NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

I don’t wish to offend anyone or upset their beliefs, but I think it’s time we let a little reality soak into religious worship habits.

I remember attending church with my wife once when her Bible study class was into a lengthy discussion of whether a particular verse in the Bible contained this word or that one. I remember the minister asking different people who obviously owned a different printing to read the verse as written in their particular version.

I left wondering why.

I am no scholar, but I am sure the Bible has been translated through several languages, as well as written by different people whose views of the described events may vary from another’s perspective.

There used to be a party game - before we were old enough to buy beer or chase girls - where one person would whisper something to the next and it continued around where the last person would relate what was whispered to him and compare it to the original statement.

Sure made you wish for the beer - but enlightening enough to shake your faith in believing everything you hear. Two things have brought this to mind today -

I am currently reading Dennis Croukamp’s The Bush War in Rhodesia, which details the author’s combat experiences, much of which was as a member of the elite Selous Scouts, the Rhodesian equivalent of our Delta Force. During one battle, Croukamp was able to recover an enemy’s written journal, which he included in the book. The journal described a famous battle of the war from the terrorist’s point of view, and included passages such as, “. . . the nato guns of sophisticated make sent flying in all directions swarms of deadly bees.” This is an eyewitness description of what was probably a light machine gun - by an African tribesman.

Now let’s further confuse our written words with the introduction of translating from one language into another. Yesterday I wrote the post complaining about attempting to buy articles manufactured in Mexico with labels printed in Spanish. I originally titled the article How To Piss Away a Morning (and grouch about it) but got “cutesy” and popped it into a language translation program and put it up in Spanish as Como a Orina Lejos una Mañana (y cascarrabias sobre ello)

To really blow our faith in the printed word, if we drop the above Spanish translation back into the software for conversion back into English, we get this little gem; Like to Urine Far one In The Morning (and grumpy person on it)

At the risk of sounding completely sacrilegious, if you consider the multiple translations the Bible has gone through, it may, in actuality, just be the owner’s manual for a Ford Fairlane.

Explore posts in the same categories: Mower Clippings