July/August 2002 Newsletter

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 3, Issue 4 -- July/August 2002
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The Religious Language Newsletter is written and published every other
month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (linguistics), from the Ozark Center
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; Courtesy of Stephen Gaskin; Quotes & Comments; Cyberstuff

EDITOR'S NOTE:

May and June have been a spiritual exercise of sorts for me. And not because I've had an adult child seriously ill here, in and out of the hospital and needing nursing, difficult though that has been. Any extended family the size of mine has periodic crises; you learn to budget time and strength for them. The extra frill laid on for me this bimonth was cataract surgery and its aftermath, which couldn't be postponed until the family and work crises were over because my left eye was almost completely blind. The surgery was nothing at all -- I didn't feel a thing, I was blessed by a magnificent light-display during the five or six minutes while it was being done, and I haven't had so much as one twinge of discomfort. But writing at the computer hour after hour, with double vision and kaleidoscopic vision, has been a discipline. It's getting better, and I'll soon be able to have the other eye done, which they tell me will get rid of the remaining special effects. I'll be truly grateful for that. And I am as always grateful for all the materials that you've been sending for the newsletters and for my resource files; thank you.

NETWORK INPUT:

1. From Douglas Dee: "I have just learned (from a footnote in the latest issue of _The Australian Journal of Linguistics_) that the Contemporary English Version of the Bible uses 'Hip hip hooray!' instead of 'Hosanna' to represent what the people shouted as Jesus entered Jerusalem. I find this so inappropriate as to be hilarious, but I suppose some people prefer 'hip hip hooray!' as more modern & intelligible."

In my copy of the CEV (1995 edition), the people all shout simply "Hooray!" -- without any "Hip, hip." Maybe the translating committee should have settled for saying that all the people shouted, without specifying _what_ they shouted, especially since they weren't shouting in English. I agree with Douglas that "Hip, hip hooray!" is dreadful. On the other hand, kids wonder why people would have been shouting "Hose Anna!"

There's a book titled _Creating and Crafting the Contemporary English Version: A New Approach to Bible Translation_, by Barclay M. Newman et al., published by the American Bible Society (NY) in 1996. ISBN 0-8267-0033-0; 97 pages long. From page 3:

"Another interesting change involved the Greek word that appears as 'manger' (Luke 2.7, 12, 16) in most English translations. It was translated 'feedbox' in the first edition of the CEV New Testament, because (a) 'manger' is a technical agricultural term that is not part of the everyday vocabulary of non-rural people; (b) there are too many different definitions for the English word 'manger'; (c) 'manger' is difficult to 'sound out' by an inexperienced reader; and (d) for those who are familiar with the term, it tends to create in the reader's mind a somewhat idyllic 'manger scene' that is quite contradictory to the real world into which our Lord was born. However, some users of the CEV were opposed to 'feedbox.' 'After all,' they argued, 'who could sing "Away in a Feedbox"?' Finally, the dilemma was resolved by using 'bed of hay' in place of 'manger.' "

Chapter titles for the book are: "Introduction: Translation in the Spirit of the King James Version"; "Facing the Problem: Millions of People Can Barely Read or Write"; "Finding Solutions: Using Language People Can Understand"; "Finding a Place: How to Evaluate the Readability of a Bible Translation"; "Upholding the Standard: A New Look at Ancient Poetry"; "Taking on Sensitive Issues: Careful Consideration of Cultural Concerns"; "Helping the Reader: What Besides the Text Makes a Bible Easy To Read and Enjoy?"; "Conclusion: A New Approach to Bible Translation."

2. From Elizabeth Barrette, in response to Margaret L. Carter's note that (according to C.S. Lewis) no Christian could participate in a clinical trial of prayer as medical treatment because we are commanded not to test God:

"Doesn't that sort of contradict all the times in the Bible where people asked God to do things, or set up challenges, like the fracas with the priests of Baal? Of course, it's a valid warning since the results were often ghastly ... kind of like poking a dragon with a sharp stick."

Jesus said that the Scriptures forbid us to test God, yes. (He was speaking to the Devil at the time, and the Devil was doing a "Let's see you prove that you're the Son of God" number.) Semantically, this is complicated. Suppose you are a devout Christian, and you believe absolutely that if you ask God to make the bank approve your loan, that's what will happen -- unless God knows that your getting that loan would be a bad thing, in which case it _won't_ happen. I can't see that there is any testing of God in either of those cases; the person praying is confident that one of those outcomes will be the result of the prayer, and no testing is involved. If the Devil was trying to get Jesus to test God, that's absurd; Jesus had no doubts about God's ability to turn stones into bread, etc. If the Devil was trying to test Jesus himself _as_ God, that parses, but it's a unique situation. The only "testing" that seems at all relevant to me is the one you read about now and then, where someone says "God, if you really exist, give me a sign!" (Stop this rain, get me out of this mess, whatever.) And where that fits into double-blind controlled clinical trials on the medical effects of prayer I am not prepared to say; you might let me know what you think.

3. From Rebecca Haden, on the question of whether it's unethical/intrusive/etc. to pray for people without their consent:

"I think this problem is one that could only come up outside the context of belief. That is, believers who pray wouldn't consider it indecent to do so, for the same reasons that you wouldn't consider it indecent to do an anonymous good deed for someone. Religious people who pray to God don't think THEY are doing something by praying, but that God may choose to do something, and God by definition doesn't make mistakes. It is therefore absolutely harmless to pray for people. Even if we prayed for something utterly stupid ("Dear Lord, please make Mary Ellen see how wrong she is to cut her hair"), God would not be swayed by our stupidity. On the other hand, people who believe that praying is something you do to people behind their backs are surely not believers. Their prayers must be more like wishing ('First star I see tonight, please make Mary Ellen cut her hair'), and that has more to do with magic or imagination than with prayer."

I don't know about the idea that religious people who pray to God don't think they're doing something by praying; that seems to me to be one of those ideas where you meet yourself coming back the other way. Surely most believers pray in the hope that their prayers will be one of the factors involved in God's choice to do or not do something. Only in the case of "Thy will be done" are they saying, "Whatever you do is okay with me, God, and I just wanted to say so," and it seems to me that for most pray-ers that objectivity may represent an ideal but is rarely achieved. And then there are the untold numbers of people who believe that their prayers are absolutely necessary to the Deity's management of the universe; that group includes not only most Native American (and other) religions, but many Christians.

3. Some indirect input, with various sources..... I went to a science fiction convention in May and found myself on a panel discussing the _Left Behind_ books and their astonishing success -- now more than sixty million copies sold, as I recall, and no end in sight. The context was (a) "Are those books religious science fiction?" and (b) "Why is it that most of the sixty-million-plus people who now read those books so eagerly don't read religious science fiction?" We didn't reach a consensus on those questions in the brief time we had available. My own opinion is that the only difference between the _Left Behind_ books and the many science fiction books with Christianity as a major plot element is that the _Left Behind_ books are openly preaching a particular religious doctrine. As for the second question, I think most of the _Left Behind_ readers are unaware that any such thing as religious science fiction exists. (A good introduction to the genre would be the anthology edited by Alan Ryan, titled _Perpetual Light_.)

At one point in the discussion I said roughly the following: "I refuse to believe that God is so incompetent that he couldn't run a Rapture without making such a _mess_. The very idea that an omnipotent God is capable of snatching born-again Christians out of their cars and planes, but he's not capable of safely parking the cars and landing the planes in the process!" That, I said, was ridiculous, and insulting to God. I have since been told, courteously but firmly, that there is an explanation for this seeming absurdity. I haven't heard that explanation yet; when I do, I'll report it in the newsletter.

COURTESY OF STEPHEN GASKIN....

From _Monday Night Class_:

"And so we have things like pictures we see of the Christ child in the manger ... and you don't have to know a language or anything to know what that tableau means. You know, you don't have to like be Christian, or have seen a manger, or any of that jazz. All you gotta do is look at those little set-ups that people put on their front lawn and say, Wow, man, lookie there, that kid's so heavy the cows know it. ..."

From _Caravan_:

"If, when people be unkind to you, you say, 'Well they don't know what they're doing, they're only doing that because they're uptight and I'll just repair myself and not complain,' you can take a piece of unkindness out of the universe. But if someone puts a piece of unkindness onto you and you say, 'Well I'm not going to keep this,' and you put it onto the next person you come to, then it starts multiplying and that's karma."

"Well, everybody has free will at one point at least, which is, Are you going to straighten up or not? That's the free will place."

"The thing about all those religions is that you can stack them up all together like IBM cards, and you can look at them and see which holes go all the way through. And that's the trip we're trying to do, the one with the holes that go all the way through."

I can't give you page numbers for those quotes, because there aren't any. Those two unpaginated books, plus _Mind At Play_, have nourished me lo these many years. The quotations are verbatim responses to questions posed by people in Steve's audiences. Also courtesy of Gaskin, the Eleventh Commandment: "You do too know what I mean."

QUOTES & COMMENTS:

1. From one of the listservs I belong to, I now know that there is a diet book titled _What Would Jesus Eat?_ I find that so tasteless, and so offensive, that I'm at a loss for words.

2. "What if God showed up 'online'? Of course, anyone can go online and pretend to be God, but a skeptical and clever interrogator could quickly dispatch such an imposter. But if the real article -- God -- actually was your e-mail buddy, what would it take to convince you that you were talking to God, especially if you did not even believe in God? This is the premise behind a remarkable new book by physicist and well-known author of children's books Russell Stannard. Titled _www.Here-I-Am_, this book , aimed at teenagers, tells the story of Sam and his online adventures talking to God. Sam, initiallly an atheist, stumbles across a website and starts to dialogue with what he believes is a hacker claiming to be God. Sam is a sharp, cocky kid who is sure that he can quickly expose the hacker...." [From "Burning Bush Gets Updated as God Goes Online," by Karl Giberson, page 18, _Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology_ for 6/02.]

This book's question -- what would it take to convince you that your e-mail correspondent was actually God? -- takes the Turing Test (for a computer to be so good at conversation that a human being wouldn't be able to tell it was a computer) and raises it a power, maybe two. I haven't read the book; I'm _afraid_ to read the book, because everything I've read from its publisher (Temple Foundation Press) has been so disappointing. But I do very much like its premise. There's a website: http://www.Here-I-Amonline.org.

3. Stanley Fish is someone whose work almost always annoys me, no matter what he writes about; his "Postmodern Warfare: The ignorance of our warrior intellectuals" (on pp. 33-40 of the 7/02 _Harper's_) is no exception. I recommend it highly nevertheless. Fish has written at length in the past against religious tolerance and against the discourse of religious tolerance. I think he is profoundly wrong. But he writes well; he knows how to present a case and isn't too lazy to put that knowledge to use; he has the courage to tackle unspeakably difficult questions and to say horrendously unpopular things; and -- since I am _for_ the discourse of religious tolerance -- I believe that he is entitled to be read and listened to, whether he is right or wrong. From page 37:

"The problem is not that there is no universal -- the universal, the absolutely true, exists, and I know what it is. The problem is that you know, too, and that we know different things.... What to do? Well, you do the only thing you can do, the only honest thing; you assert that your universal is the true one, even though your adversaries clearly do not accept it, and you do not attribute their recalcitrance to insanity or mere criminality...but to the fact, regrettable as it may be, that they are in the grip of a set of beliefs that is false. And there you have to leave it, because the next step, the step of proving the falseness of their beliefs to everyone, including those in their grip, is not a step available to us as finite situated human beings. We have to live with the knowledge of two things: that we are absolutely right and that there is no generally accepted measure by which our rightness can be independently validated. That's just the way it is...."

4. "Speaking to a Pentecostal congregation recently, I made a faux pas by trying to imagine the fate of Christianity in the coming decades. As the pastor politely corrected me, such developments need concern us little, given the imminence of the return of Christ -- though my speculations might be worth considering, 'should the Lord tarry.' "

That is the opening sentence of Philip Jenkins' "Should the Lord Tarry," on page 8 of the 7-8/02 _Books & Culture_. I love that "should the Lord tarry." That's the religious register at its most flagrant. That minister does not say, "No need to fix dinner for our guests, since they're leaving right after lunch -- but making some ham salad might be worth considering, should the company tarry."

5. From "Should Men Be Ordained?" by Gracia Fay Ellwood, on pp. 50 and 52 of the 9-10/01 _The Other Side_:

"The woman who ministers is a living symbol of the act of grace she is celebrating. Consider how baptism draws upon ancient womb imagery. Noah's family was reborn from the ark and the floodwaters into a reborn world. Jonah was reborn from the sea and the fish's belly, making possible a new birth for Nineveh. Both point toward Easter morning, when Jesus was reborn from death and the earth. Thus the initiate comes forth from the baptismal waters, from the divine Womb, as a new person, ready to be nourished by the pure Milk of the Word. How can the sacrament of second birth be administered by one whose body cannot give first birth? This would sadly impoverish our imagery...."

This parody is skillfully done and will repay careful analysis; it includes a section suggesting that perhaps it's time to consider relaxing the rigorous requirement that ordination be restricted to females. The only weak point -- in strategic terms -- is on page 52, where Ellwood writes that "The occasional biblical passages and undeveloped images of God as father may yet be explicated and drawn together to give undreamed-of insights and deep self-affirmation to men." My thanks to Sally Lloyd for the copy.

6. "A Saturday in May, the first day of the Towneley Cycle. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. Mothers are suckling their babies, lovers are peeling oranges, scholars are scribbling notes. A fanfare cuts through the sultry air. God has just sat gingerly upon his throne. The world's about to begin. With a flick of the wrist, He unfolds the heavens, the waters and the plants of this earth. With a bellow of His kingly voice, He awakens the sleepy animals and creates Man and Woman. In the audience, a small boy is staring, his mouth full of buttered roll. Satan slithers onto the stage in the guise of a snake. The boy stops chewing. He can't believe his eyes. He stands up and walks until he's an arm's length away from the action. 'Don't do it,' he cries. 'Don't eat the apple!' "

My thanks to Hal Davis for sending me the newspaper clipping about the troupe that does biblical plays (including the Towneley Cycle), with this opening paragraph. The source is "A passion for plays from the past," by Deirdre Kelly, in the _Toronto Globe and Mail_ for 6/21/85.

7. I'm not going to quote from the article -- it's too all-of-a-piece and seamless to provide a stand-alone quotation. But I do suggest that you read "Ashcroft's Ascent: How far will the Attorney General go?", by Jeffrey Toobin, on pp. 50-63 of the 4/15/02 _New Yorker_. The article is not a polemic; it does no ranting and raving. It just offers a very thorough and clear profile of a man whose religious language is neither symbolic nor ceremonial and is being given a role in U.S. government that is unprecedented in modern times. When Ashcroft says "God bless America" (or choose your sequence) it doesn't mean the same thing that it means when the average politician says it. Highly recommended.

8. Several members wrote to ask me for an example from the 3/02 _Harper's_ article by Daniel Lazare claiming that contemporary archaeology has disproved the Old Testament as a historical record. Most of the claims made in the article are too complex and lengthy to quote. Here's a brief example from pp. 43-44.

"[T]he patriarchal tales make frequent mention of camel caravans. When, for example, Abraham sent one of his servants to look for a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac, Genesis 24 says that the emissary 'took ten of his master's camels and left, taking with him all kinds of good things from his master.' Yet analysis of ancient animal bones confirms that camels were not widely used for transport in the region until well after 1000 B.C."

(I was surprised, by the way, at the limited response to this article. Either very few _Harper's_ readers were felt inclined to bother writing letters about it, or the editors decided against printing them. I had expected very heavy-duty rebuttals, and lots of them.)

9. From "Religion: What It Is Not," by Gerald Priestland, pp. 11-14, in the 4/87 issue of _International Christian Digest_:

"...[I]t began to dawn on me that instead of telling God who He was and what He ought to be doing for us, it might be a good idea to shut up and listen in case _He_ had something to say. In short, I joined the Society of Friends (the Quakers), who in this country are almost entirely of the unstructured, contemplative variety -- theologically liberal and with no professional ministry." (On page 11)

"Now, I get fed up with people who say that if there _is_ a God, he must be a monster because surely we deserve something a great deal better than we get. Surely the baby dying of starvation, the mother in agony from cancer, the young man crushed in an earthquake, all deserve something better. But the fact is that we deserve nothing, and it's amazing what we do get, even so." (On page 13)

I don't find the first quote controversial; I'm all for listening, and the Quakers have my utmost respect. But I find it hard to imagine that quotation from page 13 coming from a Quaker. Nothing I have ever read in Quaker religious literature has taken the position that human beings "deserve nothing." Perhaps the problem is in the word "deserve." If you understand "deserve" to mean "entitled," in the sense of being entitled to Social Security benefits, that's one thing. But it seems to me that "As ye sow so shall ye reap" -- a principle common to every religious faith that I'm familiar with -- says very clearly that we are going to get what we deserve.

10. One more sample from _Creating and Crafting the Contemporary English Version_, this time from page 57:

"...[T]here is a basic difference between _translation_ and _transculturation_. A translation must reflect the particularity of the original historical cultural setting. And one may no more remove from the Bible the metaphor of God as Father than one may transfer the imagery of Jesus as 'Lamb of God' to that of 'Pig of God' for the Iban tribes of Borneo, where pigs are the most prized animals, as transculturation might suggest. Similarly, many people of Southeast Asia have what anthropologists term a rice culture. But to shift from 'bread' to 'rice' in Bible translation would destroy the historical integrity and setting of the biblical message.
The metaphor of God as Father is as essential to the core of the Bible as were the 'Goddess of Heaven' and 'Mother Earth' in other ancient civilizations. Remove this metaphor, and the Bible is immediately uprooted from its cultural heritage."

This very clearly sets out the translation theory the CEV committee tried to follow. It is at odds with that of many Bible translators, who would claim that "Lamb" in "Lamb of God" must be translated as whatever animal is equivalent in the language of translation to "lamb" in English, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek -- even if that yields "Pig of God."

CYBERSTUFF

1. On Linguist List for 6/17/02, from Steven Bird: "Recently I was furnished with materials that seem like orthographic glossolalia. The written form is in its own orthography and apparently spiritually inspired, and the writer is subsequently able to read the material. Page scans and an audio recording are available online at [http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/sb/es/]." (Bird goes on to pose several questions about the material; if he posts a summary of the responses that he gets from the linguists, I'll report on it here.) He notes that in 1995 there was a discussion of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) on the list; the URL for that discussion is http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-385.html. And he adds, "A nice overview and literature review on glossolalia is available at [http://www.religioustolerance. org/tongues1.htm]."

2. If you've never seen the alleged letter to Dr. Laura asking for her advice on how to follow biblical commandments, you've missed a treat; my thanks to Hal Davis for sending me a copy of a version that is posted at Robert Anton Wilson's website -- http://www.rawilson.com/jokes.html. Here are three of the questions posed in the letter, to make clear why it would be worth your while to go read the whole thing:

"b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?"

"d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine
claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify?
Why can't I own Canadians?"

"e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself?"

For many people none of this is a joke; it's funny, for sure -- but it's also painful. Anyone who takes the position that every word of the Bible is literally true and divinely-inspired has to find some way to deal with this. The commandment isn't really a commandment because it's a mistranslation, or it's a clerical (scribal) error, or it was intended only for the time in which it was handed down and has since been cancelled, etc. All of which has to be _supporte_ somehow, and -- despite Stanley Fish -- "I'm qualified to make those judgments because I know I'm right" won't do it.

3. From _Religion Bookline_ for 2/12/02, "Lower Manhattan's Trinity Bookstore, Open Again and Optimistic," about the opening of a bookstore only two and a half blocks away from Ground Zero: "Customers from as far away as Hawaii turned up, and [bookstore manager Arlene] Bullard said they spoke about their trip in religious language. 'Visitors from all over the country said they were making their pilgrimage." This is interesting, especially if visitors who don't consider themselves religious talked about their visit to the bookstore as making a pilgrimage.

4. For a look at the medical variety of religious language, go to the website of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations; the URL is http://www/ cmdahome.org. The site has links to articles that Christian medpros find interesting, such as "John Ashcroft's Holy War," at _Business Week Online_," and an Associated Press piece about a judge who backs assisted suicide. Free e-mail newsletter. Much more.

5. The metaphor of the religious person as Warrior continues to thrive -- but sometimes appears in curious disarray. _PCA News_ for 5/16/02 had this brief book review by Charles Spurgeon for William Gurnall's _The Christian In Complete Armour_ (Moody Press, 1994):

"_The Christian in Complete Armour_ provides daily readings packed with tools for spiritual triumph. Written in the seventeenth century by Pastor William Gurnall and compiled into 365 readings by editor James S. Bell, Jr., this collection supplies Christians with a soul-searching and inspiring supplement to the Bible. 'The best thought breeder in our library.' " "Tools for spiritual triumph?" "The best thought-breeder?" Mercy.

6. The _Biblical Research Newsletter For Archaeological Updates_ announces itself with this question: "Interested in knowing more about how archaeological findings support the Bible?" The sponsoring group's site is at http://www.ChristianAnswers.net/abr; subscription by e-mail goes to abr@enter.net, with "Newsletter" in the subject line; the ABR Electronic Newsletter archives are at http://www.ChristianAnswers.Net/abr/ abrhome.html#Emailnews.

7. Virtual Religion Index -- at http://religion.rutgers.edu/vri/index.html -- is designed to advance research in matters of religion. "As a global forum that may be accessed instantaneously anywhere, the Internet promises to surpass the impact of the printing press on the study of religion."

8. If you watch CNN, you will have watched as anchorman Wolf Blitzer -- over the course of several days -- established the term "Islamists" as the correct label for the fanatics who are determined to bring down Christianity, who carry out suicide bombings, who become terrorists, and so on; I suppose the term is now established at the CNN website as well. I am appalled. Suppose people were trying to choose a term for Christians who burn down abortion clinics and murder doctors that perform abortions, and they decided to use "Christianists" for that purpose? How would we feel about "Jewists"? And then there is the semantic contamination that happens when you make "-ists" the marker for religious violence, given the abundance of such terms as "Buddhists" and "Shintoists" and "Vedantists." (And "Baptists" and "Methodists"....) It would have been difficult to make a _worse_ choice than "Islamists."

9. There is an interesting article by Michael Oppenheim titled "Feminism, Jewish Philosophy, and Religious Pluralism," online at http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/ mj/15.2oppenheim.html. Recommended.

10. For clear and concise definitions of many terms from religious language in the context of terrorism, go to the excellent terrorism glossaries posted by YourDictionary.Com -- at http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/ydglos.html.

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