An eternity of...fruit salad?
You know the 72 virgins that are supposedly awarded to each Islamic martyr in Heaven? Rivka's favorite professor, Robert Art, told her class the other day that the word "virgins" might actually be a mistranslation of the original text.
I looked it up, and apparently it originally promised not virgins, but -- are you ready? --
...raisins.
And not those cool ones that sing, either. Those raisins are awesome. We're talking about the shrivelly kind that you put in cookies if you want no one to eat them. Blech. Raisins.
From a New York Times article from several years ago:
'...the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply ''white.'' Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for ''houri,'' which means virgin, but [Mr. Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany] insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means ''white raisin.'''
Oh man. Can't you just imagine arriving in Heaven ready to spend eternity with 72 beautiful women and instead having to spend it with a bowl of wrinkly fruit? ...That would suck. I don't even like raisins.
Says Rivka: "I guess that's why you're not a suicide bomber."
That must be why...because I hate raisins.
x-posted from blogger. comment here.
I looked it up, and apparently it originally promised not virgins, but -- are you ready? --
...raisins.
And not those cool ones that sing, either. Those raisins are awesome. We're talking about the shrivelly kind that you put in cookies if you want no one to eat them. Blech. Raisins.
From a New York Times article from several years ago:
'...the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply ''white.'' Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for ''houri,'' which means virgin, but [Mr. Christoph Luxenberg, a scholar of ancient Semitic languages in Germany] insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means ''white raisin.'''
Oh man. Can't you just imagine arriving in Heaven ready to spend eternity with 72 beautiful women and instead having to spend it with a bowl of wrinkly fruit? ...That would suck. I don't even like raisins.
Says Rivka: "I guess that's why you're not a suicide bomber."
That must be why...because I hate raisins.
x-posted from blogger. comment here.