From comments, toxicfur writes:
When I was a kid and my first pet (a rabbit) died, I made a comment that at least I'd be able to see poor Wiggles in heaven. My dad, a fundie and an asshole, explained that animals don't have souls — they just cease to exist, and that I'd never see the rabbit again. It seemed perfectly reasonable to him, but I was devastated. My mom — a much more reasonable person — explained that we don't really know what happens to animals, but that since heaven is perfect, then we should be able to see our loved ones, even our pets, after we die.
Growing up among the fundies, I met a few folks like toxicfur's dad — stern men who believed God was a stern man, and who seemed to enjoy gravely informing children that their dead pets were soulless, unloved by God and unwelcome in the Great Hereafter.* Presumptuous idiots, all, speaking with utter certainty based on nothing. Literally nothing — based on the absence of anything explicit in our Bible regarding God's relationship with other creatures.
We do have some hints, however. Look around. Haldane's quip that God must be "inordinately fond of beetles" seems to me to be good theology. My sola-scriptura friends, of course, are suspicious of any theologizing except that from the page ("look around" is, to them, flirtation with heresy). But there are plenty of hints on the page as well.
The Book of Job, for example, tells us that God is immensely fond of, and proud of, ostriches. Just as small children can't imagine Heaven being heavenly without the presence of their beloved pets, it seems the God of Job couldn't imagine a Heaven in which there weren't ostriches running about, neglecting their eggs and generally behaving like ostriches. And it's worth mentioning that some of the imagery used to describe the blessed kingdom includes the presence of animals. See for example Isaiah 11:5-7. Toxicfur's dad is on shaky ground if he wants to argue that while that passage may mention wolves, lambs, leopards, goats, calves, lions, yearlings and bears, it doesn't specifically mention rabbits, so therefore Wiggles et. al. must be fated for annihilation.
In the same long monologue in which God praises ostriches, God also talks about Orion — a reminder that the target audience for the Book of Job, as for the rest of the Bible, is humans from Earth (the only place in the universe from which Orion looks like Orion). And just as it would be pointless to look to our earthling's Bible to discern the particulars of the relationship between God and the Rigelians (if there are any), it's also pointless to look to our human's Bible for insight into the eternal disposition of other earthly creatures for whom our Bible was not written.
We are told that in our father's house there are many mansions. We are not told, and so we cannot say, whether there are also many gardens, pastures, forests, swamps, deserts and streams. I suspect, and also hope, that there are. It seems to me both parochial and chauvinist to decide that, since God has promised us heaven, God can't have promised any such thing to anyone else — beast or bird, trilobite or pteradactyl, beetle or Betelgeusian.
The odd thing about people like toxicfur's dad is the vehemence with which they insist on excluding the animals from their vision of heaven. Here I think theologians can learn from those FBI profilers who hunt serial killers. The serial killers always start by doing things to animals, but they never stop there. They always end up doing the same things to humans.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
* I appreciate that many reasonable people of good will don't believe there is any such hereafter, or any such thing as heaven. It's easy if you try. For my part, there are many heavens, or ideas of heaven, in which I don't believe either. Included among them is the idea that heaven is completely other-worldly, that it is wholly unrelated to the here and now.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In
> The serial killers always start by doing things to animals, but they never stop there. They always end up doing the same things to humans.
Well, if they did stop they wouldn’t be in your sample of serial killers, would they? As a child, I pulled the wings off flies and the legs of spiders. I once dropped a brick on a frog, just to watch it explode. I, very solowly and carfully, set fire to a snail.
I don’t think these are particularly unusual things for a young boy to do, and while I regret them terribly now (and am horribly embarrased to reveal such innocent torture), at the time they seemed like harmless fun. Many of my friends did much the same thing; but I don’t know how much of a defence that is, as a few of them graduated to throwing bricks off a bridge at cars on the motorway…
A huge number of people start by doing things to animals. The vast majority of them stop. The ones who don’t go on to become serial killers.
A seldom-quoted Ecclesiastes 3:18-21 (NIV):
I also thought, “As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
Very well put wintermute.
Fred, do you mean it’s easy to believe or disbelieve in a hereafter if you try? Either would be true, I suppose.
Wintermute, my first reaction was ugh, thank God I was born a woman. Then it occurred to me that I have poured salt on slugs and drowned them in beer — also squished them with rocks, come to think. It was my husband who pointed out to me the cruelty of the salt trick. I don’t know if the beer is less cruel, although at least they get to anticipate drinking it, to whatever extent their tiny slugly brains are able. In any case my motive was to protect my vegetable garden rather than scientific curiosity, not that that mitigates the offense, if offense it be.
Thanks for the back-up, Fred. As I mentioned in my comment in the previous entry, I have (in the 25 years since the Wiggles incident) mostly moved past my dad’s hurtful comment. Generally, I use the story now as an illustration of the cruelty of the man who contributed half of my DNA, but I think that his theology was entirely off-base. I appreciate the Biblical references, and if (God forbid) I should ever find myself face to face with the man again, I shall add this bit to the litany of (much more severe) grievances I have against him.
Lucia:
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
–Complete lyrics
I deliberately only counted those killings that served no purpose other than to satisfy the sadistic urges that I believe all children (both boys and girls) have to some extent*. I wanted to avoid the question of whether killing animals to protect plants (or for any actual reason) was permissible. But clearly it’s more exusable than doing it simply for the fun of it…
And if you were born a woman, then I pity your poor mother. It must have been a painful labour…
*I think the main difference here is that it’s less socially acceptable for girls to engage in these kinds of “experiments”, for much the same reason it’s less acceptable for them to come home caked in mud.
I laughed much more than was warrented at the Imagine reference.
On another note, I found an interesting thing while googling the phrase “inordinately fond of beetles”, which held a different proposition. They looked at our current understanding of physics and concluded that god is quite fond of imaginary numbers.
I rather like that. I’m pretty fond of them myself.
we just might find out what the Rigelians think of all this… http://www.spaceref.com/calendar/calendar.html?pid=4200
Ah, this is why I like coming back to “The Church of the Slacktivist.”
Mark Twain had much to say about things:
The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.
– Letter to W. D. Howells, 4/2/1899
nevermind, false alarm on the SETI…
Coincidentally, I just noticed the Orion passage in Job a few days ago. Does it strike anyone else as odd/ironic that there is a reference, albeit via astronomy, to Greek myth in Hebrew scripture?
And hurray! for this post. I certainly hope that pets (and non-pets) go to heaven.
I would guess much the same argument could be used to refute a Biblical opposition to extra-terrestrials? If God didn’t explicitly say (or even implicitly) that there are no aliens – regardless of whether or not some may be intelligent and have souls) then there’s no way to definitively say they don’t exist…
There may be more Biblical evidence to support the no-aliens theory than no-animal-souls, though…
Making a comment like that to a bereaved child who has just lost a pet strikes me as the height of insensitive, cruel tactlessness. Faced with such behavior, it would take all the self-control I have not to paste the person doing it right in the mouth, good and hard.
I am not a “pet person” myself—circumstances forbid pet-keeping—but I have many friends who are, and they’d probably be _delighted_ to alibi me if I needed one after hitting such a person. “No, he couldn’t have—he was with us all evening, wasn’t he?”
IIRC, John Wesley argued that animals go to heaven as a kind of metaphysical compensation: they share in the suffering and death brought about by humanity’s fall, so they should get a free pass to humanity’s salvation, too. (My memory’s a bit foggy on the details, though.)
It’s verging on the sappy, but I’m fond of this prayer, too (given as ‘From the French of B. C. Boulter’ in the book where I found it):
Oh God, my master, should I gain the grace
To see thee face to face when life is ended
Grant that a little dog, who once pretended
That I was God, might see me face to face.
Andy,
actually, Job 9:9, Job 38:31 and Amos 5:8 all refer to ?????? (k?s?l), which is translated as Orion in the Vulgate, KJV and Lutherbibel, but the Strong concordance (H3684) defines it as “fool, stupid fellow, dullard, simpleton, arrogant one”. The Septuagint has ??????? (Orionos) in Job 38:31 (so that’s probably where Jerome got the idea), but ??????? (esperos) in Job 9:9, which the word for “evening” or “evening-star”. Curiously enough, the Septuagint Amos 5:8 somehow lacks the reference to either Pleiades or Orion altogether and instead of “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion” it reads “Seek the maker of all”.
Barry…, it seems eminently logical that God (in His infinite wisdom) put the stars and the inhabitants under them so far apart that we wouldn’t ever screw each other up.
I’m not religious at all, but I really enjoyed this post.
Thanks, Bulbul — I rather figured it was some problem of translation.
Wintermute: Did you ever do such things to mammals?
Generally my friends did something extremely barbaric to snails or insects or spiders as children (no frogs though), but, at least after the toddler stage, balked at hurting something which reacted to pain broadly in the same way people do. It’s much easier to tell you’re making a dog or cat unhappy than a snail. (When you pour peppermint schnapps on snails they fall over and crawl along their sides while foaming profusely, but who knows, that might be a good thing.)
OTOH, most of the animal abuse cases I’ve heard of in the childhoods of people who went on to hurt humans were of mammals or birds. Not that that’s automatically worse from an ethical standpoint, but I think it tends to mean your empathy switch can’t be tripped as easily.
Of course Betelgeusians go to Heaven!
They get there in green spaceships.
Oh, hey, anybody else remember the Twilight Zone episode where the old guy dies while he’s out hunting with his dog, and refuses to go into what turns out to Hell because they say the dog isn’t allowed inside?
“Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.” Psalm 36:6
‘nough said.
Was it CS Lewis? who had a wise priest say that if it was necessary for your happiness for Fluffy to be in heaven, Fluffy will be there.
It doesn’t answer much, but it’s kind, and it doesn’t presume to recreate God as an even bigger bully.
I think capacity for empathy is the difference between killing this and killing that. We used to catch crabs in the sewage/drainage canal and then throw them out in the highway where they’d make a delightful popping sound when a car tire ran over them. We’d have been horror-struck to witness the same thing done to a kitten.
It’s not just furry things that evoke empathy however. I remember we’d pull the legs off “granddaddy longlegs” spiders and then smash them when we were done pulling off all their legs, but we’d play with crickets (the black non-jumping kind) and let them go because crickets were cool.
Pull the lights out of fireflies / play with and release “roly-polys”.
Capture and kill wasps and bees / catch, attach to end of string, play with and then release “june beetles”.
I think all kids run roughshod over nature until they’ve learned what they needed to learn and/or develop the necessary empathy to experiment a little less lethally.
I think it’s more accurate to say that serial killers start out as kids.
Hey, the Book of Job wasn’t even written in Hebrew. Scholars, as I understand it, aren’t entirely sure where the story comes from, except that it is an old Mesopotamian tale which says, in effect, “Life sucks & then you die.” Except that, as Fred notes, the poet who took this basic material & turned it into a great work of the human imagination, loved, not just ostriches, but animals in general. Humans, he wasn’t so fond of.
But that’s not why I’m leaving a comment. Here is a poem by the American poet John Crowe Ransom that is famous for its shift of tone in the middle, but which also movingly addresses the feeling children have for their pets.
Janet Waking
Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke them
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
One kiss she gave her mother,
Only a small one gave she to her daddy
Who would have kissed each curl of his shining baby;
No kiss at all for her brother.
“Old Chucky, old Chucky!” she cried,
Running on little pink feet upon the grass
To Chucky’s house, and listening. But alas,
Her Chucky had died.
It was a transmogrifying bee
Came droning down on Chucky’s bald old head
And sat and put the poison. It scarcely bled,
But how exceedingly
And purply did the knot
Swell with the venom and communicate
Its rigor. Now the poor comb stood up straight.
But Chucky did not.
So there was Janet
Kneeling on the wet grass, crying her brown hen
(Translated far beyond the prayers of men)
To rise and walk upon it.
And weeping fast as she had breath
Janet implored us, “Wake her from her sleep!”
And would not be instructed in how deep
Was the forgetful kingdom of Death.
Making a comment like that to a bereaved child who has just lost a pet strikes me as the height of insensitive, cruel tactlessness.
It’s never too early to tell a kid that life sucks and then you die. Wear a cup.
The serial killers always start by doing things to animals, but they never stop there. They always end up doing the same things to humans.
They Always Shoot the Dog
My dog is getting old and deaf and feeble, so I guess, since he’s religious, he’ll be going to heaven. I know he’s religious because he fawns on me and flatgters me as though I was God.
But since I’m a life long atheist, I guess I’ll be condemned to go to the other place. So I won’t be seeing him again. That’ll be my punishment for not believing in Him and not flattering Him and begging Him for favors.
elef
the Book of Job wasn’t even written in Hebrew
No, Joseph, it most certainly was. We have several manuscripts and over two thousands year of tradition to prove it.
Scholars, as I understand it, aren’t entirely sure where the story comes from
That is true.
It appears that at least some parts of the book of Job had a Sumerian Vorlage.
except that it is an old Mesopotamian tale which says, in effect, “Life sucks & then you die.”
Yeah, and Moby Dick is the one about the big whale. Please.
I’m sure all dogs go to heaven and all bunnies too. Well, except for the one in that Monty Python sketch. It is doomed.
As for cats…?
If four out of five “people” in heaven never made it to multicellular stage, why wouldn’t Benji make it there too? Of course, Rin Tin Tin, being the first openly gay dog in Hollywood(EABF14), might be left out.
My mother would have had my hide if I ever hurt an animal deliberately. Swatting flies and mosquitos was OK if you did it quickly and throughoutly, but even spiders (which she dreaded) were caught in a shoebox and set them free behind the garden shed. She believed that animals, other than humans, were innocents, and hurting them was offensive to God and got you sent to a special hell.
In elementary school I have scolded boys who wanted to scare the girls with frogs or earthworm that they better set that poor animal down at once. And gently.
“Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
That’s typical of modern translations, but King James has it like this:
“Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?”
Changes the whole meaning, doesn’t it?
To my view, it doesn’t. “Beast” in 16th century English means most often “animal”. Of course, you can read anything symbolic into both versions if you like to. This is just another example of why it is not a good thing to use an archaic translation like KJV. The translation used should be in a language that can be understood by anyone.
Another problem with old translations is that the metaphorical meanings embedded into verses become part of the words’ actual meaning. They lose the former secular meaning and are turned into spiritual vocabulary, which forces the reader to conform with a particular interpretation instead of having access to the full wealth of the Word.
Making a comment like that to a bereaved child who has just lost a pet strikes me as the height of insensitive, cruel tactlessness.
I don’t know if this contradicts anything anyone has said, but it seems to me that it would be the style of delivery rather than the comment itself that would be insensitive. Being honest to your kids about what you believe is also a virtue. I don’t know if it’s problematic for a Christian to think that animals don’t go to heaven, but what if the dad had been an atheist?
Being honest to your kids about what you believe is also a virtue.
Sometimes lying can be good too. For example, telling little kids that there is no Santa Claus at the earliest possible opportunity seems a bit cruel to me.
Yeah, your right. However, little children have a good ability to mix fantasy and reality. I remember awaiting eagerly for Saint Nicholas to come to us, although I already knew that Father Christmas is not really a real person, but a man dressed up in a peculiar way. (In my country, Father Christmas (lit. translation is Christmas goat) has a habit of visiting homes in person, handing out the presents. Usually the guys playing Father Christmas are volunteers working for some sports club or a charity.) It is very nice to believe in Father Christmas, if just for a moment.
Being honest to your kids about what you believe is also a virtue.
I absolutely agree, and if I’d been raised an atheist rather than a Southern Baptist, then I think I wouldn’t have had the preconception that I’d see my loved ones in the next life. Had there been no expectation of heaven in my personal set of mythology, then I think my dad’s comment wouldn’t have been hurtful. Like Fred somehow intuited, though, it was my dad’s tone – almost gleeful at bursting my bubble – that caused hurt as much as the words. There is a wonderful children’s book about the death a cat that a friend of mine wrote and drew, here: http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=144833 If you don’t believe that animals go to heaven, then this is a great way to teach kids about death without being hurtful.
Wow. Others have quoted it, but I’d like to say — I thought this was a nice, cute, rather irrelevant essay. And then I read the final line and it completely blew me away.
It changes all the previous context.
elaf — If dogs go to heaven in part because their owners wouldn’t be happy without them, wouldn’t the reverse be true as well? I could see myself finally accepting that my dog isn’t there — that all dogs aren’t there — and going on to enjoy what I did have, but I don’t think dogs have that ability to move on.
Of course, your role in heaven might be entirely different — for example, I imagine you might be expected to spend most of your time with your dog (after all, you’re in your dog’s idea of heaven, not your own) — but, for most owners, it wouldn’t be hell, and those owners who would see it as hell probably deserve it anyway.
Lurker: My point wasn’t “beast” vs. “animal,” which are of course synonyms. The KJV says that the spirit of man goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes downward. The modern translation says, who knows? The difference in meaning is subtle, but it’s there.
Agree with you about the inaccuracies of KJV. This verse is my favorite example. I just wish somebody would come up with a good, accurate modern translation that could match it for its poetry.
If there’s one thing that this thread demonstrates it’s that ‘believing there’s no heaven’ really is easy, no trying required, but ‘believing there is a heaven’ is very complicated in ways that are extremely amusing to observers.
“If I get married and then my wife dies, so I get married again, then I die – who am I married to in heaven?” has nothing on
“Hey, how come that foetus gets in, my dog’s twice as smart?”
“Hey, how come his dog gets in and my pet iguana can’t?”
“No fair, I can’t bring my ant farm?”
It’s never too early to tell a kid that life sucks and then you die. Wear a cup.
Why spoil the suprise?
But since I’m a life long atheist, I guess I’ll be condemned to go to the other place.
Only if god is small and petty, and in that case everyone else is coming with you. Maybe we can all stand on each others shoulders and you can climb in the back way.
It’s never too early to tell a kid that life sucks and then you die. Wear a cup.
Why spoil the suprise?
But since I’m a life long atheist, I guess I’ll be condemned to go to the other place.
Only if god is small and petty, and in that case everyone else is coming with you. Maybe we can all stand on each others shoulders and you can climb in the back way.
They get there in green spaceships.
Ah, the traditional livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.
It’s never too early to tell a kid that life sucks and then you die.
Well, I’d agree with some others that it can be too early, but it should feature into children’s upbringing more than it usually does.
Wasn’t it Tom Arnold in that SNL skit about the piñata full of coal, who tells his nephew, “Now you know how grown-ups feel every day”?
Only if god is small and petty
Well, virtually every televangelist I’ve observed seems to take this as an unconscious axiom. And ask the women and children of Old Testament Jericho how unfair God can be.
Scott: {sweatdrop} And here I thought your bitterness was confined to the political arena…Is there anything you’re NOT pessimistic about? (Stay out of this, Duane)
I suppose we can lance the animals-have-no-souls-type fundamentalists with this question: What would God have to lose if animals COULD go on to Heaven?
I think the only case of animal sadism I’ve dealt in was when on a camping trip, I spritzed a particularly pesky fly with insect repellent…
Lurker,
Another problem with old translations is that the metaphorical meanings embedded into verses become part of the words’ actual meaning.
Absolutely. And then there’s the third problem: most older translations (and even some modern one) tend to be too literal. The passage Rachel quoted is a perfect example of this: the KJV translation even copies the Hebrew syntax by placing “that” after “spirit of man”. There is a difference in meaning, yes, but only because the KJV translators screwed it up.
rachel,
The modern translation says, who knows?
And so does the original text.
I suppose we can lance the animals-have-no-souls-type fundamentalists with this question: What would God have to lose if animals COULD go on to Heaven?
Clearly the streets would be paved with kitty litter instead of gold.
lovely article, which underscores my belief that heaven is not an actual, literal Place where you physically go and sit in the clouds and play a harp and have angel wings and see all your dead relatives and Gandhi and Jesus and such.
these questions about what is and isn’t possible in heaven are kind of akin to questions about the angels dancing on the head of a pin.
the afterlife is something that, if it exists, doesn’t seem to be confined to the physics of everyday reality. if your pets were important to you, you would probably have access to that if the afterlife is a paradise. i like to think of heaven as sort of comparable to the best dreams we have while sleeping. in a really great dream i can fly, i can sleep with people i have no chance with in real life, i see old friends, travel to exotic places, and my chores and errands are always done. if the afterlife is paradise, all those things and more might be possible. not least seeing your childhood pets.
For example, telling little kids that there is no Santa Claus at the earliest possible opportunity seems a bit cruel to me.
Telling your kids there is a Santa Claus in the first place seems a bit cruel to me.
Was it CS Lewis? who had a wise priest say that if it was necessary for your happiness for Fluffy to be in heaven, Fluffy will be there.
Alice Sebold must have read Lewis, then. Her novel “The Lovely Bones” puts forward the idea that every creature – human and animal – goes to its own personal Heaven after death. This personal heaven contains whatever is needed to make the creature completely happy. Since most peoples’, and animals’, idea of happiness is spending time with other like-minded creatures, many of these personal heavens intersect each other to some degree. Thus children die, go to heaven and find lots of happy dogs to play with; dogs die, go to heaven and find lots of children happy to play with them.
Bulbul — or rather that this is archaic English imperfectly understood by the uninformed modern reader. It was actually intended to mean exactly the same thing as the modern translation.
This personal heaven contains whatever is needed to make the creature completely happy.
Hmm. I’m trying to reconcile this with those folks who aren’t completely happy unless others are burning in hell.
What would God have to lose if animals COULD go on to Heaven?
If any of my cats go to Heaven, God will lose his carpets, his potted plants, and (if he eats meat) his lunch.
cjmr: Telling your kids there is a Santa Claus in the first place seems a bit cruel to me.
Word. My parents never fed me any such fantasies. I’ve never (even as a kid) understood the appeal. And kids get to go through disillusionment aplenty without adding extraneous illusions to the burden.
Duane: I’m trying to reconcile this with those folks who aren’t completely happy unless others are burning in hell.
Yeah, seems to me that heaven would involve whatever a creature could rightfully want in the name of happiness. (Does the presence of childhood pets fits into that category? God knows.)
If any of my cats go to Heaven, God will lose his carpets, his potted plants, and (if he eats meat) his lunch.
Funny, I never figured you for a cat lady… :o)
My parents never fed me any such fantasies.
Do you want to talk about this? (This is where four years of counselling training come into practice.)
Funny you should mention this, though. I’m currently reading Pratchett’s Hogfather. Here’s what he (through Death, hence the caps) has to say on the subject of fantasies:
‘So we can believe the big ones?’
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
‘They’re not the same at all!’
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE
FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW
ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET– Death waved a
hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS
IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE
JUDGED.
‘Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—‘
MY POINT EXACTLY.
Word.
Dammit, stupid windows…
Full quote here:
… HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS
THE RISING APE.
‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-‘
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE
LITTLE LIES.
‘So we can believe the big ones?’
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
‘They’re not the same at all!’
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE
FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW
ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET– Death waved a
hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS
IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE
JUDGED.
‘Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—‘
MY POINT EXACTLY.
L,
or rather that this is archaic English imperfectly understood by the uninformed modern reader. It was actually intended to mean exactly the same thing as the modern translation.
Yes, quite probably. But the syntax is still weird, even for 17th century English, and judging by what I’ve observed so far, KJV translators did a lot of word-for-word translations. Consider my favorite passage from the Ecclesiastes: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong…”. This just reeks of OT Hebrew syntax. We’ve all come to love these words the way they are through almost 400 years of tradition and even I, a non-native speaker of English, wouldn’t dream of quoting any other version. And still, I believe modern versions might be doing a much better job of translating this passage (i.e. conveying its meaning). Like the Contemporary English Version: “The fastest runners and the greatest heroes don’t always win races and battles. Wisdom, intelligence, and skill don’t always make you healthy, rich, or popular. We each have our share of bad luck.”
Correction: in my opinion, “We each have our share of bad luck” is not the best translation. OT does not speak of “bad luck” (negative), but of “chance” (neutral) and it mentions time, or rather, timing (being at the right place in the right time).
Ah well, translators, they we never get it completely right…
Pratchett on telling children about Father Christmas:
‘Look at it this way, then,’ [Susan] said, and took a deep mental breath. ‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd … and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach … and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering … yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.’
There was silence from under the bedclothes, but she sensed that the tone of voice had worked. The words had meant nothing. That, as her grandfather might have said, was humanity all over.
I think there’s something to be said for preserving poetic Semiticisms, at least where they can be understood with some clarity. The Bible was not, after all, written in English and it seems to me a mistake to make it sound as if it was. Even the LXX uses that same syntax.
I’m almost completely innocent of Hebrew, but I have difficulty believing that that verse sounds as pedestrian to a fluent Hebrew reader as the CEV translation does to me. Here, the KJV is memorable, indeed proverbial; the CEV is neither. That, I think, is as important a criterion as any.
And perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t see that the CEV conveys the meaning one bit better. Actually, it’s worse. Unless I misread both the Hebrew and the LXX, it should say, “Wisdom does not feed you, knowledge does not make you rich, and intelligence does not make you popular.” Which still isn’t very good. One regrets the loss of the metaphorical “bread”; and “intelligence” seems an unsatisfactory gloss for “one with understanding” or “discerning one”, (better than “skill” though) but we just don’t say such things in modern English. This is one case where the original syntax conveys the original sense more beautifully and concisely.
All of which is to say, if an amateur may make so bold to a professional, that your example does not convince me that following Hebrew syntax is a bad thing.
For “we just don’t say such things in modern English” above read “we just don’t say such things in modern colloquial English”, which seems to have been the CEV’s target dialect.
Bulbul: Funny, I never figured you for a cat lady… :o)
That’s not at all odd: I’ve never been a “cat lady”, but since I was four, I’ve definitely been a cat person. ;-)
I think there’s something to be said for preserving poetic Semiticisms, at least where they can be understood with some clarity.
Hm, depends on what you mean by Semiticisms. Parallelismus membrorum, the repetitivness, the poetic dialect – definitely. I self think keep Hebrew syntax including structure clause not is good idea even at all how self have good translate. (That’s Slovak syntax in English for you).
The problem is that you can get away with a lot when translating poetry. When in doubt, you can even obfuscate and sound enigmatic. But that’s just not a good way to translate stuff.
Here, the KJV is memorable, indeed proverbial
Proverbial, that’s just it. That’s the 400 years of tradition I was talking about.
“Wisdom does not feed you, knowledge does not make you rich, and intelligence does not make you popular.”
Hmmmm…. Sorry, don’t think so. The CEV version is pretty much dead on: the fastest ones don’t (always) win races, the strongest aren’t always victorious, the wise aren’t always rich (ha, tell me about it! :o)… or perhaps speed doesn’t guarantee the first place, strenght does not guarantee victory and skill (education?) does not guarantee succes BUT everything is a matter of chance (luck?). Luther, for example, is probably the best translation of this passage I have seen.
One regrets the loss of the metaphorical “bread”; and “intelligence” seems an unsatisfactory gloss for “one with understanding” or “discerning one”
I agree. The main problem I have with this particular passage in KJV is the use of the preposition “to” in a rather unnatural way (and FYI, English is not the only language where this happens, the Vulgate also shows significant influence of Hebrew). Again, one must try to detach him/herself from the whole culturally conditioned KJV thing and see whether phrases like “favor to the skillful” were ‘good English’ at the time of writing. They were not. The concept expressed by Hebrew “le-” in this particular context was and is expressed differently in English, that’s the whole problem. An idiom must be wherever possible translated by an idiom. Luther does that, various other languages do so too. Literal translation isn’t just the right kind of nutty (again, a literal translation of a Slovak idiom for “just don’t work” :-).
The metaphors I would probably keep, providing we make sure we understand the original ones correctly.
This is one case where the original syntax conveys the original sense more beautifully and concisely.
Are you sure? Isn’t it just your years of reading KJV and living in a culture strongly influenced by KJV?
that your example does not convince me that following Hebrew syntax is a bad thing.
Damn! What about now? :o)
BTW, folks over at Better Bibles Blog deal with issues like this constantly, worth checking out.
I’ve never been a “cat lady”, but since I was four, I’ve definitely been a cat person.
I stand corrected :o)
For what it’s worth, when my best-beloved cat of fifteen years died last year, I came as close as I’ve ever come to wishing I could believe in an afterlife – it still gets me weepy, sometimes, when I so much miss her familiar clawed scramble up to perch on my shoulders and rub the side of her head against my specs, and realise that I’ll never feel her do that again, except in memory. There are old t-shirts with holes in them I can hardly bring myself to throw out…
It’s been awhile since I last read Hogsfather, and reading the two quotes together–Death’s speech in defense of the “little lies” and Susan’s speech in ridicule of them–only reminds me what a complex author Terry Pratchett is. Both Susan and Death are telling truths, however mutually exclusive they seem at first blush.
Perhaps it’s that we do need the little lies in order to learn how to believe in the big truths; but if we get stuck in a a slavish literalism to the little lies, we deserve all Susan’s scorn.
sophia8: This personal heaven contains whatever is needed to make the creature completely happy.
Duane: Hmm. I’m trying to reconcile this with those folks who aren’t completely happy unless others are burning in hell.I’m reminded of a joke us Pagans like to tell sometimes, about how sometime last week or maybe next month a Pagan couple died in a car wreck and found themselves in the Summerlands, and, because one pleasant afterlife is neighbor to another, they took the between-lives opportunity to tour the various heavens. A friendly spirit acted as their tour guide, and they were taken to see Valhalla, and the Elysian Fields, and the many various Heavens of the different Christian denominations, and so forth.
And at one point during the tour, the spirit (who looked a bit like St. Peter if you squinted at it right) told them, “In this next country you’re about to see, you need to keep absolutely quiet.” They were even given special noise-cancelling shoes so their footsteps would be silent.
And so they did. And they saw a misty roll of grassy hills in which people of all ages, mostly adults but some teens and children too, strolled around at their leisure wearing white robes and glowing golden crowns with stars in them. It was peaceful and nice, but not very different from other Heavens that the touring Pagans had been shown.
After they left and they could talk again and hand back the silencer shoes, the couple asked their guide, “So what was the big taboo on noise about?”
The spirit looked a little apologetic and said, “Ah, well, that’s the bit of Heaven that belongs to the ‘fundie’ Christians. It makes them happy to think they’re the only ones here.”
there are many heavens, or ideas of heaven, in which I don’t believe either. Included among them is the idea that heaven is completely other-worldly, that it is wholly unrelated to the here and now.
The idea that heaven is related to the here and now makes no sense for me. If God has no beginning or end, then this universe and our world are only fleeting, blink of an eye artificial constructs that have no real relation to the reality of God’s nature. Do you think God, an incorporeal being who can accomplish anything with a thought, has hands and feet? Do you think an eternal, all powerful, all knowing being has any attachment to the things that we weak, finite beings are attached to? Jesus said that we will be “like the angels, neither marrying or giving in marriage”. If I am not going to have any special attachment with the woman who, in this world, I have joined myself mind, body and soul then what are the odds that a dog or cat, will be in heaven too?
Perry: If I am not going to have any special attachment with the woman who, in this world, I have joined myself mind, body and soul then what are the odds that a dog or cat, will be in heaven too?
If your soul is indeed joined to another person’s soul, then no doubt (assuming for the sake of argument the existence of a soul and of an afterlife for that soul) you will still have a special attachment to that person after you are both dead. I cannot recall that Jesus ever pronounced anything on this matter of soul-joining, so I guess you’re at liberty to believe what you like.
Legal contracts cease to be binding after death: marriage is a legal contract. Physical attachments likewise. Nothing I have ever read pretends to any definite information on soul-joining.
It seems to be very important to some fundamentalists that we all know that we’re worthless, but that at least we’re better than the animals. I’d argue that some people aren’t better than animals and in fact aren’t as worthy, but whatever… I just know that if Hitler (for example) and my cat were trapped in the same burning building and I could save only one of them, der Fuhrer would be on his own. My old, old cat is more dear to me than many people I’ve known, and if that makes me wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
I never got into the insect/small animal torture as a kid, I won’t judge too harshly those that did. Kids can be cruel, esp. when encouraged to be so by other children. I am wondering how much of it is influenced by our (Western) culture’s ideas about what animals are good and should be protected and which are OK to eliminate. Do Hindu children pull the legs off flies or spiders?
RE Santa Claus: I think of Santa Claus as a charming holiday legend. As an atheist, I sorta feel the same way about the whole Jesus born in a manger, etc. story. I know some religious people would be horrified by that, which is their right, but if I had kids, I’d explain it to them that way. Christmas is a celebration of family, renewal, life, etc., and there are different ways of telling that story. As for making kids believe in Santa, only to have them be disappointed when they find out he’s not real, I’d say to leave out the cookies just in case, cause you never know, to teach kids to be open to possibilities. Then I’d say that the important bit is not that Santa is a real guy, but that he’s a symbol of generosity and an example to follow. What’s wrong with that? And I’d teach them to appreciate Cheech and Chong’s “Santa Claus and His Old Lady.”
Even the bit about the “magic dust”?? (it really makes those reindeer *fly*!)
I’ve never been a “cat lady”, but since I was four, I’ve definitely been a cat person.
I stand corrected :o)
Cat Person: 1 – 2 cats.
Cat Lady: 40-90 cats, requiring intervention by local health and animal control authorities.
Cat Person: 1 – 2 cats.
Cat Lady: 40-90 cats, requiring intervention by local health and animal control authorities.
Catwoman: miraculously survives fall from tall building, dresses up in skintight rubber outfit, is vicious yet strangely attractive criminal, dates Batman.
Cat-Man: miraculously survives being raised by a tiger, dresses up in flashy yellow and red costume, has feline super-strength, enhanced agility, natural night vision and nine lives.
(What’s the deal with “cat ladies”? Are there “cat gentleman, too?)
(What’s the deal with “cat ladies”? Are there “cat gentleman, too?)
Yes, but the rule isn’t defined by the exceptions.
Bulbul – The problem here as I see it is that the CEV offers not a translation, but a paraphrase, albeit a fairly close one. It fails to associate concepts in the same way the original does, and it makes poor choices in finding equivalent concepts. And as a translation of poetry, it’s shockingly unpoetic.
I did not intend to offer a complete translation but an alternative to a phrase I thought most poorly done. The CEV conveys what is meant fairly well — but fails to reproduce the “flavor” of how it’s said. The latter is the reason for expressing an idea poetically in the first place. Poetic expressions are better recalled than bland prose IMO, especially prose that’s specifically designed to be bland. Of course the KJV here isn’t good *prose* English of the time, or even ordinary spoken English, but word inversion and elliptical expressions were very common in poetry. Compare for example the first lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments….”
“Literal translation isn’t just the right kind of nutty”
Maybe it’s just my own Galician ancestry, but I understood this perfectly even though I’d never heard the expression before. (My grandparents did not, unfortunately, teach me “po nashemou”. I suspect they preferred to have a language in which they could converse without the grandkids understanding them.)
Sure, “magic dust” and all. They’d figure it out eventually. And it makes as much sense as magic beans or magic shoes that take you back to Kansas.
I actually tried not telling my kids about Santa Claus. I never told them he didn’t exist, I just never said anything to instill the myth. They absorbed the idea by osmosis anyway. It really is pervasive in the US.
Our kids certainly know about the story of Santa Claus (from various cultural influences), but they’ve never expected him to come magically down the chimney to give them presents. Or sat on ‘his’ lap in a shopping mall.
re: Santa Claus
What it comes down to is whether or not you are comfortable lying to your children. Ever seen some of the extreme lengths (and convulated webs of deceit) some people go to to keep their kids from finding out the truth? My parents didn’t tell me Santa Claus was real, and I don’t feel that I’ve missed out on anything as a result. My kids both know that Santa isn’t real and the same goes for the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, ghosts and monsters.
re: Santa Claus
What it comes down to is whether or not you are comfortable lying to your children. Ever seen some of the extreme lengths (and convulated webs of deceit) some people go to to keep their kids from finding out the truth? My parents didn’t tell me Santa Claus was real, and I don’t feel that I’ve missed out on anything as a result. My kids both know that Santa isn’t real and the same goes for the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, ghosts and monsters.
Do your kids believe that Jesus can magically take up residence in the main circulatory organ of their bodies if they ask him really sincerely?
Perry,
What it comes down to is whether or not you are comfortable lying to your children.
Hm. I’m not sure it really comes down to it and I’m even less sure that Santa Claus etc. is really a lie.
L,
I actually tried not telling my kids about Santa Claus. I never told them he didn’t exist, I just never said anything to instill the myth.
Yep, same thing my parents did with me. At some point, I simply realized it was just a myth, without any adverse effects on my psyche, although I still remember kicking myself for not having figured it out earlier, what with all the clues :o)
The problem here as I see it is that the CEV offers not a translation, but a paraphrase
Oy gewalt, the old translation vs. paraphrase debate :o)
The CEV conveys what is meant fairly well — but fails to reproduce the “flavor” of how it’s said. The latter is the reason for expressing an idea poetically in the first place.
There’s Hebrew poetic and there’s English poetic. In Hebrew, the main figure of poetry was repetition, sort of echoing. Fortunately, this translates well. But I’m not really sure that the preposition “le” (which, again, is what I have a problem with in KJV) is really a poetic trope. Come to think of it, that’s a great idea for an article…
At this point I would like to point out that in the case of Biblical (or indeed any other) poetry, there is no such thing as “the only correct translation”. The CEV version is just fine with me, partly because it’s the meaning I care about most. As for whether it’s poetic enough, your opinion is as good as mine.
Maybe it’s just my own Galician ancestry
Coooooool :o) How many of you – or rather us – do we have here? I count Jeff and you. Anybody else?
My grandparents did not, unfortunately, teach me “po nashemou”.
Mind if I ask where exactly were they from?
Mind if I ask where exactly were they from?
Bayonne, New Jersey. :) My grandfather’s parents were the Galician ones, from Izby; my grandmother’s parents were from the other side of the mountains in Komloša, which I believe is now called Chmel’ova.
bulbul: ‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-‘ YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. ‘So we can believe the big ones?’ YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
Like I said, I was never fed the “little lies”. That must be why I grew up to be such an unjust, merciless, and undutiful person.
TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY.
Reductionist metaphysics? Really, I would have thought that Death would know better.
Really, I would have thought that Death would know better.
Well, he’s got a bad case of chronic humanity, that’s probably just another symptom…
my grandmother’s parents were from the other side of the mountains in Komloša, which I believe is now called Chmel’ova.
You have to be kidding me, that’s like 40 miles from where my parents live ;o)
Small world. I was surprised a few months ago to discover another member of my little Orthodox parish of <100 members in California also had grandparents (or great-grandparents, I forget which) from Izby. And we're not even primarily a Carpatho-Russian parish.
Our kids certainly know about the story of Santa Claus (from various cultural influences), but they’ve never expected him to come magically down the chimney to give them presents. Or sat on ‘his’ lap in a shopping mall.
I’m pleased to say that seeing Santa Fraud in his fake whiskers and overstuffed jolly suit makes my 2-year-old flee in fright. That’s good instincts! (and saves me $30 on a crappy snapshot)
Mud Tire Review
traction than a bias-ply tire A review like that isn’t Mud smoothly but also find lots more. CART IS EMPTY trail-and- mud applications.” A review like that isn’t Mud Lite XTR not only ride. Shopping Cart. E-Mail this Page. Be the first to review