"Evolutionary Hymn," A Poem by Clive Staples Lewis, annotated and explained

I came across this poem attributed to a 1954 letter from C.S. Lewis to Dorothy Sayers and published in Part 2 of his collected poems. Its online text is remarkably pure; besides capitalization and misplaced or missing punctuation marks (as well as == for 'equals'), the only variants I found are the presence of an introductory indefinite article in the title, and the majority error of "Oh" for "On" at the head of the last stanza. I give here my critical compilation:

EVOLUTIONARY HYMN

to the tune Mannheim, a parody of “Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us"

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
While there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.

Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.

Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
 By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).

I was surprised that none had succumbed to the temptation to change the first instance of 'god' to 'goal', but apparently this poem has only been passed on by prudent scribes; I suspect the major variant is from the oldest cyberscript, and has only been corrected because internal evidence is so overwhelmingly against it.

You can see allusions in this poem to the Greek classics, Scripture, and Lewis Carroll. "Chop and change" is an old English idiom for 'peddle' found in early translations of 2 Corinthians 2:17, but Lewis is using it here in its modern meaning. "Jam to-morrow," referring to a promise that can never be fulfilled, is a pun on a feature of Latin Grammar immortalized by the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass.

In this poem Lewis mocks what he called "The Evolution Myth" in which every genetic change is believed to be inevitably for the better, maugre all evidence to the contrary. And he points out what evolutionists themselves are rue to admit, that the struggle to survive runs contrary to the cultural norms that are the very fibre of civilisation, there being no other evolutionary standard than that of survival by whatever means necessary.

Lewis, who started his career as an ardent evolutionist and often co-opted evolutionary theory to explain his theology, clearly became quite disillusioned by its empty promises as he entered his latter years, this poem coming out in his final decade of life.

More Problems with the "Oldest and Best" Cyberscripts

I ran across this riddle years ago in hard copy, and recently decided to go online and try a little more cybertextual criticism (earlier attempts can be found under this post). Here is a random webex that, on the basis of its several scansion problems, appears to have suffered corruption (by the way, if you can't solve the riddle, hold on--the answer will be provided in due course, after a series of clews).
I doubled all the lines to save space, and added line numbers:

1 Adam, God made out of dust But thought it best to make me first,
So I was made before man To answer God's most Holy plan.
A living being I became And Adam gave to me my name.
I from his presence then withdrew And more of Adam never knew.
5 I did my Maker's law obey Nor ever went from it astray.
Thousands of miles I go in fear But seldom on earth appear.
For purpose wise God did see, He put a living soul in me.
A soul from me God did claim And took from me the soul again.
So when from me the soul had fled I was the same as when first made.
10 And without hands, or feet, or soul, I travel on from pole to pole.
I labor hard by day, by night To fallen man I give great light.
Thousands of people, young and old Will by my death great light behold.
No right or wrong can I conceive The scripture I cannot believe.
Although my name therein is found They are to me an empty sound.
15 No feat of death doth trouble me Real happiness I'll never see.
To Heaven I shall never go Or to Hell below.
Now when these lines you slowly read, Go search your Bible with all speed
For that my name is written there I do honestly to you declare.

So, what have we here? Let's see if we can identify corruptions just from a single copy, conjecturing emendations as suggested by internal evidence:

1. In line 2, a syllable is missing: perhaps an article before 'man'.
2. Line 6 is also missing something: perhaps 'Ten thousand' for 'thousands of' and 'do' before 'on'.
3. Line 7 should perhaps read 'For purpose only God did see'.
4. Line 8 is missing something, perhaps 'then' after 'God'.
5. In line 15, 'feat' is obviously a scribal error for 'fear'.
6. Line 16 is missing quite a bit, probably by parablepsis.
7. Line 18 is the last line; further research will probably show that some scribes didn't like the Abrupt Ending and added one or another alternative endings.

So here are some alternate readings to the above variant units, found in the next webex on the search page (Webex a):

1. a So I was made sometime before man
2. a But seldom on earth do I appear
3. a For purpose only God did see
4. a The soul in me, God had fed, Until, finally, the soul had fled. I am the same As when first made.
5. a fear
6. a nor to hell far below.
7. a Short ending: The answer is one word.

Note that I made all the above conjectures BEFORE looking for variant webices. And that not all of them were resolved on the first go.  So we'll keep going.

Another webex, next one down on the list (Webex b):
1. b So I was made before man,
2. b but seldom on earth appear.
3. b For purpose wise which God did see
4. b  And when from me the soul had fled, I was the same as when first made.
5. b fear (same as a and the conjectured reading)
6. b or to hell below (the text reading)
7. b Prologue: "This riddle was written by a lady in California in 1890 in response to a gentleman in Pennsylvania who said he would pay $1,000.00 to anyone who could write a puzzle he could not solve. He failed to solve this puzzle and paid the lady the $1,000.00, a great sum at that time. An 8 year old boy figured it out." Here is the entire, cleverly worded, puzzle: What is one word and five letters that only appeared in the King James Version four times.
b Colophon: [solution redacted] mentioned 6 times.

Webex b then goes on to add a Longer Ending, appending the full references of all six times the word is mentioned in the 1611 KJV.

I found a few other textually independent webices that seem to have all derived immediately from one or the other of the above, with minor scribal errors. Due to the algorithms of the search engine, only the first couple of hits are likely to ever be electronically copied--a form of valuing number, rather than weight. But it really is incredible that even in this cut-and-paste electronic age, the same kind of errors that we see in ancient manuscripts continue to to be made: just in the above three samples we see omission, substitution, addition, transposition, and interpolation. Multiple dislocation also occurred, as we shall see shortly.  Itacism seems to be the only scribal variant to have been eliminated by the electronic revolution (thanks to Spellcheck--which, ironically, is a conserving influence on the letter level, but an innovating influence on the word level), although capitalization and punctuation still vary widely.

Ah, yes, the clews (you may have noticed that I used the archaic spelling, however current within the present lifetime). The first is that the answer can only be found in the King James Version--which, ironically, only has it two times, none in a passage rather crucial to solving it, but incorporated therein by reference; and--likewise crucial to solving the riddle--with a different form of the word two more times.

The answer will be added as an edit, before my next post. But feel free to comment until then; just be prepared to explain your answer.

And finally, dear reader, here is your author's own recension of the riddle--all 20 well-scanned lines of it--online here for the first time. The considerable textual differences from ALL the webices are largely due to it being based on a pre-internet archetype that underwent major dumbing down at the hands of less literate scribes over the decades it was transmitted in hard copy. I trust you'll see that this eliminates the need to conjecture emendations to solve the problems noted above. And that the oldest webices are far from the best, the most major rescension having occurred in their electronically inextant ancestors.

God made Adam out of dust, but thought it best to make me first.
So I was made before the man, according to God's holy plan.
My body he did make complete--but without arms, or legs, or feet--
My ways and actions did control, as I was made without a soul.

A living creature I became; 'twas Adam gave to me my name.
Then from his presence I withdrew--no more of Adam ever knew.
Ten thousand miles before me reared; I seldom from the land appeared.
I did my Maker's laws obey; from them I never went astray.

Then God some pow'r in me did see, and put a living soul in me.
The soul in me the Lord did claim, and took from me that soul again.
And when from me the soul was fled, I was the same as when first made.

So without hands, or feet, or soul, I travel on from pole to pole;
My work the same by day or night--to fallen man I give great light.
Great hordes of people, young and old, do by my death great light behold.

No fear of death doth trouble me, and happiness I cannot see.
To heav'n above I ne'er shall go; nor to the grave, nor hell below.
No right or wrong can I conceive; the Scripture I cannot believe.
Although my name therein is found, they are to me an empty sound.

And when, my friends, these lines you read, go search the Scriptures with all speed;
And if my name you can't find there, it will be strange, as I declare.

ETA: Congratulations to Lydia for identifying and explaining the correct solution: whale.
The clues are right in the riddle: What other footless creature travels ten thousand miles from the North to the South Pole, seldom appearing from land? Also, whales were famous back then for not having a grave--no whale carcasses were being found buried on land.
Now, the reason this only works in the King James is that "whale" and "whales" translates two completely different words in the KJV: tannin in the OT, and keta in the NT. The former word actually refers to a reptilian monster, and the latter simply to a large sea creature. "Whale" as a modern English word can only be a subset of the latter definition, and in fact there is nothing in Scripture to specify that the creature in whose belly Jonah spent 3 days and 3 nights was a cetacean. It could have been a shark or other giant fish. So to recap, Jonah could have been swallowed by a whale, and God did make whales the day before Adam, but the Bible doesn't mention what we now know as whales specifically anywhere. Thus the riddle only works for someone wearing blinders imposed by the translation choices of the KJV editors.

So how many times ARE whales mentioned in the Bible--two, four, or six? Actually, as the Bible has been translated into pre-modern English, there are TWELVE different verses that mention 'whale' or 'whales' (including, as did the 1611 KJV, the Apocrypha), but none of them specifically referring to a cetacean:

 Genesis 1:21 And God made great whales, and every living reptile, which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every creature that flies with wings according to its kind, and God saw that they were good.
 Job 3:8 But let him that curses that day curse it, even he that is ready to attack the great whale.
 Job 7:12 Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?
 Job 9:13 For if he has turned away his anger, the whales under heaven have stooped under him.
 Job 26:12 He has calmed the sea with his might, and by his wisdom the whale has been overthrown.
 Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.
 Daniel 3:23.5 (LXX)  Then the three, as out of one mouth, praised, glorified, and blessed, God in the furnace, saying, Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fathers: and to be praised and exalted above all for ever.  . . . O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever.
 Jonah 2:1 Now the Lord had commanded a great whale to swallow up Jonas: and Jonas was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights.
 Jonah 2:2 And Jonas prayed to the Lord his God out of the belly of the whale,
 Jonah 2:11 And the whale was commanded by the Lord, and it cast up Jonas on the dry land.
 Sirach 43:25 For therein be strange and wondrous works, variety of all kinds of beasts and whales created.
 Matthew 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

The most embarrassing article in National Geographic--and a nice poem

In a past post, I mentioned that the National Geographic Magazine had become a propaganda arm of the US Military by 1943. Today I discovered that only about five years earlier, in what National Geographic is now calling "among the most embarrassing [article] in National Geographic’s history," NGM had served as a mouthpiece for Hitler. Free-lance American correspondent and photographer Douglas Chandler provided for the February 1937 issue a 9000-word article entitled "Changing Berlin," with "47 pages of dramatic images showing swastika-draped buildings and reverential descriptions of a city under Nazi rule."

But note, his submission was fully in conformance to NGM editorial standards: to include only stories “of a kindly nature” and strictly apolitical. One wonders where those standards had gone only five years later, and if perhaps a misplaced sense of guilt was behind the change.

During the War in Europe, Chandler became a literal mouthpiece for Hitler, railing against Jews and Bolsheviks on short-wave broadcasts aimed at America. After the war ended, he was hunted down and brought back to the US to stand trial for treason. Convicted, he served a fifteen-year "life sentence" before being released to return to Europe.

The editors at the National Geographic Society had a lot of explaining to do when irate letters began to pour in from listeners who had heard Mr. Chandler repeatedly mention his connection to the National Geographic Society during his propaganda broadcasts. Apparently no such apologies were ever made in defense of their pro-USA propaganda articles.

Now, while I am at making this month's post, I want to share with my readers a poem published over half a century ago (perhaps written a quarter-century before that), and apparently never yet posted to the Internet. I say apparently, because in recent years search engines have become so sure of what their customers are looking for that simply entering in a character string no longer ensures that any or all online sources containing that string will come up in the results. But here it is:

In the solemn stillness of an early dawn is heard
The crystal-throated reveille of a waking bird.
Donning golden slippers arises then the Day
And flings across the morning sky her crimson negligee.

Enchanting now, she saunters forth to spread abroad her charm
And shakes perfume from every flower to smooth upon her arm.
She paints the children's bodies brown, their faces rosy fair,
And with soft fluting of the wind breathes kisses through their hair.

Shrill piccolo of the cricket warns that night at last has come!
She gathers up her flowing skirts and hastens quickly home.
But looking up into the sky, a wary child might find--
She left her veil of mauve chiffon trailing far behind.

--Helen Wessel, Natural Childbirth and the Christian Family. pp. 3-4. Fourth Revised Edition, (c) 1983, Harper & Row Publishers

P.S. Sure enough, this poem in the same form can be found online in the original 1963 edition--IF one knows where, and how, to look. The book was contemporaneously published under a similar title, Natural Childbirth and the Family, as well as under the later and even more innocuous title The Joy of Childbirth. All likewise online, but apparently now out of print.

P.P.S. I just noticed, in proofreading this prior to publication, that, in addition to omitting the final letter of 'early', resulting in the nonsense reading of "earl dawn," I had committed the scribal error of homeoteleuton, skipping from 'up' in the antepenultimate line, to 'into' in the penultimate, with the resultant loss of the end of one line and the beginning of the next. Note that this was probably influenced by the plausibility of the new reading, "gathers up into the sky."

A metrical English translation of 'La Cucaracha'

Most Americans over the age of 40 would probably recognize "La Cucaracha's" catchy tune, and could even provide the first four words. But I doubt that even one in a thousand knows any more of the song. Now, part of the problem is that there are so many different verses, and even more parodies--all of them in Spanish. So, in the interests of literary literacy, I here provide a metrical translation of the chorus, from the Spanish as I first saw it written:

Though Mister Cockroach
May be outspoken,
He won't be gettin' very far.
He won't be smokin',
He won't be jokin',
Because he ain't got no cigar.

Actually, the last word in the original is 'marijuana,' but there are a lot of people in Washington who read this blog--and it would mess up both the rhyme and the meter.

I'm not sure if the song was the origin of calling a joint 'a roach' or not--I'll leave that to someone else to investigate.

Why The White Man is not an Expert on Anything

I wrote recently on the subject of Old Pilots and Bold Pilots, in which I appeared to find some exceptions to the rule that there are no old, bold pilots. But as I consider the question, I think that my exceptions actually proved the rule. The pilots who lived to an advanced age may or may not have started out bold; but, having survived any risks they undertook in their youth, later flew as carefully as their old age required.

There is a corollary, I think, to the question of learning. "A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote Alexander Pope at the age of twenty-one, in his first published work. Here is the quote in context:

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744), An Essay on Criticism L. 215, 1711.

But look what Pope wrote the year he died:

"Ask of the Learned the way? The Learned are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it Pleasure, and Contentment these."
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. IV. L. 19.

Another thirty-five years had dimmed in Pope's mind the value of much learning. Indeed, much learning was ridiculed by the ancients:

"Your much learning is driving you insane."
Porcius Festus, quoted in Luke, Acts, XXVI.24, c. 50

Especially was much learning of useless facts ridiculed:

"The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read."
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto I. St. 40, published anonymously in 1819

The ancients valued learning, but never for learning's sake:

"Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous."
Confucius, Analects Bk. II. Ch. XV.

Even much learning could end up being of no benefit:

"I’ve studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine
And even, alas, Theology
From end to end with labor keen;
And here, poor fool; with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before."
Goethe, Faust, I. Night, 1808.

Learning was only of use if it resulted in wisdom:

"The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction." Solomon, Proverbs, I. 7, c. 1000 BCE

"Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes
And pause awhile from Learning to be wise;
Yet think what ills the scholar’s life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the goal.
See nations, slowly wise and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust."
Samuel Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, L. 157, 1754.

So, is much learning--the kind of learning that requires one to become an expert on anything--really worth it?

"Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. " James, James III.1, c. 45

"Few men make themselves Masters of the things they write or speak."
John Selden (1584 – 1654), Table Talk, "Learning."

Perhaps, taking our cue from the Bold Pilots, we who aspire to teach should begin in our youth to acquire much learning, realising that it will be some time before we will actually have the wisdom required to profitably impart that learning to others. But we must always realise that we are ever learning, even as we are teaching:

Homines, dum docent, discunt [Men learn while they teach].
Seneca, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium VII, 64

So, The White Man is not an expert on anything--yet; and may never be. But in the mean time, I intend to stick out my neck and at least question the learning--yea, even the wisdom--of those who claim that they are. And, in so doing, I expect to learn more myself.

Another reason why this is an anonymous blog

Charles Wesley, who wrote thousands of hymns, penned the following:

"I beg leave to mention a thought which has been long upon my mind, and which I should long ago have inserted in the public papers, had I not been unwilling to stir up a nest of hornets. Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honor to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them, for they are really not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore, I must beg of them these two favors: either to let them stand just as they are, to take things for better or worse, or to add the true reading in the margin, or at the bottom of the page, that we may no longer be accountable for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men."

So you see, if what I write turns out to be of enduring value, we had just better expect it to be reprinted without authorization or even attribution. But, in many cases, with emendation. So it is just as well, I suppose, that it start out without being tagged to any one author, and let it take on a life of its own should it will.

Some time later, it may emerge in such a twisted form that I will have to refute it myself, and all the better then, that it was never attributed to me.

Between her WHAT?

What ought to be removed from between an adulterous woman's breasts?

Translators have struggled to answer this question (raised by Hosea 2:2), and most have decided to just leave it as it is. Those who have changed the wording, though, haven't done so well. They started with misdirected modesty and ended up with vulgarity. Along the way they totally lost the impact of the anthropomorphic language that is key to understanding the message of Hosea.

Most versions are pretty straightforward:

OKJV: let her therefore put away her whoredomes out of her sight, and her adulteries from betweene her breasts;

NASB: let her put away her harlotry from her face And her adultery from between her breasts,

YLT: she turneth her whoredoms from before her, And her adulteries from between her breasts,

DBY: let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;

WEB: let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;

NKJV: Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, And her adulteries from between her breasts;


The obvious meaning, as expressed in Hebrew parallelism, is to stop seeking and participating in adultery.

It is possible to put this in entirely modern English and still get the point:

NCV: Tell her to stop acting like a prostitute, to stop behaving like an unfaithful wife.


But it hasn't been all that obvious to some who take the dynamic equivalent approach; they just can't seem to put that geographically vital area between the breasts out of their sight:

NIV: Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

Adulterous "look?" This is heading us in the wrong direction--watch where it takes us!

NLT: Tell her to take off her garish makeup and suggestive clothing and to stop playing the prostitute.

Makeup?! Here we have a literal translation of the paraphrase "the 'adulterous' look."
And actually, I think taking off suggestive clothing is a big part of playing the prostitute!

MSG: Tell her to quit dressing like a whore, displaying her breasts for sale.

By the way, adulterous women don't sell their breasts; they buy them.

Alas, all this focus on breasts has completely missed the point of the passage. We would have been better off staying with the Living Bible, which avoids the word whenever possible:

LB: Beg her to stop her harlotry, to quit giving herself to others.

"Woman with sister woman?"

Katharine L. Aller was an American poetess who flourished in the 1940's. She composed this hymn in 1944 to the tune TOULON:

God of a universe within whose bounds
Thy vast creation moves in ordered space;
Sons of a nation born of faith and wounds,
We seek from Thee our true appointed place.

Within Thy purpose, through the ages’ span,
We would discern our country’s destined role:
In all our councils, man with brother man,
We would obey the law of love’s control.

By all the grief man’s strife with man entails,
By all the woe that stalks oppression’s train,
By Thy great sacrifice which still prevails,
Free us from lust for all unworthy gain.

So shall we deal in justice like to Thine;
So shall the love of mercy light our land,
Marking the footprints of the Love Divine,
Where we walk humbly, guided by Thy hand.

Lead us into the light that shines from Thee
For all mankind; for ne’er shall it fulfill
Its pure effulgence till all men are free,
Free through the truth which is th’ eternal will.

©1945 by The Hymn Society of America.

Now, note that while Katharine is obviously a woman, she identifies the corporate entity of which she is a part indifferently as Sons, man with brother man, all mankind, and all men. Yet she is obviously under no delusions that by using such language, she is excluding most of the population, including herself, from the prayer.

But even if the author were a man, only one of these labels would be considered acceptable in these last days, when "Bring Me Men," the opening words of Sam W. Foss' poem The Coming American had to be expunged from a stone arch overlooking the Air Force Academy's parade grounds just to avoid offending the weaker sex. But Katharine Aller--to say nothing of Sam Foss--would be at a loss to account for this removal. And ironically, it was the modern female performer Lamya who finally set Foss' words to music, incorporating its opening lines into the lyrics of her song, "Empires," without altering the gender:

Bring me men to match my mountains,
Bring me men to match my plains;
Men with empires in their purpose
And new eras in their brains.

The TNIV and Evil Sight

The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) of the International Bible Society (IBS) came out with the New International Version (NIV--NT only) in 1973. By 1978 the whole Bible was published in a new edition, and revised again in 1984. Subsequent to that, the CBT tested the waters with the NIrV and the gender-neutral NIV before declaring that all future revisions would be confined to a "new translation," to be called the TNIV, and that the 1984 NIV would stay in print unrevised as long as there was a market for it. Rupert Murdoch's Harper-Collins publishing house retains retail distribution rights in the US to all English Bibles translated by the CBT. Meanwhile, IBS translations have been done in Spanish and Portuguese under the NVI brand name.

What provoked my earlier run of posts on the TNIV was the CBT's claim that it was translated into more accurate English than had been the NIV (and, of course, the KJV). The pinnacle of this claim was its use of gender-neutral inclusive language. I have shown this claim to be a farce. Language in the TNIV is not neutral, but neutered.

What has provoked this recent run of posts on the TNIV is the CBT's claim to express the Word of God in the language of today's young person--one who supposedly cannot understand the now-archaic language of earlier versions. I have shown this claim to be a joke as far as the Old Testament portions of the TNIV are concerned. Other than the global change from generic masculine to inclusive language, the NIV was left pretty much untouched, archaic language and all.

A prime example has come to view, which is the extremely archaic phrase, "evil in his sight." This idiom is an excellent example of the sort of archaic ecclesiastical language that the NIV itself was to have long since put to rest. But look where it pops up, unchanged, in the TNIV (only relevant portions of the following verses are shown):

Numbers 32:13
The LORD's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.

Deuteronomy 9:18
Then once again I fell prostrate before the LORD for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the LORD's sight and so arousing his anger.

Deuteronomy 31:29
"In days to come, disaster will fall on you because you will do evil in the sight of the LORD and arouse his anger by what your hands have made."

1 Chronicles 21:7
This command was also evil in the sight of God; so he punished Israel.

Nehemiah 9:28
"But as soon as they were at rest, they again did what was evil in your sight."

Psalm 51:4
Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

Isaiah 65:12
"You did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me."

Isaiah 66:4
"They did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me."

Jeremiah 18:10
and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

Jeremiah 32:30
"The people of Israel and Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth," declares the LORD.

In most of the OT passages where some form of this idiom is found, the NIV had "evil in his eyes," which the TNIV left unchanged. The one is even more archaic than the other, being found in Wycliffe's editions of the 14th century. But what is fascinating about this is that the NIV and TNIV tend to have "eyes" where the KJV has "eyes," and "sight" where it has "sight." This despite assurances from the CBT that the NIV was a completely new translation, not a revision of the KJV--and that the TNIV gives a dynamic meaning to the text, not a literal equivalent--the Hebrew word being the same in either case!

It is becoming clear that today's Bible translators don't like to go to all the work of coming up with a new translation of the entire Hebrew/Aramaic Old Testament, and prefer to confine their creative energies to the Greek of the New. Thus the TNIV pretty much follows the NIV, which pretty much follows the KJV, whose partial switch to "sight" from "eyes" can be traced back to the Geneva Bible-- a switch, never brought to completion in the TNIV, from the usage of the Coverdale Bible, which in much of the OT portion, like Wycliffe's editions, was based on the Vulgate of Jerome.

Here we are reminded of that immortal poem by Sam Walter Foss:

One day, through the primeval wood,
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail as all calves do.

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day,
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then a wise bell-wether sheep,
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep;

And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o'er hill and glade.
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about;
And uttered words of righteous wrath,
Because 'twas such a crooked path.

But still they followed - do not laugh -
The first migrations of that calf.
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
that bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load,

Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half,
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare;

And soon the central street was this,
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half,
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout*,
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went,
The traffic of a continent.

A hundred thousand men were led,
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent,
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind,
Along the calf-paths of the mind;
And work away from sun to sun,
To do what other men have done.

They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.

They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!

Ah! many things this tale might teach -
But I am not ordained to preach.

*Archaic: a company or band of people; horde

Singing heresy

It is a curious characteristic of the ordinary Christian that he is able to lift his voice to God in song using the words of someone with whom he is at theological enmity. Thus Calvinists can ring out in the words of Wesley, "Jesus, Lover of my soul, let me to Thy Bosom fly," while anti-Calvinists can just as wholeheartedly repeat the words of Wesley's theological opponent Toplady, "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee;" and indeed, the two messages sound forth as one--at least in their opening lines.

Yet will the Calvinist still be singing when he reaches the words, "Leave, ah, leave me not alone," though his doctrine allows for no such eventuality. Likewise will the anti-Calvinist keep up the volume when arriving at "Thou must save, and Thou alone--" although he thinks of himself as playing some role in the receipt of that salvation.

Indeed, although every hymnbook probably contains at least one song that would be perceived as objectionable if sung in many of the churches whose pew racks contain it, few are the premillennialists who will seal their lips during the chorus of "We've a story to tell to the nations," for were they to fail to sing out the heresies of Postmillennialism, they must needs keep silent for the duration of at least three of the four stanzas.

Yet there are unmistakably some songs that a Calvinist will never be able to bring himself to sing--even some written by the beloved Wesley himself. At the very least he will seek respite in the subterfuge of Jean Fritz, who found herself, as the child of expatriate Americans, attending a British school in China. Loathe to sing "God Save the King" at the beginning of class each day, she discovered to her delight that "My country, 'tis of thee" could be vigorously mouthed to the identical tune, which became her undetected practice for the duration of her education there.

And yet, I'm thinking that my example above shows that Calvinists and anti-Calvinists are not yet at such a level of enmity. This brings me to my question: are there any songs of such rank Calvinist nature that no anti-Calvinist could sing them aloud? I suspect that songs from neither extreme of this musicological spectrum would ever find popular acceptance in either camp, but I welcome my readers to prove me wrong.

The whole story behind the Grandfather Clock

From the internet

My Grandfather's Clock
by Henry Clay Work

In Piercebridge, England in north Yorkshire there was an old hotel called the George Hotel.The place was a rest stop for weary travelers and was run by two brothers, last name of Jenkins. In the lobby of the hotel was an old upright clock. The clock always kept perfect time until one of the old Jenkins brothers died. Gradually the clock started losing time, first a minute or so every few days, then a minute a day, then several minutes a day. Clockmakers were called in to repair the clock, but no matter what their level of expertise, it seemed nothing could be done.One day shortly after the second old man Jenkins passed away in his ninetieth year, the old clock quit running completely. It never ran again. Attempts to fix the clock by the new owner of the George Hotel failed. But the clock, having become somewhat of a mysterious landmark in the hotel, was left to stand in the corner of the lobby - dusted and polished, but silent.

Sometime during the 1870's, a man, a songwriter from the States came to stay at the George Hotel. He was told the story of the Jenkins brothers and the old clock. It inspired him. When he got back to the States he wrote a tune about the clock and its story, but to personalize the lyrics somewhat he decided to write about one old man and visualized that old man as his own grandfather. The tune was named My Grandfather's Clock.

I found this story in Paul Aurandt's book Destiny and 102 Other Real Life Mysteries.

Henry Clay Work had already gained much success in the United States during the Civil War for several tunes he penned - Kingdom Coming and Marching Through Georgia among them.The tune My Grandfather's Clock became very well known, but perhaps more well known than even the tune is name for that type of clock. Before Henry Clay Work named the tall standing clock in his song "My Grandfather's Clock," those types of clocks were known as case clocks, coffin clocks, standing clocks, upright clock, long clocks, etc. It was only after the tune was written that they became known as Grandfather Clocks.

My Grandfather's Clock

My mother used to sing this song to me. It would have been written shortly after her grandmother was born in 1872, and perhaps she sang it to her.

Her son, my own grandfather, died on his 96th birthday--after relinquishing the long-held claim that he would live to be 100.

If I live to my 90th birthday, I want this sung at my funeral dinner. I don't have as lofty a goal as my grandfather--I don't expect to live any past 90--but I don't want to die until my youngest grandchild is at least 5 years old (as his was).

There must be over a hundred slightly differing versions of this song online. Many leave out the third or fourth verse, and I found half a dozen different renditions just of the word after "pluming". Although several could, by intrinsic probability, offer themselves as the oldest and best version, this is the only one with "its" before childhood (clearly the more difficult reading), and furthermore is on the site of a biography of the author, Henry Clay Work. It is the best known of the dozens of songs he wrote. He gained fame during the Civil War for his wartime songs, so he was already quite famous when he wrote this one.
1
My grandfather's clock
Was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half
Than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn
Of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.
2
In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And its childhood and manhood
The clock seemed to know,
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four
When he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride;
But it stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.
3
My grandfather said
That of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time,
And had but one desire,
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place,
Not a frown upon its face,
And the hands never hung by its side.
But it stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.
4
It rang an alarm
In the dead of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit
Was pluming for flight,
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time,
With a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side.
But it stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.

Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopp'd short-- never to go again--
When the old man died.

Note: Before this song became popular, the floor standing clocks were known merely as tall clocks, and became known as Grandfather Clocks as a result of the singing of this song, written by Henry Work. --Colophon from another website

One website offered this history for the lyrics: Music By: Henry Clay Work; it is reported that James P. Christian owned the old Grandfather's Clock which inspired C. Russel Christian to write the famous poem by that name.