Accursed World...
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.
1 John 2:20 (NKJV)
I don't even know what to say. I'm just really annoyed with the world at the moment. People are stupid. Seriously. You and me included. Sometimes I learn something... and I'm simultaneously glad that I learned it, and annoyed that I didn't know it before. I've lost just about all of my faith in the reliability of any of the English translations of the Bible. Which has the side-effect of greatly decreasing my faith in all of those people who use the English versions. I seriously need to learn Greek and Hebrew and translate 'em myself. I already use several Web sites together to get the original text and translate it... So I know what it really says.
One thing that's always annoyed me is that when people are making new translations, they use other translations to do it. They refer to the other English versions, as well as versions in other languages. For example, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Translators use the Greek and Latin versions as much or more than the Hebrew when translating. Which means that any errors the Greek and Latin translators made carry over into the English. And since all of the different translators use them, the same errors carry over into all of the English versions, instead of just the one the translator is working on. I know the errors are there, because I've found them.
Another thing that annoys me is that "Bible scholars" are always the ones doin' the translating. The problem with that is... they're scholars in the English versions of the Bible, and when they go to translate, they already think they know what it's supposed to say. I'd rather have some secular translator doin' it than a Bible scholar. Less likely to change a passage to what God meant to say.
The English versions are worse than I thought they were, too. It's mostly because the first English translation was the King James version, and that version is bad. Some of the problems are accidental, I'm sure, but I know for a fact that politics affected the way it was translated. And since that was the original version, and the Bible scholars who translated the successive versions were very familiar with it, those political mistranslations have carried through to just about every other translation to date.
Seriously... It pisses me off.
Meh. It's not just the translations themselves, though. Most people don't bother to read 'em, so what happens is that one person takes a verse out of context, nobody bothers to check on it, and a hundred years later, everyone's still believin' the lie. After all, if that's what Daddy and Grandpa said, it must be true, right?
Anyway, the reason I'm ranting about this is that I just went through and checked out a number of verses that I've been suspicious of for quite some time. Always thought, That doesn't sound right... I wonder if it really means something like _____. Guess what. I was right. On all of them.
Refering to the verse at the beginning of this post (I used the translation that was closest to the Greek meaning, by the way, which oddly enough was the [New] King James. I was very surprised)... I seem to have this knack for being right. Things just... either seem right or wrong to me. Seems to me that my soul is able to tell fact from fiction, and if I bother to listen to it, so can I. So I generally do. And I'm right a lot. More than I want to be. The problem with that is that I tend to get annoyed when people do stupid stuff, which is pretty much all of the time. I figure, if I have the common sense to listen to my spirit, everyone else should be able to, too. And they definitely shouldn't just take someone else's word for it. Most people's word isn't worth much, anyway.
So anyway, this is a very random post fueled by bored and frustration. I really don't have anything to say, but I figured it'd be better to vent it out in verbal (yes, it's verbal, 'cause I used words. Verbal does not mean oral) form than to sleep on it and be uberly pissed off during work tomorrow. And I'm pretty sure I'm already gonna be in a bad mood tomorrow, 'cause I know what they're gonna have me do. Speaking of which, starting Monday, I get an extra dollar an hour. Yay. *isn't excited*
On another note, they're thinkin' we'll probably be movin' into the house next week. Again with the "Yay. *isn't excited*". But then... I rarely get excited about anything, do I? Let's see... The last time I was excited about anything was... *thinks for a while* I can't remember. Oh well.
I guess I'm about done, then... Still nobody worth talkin' to on, but that's not really surprising since there's only three of you, and it's almost four in the morning for one of you. This one wasn't as long as that last one... More of a rant, whereas the other one was more of a ramble, I suppose. Guess I'm better at rambling than ranting.
Anyway, I'm gonna go home and eat chicken and rice, I guess. And then play video games... and then go to sleep, since I probably shoulda gone to bed like fifteen minutes ago.
Oh. I seriously doubt any of you care, but if you ever feel like lookin' stuff up in the original language, I use ScriptureText.com to get the original words, then Christianity.com's lexicons to find definitions for the words and to find other places where they're used. The definitions don't seem to be entirely reliable either, though... Oh, and I use BibleGateway.org to see what all of the various versions say.
So... I'm seriously going now. Well, maybe.
1 John 2:20 (NKJV)
I don't even know what to say. I'm just really annoyed with the world at the moment. People are stupid. Seriously. You and me included. Sometimes I learn something... and I'm simultaneously glad that I learned it, and annoyed that I didn't know it before. I've lost just about all of my faith in the reliability of any of the English translations of the Bible. Which has the side-effect of greatly decreasing my faith in all of those people who use the English versions. I seriously need to learn Greek and Hebrew and translate 'em myself. I already use several Web sites together to get the original text and translate it... So I know what it really says.
One thing that's always annoyed me is that when people are making new translations, they use other translations to do it. They refer to the other English versions, as well as versions in other languages. For example, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Translators use the Greek and Latin versions as much or more than the Hebrew when translating. Which means that any errors the Greek and Latin translators made carry over into the English. And since all of the different translators use them, the same errors carry over into all of the English versions, instead of just the one the translator is working on. I know the errors are there, because I've found them.
Another thing that annoys me is that "Bible scholars" are always the ones doin' the translating. The problem with that is... they're scholars in the English versions of the Bible, and when they go to translate, they already think they know what it's supposed to say. I'd rather have some secular translator doin' it than a Bible scholar. Less likely to change a passage to what God meant to say.
The English versions are worse than I thought they were, too. It's mostly because the first English translation was the King James version, and that version is bad. Some of the problems are accidental, I'm sure, but I know for a fact that politics affected the way it was translated. And since that was the original version, and the Bible scholars who translated the successive versions were very familiar with it, those political mistranslations have carried through to just about every other translation to date.
Seriously... It pisses me off.
Meh. It's not just the translations themselves, though. Most people don't bother to read 'em, so what happens is that one person takes a verse out of context, nobody bothers to check on it, and a hundred years later, everyone's still believin' the lie. After all, if that's what Daddy and Grandpa said, it must be true, right?
Anyway, the reason I'm ranting about this is that I just went through and checked out a number of verses that I've been suspicious of for quite some time. Always thought, That doesn't sound right... I wonder if it really means something like _____. Guess what. I was right. On all of them.
Refering to the verse at the beginning of this post (I used the translation that was closest to the Greek meaning, by the way, which oddly enough was the [New] King James. I was very surprised)... I seem to have this knack for being right. Things just... either seem right or wrong to me. Seems to me that my soul is able to tell fact from fiction, and if I bother to listen to it, so can I. So I generally do. And I'm right a lot. More than I want to be. The problem with that is that I tend to get annoyed when people do stupid stuff, which is pretty much all of the time. I figure, if I have the common sense to listen to my spirit, everyone else should be able to, too. And they definitely shouldn't just take someone else's word for it. Most people's word isn't worth much, anyway.
So anyway, this is a very random post fueled by bored and frustration. I really don't have anything to say, but I figured it'd be better to vent it out in verbal (yes, it's verbal, 'cause I used words. Verbal does not mean oral) form than to sleep on it and be uberly pissed off during work tomorrow. And I'm pretty sure I'm already gonna be in a bad mood tomorrow, 'cause I know what they're gonna have me do. Speaking of which, starting Monday, I get an extra dollar an hour. Yay. *isn't excited*
On another note, they're thinkin' we'll probably be movin' into the house next week. Again with the "Yay. *isn't excited*". But then... I rarely get excited about anything, do I? Let's see... The last time I was excited about anything was... *thinks for a while* I can't remember. Oh well.
I guess I'm about done, then... Still nobody worth talkin' to on, but that's not really surprising since there's only three of you, and it's almost four in the morning for one of you. This one wasn't as long as that last one... More of a rant, whereas the other one was more of a ramble, I suppose. Guess I'm better at rambling than ranting.
Anyway, I'm gonna go home and eat chicken and rice, I guess. And then play video games... and then go to sleep, since I probably shoulda gone to bed like fifteen minutes ago.
Oh. I seriously doubt any of you care, but if you ever feel like lookin' stuff up in the original language, I use ScriptureText.com to get the original words, then Christianity.com's lexicons to find definitions for the words and to find other places where they're used. The definitions don't seem to be entirely reliable either, though... Oh, and I use BibleGateway.org to see what all of the various versions say.
So... I'm seriously going now. Well, maybe.