basic scripture.  My impression is that the Hadith is so long and has so many contributors that it is one of those documents in which anything can be found if you look long enough.  The Hadith is not something that can be read through in spare time during a summer which means I am not familiar with the Hadith, so my comments will focus only on the Koran.

I know how many books there are that are commentaries on the Bible.  I imagine there is a similar collection about the Koran.  My comments are simply the comments of a reader who sees a lot of distortion by people who have never read either book.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-101, Vocabulary Lessons

There was a time in our past when the vocabulary of the Bible was understood by society and its definitions accepted.  All you had to do was read common literature or political documents.  That time is past.  We live in a day when the world is co-opting the meaning of words and giving them designer definitions.  This has come about in several ways.

First, they steal our words and redefine them.  Charity and love used to be somewhat synonymous.  Check out the KJV on I Corinthians 13, the Love chapter.  The translators used “charity” all the way through to represent the Greek agape.  You demonstrated agape by giving of yourself to others.  The word has totally lost its meaning in contemporary culture.  That is bad enough but it has also lost its meaning in the contemporary church.  It has come to mean squishy emotional responses and lots of feeling.  Our entertainment industry has further polluted it by making “love” a synonym for “lust” or “sex.” 

A similar transformation has come in the concept of compassion.  It has become a matter of helping people because it makes us feel better or because it gives us power over others.  We are warned of this in the book of Proverbs.

(Proverbs 12:10 NASB)  A righteous man has regard for the life of his animal, But even the compassion of the wicked is cruel.

It is hard for us to understand how compassion can be cruel, but it can.  As a teacher I have students who are always complaining because I try to make them read and think.  I believe they have the ability to do the work.  All it takes is effort, a little bit of belief in yourself, and a teacher who doesn’t just want to feel good because they did something for someone.  By pointing out the answer on a page the teacher makes the student weaker and makes success in life harder.  A long line of teachers acting this way will destroy a student’s future.  That is cruel even if it feels good at the moment.

Second, they take old words and give them new meaning.  Remember when “gay” was a good word?  You don’t?  Remember the Christmas carol which goes “don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la la la la la.”  I don’t think that was talking about getting ready to go out in drag.  When kids ask me if I am gay to try and irritate me, I ask them, “What’s wrong with being happy, light hearted and care free?”  That is what the word means, not homosexual.  If you think about it, even the word “fag” has been corrupted.  When I was in high school we used to have a “faggot service” at campfire in summer camp.  This was not a time when people came out of the closet.  We would take a small piece of wood, a faggot, and throw it in the fire as we shared a thought.  We also used to talk about being “fagged out” when we were tired.

Third they remove the sacred quality of words with humor.  I remember driving along a freeway and seeing a picture of Green Stamps painted on an overpass with the phrase “Jesus saves.”  We have all watched monologues on late night TV.  For while there was a steady diet of jokes about born again cars. 

The attacks go on.  That is to be expected.  I don’t think the devil or his minions take vacations.  The sad part is that the church has surrendered to this attack and is losing the battle for minds because we do not have an honest vocabulary.  We need to stop being afraid to use big words.  We need to challenge believers to move beyond the milk and on to the meat.  We need to challenge people when they blaspheme against what we believe.  Use humor.  Be tactful if possible.  But speak up.  Use your words to defeat theirs.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-100, Logical or Scientific, part 3

Part 1
Part 2

After a long period of trying to evaluate social phenomenon with a scientific approach, which produced Sociology, and Political Science, we are now trying to evaluate physical phenomenon with social measures, which will produce superstition and weakness.

We have developed ways of doing things that can at best be described as bells and whistles or smoke and mirrors.  Popular wisdom, ne foolishness, says it is the way to do things and no one seems to be able to stop the nonsense. 

One example is what is called cooperative learning.  It has many variations but is some kind of group work that assumes that the students are loaded with wisdom and a desire to learn.  They share what they know and write the result.  We also do this in faculty meetings.  What happens with the adults is exactly what happens with the kids.  One, maybe two, people will be real earnest and desiring to please.  One will do the writing, the other will present or “share out.”  The rest of the small group will sit around an talk about whatever they feel like.  The work of the two little worker ants will but put on a large sheet of paper and later posted on the wall.  The leaders will feel like we have made a real contribution of the progress of education.  The rest of us count the years until we can retire.  This is one reason why education is going down hill.

We also emphasis appearance over substance.  One time a math teacher was sharing some student work.  The class was working on graphing.  He brought some really colorful charts and graphs.  Everyone was very impressed and full of praise until I asked a simple question, “What are these graphs showing?”  Simple question.  You would think it would have a simple answer.  He stammered awhile and finally admitted they did not show anything.  In other words they were just pretty art projects that had nothing to do with any equations or data.  Most people still did not understand how meaningless they were, after all, they were pretty.  I was the one condemned for being critical.

I wish people could remember that correlation is not causation.  Just because you do a “study” and find data the goes up at the same time does not mean that one caused the other.  My favorite illustration is one I read somewhere, years ago.  It proved that tomatoes kill people.  The researcher showed that everyone who had eaten tomatoes two hundred years ago was now dead.  This is 100% correlation.  According to social science we have a match.  Anyone who can count their change will see that this is foolishness.  It does not stop modern thinkers.

Think of what we saw in the 2008 presidential campaign.  In a taped interview Barak Obama admitted that raising capital gains taxes would lower the amount of money collected.  A scientist or a Christian believing in absolute truth would say that the obvious thing to do is not raise the tax.  Soon-to-be President Obama said the tax should be raised anyway, because it was “fair.”  In what way is it fair?  If less money comes in then the “rich” are paying less in taxes.  It is not even robbing the rich.  If less money comes in there is less to give to the poor.  Robin Hood would have been a failure with this philosophy.  But this is the logic of our modern age.

Keep your eyes open.  Keep your mind engaged.  Don’t ever accept that an expert knows anything or that a study proves anything.  They may, they may not.  Don’t be fooled.

homo unius libri

Opus 2011-99, Senile Taste Buds

I have crossed a depressing threshold.  I am now drinking my coffee black.  That is not the depressing part.  What troubles me is that I am enjoying it.

A little background.  I used to teach science.  Since I found it boring I managed to switch to history.  One of the units was on the human body and I learned that as we get older our taste buds begin to die.  This explains why my parents were able to eat liver without feelings of nausea.  The last to go are the ones that taste sweet.  This explains why old people like candy.

Like many people I started drinking coffee to stay awake to study all night in college.  I loaded it with cream and sugar.  Not bad.  Then I came to the place where I was concerned about too much sugar and I went to coffee with cream.  I tried it black a few times but could not handle it. 

Recently I began to get serious about having diabetes.  One of the things necessary is losing weight.  I decided to cut out the cream in my coffee.  On a typical day that would save me at least 160 calories.  What scared me was that after the initial shock, I found the taste acceptable.  That means my taste buds are dying.  That means I am getting old.

I hope my brain cells are more resilient.

RIP taste buds.

homo unius libri