Feri Godmother

[dr_pretentious]

It's not every day that I find myself publicly exhorted to renounce Satan and all his works. It's even weirder to be asked to do so as a proxy for someone else who is neurologically unable to process the question.

I'm just back from a quick trip to Rockville for my niece's baptism. Dan and I drove down Saturday night late-ish, were up for the service, were claimed by relatives all day, and then drove straight back home. It's been an exhausting time for everybody, not least my infant niece. Kate's turning into a gregarious, flirty baby, able to make eye contact across a room and track individual faces for several minutes at a stretch. I find her endlessly fascinating. Every time I see here, there's some enormous new developmental milestone she's passed.

I have, on previous occasions, described my brother-in-law in demographic terms, as a Catholic Republican from a Nebraska ranching dynasty, but that's only part of the truth. He and my sister compromised by joining an Episcopal church, and he expected his family to explode when he told them. Instead, they were already in such a tizzy over one of his female cousins having run off and got herself ordained by renegade Catholic priests, his infraction hardly registered. Perhaps he was counting on the ongoing distraction of his cousin's impending excommunication--I don't really know--but he went ahead and asked the only Wiccan of his acquaintance to be his daughter's godmother.

It was a little puzzling, but he explained that he wanted Kate to have godparents who had (1) a solid education in the Christian faith, and (2) an active spiritual life that is a source of joy to them. He wasn't all that concerned about how the two qualifications did or didn't fit together. He just wanted Kate to know, if she decided to stay Christian, that she'd chosen it for herself, having learned about her other options. The other options bit? That's my job. Apparently, the other options can't include Satanism, but since I find Satanism repellent, that one exclusion is just fine by me.

I imagine saying something like, "Jesus told you to love your neighbors. These are the neighbors." And then, I imagine, we might go on field trips. There's a Zoroastrian bookstore in Nutley that I've been wanting to go to, and it's past time I read the Zend-Avesta. The local Durga temple is open to guests. Down in DC, just about every religion you can name is represented somewhere on 16th Street. But why stop there? A pilgrimage to the Shrine of Ise might be edifying--a combo package of comfy Shinto animism and dubious divine-right-of-kings assertions, plus bonus Auntie-Mame-style international adventure. Well, maybe the Shrine of Ise's a bit of a stretch, but everything else is feasible.

Oh, and I suppose I ought to read the Bible again. And not just the greatest hits, the bits I agree with, and the obvious straw men this time. It's been a long while, and there are whole books I don't remember. How often is there call for the Book of Joel?

One of Kate's baptism gifts was a children's book, Touch and Feel Bible Stories. We all thought immediately of the bits of the Bible that ought not to be touch and feel for a young audience. The books of Ruth and Esther? Right out! And whole swaths of Genesis... But really, the touch and feel aspect consists mostly of bits of synthetic fuzziness glued onto pictures of camels. We speculated about a Scratch'n'Sniff New Testament, in which the scratch'n'sniff aspect would consist mostly of pictures of fish and sheep, but I think that might be a book even less salable than mine.

Comments

[dragonlaire.livejournal.com]

Reading the bible is a fine and noble idea, but it seems to be one of those frequent resolutions we make but manage to bravely ignore. Even with the best of intentions, though, a new problem arises as soon as we enter the religious bookstore or open the drawer next to our hotel beds. For which bible shall we read? The answer to that little puzzle is a complicated one, indeed. The purists among us would tell us to read the King James Version, as they should, for it's the monumental accomplishment of English prose, rivaled only by Shakespeare. I seem to vaguely recall one famous novelist--a woman but the name has escaped--describing her habit of beginning each writing day with thirty minutes of bible reading; the idea was to come into contact with good prose. But unless a person is a monster of comprehending antique English, the King James Version is frequently impenetrable. Look, it's beautiful, but who can understand this stuff? You could fairly consume a lifetime staring at the impassable obstacle of a single line. So, the next best thing is to consider alternative bibles, if only for comparison purposes. We have the NIV, LIT, RSV, and so on; and the neatest part of the whole process is that almost all of these translations have been produced to satisfy the theological demands of the various denominations who sponsored the work. I have it from reliable sources that the Oxford Annotated Bible is best; I believe it uses the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) for text and adds scholarly annotations as things plow along through the scripture. Apparently, evangelical Christians have disowned it completely, and this may be the best recommendation of all. Happy reading!

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

I believe there's a direct translation of the NT from Greek that came out a few years ago and was highly praised for its attention to detail and lovely prose, but I'll be damned if I can remember the exact title and author. There's plenty of other cool stuff, though:

Differences Between Bible Versions compares versions and explains what they get right and wrong
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels is a really cool look at the Gospel of Thomas and its effect on the early Christians, and I remember her The Gnostic Gospels as being fascinating, though I ought to go back and read it. And then there's Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament and Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D Ehrman, which I covet, having given them to my in-laws and read parts of them - they took them to their church Bible classes and the group had a really good time learning all sorts of stuff about the early church. Also, I like ex-Bishop John Shelby Spong a lot. He was my in-laws' Bish, and he's an advocate for equality and a strong opponent of fundamentalism. He's written several books - I've read Why Christianity Must Change Or Die and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, and they were both great.

[dragonlaire.livejournal.com]

Well, I was being a little facetious, but this what writers do. The King James Version of the bible is extraordinarily beautiful, and there are many aids (Strong is very old and won't help much with comprehension) to help decipher the antiquated language. So, if your goal is either a literary or historical one, nothing can match the King James Version; and you may also have theological reasons why it is irreplaceable.

But if your goal is comprehension of the most accurate available translation, the King James Version just won't do. The New Testament contains numerous translation errors from the Greek texts; and those considerations are independent of latter discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found long after the 1611 edition was published. At that point, picking the most objective compilation becomes a tricky business.

So, really it comes down to your objectives. No serious contemporary scholar would consult the King James Version for serious study of the biblical period; and no one concerned with producing beautiful prose would ever consider looking elsewhere.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Let translations abound. My personal preference is KJV, but whatever translation she's getting in Sunday School will have the advantage of early familiarity. By the time she's old enough to start wrapping her head around the difference between Greek and Aramaic, let alone the Nag Hammadi papyri, she'll already have opinions of her own about directions of study to pursue. In this kind of learning, more than any other, the student's interest should be the organizing principle.