Bible Squee for poisonedgrace

[falcongrrl]

The first difficulty I run into when writing about the Bible is the obvious first question: Whose Bible? Followed shortly by the next question: Which edition? The third: Which translation?

So, for our purposes, I’m going to go back to my Baptist-upbringing days and assume that ‘Bible’ means the Christian Protestant Bible. Later on, I’ll discuss specific translations, primarily the ‘KJV’ or King James Version.

Let’s start with the Torah, or first five books of what Christians refer to as the Old Testament. Much of what I learned about it (and have since forgotten) came from Richard Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible , a terrifically readable book that you can examine more closely here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060630353/103-8469791-0835069.

According to this book, the first five books of the Bible are an amazing compilation of work done by four different writers plus a ‘redactor’ who smoothed things over and produced the version we have now. It’s an amazing process - how we discovered this knowledge (or created this theory, depending on your pov) and how the initial strands of writing were woven together into the fairly coherent unit that we have now. Apparent contradictions are explained if not resolved by this type of scholarship. When I read Friedman’s book several years ago, I found it fascinating.

The Old Testament is the world’s bawdiest collection of stories (an opinion I formed from reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345418824/103-8469791-0835069) . There’s enough sex for the most prurient among us (really! I count myself among that group, so I should know). There’s enough violence for...dunno...those of you who are more into that sort of thing than I am. No guns, admittedly, but plenty of blood and guts and more than an adequate amount of slaughter. There’s love and romance. There’s hatred. There’s devotion. It’s a romance, action, drama, and adventure story all in one. Something for everyone. I can’t begin to list all of the subplots here (you’d hate me), but some story-filled books are Esther, Ruth, Joshua, Daniel, and Jonah. Of course, that’s not including the Jacob or David or Moses sagas, all of which span several books and some pretty substantial time periods.

And if you don’t like prose, well, there’s the religious poetry of the Psalms or the sexual metaphor of Song of Solomon.

If you don’t like poetry, there are the terse Proverbs or the sometimes ironic, often illuminating, musings of Ecclesiasties. There’s the quiet despair of Job or Lamentations. There are prophecies as nebulous or as clear as you want them to be. Interpretations are perhaps limited upon your creativity alone. ;-)

Moving onto the ‘New Testament.' This is a saga for you LOTR fans. There are obvious good guys and bad guys. The hero of the story, a simple carpentry student from Galilee, is actually a mage and healer who goes through all sorts of punishing trials and learning experiences before triumphing in the end. Like Gandalf, he descends into hell and returns wearing robes of white. Unlike Gandalf, he ascends into the sky at the end of the story, but not before admonishing his followers to continue to spread the glorious tale throughout time and space. (Admittedly, they did a kick-ass job.)

But what about the language, you say? Most people regard the KJV as worse than Shakespeare, and even I have to admit being somewhat partial to the New International Version currently.

But the KJV is truly miraculous when you consider the breathtaking poetry the author (it wasn’t King James, btw) manages to render in a mere 12,867 vocabulary words when there are 790,126 words in the entire work. In contrast, Melville uses 17,227 different vocabulary words in Moby Dick, which is a mere 211,763 words long.

(As I’m a language geek, I’ll let someone else do the math here. ;-) )

The point being that the KJV has a streamlined beauty that is unparalled in much of literature, and it’s amazing that it can retain so much of the spirit of the original Greek [edit: though the 'OT' was originally in Hebrew, I believe that the KJV was translated from a fully Greek text], when compared to other English translations, when it has limited itself so much in terms of word choice. Also, despite the fact that I prefer the NIV, I have to admit that I am biased by the poetry, the rhythm and beauty of the KJV. And I’m glad that much of the Bible verses that I have committed to memory (Thank you, Mrs. Norman, my Sunday School teacher from 3rd through 6th grade) are all resting firmly in my mind in the King James Version. (Though for accuracy and notation I still prefer either the NIV or the RSV, let me be clear on that.)

I am not a Christian, something that is probably clear from this post. Yet I remain fascinated by the Bible. It’s one of the best-written, most alternately maligned and worshiped, most creatively interpreted works in existence today. It’s also inspired countless other authors and had an amazing and unparalleled influence upon the Western world.

*squee!*

Comments

[poisonedgrace.livejournal.com]

"I am not a Christian, something that is probably clear from this post. Yet I remain fascinated by the Bible. It’s one of the best-written, most alternately maligned and worshiped, most creatively interpreted works in existence today. It’s also inspired countless other authors and had an amazing and unparalleled influence upon the Western world."



what a perfect summary!
yay!