Dear Lord,
-- Or Whoever You are --
Either give me an answer,
Or Fuck Off.
Amen.

I hadn't realised how significant the differences between translations could be ( Read more... )

Can misfortune come to a town
If the LORD has not caused it?
Indeed, my Lord GOD does nothing
Without having revealed His purpose
To His servants the prophets.

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation."

"Is it my desire that a wicked person shall die?--says the Lord GOD. It is rather that he shall turn back from his ways and live."

Biblical poetry seems much less artificial and stilted in the Jewish Publication Society's translation than in any Christian translation I've yet read (KJV, NRSV, NAB).

Yesterday I received my Jewish Study Bible and How to Read the Jewish Bible by Marc Zvi BrettlerThey're sort of meant to go together. Both take a historical-critical approach, but Brettler is a committed Jew, not a secular scholar, so it's historical-critical but from a religious perspective ( Read more... )

I'm winging it on this post, just writing to work out this realisation that embedded itself in my mind recently.

( Scripture is inherently symbolic... )

I really would love to find a Muslim who can reconcile this:

"In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful" (first line of every chapter in the Qur'an but one)

with this:

"When thou dost recite the Qur'an, We put, between thee and those who believe not in the Hereafter, a veil invisible. And We put coverings over their hearts ( ( Read more... )

I have an essay I want to write about scriptures, and I wanted to use a verse from the Qur'an, but I don't remember what the verse was, only that Yusuf Ali's footnote to it referred to the idea of an Ideal Revelation from God of which the Qur'an is the worldly artifact "par excellence" (his phrase). But I can't find it in the index, and I'm not all ( Read more... )