The English Bible

My post below caused me to start thinking about the history of our English Bible. The four essays below are written by Dan Wallace, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. A few years ago he spoke at my church--Jackson Bible Church--on this very topic. The history is fascinating and the end result has no doubt had a profound effect on everyone that professes Christianity.

Part I: From Wycliffe to King James (The Period of Challenge)

Part II: The Reign of the King James (The Era of Elegance)

Part III: From the KJV to the RV (from Elegance to Accuracy)

Part IV: Why So Many Versions?

Actually, the entire site that these essays come from is worth a look. It has to be one of the absolute best resources on the internet for helpful information in Biblical studies.

Rewriting...

This guy has just released a new translation of Books of Moses--the first five books of the Bible. I'm not sure what to think, but just not knowing where this guy is coming from theologically/spiritually makes me a skeptical until I know more about him. According to CNN,

A professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Alter says since he has never found a biblical translation that he liked or could recommend to his comparative literature students, he decided to do his own, starting with the story of Genesis and ending with the death of Moses.

His argument is that past translations either get the Hebrew wrong or mangle the Bible's syntax or lose the power of the work or even are so up-to-the-minute that they become too conversational to be accurate or interesting.

He was also determined to get back into the book every single "and" that other translators left out, saying that part of book's majesty is built by its use of repetitions.

The 1611 King James version, perhaps the most famous book ever written by a committee, may reach poetic heights, but Alter says it is fraught with "embarrassing inaccuracies" and often substitutes Greek or Latin words and Renaissance English tonalities and rhythms for biblical ones.

Here's an example of how this translation differs:

"Reading through this book is a wearying, disorientating and at times revelatory experience," said noted author John Updike in a review of Alter's 1,063-page translation of "The Five Books of Moses" (Norton) for the New Yorker magazine in which he complained about page after page of footnotes that often explain obscure points.

Updike also took exception to some of the translation. For example, he is a lot happier with the King James version in which "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water" than with Alter's version of the same sentence: "God's breath hovering over the waters."

But Alter, in an interview with Reuters, said he used the phrase "God's breath" rather than the "spirit of God" for a simple reason: "The Hebrew word means life's breath, a constant moving of oxygen in and out. The body-soul split of early Christianity is something not imagined in the early Hebrew."

Shhhhhhh!

Peggy Noonan is right as always. Basically, the point of her article is that the country needs to step back and chill out.

Baby blues

This column in The Wall Street Journal hits the nail on the head about why Democrats keep losing. Here's the ending:

There's a debate raging now whether the election really did turn on "values"--as if the word only applied to abortion and gay marriage. If that is the extent of the debate for Democrats, it will prove to be a dead-end street. The short answer is, of course the election turned on values. But the hard answer is that it's hard to think of an election that didn't. Fighting the war on terror, bringing democracy to the Middle East, protecting Social Security, ending an era in education dominated by the soft bigotry of low expectations--it's hard to find a contentious political issue that is devoid of fundamental moral judgments. And on each one of these issues, it is the Republican Party that has been offering fresh ideas, a chance for a new beginning. Democrats need to get a reform agenda and start thinking about ways to be born again.

Why I love the New York Post

I only wish I had thought of that biting pun.

But much more seriously, this is a must read from the National Review Online: The Father of Modern Terrorism.

Amazing that France gave him yesterday a send off reserved only for head's of state--even though he's a terrorist leader of a group of mostly blood thirsty thugs that don't even have a state.

A dead man

One of the most abhorent men on the face of the earth has died. The fact that Yasar Arafat actively supported and promoted vile terrorism against Israel can't be disputed by any rational mind. He left the Palestinian people in a state of poverty, desperation and chaos. Israel isn't responsible for this. He funneled over $900 million in aid and relief money into his own bank account. He walked away in 2000 at Camp David from unprecedented concessions by the Israelis and as a result, instead of having their own viable state, Palestinians have spent the past 4 years attacking the same Israel that offered them a state. Only Arafat is to blame. The fact that Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Europe actually will eulogize this despotic mass murderer is a shame and blemish on humanity. It's the ultimate proof that they don't understand the evil of terrorism and the fact that fundamental Islamics will never be satisfied until every Jew in Israel is dead. Negotiations, treaties, and even, yes, Nobel Prizes will never abate the Palestinian desire to see the total destruction of Israel. The only thing that can put an end to their thirst for blood is death itself. And death has at long last come to this terrorist.

This site has a list of Arafat's atrocious accomplishments as a terrorist leader.

And this site lists only the most recent innocent victoms of Arafat's terror.

The Blues

This article provides some chilling analysis of the election if you're a Democrat. Bottom line is that across the board--not just in red states--Democrats lost considerable ground from the 2000 campaign. The article is worth reading in its entirety, as is most of the writings published by the Weekly Standard.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this change, however, is not to focus on Bush’s share of the vote, but instead to compare the percentage of the vote received by the Left Coalition of Gore-Nader in 2000 and Kerry-Nader in 2004. It is revealing to focus on this coalition, because it represents the real opposition to the Republican party. By this measure, if the electorate was as unchanged as many have suggested, the Kerry-Nader percentage of the vote in each state in 2004 should have equaled the Gore-Nader percentage in 2000.

But this was decidedly not the case. Although John Kerry received a larger share of the vote than Al Gore in 25 states, this masks the general decrease of the Left Coalition, which was often substantial. In only three states–most noticeably in Howard Dean’s Vermont, but slightly in South Dakota and Wyoming, where the Left is at its weakest–did the score of the Left Coalition clearly increase between 2000 and 2004. Take, as one of the most conspicuous examples, John Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts. Kerry slightly outpolled Al Gore. But this point is hardly as relevant since in 2000 Gore and Nader combined to receive 66 percent of the vote. Without Nader on the ballot in Massachusetts, Kerry was still only able to poll 62 percent–a notable decline, even with the added pull of a favorite son on the ballot. In New York, 64 percent of voters chose the Left coalition in 2000, while only 60 percent did so in 2004. There were instances of larger losses in other Blue states: Hawaii 8 points, Rhode Island 7 points, and in Connecticut and New Jersey 6 points each. Changes of this magnitude belie the notion of “stability” that [Harold] Meyerson and others have advanced.

THE DECLINE of the Left Coalition was not restricted to the Blue states. In 17 of the 31 Red states this year, it lost anywhere between 2 and 6 percentage points. Alabama, Nebraska, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arizona, comprising 47 electoral votes, witnessed at least a 4 percent decline in Leftist support. Because Nader’s share in these states was generally small in both elections, these losses came almost entirely at the Democrats’ expense.

Rebels with(out) a cause

I posted a few days ago that the Democratic party was in a state of implosion. It has been a week now since the election and it appears that the left is in a state far worse than I thought they would be. Some Democrats are actually saying that the blue states should secede from the Union. This is silly and stupid. The hysteria is out of control and the insult to those of us who aren't of a blueish persuasion is outrageous. Tony Blankley, who normally is subdued in his analysis, offers some striking comments in his most recent writing that is well worth the time to read in full. Here's a highlight:

It's not that the Democrats lost an election, obviously both parties have lost numerous elections. But never before in my memory — which goes back faintly to 1956 — has either party in its loss reacted with such venomous contempt for the American people.
     When we conservatives got shellacked in 1964 — with Barry Goldwater losing 61percent to 39 percent to Lyndon Johnson — we knew we had a lot of work ahead if we were going to educate the public to our views. But I can honestly say that, although I remember thinking that the public was misguided in its judgment, I never hated or felt contemptuous of the majority electorate — of my fellow countrymen.
     This dominant sentiment of the Democratic Party elite — that scores of millions of Americans are categorically unacceptable as fellow countrymen — is evidence of a cancer in the soul of that party. These Democrats, quite expressly, are asserting that "Christers," people who believe in the teachings of Jesus as described in the inerrant words of the Bible, are un-American, almost sub-human. Some of these Democrats would rather secede than stay in the same country with such people. If they were in the majority with no need to secede, what would they do? Their bigoted and absolutist view of religious people is at least a second cousin to the Nazi view of the Jews.

Today's stuff

Christopher Hithens is always an interesting read. His most recent column had a few points I hadn't considered before. I don't at all appreciate his atheism (which is a bit ironic considering his namesake) but he is a fairly fair critic given where he's coming from.


More good news on the economic front...


Poor Arlen Spector. He's the only pro-choice Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the press seems determined to milk that for all its worth. He defends himself in the Wall Street Journal today and does a good job of putting to rest whatever concerns I might have had. If he voted for Rhenquist, Scalia and Thomas, it would stand to reason that he doesn't have a rampant pro-choice agenda for nominees that is so characteristic of most Democrats. Bush put his political clout on the line for Spector in this past election; without Bush's staunch support, he likely wouldn't have been reelected. I doubt Spector will repay that with a Senatorial brick wall.

Presidential History

I stumbled across this site last night. This was made for US history buffs. It has detailed breakdowns and maps of every US Presidential election. It's amazing to watch the trends across the country from one election to the next--states going from red to blue to red again. For example, I learned a bit about the 1988 election (I was six at the time). California, New Jersey, and Connecticut all went for Bush. In today's political climate I can't imagine a Bush taking those states. And here's an interesting factoid: in 1912, Woodrow Wilson defeated two Presidents--Taft and Roosevelt--to win the White House.

Maps

Of all the maps I've seen of the election, this one is one of the best.

Also, The New York Times has a nice interactive feature that allows you to zoom in on a number maps that break the election down county by county in numerous ways.

Fallout...

Read the news and commentaries coming from the left. The Democratic party is in a state of total hysteria, implosion, and disarray. I hope to post some analysis and links to appropriate articles when I have a bit more time and am not in class...

The bottom line, though, is that Bush was vindicated bigtime--especially seen in the GOP's pick-ups in Congress. And the Democrats have a long way to go to define themselves over the next four years in such a way that Red America can reasonably consider them.