Finals Week
Nothing much going on--no grading yet to do (though I proctor my first final in 1/2 an hour, so that'll change anon--"anon"? God I'm pretentious--soon, OK?)--yet I'm running hither and yon--oh God, I'm doing it again--listening to the unabridged Don Quixote in the car during my daily commute--filling prescriptions at the pharmacy--seeing my pill-shrink to discuss the notion of eliminating one of my drugs, just because I'm tired of the side-effects--and maybe reducing one of the others--and there's e-mail and blogging and World of Warcraft--whoops, did I just cop to that--nevermind, no--um, porn--lots and lots of porn--phew, dodged that bullet--anyway--scrambling is the order of the day--imagine what it would be like if I were busy!
One thought did occur to me: if you're a hard-core Fundamentalist Christian, and believe that the Bible is the unfiltered Word of God, shouldn't you be required to know both Hebrew and Classical Greek so you can read the version untouched by human hands...? Of course, most fundamentalists don't even speak *one* language ('tongues' doesn't count), so I guess asking them to master two particularly tricky ones might be too much to ask. Nevermind, go picket another family planning clinic...
One thought did occur to me: if you're a hard-core Fundamentalist Christian, and believe that the Bible is the unfiltered Word of God, shouldn't you be required to know both Hebrew and Classical Greek so you can read the version untouched by human hands...? Of course, most fundamentalists don't even speak *one* language ('tongues' doesn't count), so I guess asking them to master two particularly tricky ones might be too much to ask. Nevermind, go picket another family planning clinic...
posted by Yr. Hmbl. & Obdt. | 10:03 AM
3 Comments:
I keep trying to think of something to say here, and ... nothing. But Don Quixote is very cool. World of Warcraft is, um, less cool. But at least you're balanced! Good work. Really.
It's not pretentious, Dryden... it's just English.
[Aside]: Not too long ago I had an invited commentary published in a youngish journal. I had written: Without data to sustain a single measure for both ..., it were best to consider them two independent features of the same event, which was edited to read Without data to sustain... it was better... GAH! No... it wasn't!
Okay, the subjunctive is not quite hither and yon... anon... but go ahead speak in tongues. Εν αρχη ην ό λογο... and all that.
Hi, I'm new to blogs, but I thought I'd comment quickly - I totally agree with your last bit. I think the problem with most fundamentalists (or at least one glaring linguistic one - there are so many) is that they for some reason "forget" about the fact that even the Aramaic and Hebrew texts were touched by human hands. God doesn't play dice with the universe and he certainly doesn't give dictation! And most of them think that the pure "word of God" Bible is the KJV.
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