In Which Michael Pearl Shows Himself to be Scripturally Illiterate

In this video, Michael Pearl attempts to dismantle the doctrine of pacifism, and in so doing he exposits Matthew 10, where Jesus sends out his disciples with no supplies. He reads the word "scrip" as if it were "script" and defines it as "Bible, books, notes, writing paper."
In fact, "scrip" is an old English word for the bag in which a traveler carried his supplies. Since Jesus was sending them out without supplies, he of course didn't expect them to tote around an empty rucksack. But in literally misreading this archaic word as something else, Michael totally misses out on its meaning. This didn't have to happen; had he just used a concordance to look up all seven uses of the word 'scrip' in the KJV, he would see it used six times in this same context, and once more--THE FIRST MENTION--for the shepherd's bag in which David stashed the stones that he took with him to take on Goliath.
David didn't wrap those five smooth stones in a book, or a bundle of writing paper; he put them in a BAG.
You can stop watching the video right there, because Michael Pearl does not have a sufficient understanding of the Bible to be trusted to explain the rest of what Jesus meant in those gospel passages.

Another Lexical Obituary

Living in America as I do, I'm constantly struck by news reports of "migrants" wanting to come here to live. Back in my elementary days, I was taught that a migrant is one who temporarily leaves his native land for seasonal employment, like the migrant workers who lived in Mexico but traveled north with the harvest for about half the year, hand-picking vegetable crops for which meechanical harvesters hadn't yet been invented, as the cotton harvesters which replaced the slaves and sharecroppers in the cotton fields of the American South. A migrant lives part of his year as native, and part as a foreigner. He is thus distinguished from a nomad, who lives always on the move within the bounds of his own territory.

I was also taught two other words: Emigrant, one who was leaving his native land to live somewhere else, and Immigrant, one arriving in a new country to make it his home. The two words were of course used of the same people, just from opposite perspectives. Neither was ever used of a migrant. And of course both were in contrast to Native, which referred to a person living in the land of his ancestors--one who had neither emigrated nor immigrated.

There was another word I wasn't taught in school, but picked up from conversation, that was used in reference to a person whose present situation wasn't well described by any of the other five words: Expatriate. This was someone not living in his native land, but with no intentions of becoming a citizen, or of leaving descendants, in the land where he dwelt. He was there long-term enough not to qualify as a migrant, but still not permanently. He may not have owned a dwelling back in his native land, but no matter how long he was absent, his loyalties and affections remained with it, rather than with the land of his current residence, which at any rate was often likely to change every few years.

One of these six words has never been all that common--and is frequently misspelled as Ex-patriot--but two of them have gone from common to almost extinct in the course of a single generation.
Emigrant and Immigrant have now been almost totally replaced by Migrant, the original meaning of which has been sacrificed to force it to swallow the combined meanings of both other words. The word Native has also been suppressed, mostly narrowing its application--at least in the States--to those with autochthonous tribal ancestry.

Another word which has suffered greatly in connotation and change of meaning is Colonist, which originally referred to a group of expatriates who functioned as immigrants, planting a piece of their own culture on foreign soil, which they never intended to leave. Unlike true immigrants, who abandoned their former loyalties to join another culture, they brought theirs with them. Colonialism in that sense has almost gone extinct, so the word has become attached to other meanings loosely attached to the original one. Colonialsim lives on only in a cultural sense, when immigrants adapt somewhat to the local laws, but retain their original lifestyle, language, and culture. Mennonites are a good example of this, and they do in fact still refer to their settlements as Colonies.

How does this all relate to the so-called Migrant Caravan that is so much in the American news these days? Well, they certainly aren't migrants, in the classical sense of the word: they don't intend to return to live in their Central American homes on a seasonal basis. American immigration laws (ironically, the term will probably live on for centuries in statute after it is abandoned in speech) have made that process increasingly difficult to impossible. By leaving behind their homes and national loyalties, they are true emigrants; they want to come here to settle. But are their intentions in settling in America those of immigrants, expatriates, or colonists?

Does χιλια ετη mean a thousand years?

As promised in my last post, here is a critique of Peter Hoover's view of the Millennium. In an email broadcast on August 12, he wrote briefly of his fling with premillenialism, and subsequent revocation:

I dropped all popular theories, all names that would identify me to this school of thought or another, and I chose to cling to Jesus' Gospel and the Scriptures themselves. Nothing more. Nothing less. With only this in mind, these became my conclusions. My passion. My goal:
 1. Building on the right foundation, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11). "No one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ." Whatever we build on, whatever we use, whatever we teach must come from Jesus. Everything else is unsafe and will not stand in the end. If Jesus and his apostles did not teach it, if Jesus' example does not match with what we are promoting, we are in the wrong. Plain and simple.
 2. Choosing the Narrow Way (Matthew 7:13-14). The broad way, the way of the crowd, the popular way is dangerous. The narrow way, the way of Jesus, is the only right and safe one. How shall we find it? From Jesus and his apostles alone. Not from any modern organisation or religious group. Not, particularly, from any church. The real Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that truly follows him on the narrow way, is the fellowship of all who listen carefully, who follow, and obey. Why is it narrow? Because few choose it. It is the Way of the Cross.
 3. Following the Context and Flow of Scripture (2 Timothy 2:15). Using the Scriptures responsibly includes its context and how they were presented to us, one after the next. That is how we need to use all information anywhere. To use the Scriptures in a game of "fast and loose," pulling out bits and pieces here and there, while cobbling them together again through all kinds of ingenious ways, is not only dangerous. It is dishonest. It takes serious study (like they did in Beraoea) and the help of the Holy Spirit. It is not safe for us to use the Scriptures unless the Lord Jesus has already freed us from human prejudice and a pre-established agenda.
 4. Not Adding, not subtracting from prophetic Scriptures (Revelation 22:18-19). "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll."
How seriously have we taken these sobering words at the end of John's Revelation? I am amazed. Of all Scriptures used by Christians, anywhere, none of them have been tampered, twisted and added onto more than this one itself. An absolutely massive world-wide movement, involving millions upon millions of people, entire political parties and shocking wars have revolved around what is read "between the lines" of Revelation 20:1-10.
 But, seriously, have you ever carefully read this chapter yourself? Stunning in its simplicity!
 There is not one word, not even the minutest suggestion of any "restoration of Israel," or of any flesh and blood Jews, or of any earthly nation governed by Christ, in this passage.
Neither is there any suggestion in the entire Scriptures of any "pre-tribulation rapture," or of any restoration of animal sacrifices that glorify God, or of a return to the laws of Moses.
 In fact, the "thousand years" is one of the most poorly translated pieces of the entire New Testament in our North European languages. The Greek word (check it out in Strongs, or wherever you wish) is the word "chilioi," not singular, but plural. In other words, it already includes "thousands of years," instead of just one clearly defined millennium. But even the word "thousands" is not totally accurate.
 "Chilioi" is not the word that Greek speakers would use to describe "thousands." Instead they use the word, "chiliades." Chilioi, as used by the Apostle John is a vague term, used basically for a "long long time." An age.
And this brings us right back into the rest of all the teachings of Christ, the simple Gospel that tells us nothing more than to be ready at all times for the day of judgement. Not adding. Not subtracting, is a key to understanding Bible prophecy. If the Lord wanted us to know more, he would have told us more. And in the meantime, while we are still waiting, I rest every night in total peace. The Lord is in control. Not me. And this is why I refuse to latch onto any "ism" or humanly constructed line of thought: premillennialism, amillennialism, postmillennialism, etc. Who needs it if we have the Gospel of Jesus in our hearts and hands? 

 I wanted to give the full context of his claim regarding the meaning of  χιλια ετη, the term Revelation 20:2 uses, because he is so totally wrong about this that I can't address it without making him look really stupid. And he's not stupid, he's just way out of his league here, casting judgment on basically every Bible ever translated in English. Yes, Strongs uses the transliteration 'chilioi' for G-5507, which is its nominative singular lemma form. But not even Strong translates it as 'thousands', but 'a thousand'. This shows how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; being able to look up a word in Strongs does not qualify one to evaluate Bible translations.

It gets worse, when he assays to read the mind of the modern Greek. I actually don't know modern Greek, but I do know that when Google or Bing attempt to translate Biblical Greek as if it were Modern Greek, the result in English is usually hilarious, but never accurate. Google, however, perfectly rendered either χίλια χρόνια (its Modern Greek translation of 'thousand years') or χίλια ἔτη (the Koine equivalent). So all the talk about how a Greek speaker would say it is nothing but ignorance strutting as erudition; at least at first blush, it's 'chilia' either way.

If Peter Hoover wants to accuse a Bible translator of mistranslating 'thousand', he need look no further than Acts 21:20, where many Bibles have the elders telling Paul that "thousands" of Jews had come to faith, when even Strongs could tell him that the number is actually that of the next order of magnitude, 'myriads'.

And how is χίλια ἔτη used elsewhere in the Bible? Well, it is only used twice elsewhere, and both times it is used proverbially to refer to a long time, like me saying in English, "Never in a thousand years would I expect such a scholar and historian as Peter Hoover to make such a blunder." But this is not proverbial language here--it's narrative, with terms like, "And when the thousand years are ended," which is pretty specific.

It's not as if John didn't know how to express large numbers: in the majority text of Revelation 9:6 he speaks of a number of horseman so large as to be inconceivable in his day, a thousand myriads (the two largest Greek numbers put together). Then in 5:11, he gives up counting the heavenly host after running clean out of big numbers: myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands. But he is able to divide 144,000 by twelve and come up with the right number; and when it comes to telling time, he is twice able to count up to one thousand, two hundred, and sixty days. It sure seems to me like John considers χίλιοι to mean 'a thousand'.

Could χιλια ετη refer to a long time, rather than exactly 12,000 months? Well, it does every other time it's used in the Bible, so I would have to answer "possibly," given that Revelation is a highly symbolic book anyway. But let's at least be honest about the evidence, and stick with what we have rather than making it up. And we are certainly not on firm ground to assume that it does, and build our theory on that.

P.S. In the interests of fair use, I should note that you can receive your own free subscription to Peter Hoover's emails by so requesting in an email to detention.river@gmail.com.

Revive Indiana Really Does Jump the Shark. But That is not All. There's More, So Much More.

A thousand days after launching what was originally to be a one-week revival, Kyle Lance Martin returned to his homeland of Elkhart County, Indiana to "Fan the Flame" with another week of meetings at Maple City Chapel and Clinton Frame Mennonite Church. In this video you can watch what happened at the tail end of "Day 1005." After Kyle had spent the previous hour laying out his vision for what "more" might look like, and the closing song had been sung, Kyle came back up and announced that a "sister" named April felt led to "release tongues" over the audience, and he asked a man named Adam to "interpret" so that all would be "in biblical order," using "a safe, biblical model." You can see Kyle tell the backstory here.

So, a woman comes forward, stands silently for a minute, and then begins babbling through her sobs the same staccato syllables, over and over. More silence. Then she ends by saying in English, "We just want more of You God." After another interlude, Adam takes over. "Oh my children (2x) How much I love you (2x) Oh, children, I paint the day every morning for you, and every evening I paint the sky for you. I love you so. I have things for you each new day--new things. Oh my children, what I have in store for you. Oh, how much I love you my children."

Kyle then came back up and encouraged the audience to "ask the Lord for the interpretation of what you just heard . . . Everything you heard pointed to the Lord. Nothing you heard contradicted Scripture."

But it just ain't so, bro. Scripture says, "women are to be silent in the assemblies." In fact, it's right there in the very same passage that encourages members of the assembly to speak orderly in tongues. I think it's highly significant that it was a woman who felt "led by the Spirit" to "release tongues" on the assembly.  And that it was a woman who told Kyle, "Let's do it." And I would almost be willing to bet that just about every interpretation Adam ever comes up with has "My children" in it several times.

Now, the reader may recall that I devoted several weeks, nine years ago, to examining this passage right here on the pages of this blog, and I'm not advocating the muzzling of women in the assembly. But to say that something doesn't contradict Scripture, when it in fact does so to its face, raises red flags. To say that justification is by faith alone, without works, contradicts Scripture to its face. To claim the blessing of heaven on that which contradicts Scripture isn't going to work for eternity.

I have to say one thing for Adam, he did a good job of attempting to match his interpretation to the message: lots of repetition. But linguistically speaking, there simply wasn't any correlation between "the tongue" and "the interpretation." Yes, they represented different "gifts:" the tongue, a gift for producing a meaningless message; the interpretation, a gift for producing a meaningful platitude. But what's the point? We could have completely skipped April's contribution and gone directly to Adam's. The church was no more edified with the tongue than it had been without it.

Here's a test. Have three people watch the video of April's "tongue" and give their inspired "interpretation" of it. What do you think are the odds that all three will be identical?  To the thinking person, this is all a lot of nonsense. Sure, Paul encouraged tongues; but at the end of the very same chapter, he banned women from speaking in church. If the one still applies today, why not the other? Kyle had no answer to that question; he didn't even bother raising it.

Now shift the scene. It's three weeks later, and just across the state line into Michigan. Riverside Christian Fellowship is a church that, like Maple City Chapel, was founded by conservative Mennonites, but doesn't carry on their name. A church that tries to hold on to what was important of that which has been passed down to them, and let go of what wasn't. It's a half-week of revival meetings, and the pews are packed. Even Amish have come in from the surrounding area. But it's not Kyle Lance Martin from Time to Revive speaking--it's Israel Wayne from Family Renewal, preaching sermons based on his books Questions God Asks and Questions Jesus Asks. And his message strikes a decided contrast to that of Kyle Martin. When Israel talks about salvation and works, he doesn't see any need to warn against mixing the latter in with the former. In fact, he speaks of salvation as a coin with two sides: on one, faith, and on the other, works. To claim one to the exclusion of the other is like a quarter with two heads or two tails: it's fake. A faith that does not produce works is of no saving value; Works that spring not from faith are no redeeming worth. Israel says, "Jesus didn't have a problem with his disciples obeying him too much; he had a problem with them obeying him too little."

After four days, Israel packed up and headed home with his family of twelve. There was no extending the revival, no taking the church out into the streets. No meetings in businesses and at Amish league football games. No baptism truck. But neither was there rushing people through a marked Bible, reading Ephesians 2:8-9 but skipping over verse 10 (which says we were created to do good works). No printing off an instant Birth Certificate and assuring people that because they had prayed a prayer, they were now in the kingdom of God.

Interestingly enough, both Kyle and Israel talked a lot about the way they were raised in the churches they went to, and how there seemed to be something lacking, something not right about it. Bear with me here, I'm going to try not to be too simplistic. But for Kyle, the solution was basically to get a woman to teach him how to babble, and a man to transpose that babble into English. For Israel, it was getting Dietrich Bonhoeffer to teach him the cost of discipleship. Both preached "more;" but only one submitted his preaching to the what the Word actually says. And there is certainly nothing of the cost of discipleship in "I make the sun to rise and set for you, and I have more in store--oh, so much more."

Preaching about the costs of discipleship probably won't get kids to leave their schools to hear you. It won't bring thousands of people out to march around downtown Goshen behind you. It won't get you wall-to-wall coverage on a local Christian rock station. But it may just result in actual disciples.

Israel had a message for the Riverside Church. It combined two letters to the leadership of the church in Ephesus: Paul's, and that of the risen Christ. Paul told the Ephesian pastor to "Remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." --ESV

Jesus told the Ephesian pastor, "I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent."  --ESV

The Ephesians passed down the right doctrine, and proved those who taught it. But in the process they missed the whole point, which was love. Yes, it's important not to mishandle Scripture. Yes, it's important to teach the whole counsel of God, not just the parts that make us feel good. It's important to stand for the truth, and not compromise. But the whole point is love that issues from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. Lose that, and you've lost it all.

Persecution Update: of Produce and Pronouns

It's been two and a half years since the bulk of my Indiana Revival Reports, but I've continued to follow Kyle Lance Martin and Time to Revive, as they held extended meetings in Florida, Ohio, Dallas, and now Wisconsin. An interesting update came out in a recent sermon in Wausau: at about 1:40:40 in this video, Kyle Martin tells about the Michiana farmer who lost a majority of his wholesale business after putting peel-away gospel stickers on 600,000 of his watermelons. I saw some of those rejected watermelons, donated by the crate to a local food pantry, the sticker still on them. They tasted just fine.
Like a frog in a teakettle, American Christians are experiencing such a gradual loss of their liberty that most young adults have no idea how much their country has changed just in their lifetimes. Thirty years ago, for example, women were typically addressed as either Mrs. or Miss; those titles have almost universally been replaced by Ms.--not, as far as I know, due to a single court decision--definitely not to an act of Congress--but the social pressure to conform to the new normal has sufficed to snuff out two words that were, not all that long ago, among the most commonly spoken ones in our vocabulary. And now, a six-year-old is investigated for calling a friend 'he' when he now prefers 'she'. Two even more common words are in immanent danger of disappearing themselves.

Elizabeth Elliot lived among naked savages in Ecuador--well, they were still naked savages when she met them, but contact with incarnated Christianity was rapidly changing that. She ate what they ate, lived where they lived, spake as they spake, and even let her daughter run wild with their children--but she drew the line at dressing as they dressed: a single cotton string around the waist, or--if they really wanted to dress up--one around the upper arm as well. She didn't want to just identify with their culture--she wanted to uplift it. And as they saw the three incarnate Christians wearing clothes, they all started wearing them too--and have ever since.

Christians just aren't going to be socially acceptable to a depraved and fallen culture. They needn't bother to even try to keep up with the decline. Any who continue trying to comply with the culture's escalating demands are just hoping that the crocodile they feed will eat them last.

Who are our neighbors?

On my way through town the other day I noticed that several yards contained the same sign, with a message in Spanish, English, and Arabic. Now, I happen to be proficient in all of these languages, so I was able to discern some differences in the translations.

First of all, it was obvious that the English version was the original one. It read, "No matter where you're from, we're glad you're our neighbors."

Now, all three of these language have the capability to address someone in either a formal or a familiar way; as it happens, the familiar is obsolete in English, so the original is in what would have earlier been considered the formal construction, but is now the only way of expressing such a sentiment. However, the formal construction is rarely so used in Arabic--as is the familiar in Spanish. So one would not expect the two translations to have the same construction. They don't; but ironically, the Arabic uses the rare formal construction, and the Spanish the rare familiar. Thus the Arabic is more a formal equivalency translation than the Spanish.

But ironically, given that English no longer distinguishes between number in the second person, the Spanish version is an exactly literal translation of the English, while the Arabic version is more of a paraphrase. It would literally read, "It doesn't matter where your country [is], but we're glad that you're our neighbors."

I wonder if the owners of these signs first looked up the online database of registered violent and sexual offenders to see how many had moved into their neighborhood, before so welcoming them.

ETA: I just realized why the Arabic is in the plural. In Arabic, one has to distinguish between male and female in the singular (not so in Spanish); this construction is the only possible way to translate in a gender-neutral manner. Thus the Spanish and Arabic separately convey different nuances of the English.

What is a transgender? A linguistic answer

Chances are you are arriving at this blog as the result of an internet search. This isn't surprising, as the concept of transgender has exploded upon the public consciousness of the western world rather recently, and many people are confused as to just what transgender means or is. As a scholar who has been following this topic for several decades, it is incumbent upon me to make things as plain as possible--as I did for my series of posts on albinism, which continue to enlighten thousands every year.

Let's start with a contemporary definition, taken from the first hit on a Google search:

Transgender: denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender.

So, right off we see that transgender is unconventional. From the same source, that word is defined:

Unconventional: not based on or conforming to what is generally done or believed.

So, transgender is something unusual, not ordinary. In fact, it doesn't even fit into a conventional belief system. To sum it up, transgender is a new way of looking at the world that conflicts with what has previously been done and believed. Let's go back a bit and see how earlier dictionaries defined it:

According to Google Ngram, the word was first coined at the dawn of the 20th century. But one will look in vain for even a mention of the word in any dictionary before the close of that century. It isn't found in my Funk & Wagnell's Unabridged Dictionary of 1929 (updated 1959), nor my Websters Collegiate Dictionary of 1983 (updated 1991; published citations of the word doubled in the following year). Popular usage of the word itself is younger than the majority of people claiming that it describes them. Instead, one will have to look elsewhere for a word that describes the actions and beliefs now codified in the word transgender: transvestite.

It first appears in Google Ingram in 1897, but the word, and the behaviour it connotes, were so new in 1929 that Funk & Wagnells didn't include it. It remained so obscure that even thirty years of updates failed to add it to the lexicon. By 1983, however, Websters includes the word, dating its origin to ca. 1922, and defines it as:

Transvestite: A person . . . who adopts the dress and often the behavior typical of the opposite sex esp. for purposes of emotional or sexual gratification.

This is exactly the definition of a transgender. Only the label has changed, and this transfer was not complete until the dawn of this century.

Why the change in label? It certainly isn't because 'transvestite' is no longer a useful word. Look through photos of those claiming to be trangender women (often abbreviated as 'trans woman') and you will see that virtually 100% have long hair. Why? Because although there is no longer any cultural expectation that a woman not shear her locks, long hair is still culturally associated with the female sex, and those desperate to present themselves as women universally subvert this cultural norm to their own purposes.

Likewise, dresses. "Trans women" are much more likely to appear in public wearing a dress then are women themselves. Again, it is all part of a desperate ploy to appear feminine using any cultural device available to them.

So far, we are only speaking of transvestites--a word composed of elements that refer to regulating one's public appearance to match that of the opposite sex. But transgender goes beyond that; it claims to have effected an actual transference from one sex to the other. In this, it co-ops another word that adequately describes what happens in nature when certain species make the transition from a phenotypical female to phenotypical male, or vice versa: transsexual, the usage of which, along with 'transvestite', began its decline at the dawn of this century. 'Transgender' has replaced them both, and thus suffers from an inbuilt ambiguity: is a transgender someone who has actually taken steps to transition from one sexual identity to another, or merely one who wishes to?

This inbuilt ambiguity is at the very heart of the controversy currently raging over whether or not transgenders should be able to use the public restroom of their choosing. The definition with which I began this post indicates that the wordsmiths desire it to be both: A person need nothing more than an inner desire to gain access to the toilets, locker rooms, and showers of either designation. Remember that: this is not about transsexuals, or even transvestites. Bathroom Bills which give transgenders access give access to anyone based on nothing more than his or her claim to be transgender. By definition, nothing more can be required of them.

Men and women dress differently--in dresses

Earlier posts about clothing led me to add one more, here.

If you can't make out the Ethiopic, at least you can figure out the English.

'Nigger' is the new 'Peasant'

One thing about living in the modern age is the ease at which one can look up the meaning of a word. And I'm not just talking about The Internet; I was able to pick up an 8-pound unabridged 1929 dictionary for its value in scrap paper. I'm therefore able to look up meanings that are now so obsolete that they may be left out of most online definitions. Thus my surprise when I found that there is a word with a very specific meaning I could have used instead of the word 'nigger' when writing this post.

The word is 'peasant.' An ancient meaning of the word, still found online, is:

a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank.

Obviously, peasants were the niggers of their day. But you can see how this usage of the word has not kept pace with modern technology: niggers of the late 19th and early 20th century in the American South definitely fit this definition of peasants, but most niggers nowadays wouldn't.  You don't have to work on a plantation to belong to a class with a low social rank.

Hangin' with 'the brothers'--The NIV and John 2:12

As I've mentioned before in this series on translation, there is a glaring exception to the NNIV's general policy of using search-and-replace to add 'and sisters' to every mention of 'brothers' in the NT: Jesus' siblings, which are never so mentioned.

Our most recent example of such is in John 2:12--

NIV '73 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. Here they stayed for a few days.

NIV '78, '84, '01, '11 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

So, this verse got attention in the very first NIV revision, when the entire Bible was published. But none since. Interestingly, there is a textual problem in this verse--one that does come through in the various translations--

Jerusalem Bible
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and the brothers, but they stayed only a few days.

You see, very early on in the history of the Bible, the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary took a strong hold among those who read it--and those who copied it. Thus it came about that certain passages in the gospels were altered to, on the one hand, downplay the possibility that Mary had any other children, and, on the other hand, to present Joseph as Jesus' father, so as to equate the possibilities of him parenting Jesus and his "brothers." The Jerusalem Bible, a Catholic translation, goes probably the farthest in subsuming the disciples themselves into a band of "brothers" (despite wide textual variation in this verse, no manuscript that leaves out 'disciples' has 'the brothers').

The reigning Greek text in 1973 was NA26, a.k.a. UBS-2. This text follows the Perpetualist manuscripts in leaving out the 'his' with 'brothers,' but the CBT's translation philosophy allowed them to translate in such a way as to not disclose which text they were following. This textual decision was never reconsidered, either by the compilers of the two subsequent Greek texts, or the latest two iterations of the CBT.

Apparently a commitment to the handful of NT manuscripts (p66*, p75, B, L, Psi, 0141, 0162, 1071) that follow the Perpetualist line so ruled the retention of this verse as-is that the CBT never considered the possibility that, in addition to his still-virgin mother and his stepbrothers, Jesus hung out in Capernaum with at least one of his stepsisters as well.

I guess the CBT felt that their place was back home in Nazareth. Just hangin' around.

The Curious Case of Kenneth Miller

The White Man continues to get a lot of inquiries concerning the arrest of Kenneth Miller for aiding in the "kidnapping" of Isabella, Lisa Miller's biological daughter who remains with her mother against the full force and power of the U.S. federal government. That I have anything further to add to the knowledge of this case is mainly due to an FBI document that, most curiously, is unavailable on the World Wide web except on a couple of homosecksual advocacy sites.

It's an excerpt from Kenneth Miller's arrest affidavit, which, unlike in the case of Timothy Miller, has not published on the FBI website. It mostly refers to a communication between Kenneth and Timothy which had to be translated from Pennsylvania Dutch by "an FBI Contract Linguist."

Kenneth and Timothy made a mistake that has been made many times, in many places: that is, assuming that by using their own native tongue to communicate, they were protecting the content of their communication from being understood by hostile parties. The problem is that the FBI offers between $60 and $100 an hour to its contract linguists, and at those rates, it's possible to get just about any unencrypted text translated in a matter of hours.

Encrypting a text is very easy; fourth-graders do it all the time, just for the fun of it. Now, with few notable exceptions, every encrypted text ever confiscated by the government has eventually been deciphered. But encrypting a text in another language makes this up to a couple hundred times harder. You see, it wasn't very hard, even for the FBI, to identify the language that Ken and Timo were using. Timo was in Central America, and Ken was in Europe, but they were both American Mennonites, so it wasn't at all unlikely that the language they were using was the Mennonite dialect of German, known to those who speak it as Deitsch (Pennsylvania Dutch in English). Then, all they had to do was contract a member of the Mennonite ethnic group to translate the text.*

If, however, Ken and Timo had run their entire conversation through an encryption program, the FBI would have wasted a lot of time trying to decipher it on the assumption that the base language was English. Only after multiple attempts failed would they have started working on the assumption of another base language, and to do that they would have needed the services of a contract linguist for much longer. Much has been said about the money the litigant parties have spent on this case, but now it appears that the government has outspent either side in its relentless pursuit of of a nine-year old escapee.

Just as an example, here is some information on the case (AFAIK, not known to the FBI) that I have encrypted:

TDIASZOSTN ORRYYIBESX AHBODUTHQW SANIZMRANN YHOEXANATM ELQTFIMCOZ MANUYHGEXP LAWSQBNABM EWZMPILGLA UVYMHECXBF EQLWALNTFI NCZTMOYUGO GXTPOQWWAB NZTWEADION YNINRXPILE SSQHKADLLH ZISNDIIARN ANCYOBUATX THELQLFIFC INMZIUNYGF APXKWUNBTR JYQJNIBKAW RAPGUGAVUZ SMOYCHEFXF LLYTQPALAO NENZTROYIF ISRGHINDIA KXBKUTHQGS OFIERRMENN TOZMAANTYK KESLHXFHIC MQMATUZDGE PYAWIRBPOJ RTJXABNDWQ KPUFGFZUHE MYHCANFXSL OQJHETZNAOT OYANYBRULI XTSOQHREDE SKHZHINSDI IANRAYNFOO RXALOFNGMV QUBUGTZPJU WSTBYIPNXU TIMMECQTFH ETYZMSANYY AOKDAYGCXJ YOLUQKMAHY ZGGODDYAAN WXHREQYMAI KEPZIOTYUT OTXWEEDCDI BNQMANNYWX AYVZAZTYQR AGMEHRXVYO KOTCQBAIDA DITNGWVVPX

It took me less than an hour to compose, translate, and encrypt the information. Anyone with the key (which is easy to memorize) could decipher this message in ten minutes.§ Then all they would have to do is translate it back into English. The FBI could definitely do it, should they enlist the help of the NS A. But I doubt they could do it for under $150,000. There are just too many possibilities to run through before they would hit on the solution.

By the way, I am so confident of the security of this encryption that I guarantee approval of any comment that gives the solution.

* Actually, it was just a professional linguist, not a member of the Mennonite community. That makes me feel a little better about the Mennonite community! 
§once they take into account that this message, as is often the case, has some encoded mistakes.

Niggerhood in Iraq

Imagine not being allowed to attend school with the other children in your neighborhood because of what your ID card says. Imagine being told that your rent is going to go up simply because of who you are. Imagine losing your job when your employer finds out that you're one of "those people."

As explained in an earlier post, I've appropriated the word "nigger"--no longer allowed to be used by outsiders to describe those of a particular race--for a new use, one for which no suitable word previously existed (one of the many ways languages evolve). A "nigger" is anyone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. Crucial to this discrimination is being able to identify "niggers." In Iraq, it's a matter of which word one has on his ID card under the heading "Religion."

Iraqi society is strictly segregated by race and religion. Until recently, the two were one and the same. Assyrians were Orthodox; Chaldeans were Catholic; Armenians were Apostolic; and other than a smattering of Zoroastrians and Yezidis, everyone else was Muslim. Much as the two groups were at each other's throats, no distinction was made between Shia and Sunni; both classes enjoyed, at least in name, the full benefits of citizenship. For the others, a certain level of second-class citizenship was readily available, and as long as one did not aspire to anything higher than two stars in the military or a cabinet level position in the government, he was free to advance as long as he kept to his proper place.

But, ah. The 'uppity' Muslim who tries to become a Christian! Instant niggerhood.

MEN at war

"The Government of India have caused this tablet to be erected to the memory of the twenty one non-commissioned officers and men of the 36 Sikh Regiment of the Bengal Infantry whose names are engraved below as a perpetual record of the heroism shown by these gallant soldiers who died at their posts in the defence of the fort of Saragarhi, on the 12 September 1897, fighting against overwhelming numbers, thus proving their loyalty and devotion to their sovereign, the Queen Empress of India, and gloriously maintaining the reputation of the Sikhs for unflinching courage on the field of battle."

Thus reads the inscription commemorating The Battle of Saragarhi.

Notice that in 1897, the word "men" in a military context carried a very specific meaning. It was a subset of enlisted soldiers--those who were not of non-commissioned rank--just simple infantrymen.

There's that word again--"MEN." It just keeps coming up whenever people talk about soldiers, for the simple reason that soldiers historically were men. Thus we have infantryMEN in the Army, airMEN in the Air Force, seaMEN in the Navy, and just plain MEN in the Marines.

The push for inclusion of females in all branches of the Armed Forces, and eventually all MOSs, is making people increasingly uncomfortable with these labels.

There's one thing women have never done, though--other than go to the moon, which at least one of them most assuredly will do before men once again step foot thereupon--they have never made a last stand. Edit: I guess I didn't make it clear in the original post that the Battle of Saragarhi was itself a famous example of a last stand.

The New Feminist People's Collective

Who died in Afghanistan on August 12th, 2011? According to most news reports, it was "Eight NATO troops." A few news services referred to "8 service members" or even the "7 U.S. soldiers" who, along with a single unidentified European, made up the day's casualty list.

As recently as the mid-1980's, the U.S. Marines stationed in Lebanon were popularly referred to as "our boys in Beirut." At the time it was still common to speak of a nation's military by the number of "men in uniform." But times have changed, and one can no longer assume the sex of any military service member. Thus, the emergence of the strangely plural collective "troops." One never speaks of a single "troop," although such a military designation has existed at least since the thirtieth chapter of Genesis. But the awkward term "military service member," a more politically correct way of speaking of a soldier, is most often pluralized by "troops--" although clearly eight soldiers constitute a single troop at most.

It's an axiom of linguistics that the meanings of words change over time. How it works is that the connotation of a given word changes in frequency to the point that its old usage is subsumed into its new one. Inasmuch as soldiers have long since ceased to operate in troops, the old meaning lay pretty much unused. Whenever this happens, a new meaning typically attaches to the old word, and it goes on to a new life as a component in an ever-so-slightly evolved language. It's also axiomatic that some people resist such changes, yet they happen nonetheless.

Given that English has become so standardised in the past century, I guess I'm a little surprised that it continues to change nonetheless. But it's this sort of change that is the most common and the most widespread: the recycling of an old word whose primary meaning has yielded to a newer, more politically correct usage.

Definition of Niggerhood

Inasmuch as I have used a certain word a few times in this blog, I though I should stop and define it for the benefit of my readers who have most likely never encountered it the way I use it.

As a boy, I could have gotten my mouth washed out for using the word 'nigger'. During the era of Race Riots and forced desegregation, it was a word so charged with emotion that just using it could incite a riot. I myself thought of it as a pretty demeaning appellation, so I saw no reason to use it for several decades.

In recent years, however, especially after reading the series of biohistorical novels by Mildred D. Taylor, I've come to realise that the word 'nigger' best encapsulates the experience of someone who is discriminated against because he belongs to a suppressed class. The word itself comes from the Southern English pronunciation of the pidgin word for black-skinned person, nigga. It has also been pronounced nigra, and originates in the Latin word for black. All of this goes back to the fact that black-skinned people have throughout recorded history been taken as slaves in battle, and that this custom persisted centuries after the custom died out among the other races. In fact, it persists to this day, with the black slave trade curtailed but still active in the geographically diminished country of Sudan (which name, by the way, means 'black person' in the language of those who continue to take them as slaves--Arabic).

But being a nigger doesn't necessarily have anything to do with slavery. Niggerhood persisted by custom in the American South for many decades after slavery was abolished, and wherever the Police State raises its ugly head, niggerhood inevitably will be found as well. Niggerhood is simply the state of belonging to a class, the members of which are considered to be not worthy of the rights and privileges enjoyed by members of the ruling class. The recent rhetoric in Washington, for example, to the effect that members of the Tea Party ought to be "taken out and shot" for opposing Obama's debt-raising scheme, indicates that in the mind of the ruling class, even legally elected members of this newest class of Niggers don't really deserve to belong--nor, apparently, even to live. It is typical of the suppressing class to seek to kill members of the suppressed class who 'get uppity' and try to find a legal way to express their human rights--in fact, the whole notion of lynching is based on this characteristic.

So, my dear readers, be advised that I use the word "nigger" not in any specific racial sense whatsoever, but merely as shorthand for "member of a suppressed class" whether that suppression be political, economic, or social in nature. In fact, niggers will invariably encounter suppression in all of those forms, should their identity become known.

Breastfeeding fathers? The NIV and Numbers 11:12

Don't clic here
"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?" --KJV

Now, there's a problem with this. Has anyone ever heard of a nursing father? Yet the word is in the masculine gender. This is how the NASB has it:

"Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a nurse [Or foster-father] carries a nursing infant, to the land which You swore to their fathers’?" --NASB

Now, by 2010, 'nurse' still carried a female connotation, but much less so than it did 50 or even 25 years earlier, when a man who was a nurse was always referred to as "a male nurse."

So, let's give the CBT credit for making the best of the gender-specificity problem on the first try.

"Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their forefathers?" --ONIV

But the New and Improved NIV couldn't resist getting rid of that last vestige of sexism, the word "forefathers:"

"Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors?" --NNIV

The NLT clearly went too far trying to feminize the entire verse:

"Did I give birth to them? Did I bring them into the world? Why did you tell me to carry them in my arms like a mother carries a nursing baby? How can I carry them to the land you swore to give their ancestors?"

But focusing on gender only obscures a literal understanding of the passage. This is the situation: Moses is complaining to God that the people he gave him are too much to bear. Moses is carrying on a one-sided conversation with God:

Why am I saddled with the impossible job of leading these people? (is it because I deserved it?)
What have I done to deserve it? (is it because I'm their progenitor or something?)
Did I conceive them?
Did I carry them in my womb?
Did I give birth to this people?
(implied answer: No)
Then why are you making me carry them at my breast all the way to the promised land?
How can I possibly feed them all? They are hollering for food.

This is obviously a metaphorical picture Moses is painting, of someone who has never been pregnant, much less given birth--and therefore can't lactate--being handed a baby and told to nurse it. S/he can't! Neither can Moses handle the burden of providing food for six hundred thousand men and their families.

God's answer?

"Okay, so you can't handle the responsibility for all these whiners. Send seventy men up on the mountain and I'll distribute your authority upon them so they can share the load of leading my people."

This is clearly the intended meaning of this passage. Interpreting it literally, as the KJV does, offends the language; we don't have nursing fathers--at least not in the dialects of most English speakers. Interpreting it metaphorically, on the other hand, unpacks the literal meaning: Moses didn't think he could physically handle the job God had given him.

The NIV, more concerned with gender sensitivity than unpacking the meaning, obscures the literal meaning by translating ha-omen as "nurse." For one thing, it's not the usual Hebrew word for wet-nurse; look how the NIV translates its other occurrences in the Bible:

Ruth 4:16 Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.

Lamentations 4:5b Those brought up in royal purple now lie on ash heaps.

Isaiah 49:23 Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.

Isaiah 60:4 Your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip.

The word omen signifies, not a breastfeeding relationship, but one of caring for a nursing baby in other ways than breastfeeding. Moses uses it ironically: God is telling him to take a nursing baby, and care for it himself--without breastfeeding--all the way through the wilderness journey to the promised land! Clearly this is impossible, as Moses sees the situation. So let's see how we could allow this meaning, clear in Hebrew, to come across in English:

So Moses said to YHWH, "Why are You doing this to Your servant? What have I done to deserve You putting the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people, or give them birth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom,’ as if I were a father carrying his suckling child all the way to the land which You swore to their forefathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For theirs is a constant whine in mine ears, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’"

Once again, we see the NIV's Committee for Bible Translation  translating a masculine word in such a way as to thrust femininity into a context where it has no business being. Their pink-coloured glasses have blinded them again.

EDIT July 2017

It's been brought to my attention that the word 'nurse' as a verb carries very different connotations in American and British English, respectively.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the primary meaning of 'nurse' is to care for a person or animal that is sick. From that, the verb split into to secondary meanings on either side the Atlantic--and in both cases, these became the most common usages of the verb: In Britain and thus the Commonweath, to 'nurse' a baby simply means to care for it; the term 'baby-sit' is approximately analogous. But in the USA, to 'nurse' a baby clearly means allowing it to suck at the breast (whether natural or artificial).
The ONIV was an attempt to produce an English version free of both Briticisms and Americanisms. To accomplish that, it would have been best to eliminate the word 'nurse' altogether, but a compromise at least was reached in using the word only as a noun, where it carries close to the same meaning in either dialect--someone whose job is to care for sick and injured people--a meaning, however, that simply doesn't apply here.

Copasetic

I first heard the word "Copasetic" used about 25 years ago. It was immediately clear from its context what the word meant: satisfactory. Linguists have puzzled for years, though, over where the word came from.

I would suggest that the word ultimately originated from the Greek phrase κομψός ἔχεις, which means 'getting along well'. There are several other Greek words with similar sounds and meaning, such as κοπάζω and especially its form κοπάσει.

Three Levels of Numerical Precision in Published Report

Headline: "Libyan forces pound Misrata, 1,000 evacuated by sea"

Dateline: "BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – A chartered ship evacuated nearly 1,000 foreign workers and wounded Libyans from Misrata on Monday"

Copy: "The Ionian Spirit steamed out of Misrata carrying 971 people, most of them weak and dehydrated migrants mainly from Ghana, the Philippines and Ukraine, heading for the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya."

Thus we see three accepted levels of precision, all in the space of a single article. We could go even further and count the exact number of souls on board, which would include all those in utero. Interestingly enough, this would probably be within the range already outlined; a different number from the third listed, equally precise, yet both perfectly accurate.

This is something to keep in mind when dissecting the Four Gospels.

"Allah" is not a Muslim word; Allah is not a Muslim god.

As is well known, Christian Arabs use the word "Allah," and "Allah" is found throughout the Arab Bible. But the contentious question for at least the past couple of decades has been, Did pre-Islamic Christians use the word "Allah?"

Well, a doctoral thesis recently made available online has finally put to rest the idea that "Allah" is a Muslim idol. The author analysed a medieval Arabic manuscript and was able to prove that it is a copy of a pre-Islamic Classical Arabic Gospel translated from an ancient form of Aramaic. It has proper nouns in forms that became extinct in the Islamic era, even among Christians. It even uses a spelling for 'Jesus' not used since among Christians or Muslims. But--guess what--it uses 'Allah' for God.

Allah is not an idol, any more than God is an idol. 'Allah' and 'God' are just two different ways of translating the word 'Theo' which, in turn, is the Greek word that translates "Elohim." 'Allah' is, in fact, much closer to 'Elohim' than 'God' or even 'Theo' are. Pre-Islamic Arabs were no strangers to the idea of one true God--they were, after all, descended from Abraham, who thought nothing of referring to God as "El Elyon."

Just because you name your teddy bear Theo, doesn't mean that God is a Greek teddy bear. Just because Muslims retained the pre-Islamic Arabic word for deity in their theology and creed, doesn't mean that Allah is a Muslim idol.

But alas--minds, once hardened, cannot be molded, even with the truth.

Today's English Lesson

Today's sample of incorrect and misleading English comes from Avi Issacharoff:

The Palestinian Authority, as well as the leaders of the Palestinian popular protests in villages such as Bil'in, Na'alim, Umm Salmuna, have been trying to keep the following story away from both public knowledge and the media's eye: One of the more prominent Umm Salmuna activists – a village south of Bethlehem, long entrenched in a battle against the West Bank separation fence – is suspected of the attempted rape of an American peace activist who had been residing in the village as part of her support of the local protest.

Omar Aladdin, who had been arrested three months ago over suspicions he had attempted to rape the U.S. citizen, was subsequently released after agreeing to apologize to the young woman. However, Haaretz had learned that representatives of both the popular protest movement and the PA have since applied pressure on the American peace activist as to prevent her from making the story public.

The incident allegedly took place last April, as Aladdin, who had served a term in the Israeli jail in the past, arrived one evening at the guest house in which many of the foreign peace activists were staying. The European and American female activists reportedly agreed to let Aladdin stay with them after he had told them he feared the Israel Defense Forces were on his tail, adding that he had been severely beaten at an IDF checkpoint only a week before.

During his stay Aladdin allegedly attempted to rape a Muslim-American woman, nicknamed "Fegin" by fellow activists. The woman escaped, later accusing the popular protest man of the attempt. One villager who had encountered the American following the incident said she had been in a state of shock.

Aladdin then refused to apologize for the incident, when news of it reached the village's popular committee, the popular protests' governing body, allegedly saying that the incident had been marginal and normal. The American activist then asked the committee to notify authorities of the attempted rape, a request which resulted in the man being arrested by security forces in Bethlehem. After agreeing to apologize for the incident, Aladdin was released from custody by the PA police.

The U.S. citizen was then convinced to retract her complaint, as to avoid tainting the image of the popular protest, which had attracted praise from around the world in recent months.

The pertinent portion of this story is the following imbedded sentence:

One of the more prominent Umm Salmuna activists – a village south of Bethlehem, long entrenched in a battle against the West Bank separation fence – is suspected of the attempted rape of an American peace activist who had been residing in the village as part of her support of the local protest.

Let's break it down.
Subject: one
Predicate: is suspected
Appositive Subject: village
Appositive Predicate: entrenched
Indirect Object: rape

Now, let's switch the appositive with the subject and see what we get:

A village south of Bethlehem, long entrenched in a battle against the West Bank separation fence - one of the more prominent Umm Salmuna activists – is suspected of the attempted rape of an American peace activist who had been residing in the village as part of her support of the local protest.

Now, obviously a village is not suspected of attempted rape. This is how the sentence should have been framed:

One of the more prominent activists in Umm Salmuna – a village south of Bethlehem, long entrenched in a battle against the West Bank separation fence – is suspected of the attempted rape of an American peace activist who had been residing in the village as part of her support of the local protest.

See how easy that was, Avi? Breaking it down again:

Subject: one
Predicate: is suspected
Subordinate Clause Subject: village
Subordinate Clause Predicate: entrenched
Indirect Object: rape