Comenius! I'll be damned—this is the first time I've seen anyone actually reading his Orbis Pictus. There's a country whose educational system basically revolves around Comenius (the Czech Republic). And even there I don't personally know anyone who I'd be 100% sure has actually read the whole book!
These are indeed seven of the kinds of books I would expect to see in this kind of post shared on HN.
> It [The Bible] is full of great wisdom and great stories, and also cruelty, evil lies, and reminders that the world now is in many ways better than it was because people are better.
Are people better? And if they are what made them better?
Second Frege to Gödel. It is a great introduction to a study of the foundations of mathematics.
was expecting umberto eco after the first few - I'm sure you've either read him or desperately should!
I assume the first one is "High Performance HTTP Servers"
A sequel that diverges from and dwarfs its predecessor -- Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (translated into English) https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816614028/a-thousand-plateaus...
> The four em-dashes were organically cultivated and sustainably harvested
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Is no one going to comment on the goggly eyes or 8mm data tape? You people disappoint me.
"I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness"
Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy.
As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
Ah the classic
He lost me at Thesaurus
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Get the data off those drives now, rather than later. The longer you hope to get the data, the more hopeless it will be.
I discovered that when I want to find the translation of a German word, it is far quicker to open a dictionary and flip to the word than open google, select the language, and type in the word.
Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.
Binary search is strong
This is a solid collection, one that shows real intellectual curiosity. Something that would be interesting to add would be something that falls entirely out of the canon of Western philosophy - you have what is by all measures a diverse sampling of the various permutations of the intellectual procession of western thinking, but nothing reflecting traditions from outside that procession, eg Chinese, Islamic, Indian, or even Mayan or others from the Americas. It’d be interesting to pull from something entirely outside the intellectual tradition you’re well steeped in, to take a play horizontally instead of vertically.
(Note this isn’t a knock on the author for staying within western tradition, which is both deep and interesting and also diverse in a way which provides a wide breadth of ways of thinking about the world; rather, getting outside the tradition entirely would provide yet another perspective on that tradition, eg its bounds and the lines it doesn’t realize its prescribing itself within even as it changes dramatically over different eras.)
I do own more than these seven books.
> I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness for the way that medieval Christianity strangled the human spirit for so long.
As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's.
Adding the Pseudodoxia Epidemica to my list of things to read if I ever have infinite time.
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and the seven books I keep close: diary of a wimpy kid 1-7
Having read these outloud to my kids many times, they have genuine insight into psychology and the condition of the child as a developing person.
I’ve been told the Legacy Standard Bible is one where the translators tried to not use the same English word when the original Greek or Hebrew words are different.
I use the New Living Translation (NLT) for casual reading and was unaware of the LSB. I'll have to get a copy, thanks.
Here's a brief comparison (Titus 1)
LSB: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus%201&versi...
NLT: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=titus%201&versi...
What an inspiring post! So much surprise and depth in each selection.
Yeah, I just saved these books on my wish list to read later.
The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible is by far the worst translation on almost any metric you can think of, except maybe understanding how evangelical Christians read the Bible in the 90s and 2000s.
The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a great catalog out there of the most egregious translations in the NIV [1]. One such example:
> Romans 7:18 — The NIV here translates σάρξ (sarx) as “sinful nature” even though this implies later Augustinian doctrine on original sin that is not intended by the original writer. In contrast, the NRSV correctly chooses to translate this tricky Pauline term more literally as “flesh”.
Are you interested in a readable Bible that flows well to modern English ears? The New Living Translation (NLT) is fantastic and very underrated. I recommend reading the Psalms in the NLT since much of the language of the Psalms being in a higher register in the NIV and other translations doesn't land as well, but reading the Psalms in NLT makes it much more relatable and human. I find the way it reads refreshing, and it's based on more modern scholarship.
Are you interested in latest scholarly understanding of the Bible? The NRSV is the consensus version (as much as there could be one).
Are you interested in understanding the Bible as American Evangelical Christians read it today? That's currently the English Standard Version (ESV), which many churches have switched to as the NIV has lost favor in Reformed circles.
[1]: https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resource...
It is still the most popular English-language version according to https://christianbookexpo.com/bestseller/translations.php?id..., so for his goal ("there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible") I think it's the right choice.
It's been eye opening to read books from the Old Testament in the word-by-word translation of ancient Hebrew. A lot of the semantic accretion over the millennia comes off and you get a more raw iron age tribal wisdom glowing through.
One example is that often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations. It happens that words interpreted as names of people are also abstract nouns and these passages can also be read as aphorisms. I haven't looked deep into that but it makes way more sense to me that narrative is punctuated by such reflections on "Wisdom unites with Patience and beget Lasting Wealth than breaking into describing marriages and lineages then going back to the story...
Yes! In that vein, The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter[1] is great for folks who want to get a better sense of what the original Hebrew might feel like rendered in English.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Books-Moses-Translation-Commenta...
I've become intensely interested in the meanings of Biblical names. Of course, names are the words least likely to be translated into a plain meaning, and knowing a name's translation and connotations gives the opportunity to pierce the veil on some very important meanings, meanings that were patently obvious to anyone who actually spoke those languages.
Discovering that "Jonah" can mean "dove" was certainly eye-opening. And re-reading that book in light of knowing this, quite interesting!
In fact, the OT and NT alike sometimes even drop in-line translation/explanation of a name that they really want us to know. In that case, why not know all of them?
I've only ever read KJV and haven't heard of the others. Is the downside that KJV is 1600s English? That particular line:
KJV: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
NRSV: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
NIV: For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
So KJV and NRSV agree.
One potential issue is that some English words have changed meaning since it was written, and sometimes in extremely confusing or misleading ways. For instance 'convenient' and 'prevent' used to have radically different meanings.
Slightly off topic: The title hits home. When I was young, books were a luxury item. Less rich people just used the library. But the library had a strict 7 books rental policy. Not enough for the avid reader that also needed a small programming reference library. So I had 3 steady, occasionally 4th, library card pool from family members to keep my bookshelf operational.
I also remember libraries having a very small limit back in the day, so I was surprised to find out that in the Bay Area libraries typically allow up to 100 books per card!
Mind blown. How can that work? I assume book rentals follow the usual Poisson distribution?
Speaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.
His book Higher-Order Perl was really good and introduced me to some interesting programming concepts, but it also helped me realize why no one uses Perl anymore
I feel the same about Haskell...
We read some passages from Decameron back in high school. Lovely book really, I should take the time to really read it cover to cover.
I tried to read it at the height of the pandemic, inspired by the plague framing, and couldn't get into it. Might be time to give it another shot.
There's apparently a pretty amusing adaptation on Netflix as well.
It's very good, although it focuses mainly on the framing device and not on the stories themselves. I can imagine if you're a fan of the original book, it might feel quite shallow in comparison, but as someone who never read the book, I really enjoyed it as a black comedy about bad people in bad times.
The Netflix series is an "inspired by", not an adaptation. It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters.
I enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
I loved the Netflix adaptation. I ignorantly missed the part about it being a book and am so excited to dive into it.
A great feature of The Decameron is that it's easy to read and the chapters are short and largely self contained. It's not one of those books that you need to be in the right head space for, and have a big chunk of time where you can sit down and dig in. I read The Decameron over 6 months or so in random little moments, a chapter sitting on the subway, a chapter during lunch, while laying in bed, etc.
Reading it in Italian (my native language) is fascinating, as it's a weird mix of mostly modern Italian flexion and Latin sentence construction. It's incredibly taxing, enough so that I stopped after 70-ish stories, but it also makes it very clear that the whole thing was written 700 years ago.
And I bet you won't guess what any of them are.
Number #8 will surprise you!
I keep a computer graphics book that I'm reading over and over again, just one chapter that is concerned with physically-based rendering. By now the theory is getting so ingrained I could write a path tracer in my sleep! But then again, I don't want to.
The current front-runner is “The Crazy Ape” by Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid.
It's about how war is perpetrated by the old against the young. I've carried it next to my heart since I was fourteen.
Also, it's quite short and will definitely fit in the space.
A bit more about it: https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/116411220100252049
> For example, Moses is easy to recognize at lower right, because of the glowing horns
I'm sorry, what? Why is Moses depicted with glowing horns?
Yeah, I thought he was easily recognizable because he's holding stone tablets.
But apparently it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_of_Moses
> The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light.[1] The idea comes from a translation, or mistranslation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
He didn't carry the stone tablets around all the time.
> knowing full well that [Delilah] will betray [Samson]
It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?)
I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically.
A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
Having just finished the book of Judges last week, this is fresh on my mind. Finishing the story of Samson, my first reaction, like the author of the post, is that Samson is just stupid. Delilah is likely a Philistine, the nemesis of Samson and the Israelites. Her intention to betray and destroy Samson is hardly hidden in her questioning him. How can Samson be so dumb?
But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him.
Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
> Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times seeking going outside of his community to find women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
Which, as I understand, is pretty much the lesson that most of theologists derive form the story of Samson: don't let your lust blind you and make you stray from your duties to the God.
I think it's a bit of both/and. The Samson story within the context of Judges is about people doing what "that which was right in [their] own eyes," and the people of Israel devolving into madness and dumbness because of their rejection of Yahweh and his law.
I think he's purposefully supposed to come off as a buffoon, but maybe a relatable one?
I think it's more of a desire to be loved by the woman he falls in love with and not accepting that she is not going to love him back. His refusal to acknowledge the truth sets him on a course of self abandonment, he simps after a wife that treats him bad to use the parlance of our time. I think it shows physical strength can't guard you from a broken heart.
> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading.
That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.
What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,
which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.
If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.
Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.
Thanks. I'm reframing that as god playing 5D chess.
The same issue seems to occur with "deep" thinkers in other areas (e.g. trying to understand French intellectuals).
The trouble is that it can be worthwhile thinking about something without depth, or paying attention to a smart persons' thoughts on something shallow. And a priori we can't always know what is worthwhile.
E.g. I liked the blog, because here's a smart guy who has explained a little of what he gets out of a few divergent works.
In all seriousness, the "god playing 5D chess" framing, is exactly at the core of the last few thousand years of religious scholarship including everything from the Talmud to Aquinas and by extension most thoughtful sermons in most religious traditions today.
To an atheist, it seems very obvious that there is a intellectual whirlpool and cognitive error meta-pattern at work, which crudely summarized would be, "close attention to any subject and its context provides a fractal landscape within which infinite complexity and subtle relationships may be discerned" (the universe is reflected in a grain of sand; or, if you practice breath meditation, in the focus of breathing): this is interpreted as the signature of the divine. Because nothing we can produce with our human agency has such complexity. We are simple, serial, things; the world is parallel and multidimensional at every scale.
The world IMO is worthy of wondrous regard. But it's not because of design, not in any sense usually meant, bar those that Wolfram is pointing at with his "Rudliad" and the anthropic principle.
A deist is liable to say, ah ha, well, that is where the divine shows itself. But this is IMO the last of the gaps into which it might flee. Or, more charitably and ecumenically, one might say, this is where definitions of the divine converge for the atheist and the deist; what we mean when each say "the divine" is this, that the universe is wondrous and has deep orders and it betrays fractal similarity and order; and what a thing it is to be not just alive within it but aware of being so!
That is a cause for humility reflection and gratitude, for sure.
NIV is what I grew up with and I kind of tired of it because of that... I have a soft spot for the KJV/NKJV.
Same, not a believer, I appreciate KJV for its artistic value and it being referenced in so much literature and cinema.
Am a believer, and appreciate the KJV for its language. However, it can be tricky, because words change over 400 years. So while there are many wonderfully translated passages that use very expressive language, you also have passages that are full of words that seem similar but actually are easy to confuse.
For example:
- "Prevent" in 1611 meant "go before, precede". Now it means "stop from happening". - "Suffer" in 1611 meant "allow to happen". Now it means "experience pain". - "Quick" in 1611 could mean "alive" (hence "the quick and the dead"). Now it exclusively means "fast".
And there are words that are completely archaic now - "anon", "bissam", etc. Or words that are just very rare - e.g., peradventure.
It's a wonderful read in many places if you want to revel in language, but modern translations are often better for understanding meaning. Not because they're "dumbed down" (as some claim) but rather because they reflect modern meanings and usage.
I get that, but KJV is referenced so much that I find it's worth just dealing with it and learning the 1600s differences along the way. Plus those differences are interesting in of themselves.
I respect your beliefs.
I once tried to stick to Green’s Literal Translation but it got dry fast. I actually enjoyed reading the preface and made me appreciate the work Jay Green Sr put in.
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in [the Bible].
Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
That is quite a bold claim you make there!
Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts?
Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in Western culture will we understand if we take you on your word and spend time into understanding those concepts?
Bullet points / pointers would be enough already!
Whoosh ;)
My convictions are pretty hollow because I'm demonstrating the pointlessness--or arbitrariness, if you like--of gatekeeping the ranks of the "well-educated," as the author tries to do here.
Well played sir, well played :)
I just need The Wind in the Willows :)
When is the best time of year to read it?
When you're trying to fall asleep but there is too much noise in your head, I suppose :)
Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that.
But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.
I bought Redwall for my kids a few years ago, and was stopped by three different people while walking from the back of the store to the checkout who commented on how good the books are!
Redwall mentioned!
Brian Jacques' other series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman is also very good.
Oh I forgot to say "as an audiobook" for the falling asleep to part
Pleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.
I never knew Roget's was organized like that and I have had several different editions over the years. I'm one of those people who always used it as a compendium of synonyms.
Roget's Thesaurus is part of Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22
From the preamble of the edition published by PG:
Note that this version of Thesaurus-1911 has been supplemented with over
1,000 words not present in the original 1911 edition, but many modern words
are still missing. About 1500 verbs (out of 6500) which can be found in an
80,000-word spell-checker are absent from this work. The deficiency of nouns
is probably much worse, especially on technical topics. Of 40,000 unique
words contained in the original text, 12,000 are not recognized by a
spell-checker. Most of these are foreign words (primarily Latin), and many
are obsolete.I was looking for it after reading the post, but there seem to be so many different versions and edtions. Harper, Penguin. College. The New. The Concise. The International. Some say they’re organized alphabetically. How do I know which one is the kind that the article talks about, if I buy used online and cant look into it?
Are you in the USA? It's because Roget as a title isn't trademarked there so it's accepted as a name for any thesaurus.
If you want the latest edition of the "real" Roget's, it's the one published by Longman.
The one in TFA is Harper and Row, and the later 8th Edition, published by Harper Collins, is also organized the correct way. I think you'll be safe if you can get a Harper version.
That's the one I have. I've had an older version in the past but misplaced it years ago. This one does the trick, but like the article author says: it is a weighty book. (I like that.)
I've never owned a copy of Roget's, and now I'm curious/tempted to get one, but my go-to digital word picking assistant has always been OneLook Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/
Hey, I'm the developer of OneLook. I'm so glad to see it here! The concept clusters on the site are directly inspired by Roget's work. Like the author, I see a thesaurus less as a synonym dictionary and more as what the word literally means, a storehouse of treasure. I'm in the midst of a long-overdue data refresh across OneLook right now, so I'd be curious to hear your feedback once it's done.
Very cool. This will likely become my default digital source. Much more extensive than the other online options. I still prefer the discrete clustering of Roget's, but this blows away anything else I've found.
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> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging.
A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."
"Let my soul die with the Philistines" being the literal translation?
I'm curious, what would you be your translation?
Something like "let my life perish with the Philistines". As the sibling comment notices, the original Hebrew word doesn't really mean "spirit" in the "immortal soul" meaning.
Yeah the comment is a bit of a cliffhanger. Wish they had given us their preferred translation.
That's funny, I (not the poster) didn't stop to think that other readers might not understand the Latin and Greek here!
Both of those forms are third-person and say "may my soul" ( ψυχή/anima) "die with the Philistines". (Definite article in Greek but not in Latin because Latin doesn't have them.)
The original Hebrew has
תָּמוֹת נַפְשִׁי עִם-פְּלִשְׁתִּים
which is also third person "may my soul" (נַפְשִׁי) "die with (the) Philistines".
"let my soul die with the Philistines" is the literal translation of the Latin. I'm not an expert on Greek but I'd translate that as "let my soul die with the foreigners." ἀλλοφύλων more literally means something like "different people / people belonging to another group"
But the original Hebrew word is "פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒" which is "Philistines", not "foreigners". The Greek has already suffered a translation.
I can't speak for the OP, but in my research, the translation works out to be:
"Let me die with the foreigners"
I usually see "foreigners" replaced with "Philistines" (as noted above). It's Samson's line just before he braces against the pillars and brings the building down on himself and the thousands of Philistines inside, so I understand why it is usually translated that way.
Also, ψυχή here renders Hebrew nephesh, which is closer to "life" or "self", but when I think about the attributed statement it just reads better with the personal attachment (vs. "Let my self|life|soul die with..."). Which is the fun of translation, as each translator seeks to reveal a meaningful rendition which will resonate with their audience.
But the original Hebrew word is "פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒" which is "Philistines", not "foreigners".
P.S. My only reaction to the response is "whoosh!".
In that case I'll consider myself whooshed.
I don't think that disagrees with what I said. I was translating the Greek, not the Hebrew. But you're right the Hebrew פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒ is unambiguously "Philistines."
The Greek quoted above is from the Septuagint, and those translators rendered that word as ἀλλόφυλοι, roughly "those of another tribe." So "foreigners" is the closest I have in English to the Greek word, and "Philistines" is who it refers to.
I'm no scholar here, just a dabbler, so I'm happy the discussion is happening at all.
I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations).
It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique!
As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
> I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand
Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
But you do?
Translations are inherently lossy, especially for cases like the bible that use less common dialects and have conflicting source versions. Are any biblical translators claiming that their work is a 100% reproduction of the original? I doubt it. Most I'm familiar with readily acknowledge that it's a very messy process and two experts acting in good faith will produce different translations in many cases.
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect also applies to the majority of translations.
> Why do you assume a (sic) entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement (sic) for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
That assumption does not appear anywhere in their comment.
Your rude strawman question only makes sense if assuming that ivrit-tirvi is not a fluent speaker of Hebrew and is somehow translating the Hebrew into something else that they understand ... which is quite unlikely, since ivrit (עִבְרִית) is the Hebrew word for the English word "Hebrew".
And the NIV translation into English reflects ideological interpretation that one can avoid by reading the original Hebrew if one understands it.
Through a glass darkly, if you will. :)
Have you read Patton's poem by that title? It's not great but it's a fascinating window into the beliefs of a major historical figure.
In my experience there's a lot of support for reincarnation in judeo-christian scripture, when you read it open to that interpretation.
I hadn't read it until now. Interesting find! I wonder why he chose that title as the teleology of I Cor 13:12 seems straightforward.
My read is that cor 13:12 is about seeing life from both sides, flesh and spirit. Some things are clearer on either side, and we learn from alternating.