I firmly believe that there is something inherent about the ability of the Bible to stand up to translation. I think that the whole point, from the very beginning with God's promise to bless the entire world through Abraham's descendants, was that there should be no impediment to people's relating to God, and translation is a huge part of that. I think it's right that the Bible should be read in English, Spanish, Farsi, Japanese, Cree and everything else, because I think God's bigger than language differences and linguistic quibbles.
However, I think it's also important to at least remember that if you're reading the Old Testament in anything other than ancient Hebrew, or the NT in anything other than slightly-post-classical Greek, you are reading a translation, and care must be taken to double check things before jumping to conclusions - or at least, before publicizing your jumped-to conclusions.
I say this because I got one verse into today's readings and thought I'd "discovered" something very interesting.
1 Then they set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the sons of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure from the land of Egypt."A-HA!" says I, "'the wilderness of Sin' eh? How delightfully telling, poetic and metaphoric... a fascinating insight into the reasons behind Israel's wanderings in the wilderness to come, blah blah blah..."
So I look it up, and it turns out I'm not really all that smart. For whatever reason, the English word sin (referring to the morally questionable stuff) ended up being roughly the same as the coincidental transliteration of the Hebrew word for the place they happened to be when this story happens.
See for yourself: here's the Hebrew word for "sin" as in wrongdoing, and here's the Hebrew name for the place translated as Sin. They're different. Ah, says you, but maybe the one was the origin of the other, and the current concept of "sin" came from the name of that place. Maybe, but it doesn't look like it. Seems like just coincidence.
And so I plod ahead, duly chided and treading lightly.
And then this. This is the reason why I was excited to do this project in the first place. It's happened a couple of times already, but nowhere so deliciously as here.
13 So it came about at evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as the frost on the ground. 15 When the sons of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat.
How unspeakably awesome is that? Manna didn't fall from heaven, it coalesced from the gathered dew of the morning. It appeared gradually, naturally, magically on the ground right around them. There was no chaotic random scattering of this stuff, pelting down from above, it just was. It echoes back to the way creation happened - it just did once God decided it would. It's beautiful, and it seems just like magic.
But then again, not.
Remember Lewis' distinction between magic and miracle? I think the same thing applies here. As decidedly unmagical as I (for whatever reason) see the idea of manna simply dropping from the sky, it definitely is more like magic (the spontaneous breaking of natural laws, processes and progressions) than miracle (the alteration of those laws, processes and progressions for the purpose of identifying their creator and master).
Bear with me, because I think the analogy holds up to some scrutiny. How do we get bread? Grain grows, and we make it into bread. It's a ground-up process, starting with the water cycle, a part of which is the settling of dew.
I think what makes the actual account of the delivery of manna so much more magical (in the non-Lewis-analytical sense) to me is that it doesn't involve a brute cognitive/realistic dissonance, but instead smacks of art, a creative (in every sense) power revelling and frolicking in the joy of spontaneous adaptation and flexibility.
So, the fact that manna came as dew instead of rain has officially become the coolest mind-blow of the year so far for me.
So. Awesome.
Almost awesome enough, in fact, to forget about the head-scratching ability of the Israelites to revel in whining revisionist history, where they gripe and gripe and gripe until God relents, through Moses, with what I can only assume is a barely concealed transcendental sigh.
Just look at the crap they come up with:
16:3 The sons of Israel said to them, "Would that we had died by the LORD'S hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full ; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."
17:3 But the people thirsted there for water ; and they grumbled against Moses and said, "Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst ?"
This is simply unbelievable whining. They had just been rescued from centuries of slavery, by extremely convincing methods thanks to God's God-ness, and they reminisce and moan about how much bread they had back in Egypt. (Would that we had died by the Lord's hand?! WHAT?!) Then, after they're miraculously and spectacularly rescued from even the threat of starvation by the same God, it's not just a matter of "Hey Moses, know where we can find some water?" but "WHY DO YOU WANT US TO DIE?!?!?!"
I know, I know, we're none of us any better, really. But still...
Anyway, I'd forgotten how early Joshua makes his appearance, as well, and the battle that he leads has an interesting little side-episode that I find fascinating, as it relates to what I've already commented on as the Old Testaments pragmatic "let's try this and if it works God must have approved" approach to seeking divine intervention.
The battle is set, and Moses goes up with Aaron and Hur (no, I have no idea either - never Hur-d of him before. BAHAHAHA!! *ahem*) and it's decided that if Moses keeps his arms up, that means that Joshua will win, and if he lowers his arms, Joshua will lose.
Soon enough, it becomes clear to the rapidly aging Moses that it may have been a wiser choice to flip those two signs around, so that he could have just left his arms by his sides and had that be that...
No matter. Where some would have lamented God's abandonment of them once the elderly man finally lowered his rusty arm bones to his sides, Moses, Aaron and Hur decide to take action, get a large rock, and have Moses rest his arms on that.
"See? They're still up! That means we'll win!"
And they do. How 'bout that? Some would consider what they did cheating, but God apparently didn't, so where's your "cheating" now?
Finally, this passage contains one of the single most useless bits of "clarification" in the history of helping people.
BEHOLD IT:
36 (Now an omer is a tenth of an ephah.)
Um... thanks, Exodus. You really cleared that one up for me...
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