Wednesday, March 10, 2004

Stupid Insomnia strikes again

Pump: Visceral humor is par for the course here, three cheers to a brilliant entry.

Rude: Passion looks to be a bit of an oddity. Certain Christian organizations are condemning certain violent and sexual content on the air, yet promoting Passion. Example: "This week, the Rev. James Kennedy, of the Coral Ridge Ministries in Tampa, was on Fox TV drumming up letters from viewers to members of Congress and the FCC to rail against sex and violence on TV and radio. And then he segued to how great Mel Gibson's extremely violent -- and possibly pornographic -- movie, 'The Passion of the Christ,' is doing in theaters." Source. An even more important point to note about the anti-semetic tilt of the movie is that most of the current english versions of the bible are descendents of the bible translated in the 17th century by clerics trying to curry the favor of King James I, the first Stuart king and a man of uncertain temperament. A clip from an even better opinion article about religious fundamentalism in american and how it effects science research. Seeing that the bible was originally written in three languages (Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew), the many translations afterwards have slowly chaged its meaning, particularly since rulers sometimes had reign over the translators and would put their own political spin on it. Or translators would change the spirit of the document by making it more readable by the population. This was done since word for word translations tend to be a little awkward to read and certain words and phrases change in meaning and use in languages over time. Finally, the oldest know bibles are from the 4th or 5th centuries, add transcription errors and tranlator judgement over the first 4 to 5 centuries after the death of Jesus and you have a document subtly different than the orignal's intent. Think of it as a big game of telephone where instead of a media of a chain of electronic conversations bottlenecked by human memories penchant to summerize things, you have hand written documents with typos and potential politcal agendas. This is of course the best case scinario in which a tranlation would be made directly from these. Yet, as pointed out above, most current english versions of the bible are based on the King James I's version, cleaving the system exposed to even more noise leaks. How different is the intent and makeup of the 'good book' now?

Trust no one! Kill allllll the vampyres.

"My eyes, my eyes, their alien"