Getting new glasses is sweet. Getting new prescriptions sucks. Seeing things in a whole new perspective, priceless. For some odd reason, my eyeballs decide to change shape over the course of every new decade, which causes my sight to become blurred and changes my whole perspective of the world–literally. Of course, the change takes place slowly over a long period of time so that my mind gets used to seeing things according to whatever shape my eyes are in. When the new lenses come in, it is a bitter sweetness. Everything jumps out into amazing 3-D clarity. I marvel at the sight of individual leaves on trees, the faces of strangers in the dark, distant road signs that are entirely readable… And yet, I know there is going to be a good headache for the next day or two and everything is going to look somehow skewed for the next week as my mind copes with and tries to get used to the sudden changes…like height (somehow I and everything else around me managed to shrink about a half a foot). Fortunately, even though things look smaller or further or closer or whatever than they did before…I am not bumping into things. Somehow my mind knows that the space is no different even though my eyes tell me otherwise. Creation is incredible. Praise be to YHWH.
The hardest thing to do was trying to forget the meanings and interpretations imposed on me by other translations or tradition so that I could, hopefully, make decisions based more on the grammar and narrative of the text itself than on my own presuppositions or theological leanings. However, as I learn more about the Ancient Near East, I do hope to use that as a direct influence. Here, for example, I have translated verse one with heaven and earth
since this was a common phrase in the ancient world (for example, the Sumerian ziggurat, Etemenanki, house of the foundation of heaven and earth
). The phrase signified the entirety of the physical/material world. I now present the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1-6 as taken from the 1983 BHS Michigan-Claremont electronic text along with my humble translation.
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהֹום וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּֽיִם׃
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אֹור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור׃
וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאֹור כִּי־טֹוב וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים בֵּין הָאֹור וּבֵין הַחֹֽשֶׁךְ׃
וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים ׀ לָאֹור יֹום וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה וַֽיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹקֶר יֹום אֶחָֽד׃ פ
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי רָקִיעַ בְּתֹוךְ הַמָּיִם וִיהִי מַבְדִּיל בֵּין מַיִם לָמָֽיִם׃
Genesis 1:1-6
1. In a beginning, Elohim created heaven and earth. 2. But the earth was vacuous and uninhabited, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and a wind of Elohim was swooping over the surface of the water. 3. Then Elohim said, “Let there be light” and light was there. 4. Then Elohim saw that the light was good and made a separation between the light and the darkness. 5. And Elohim called, “Day!” in reference to the light. And in reference to the darkness, Elohim called, “Night!” And evening was there. And morning was there. Day one. 6. Then Elohim said, “Let there be a broadened space in the midst of the water and let a separation be there between waters for the water.”
Genesis 1:1-6
Unless it was not evident by now, George W and most of his Republican cohorts are all Fascists. Another one of the many things this tyranical administration has done and is doing that you can add to the list of abominations is telling the Burea of Prisons to deny prisoners access to religious material (unless, of course, the government arbitrarily and unconstitutionally deems those religious materials okay
for prisoners to read). Just wait till you see what books the government says are okay
and then guess how much time we have until the Fascists tell you and me what we can and cannot read. Read the report by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times here.
Ever wanted to write something simple in Egyptian? How about Babylonian or Sumerian? Now all you have to do is go on-line and type it in. It does not appear, however, that this can be relied on except in terms of simple words and short phrases. It may even butcher those. And it will definitely not be of any use in terms of digital translation of ancient documents… If something like Altavista’s Babelfish or the myriads of other on-line translators can’t even adequately translate a moderate German sentence into English (or vice versa), I think there is not much hope of an ancient language working any better. But it is amusing!
Go here to read all about it.
In case you were not aware, about 50% of the Soncino English translation of the Babylonian Talmud (hereafter referred to as the Bavli), is available freely on-line through a site called Come And Hear. You can download the website to a computer and have immediate access to the Bavli whenever you want. I have already made great use of it and enjoyed the translation so much that I started ordering several Tractates that are missing on-line. New in the mail are Tractates from the Order Kodashim. I had no idea they would be so big… For 27 bucks a pop, you get quite a Hebrew-English bang for your buck.
Free at last! My intensive German translation workshop is complete! And I suddenly have free time again! Unless the professors are disappointed with the amount of text I translated (only half a page), I should pass the proficiency exam with flying colors. How about that…I now have a European language under my scholastic belt.
Das Wesen der Kultur besteht darin, dass die in unserem Willen zum Leben nach Geltung ringende Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben sich in den einzelnen Menschen und in der Menschheit immer mehr durchsetzt.
Albert Schweitzer
The essense of culture consists in the fact that the reverance for the life which is fighting after validity in our will for life asserts itself more and more in individual people and in humanity.
About 2 1/2 years ago my CRT monitor died (went up in a puff of smoke), and so I decided it was time to finally upgrade to a nice 19 inch LCD. Unfortunately, my video editing machine would no longer boot into windows 2000 (except safe mode), because the last g550 matrox driver release, for windows 2000, doesn’t support LCD monitors. Thus, my only option to get support was to upgrade to windows XP which I didn’t have the money to do.
So I figured I would research to see if GNU/Linux could be a viable video editing platform. But everything I read at the time said no. So I just let the machine sit there for the last two years. About a couple of weeks ago I finally decided to take the plunge and installed Ubuntu on it, so I could at least backup the data that was there and then start clean. Luckily in this time frame GNU/Linux has gain the ability to mount NTFS drives, so I didn’t have to reformat my drives and thus was able to use GNU/Linux to backup the data that was there.
While I was backing up my data I discovered a folder on one of the NTFS drives I had never seen before called “RECYLER”. So I started poking around in the newly discovered folder to see what was in there. And low and behold I found a gold mine. I found the master print of my Camp Attitude video (ogg) I did 5 years ago, which I thought I had forever lost due to me accidentally deleting the wrong file, and not noticing until a year later. I can’t tell you how jubilated I am, this is the find of the century, as I thought I would never be able to make a DVD of this video, so I can show the video to friends and family on a TV instead of a poorly encoded postage stamp QuickTime video on my computer. Which, up to this point was my last remaining copy. So in celebration I’ve made a copy of the master in ogg theora, so you can view the Camp Attitude video (in ogg), here on the website.
There are many good reasons out there which, had I known previously, would have compelled me pretty quickly to abandon Windows for Linux. There is, for instance, no thrill as big as downloading several dozen different types of legally free software which individually do almost if not the exact same things as their non-free counterparts whose combined price tag would number in the multiple thousands. Every time I open Synaptic, I feel like I’m going on a shopping spree… What kind of really expensive software do I want for free legally today?
But the primary reason I use Linux is actually very simple. Because I’m Libertarian. I believe there is no greater good than liberty and no greater evil than the oppression, coercion, or slavery of our own natural rights and authority. I don’t accept Nissan controlling how, where, or when I drive my car and what I can or cannot do with it. Then why in God’s name would I let Microsoft control my operating system or tell me how I can and cannot use my software? Of course, there is a price involved: you have to learn a new way of doing computing. But nobody ever said liberty costs nothing. The question is what are you more willing to pay for: liberty or slavery?
Most people do not realize that when they laid down those several hundred dollars for Windows, they were not actually purchasing the operating system for their own control and ownership, but a license which allows Microsoft to maintain ownership and, therefore, to have control, authority, and right over the person using it. Using any Microsoft product is allowing yourself to be enslaved digitally for the opportunity to use that product. Some people might be fine with that slavery and chose it for themselves. If so, great! This Libertarian stands behind your decision, whatever that happens to be. And I will stand beside you against anyone who tries to deny your right to your decision. But I cannot abide selling myself into digital slavery.
Linux is everything that digital enslavement under Microsoft is not. For a long time I neither knew I was enslaved nor knew what it meant to be free of that slavery. But now that I have digital liberty, even thinking of going back to my old Microsoft shackles is repulsive. If this liberty were the only advantage to Linux, it would be enough reason for me to leave everything else for it. There just happens to be a great many other advantages as well.
Die Bedeutung der Ordnungen für das rechte soziale Verhalten
Seit je her hat man in dem Sprüchebuch den konzenrierten Niederschlag der Sittlichkeit des alten Israel gesehen. Dagegen wäre nichts einzuwenden, solange man sich das, was Israel unter dem >>Sittlichen < < verstand, vom Alten Testament sagen läßt und nicht versucht, es von der herkömmlichen Begrifflichkeit einer philosophischen oder theologischen Ethik her (Freiheit, Gewissen, Pflicht usw.) zu erfassen. Versteht man die Sentenzen des Sprüchebuches aus ihrem Vorstellungshorizont und von ihrer eigenen Intention her, so spürt man schnell, daß sie in einer sehr spezifischen und uns keineswegs ohne weiteres vertrauten Wertwelt verankert sind. Dabei soll es noch leicht genommen werden, daß diese Belehrung wenig oder gar nicht an der Gewinnung theoretischer Erkenntnissse interessiert ist, daß sie vielmehr durchweg ein pragmatisches Wissen vermittelt.
Von Rad, Weisheit in Israel
The significance of the classifications for the correct social behavior.
Against that would be nothing to object to so long as one allows it to be said about the Old Testament what Israel understood according to the moral
and so long as one does not try to grasp it from the conventional concept of a philosophical or theological ethic (freedom, conscience, duty, etc.). If one understands the truisms of the book of Proverbs out of their horizon of imagination and of their own intention, then one quickly feels that they are anchored in a very specific world of value and in a world of value which is by no means readily familiar to us. At the same time, it should still be easily assumed that this instruction is little or not at all interested in the production of theoretical knowledge; that rather, without exception, it mediates a pragmatic knowledge.
