Immaculate Mistranslation
Filed Under (News) by Ian on 07-09-2007
Woopsiedoodle! Did we say she was a virgin? Hah, silly us, she actually worked on the street corner.
Virgin Birth and Red Underpants
The Virgin Birth and Virgin Mary are, pardon the pun, pregnant with social symbolic significance in most, if not all, parts of the world. Whether you believe in them or not, they are solid social constructs, rehearsed endlessly in art, humour, everyday life, and language. And yet their birth is due to a relatively simple mistake in translation. The Old Testament talks about almah ‘young woman,’ not bethulah ‘virgin.’ However, the scholars in the 3rd century BC translated the Hebrew almah as parthenos in Greek. Thus the ‘young woman’ in Hebrew metamorphosed into a ‘virgin’ in Greek—and she has remained a virgin ever since in translations across the world. The notion of ‘virgin birth’ was born, thanks to a mistranslation.
Mistranslation is plentiful, painful and powerful, whether it shapes our way of seeing the world through the Bible or the bibles of our times—films. In an American cult movie, “You’ll get the pink slip for Christmas” is translated as “You’ll get red underpants in Santa Claus’ stocking.” It must be a joke, I hear you say. No, I’m afraid, it is not. The ‘pink slip’ (a notice of dismissal, American slang) has metamorphosed into ‘red underpants’ in a famous action movie seen by millions and millions of people. Thanks to the translator’s error, they envisage the hero in a pair of red underpants, not as getting fired by Christmas.
Albeit the difference between getting fired or getting a pair of red underpants may not be quite as substantial as the difference between a virgin and a non-virgin birth, it still does serious damage to the source text. Both examples above illustrate relatively simple nonetheless fundamental mistakes in translation. Objective mistakes. But a mistake is a mistake only when you become aware of it. Otherwise mistakes become part and parcel of our ongoing discursified thinking—of our language and thus symbolic cultural system. As the virgin birth has, and no doubt the red underpants will.
“Though shall not suffer a witch to live” was origionally “thou shall not suffer a POISONER to live” and was purposely mistranslated because of the protestations of King James I (as in “King James Bible”). The infamous “thou shall not lie with a man as a man lyeth with a woman” that’s so ubiquitous these days can be better translated as “married men can’t have affairs with other men” (meaning it’s all about the adultery, no the homosexuality) or, and this is my favorite: as “you can’t get into bed with a woman and a man” thus making threesomes specifically forbidden. In other words, all this hoopla over gay marriage being against the bible is a waste of time because the bible doesn’t forbid it.
So, what’s the point? The point is the bible has been proven to not be inerrant for a long, long time (the part about the poisoner was “found out” centuries ago), but it doesn’t slow them down. They’ve bought into the dream full scale and won’t change their minds because they’re proven wrong.
** An irrational god loves his know-nothings **
How can an atheist have favorite verses from writings sacred to xians? Read Paul:
27 God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are. . . .” 1Cor1:27-28 NIV
About 1,800 years ago Celsus objected in his book, The True Doctrine : “. . . who are we to believe — a rabble of mistaken [jewish-xian] prophets or the [Greek] philosophers?”
bipolar2
copyright asserted 2007
******* source *******
Written by Celsus about 180 CE, probably at the request of Emperor Marcus Aurelius —
“On the True Doctrine, a discourse against the Christians.” p. 108. Translated with introduction by R.J. Hoffmann, Oxford Press, 1987.
I knew it! I knew the Bible couldn’t possibly be without error!