Within Reason - #85 Magnify - 7 Translation Problems in Genesis

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

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Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. it's not very hard to clap pretty bad clap to be honest I'd love to know why we clap like why human beings clap to like make your presence known but I mean like when something is

I think it might be like the loudest noise that's easy to manufacture but you could all just like scream like if someone does something you like at a show you could just like scream people shout like bravo yeah well they do that right but is it always been clapping I have no idea but that would be unusual to like the conclusion of an opera and then instead of this everyone just goes

I don't know who does happen like a soccer game I feel like a football match rather that yeah there's just like all these guys just they're not clapping you just let out a primal yell so is it just like a civilized civilized replacement for just yelling your head off like trying to make a thunderous noise I mean I wonder the most effective way to make a lot of noise show appreciation strength and social bond that comes from enjoying something together To the most effective way to make a loud noise together. Surely it's more effective to just scream. I think it's the same.

You can clap for hours. You can scream for hours. That's true. You can clap for longer. I feel like it might be the same way where why you would clap to mark when you're filming something to synchronize everything because it's the quickest way to manufacture a very sharp, distinct sound. I guess that is louder and it requires a lot more to make that level of noise with my mouth.

Although we use this wonderful sort of AI enhancing tools. So we're having this conversation and anybody listening is not going to hear any of the claps. I'm just going to look like a fool. So you're ethically fine with those AI tools. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It feels a bit bad actually because like it's quite clear that with how easily our like audio post production got taken over by AI, I do sometimes worry for poor Alex over there and his job.

But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Christopher, Magnify on YouTube. I'm so glad to have you on the show. We've got about one and a half million subscribers and you've managed to do it just through using YouTube shorts, some of the most interesting and captivating YouTube shorts on the platform. I imagine that most people watching this, even if they don't know your name or know who you are, when they see your face and who you talk, they'll recognize you because you're doing quite well for yourself. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. It's really exciting. Some of the stuff that you do that's really sort of piqued my interest has been your biblical analyses in terms of the language and history of the Bible.

We were just speaking a moment ago, and you told me that we could potentially do an entire episode just talking about the linguistic quirks of the very first phrase of the Bible. You opened the Old Testament, Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's what I always read. what can you tell me about it? Well, there's a little bit more to the English version of Genesis 1-1 because as you said, it's in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

and then there's a period. There's a big fat punctuation mark which is really quite interesting because as like an ancient language, ancient Hebrew doesn't have punctuation. So there's a big question about what is the significance of introducing a punctuation mark

into a text in which one wasn't There, I think in ancient Hebrew, there is like little markings on a scroll to let you know when you've reached the end of a line. But that's not the same thing as a period. And a period definitely has a meaning of like this idea stops here and doesn't continue on to the next one. So there's a big question about whether or not there should be a period at the end of Genesis 1-1. What difference would that make is what comes next, you know, and the earth was without shapeless and void in the spirit of God? moved over the spirit of the waters, another period there. And God says, let there be light, and there was light.

So in the English version, by the time you get to let there be light, there may be three or four periods or three or four stops. Are you familiar with the Bible translator Robert Alter? No. He's like a very, probably the most highly regarded working translator. And he spent very unusual for a Bible translator that he spent about 20 years. translating classical literature and then got sucked into this project of translating the Old Testament with all of that literary sensitivity to style and format that maybe someone who went to

seminary isn't sensitive to. So when he talks about Genesis 1-1 and the punctuation, the literary effects of punctuation in Genesis 1-1, he talks about that it really slows down the pace and that for an original reader, there's a sense in Genesis 1 that the universe is happening extremely fast, like an explosion almost, which is really interesting. And so when he translates it, he says the original reader would feel that this is all happening very quickly. Like, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth was shapeless and void, and God said, let there be light, and there was light. Right. And Hebrew is also a much more like economical language, quicker language. So the first verse, I think, in Hebrew, Genesis 1-1,

is seven words in Hebrew, and it takes English 12 words to accomplish the same thing. So it's nearly double the speed, takes double the length of time to say it, and it's got these plotting period marks that remove that information that this is an event that's happening rapidly. And you could say that is meaningless information that it doesn't change anything about. But to me, that seems like an interesting way to communicate something about the of the universe that it happened fast rather than in this calculated slow way, more of like an explosion. Yeah, well, the image that I have in my head of Genesis is the sort of old man in

the sky sort of doing this and doing that and fiddling with this and turning this on and turning that on. I mean, I don't speak Hebrew at all. I can't read Hebrew, I mean, to say, and I had no idea that there was so much variance just in like a single sentence like that. I know that a lot of these ancient languages don't have punctuation, but I do wonder how ancient readers did separate out their ideas. I mean, was it just sort of natural reading the text where one idea ended and another started? Or as you say, there might have been indications of some kind of line break or something, but was it really just this continuous stream of text?

I think that's very likely. And you have to think about like the oral. tradition of sharing this story before it was even written down. It's like was the reader getting off to a calculated and calm and steady start or was this like kind of in media res explosion onto the scene and those were two different experiences as a first as a listener and then when you're trying to translate that experience into a written scroll it's a different reading experience to like have this measured. I feel like that might be the same with poetry. There's a different if you're like reading Byron or something like that

and you're just like blazing through it versus like savoring each line and like getting hooked. So there's a big difference I think. And Robert Alter when he talks about the difference that these punctuation marks make, he says that like the style of the passage is more than just like an embellishment of a message

but it's like a vital medium through which ideas are communicated. So it's like not something that you can just take it or leave it. It's like this is how the Bible might be communicating something about this event. Yeah. I mean, I want to ask how that problem can potentially be avoided. If there would be a way in translation. I mean, presumably kind of not, given that everybody does include sort of normal English punctuation.

But I wonder if there would be a way in translation to convey the same feeling of the sort of continual idea. that still makes grammatical sense. I mean, you could maybe sort of try to use commas instead or something or maybe write it as verse and have no full stops or punctuation, but like a line break, you know, in the beginning God created the heavens in the earth, line break, and the earth was without form, but like maybe not a capital letter on the and, something like that, you know? Yes. They do, that comes up in music notation a lot because you've got like someone delivering,

here's the notes you have to manufacture to recreate this melody. but like any musician knows that's not really the message. The message is like in the crescendos and you're more of a musician than I, so you probably know more of those terms. Have you ever read the lyrics to a song that you've never heard before? It's oftentimes just an incredibly cringe-making experience. It's a bit of a sort of known fact, I think, among artists. I may be wrong about this, that you'd think that poets would be good at writing lyrics

and good lyricists would be good at writing poetry, but they're actually not as translatable as you might think. If you try to take a poem and set it's music, it's actually incredibly difficult to do. I have a friend who worked with a very esteemed poet, and the idea was it was sort of a musician friend and the esteemed poet and they were going to come together and create a song, and I think it kind of didn't work in the end, because it turns out that good poets don't make good lyrics and it's because if you read these lyrics it's just like really weird if you can't hear the tune and the phrasing it's a bit sort of clunky or it sounds a bit bad and i'm thinking here

maybe like reading the bible in translation is a bit like reading the lyrics to a song without knowing what the music is without knowing what the phrasing is supposed to be and it just makes it sound a bit more clunky and almost like have a different message i think with the koran they definitely take that approach absolutely absolutely every verse is going to have a set melody that maybe you can improvise or add little flourishes, but then I think they would believe that that musical, musicality is just as sacred to the meaning of the text as the shape of the letters. Yeah, well, that's why, I mean, I have found Qurans that are just written in English, but you almost always find Qurans with the English printed next to the Arabic, because

there's this sort of overt recognition that, okay, we're going to translate this into English, but you have to recognize that this is a compromise because the language of the recitation is Arabic and there's something in the phrasing, in the pronunciation, in the way that it's so melodic that is part of, not only part of the message itself, but also part of the very proof of its divinity. There's a sort of test in the Quran to produce something so well put together, so genius, so beautiful, so perfect, which is something that just can't be captured in a translation. And I think actually people just tend to forget this more when they're reading the Bible.

They forget just how much a translation can completely alter our interpretation of the words. We're talking here about full stops. It seems maybe a little more trivial than some other examples. I mean, there are so many translation differences which are absolutely huge. I'm thinking of like a pool in the New Testament writing about women. And there's this verse in 1st Timothy that he suffers not a woman to teach nor to assert authority over a man. Rather, she should remain silent. And that sounds really bad.

I suffer not a woman to teach nor to assert authority over a man. But I've spoken to some scholars who think that the phrase for sort of teach and assert authority are actually kind of together. And Paul uses a word there, which isn't the normal word for authority. He uses something else, which tends to actually mean sort of seizing authority that isn't rightfully yours. And so this little translation might have the verse read more as like, you know, that a woman should not seize authority. She doesn't have to speak in church. And these scholars say that he was writing to this church in Ephesus where there was this cult of Artemis, where there was, it was like a feminine cult. And they were sort of taking over the churches.

And I don't know how much credence I give to this, but at least open my eyes to this. the fact that the translation of a single word there can completely alter the way that you interpret a text. There's definitely one of those in Genesis 1-1, where it's not like, oh, this just changes the style, but like radically separates the story into two very different things. Tell me about it. It's the second word of the Bible. So the first one I think everyone agrees on. It's just means like at the start of something or in the beginning.

It just takes one Hebrew word because, again, it's more economical. So everyone's agreed that, about the first word, but then there's a lot of disagreement about what is actually beginning, because the second word of the Bible is a verb, create. And since there's no tense in ancient Hebrew, there's a lot of, the tense of a verb is like derived from context clues. So there's a lot of question over what is actually beginning. at the beginning, and then there's a lot of question about whether created should be, in the past tense, created, or an infinitive of to create, and to create. So in the beginning of God's act of creating versus in the beginning God created. Does that make a difference between us two? It could read something like, you know, in the beginning of God's creation, you know, this happened.

Or it could be in the beginning, God made a creation, you know, something of that sort. And I think the difference there is almost like if you look at a comic book strip, in one version, the first cell of the comic strip is just like a blank square because it's the beginning and there's nothing there yet. And then God creates the heavens and the earth and it all appears in the second strip, the second cell of the comic strip. In the second version, if it's in the beginning of God's creating, then in that first cell of the comic strip, there might be some primordial materials that are already there. And then God starts to decide to make something out of it. So it's the beginning of his creating. It's not saying, like, in the beginning, it's just like, well, when God started to start making some stuff. And if you look at the actual, like, text, it seems to be more in support of that second option, because the second verse talks about the earth being shapeless and void in the spirit of God hovering over the waters.

So if that verb is truly past tense and God created everything. how was there all this material before he created anything so it doesn't seem like it's saying in the formal beginning of everything it's just like yeah typically the image we have is god creates the heaven and the earth so he sort of pops into existence this thing called the earth and then there is this earth which is without form and and void or or formless or whatever whatever word you'd like to use. I've never quite known exactly what that means for the earth to be without form and void. That's kind of an encroachment of like Greek philosophy onto the text from what I've read because the word that's actually used in the Hebrew is like a made up word like helter-skelter.

And then when I guess the Greek translators were trying to figure out how do we communicate this made-up word into our new culture, they kind of borrowed that classic Greek idea of form and formlessness. And so that's like more of Greek. encroachment of a more philosophical statement where that's fascinating hebrew uses like a more playful word for just kind of like the earth was helter-skelter i guess basically yeah but do we know what that word is trying to sort of get at it's just like a made up it's like a made-up word like it's like a sing-songy word really and we don't see that word used anywhere else i think it's used one other time in bible but as like an intentional reference to where it appears here really so

So I suppose we don't really know what it's supposed to be saying. So we've got like in the beginning God created or potentially in the beginning of God's creation, the earth is something. Yes. And immediately the meaning of this text is falling apart to me and makes me want to go and study Hebrew, to be honest, because I just can't get a grasp of what any of it means. It's really interesting what you say by the way about the Greek encroachment on. the text. I did a podcast recently with esoterica, Dr. Justin Sledge, and we were talking about, we were talking about the demiurge in like Gnostic philosophy. And for some reason we got on talking about the Trinity and how philosophies emerge. And he pointed out to me that the church

fathers in developing their sort of understanding of the nature of the infinite triune God, we're using words like uziah using like Greek concepts because like Greek philosophy is popular and it just gets like imported as a product of its time into what these people believe is actually just like

the eternal truth about the universe because that happens to be the framework through which they're understanding it and you don't often recognize the framework that you have right and so you end up with this bias or this this philosophical frame

that everything goes through without you even realizing. And it was interesting to hear that applied to the way that they sort of did their philosophy, but applied to a translation, that's really interesting because you've got this meaning of this text. And depending on when it's translated into a different language, when it's translated into English, depending on what the translator is trying to get across, you can just totally change the meaning of what the text is supposed to be saying based on like essentially what philosophy is popular at the time. Yes.

And that is, it's kind of scary, actually. So, so, I mean, how do you think we should read this text? Carefully is probably the correct answer there, but how do you approach it? The way that Robert Alter translates it, who I really admire, is he translates that phrase as the world was welter and waste. So it's like, it's a little playful and a little bit more childlike, and it's like kind of sing-songy, because you can't manufacture a new word in the language. but he says it's welter and waste. So it's like a little poetic kind of rhymy and waste. Because formless and void sounds so like stately and like the original is, I think, a little bit more playful and a more childlike.

So to be true to that literary effect. But you've spoken a lot about or you've spoken before about the sort of the tone of the Bible. Like you say, you know, without form and voice. sounds very formal and very serious. It's like a stern father telling you a story, right? But like, I think so much of the, essentially the undertones of scripture can be lost in translation. I read a translation at the book of Job. I really wish I could remember whose it was.

I will find out. I've got it at home. I'll find out and I will put it on screen. Well, you will put it on screen. And he sort of tries to translate the book of Job. as a more poetic text. It's read more as a poem. It's more sort of beautiful.

It's supposed to contain some of that. And reading the difference between God saying in the King James, like gird up thy loins like a man, for I will question you and you will give me an answer. Still, it's pretty intense, but it's quite sort of like, and he translates it as something like, you know, stand up like a man. I will question you, please, instruct me.

It's almost like sarcastic. It's like, you know, go on then, Joe, right, please, instruct me. I'm going to ask you some questions, instruct me. It's a bit sort of sassy. And I have no idea if that's an accurate translation. But reading that made me realize that it seems like a way to translate what that text means. But it totally changes the attitude that I was grabbing to God here. He goes from just being this angry, like, I'm going to ask you and you're going to answer to a sort of like, okay then, all right, if you're so smart, you know, here we go.

It's almost a bit more sassy. Really, really interesting. And you're telling me that this can happen in Genesis 1-1 as well. There's something a bit more like maybe playful in the in the in the playful and fast and like a lot of the experience is very malleable depending on what assumption you have about what it's supposed to be sounding like. And so is this how you would, you know, if you were sort of reading the Old Testament to your children or something, would you pick this translation? I think that's good and try to read like the first three verses in one breath because maybe that's how it would be read out allowed in public. Yeah, that's so interesting. You said that ancient Hebrew doesn't have tensed terms.

So what you mean by that is like there's no such concept. as a past, future, or present version of any word at all. You might say like, in English, we would say, I walked to the store, to say I walked to the store yesterday. But like in an ancient language, you might say, yesterday, I walk to the store. And there's no, the verb is the same verb as if you're talking about the future, present or past. And then there's still, I feel like a lot of languages that maybe tie or something. something like that that works. Well, sometimes you've often noticed the quirks of different languages when you have a non-native speaker trying to speak English, right? Like, you might hear somebody say

something like, oh, yes, yesterday, I walked to the store. And you know what they mean, of course. And you're like, oh, it's not quite correct. You think, well, maybe English is in their first language, but that's probably a result of the fact that that's not a thing that they would do in their language. You know, if I'm trying to say something in a language I don't really know very well, I might try to sort piece together english words and it ends up coming very sounding very strange i walk into a shop and i'm like excuse me i look for toilet nearby so i may relieve thanks you know something like that right and it's like you get the message across but something to do with the way that sentences are constructed and i suppose a lot of that's probably going on in the bible yes like and we have to sort

of adapt it the english and i think it's especially powerful in the first verse of the bible when it actually has a narrative difference about whether God is creating the universe from nothing or whether in line with a more ancient cosmology that he's arranging, he's organizing the universe from pre-existing materials, which I think to a modern reader, we're like, how could anything exist before God created it? That's not logical, but an ancient reader might be like, oh, yeah. There just always was stuff around. Viewers of my show, hardcore viewers will know that I'm what's called a myriological nihilist, which is this, this view that, well, myriology is the study of parts. And so, myriological nihilism is nihilism about parts. So it's the view that there are

no such things as real parts of objects. The best way of understanding what that means is to say that like objects like chairs and tables and things are just kind of arrangements of matter. I've often sort of asked people, you know, did this chair begin to exist? Like, was this chair here 100,000 years ago? No. But nothing has, like, popped into existence in the last 100,000 years, right? Like, all this happened is a bunch of preexisting material has been sort of arranged in a particular way and we call it a chair. For convenience.

Exactly. So I've taken some of this material and I arrange it into a, into the shape of a cup. And I take some of this material and I shape it into a chair and I say, oh, look, now there's a chair. and now there's a cup. But really, the distinction between those objects and their very sort of existence is kind of conceptual. The distinction between them is a mental one, not a real one. So myriological nihilism has this radical implication that objects kind of don't exist.

I mean, when I say the chair, I'm sort of putting a mental construct over an arrangement of matter. And the matter that I'm referring to does exist in the real world. It's really there. But the concept of the chair, like it's distinction between other objects. It's not a real distinction, but a mental one. A useful fiction, I guess. Pretty much.

And I say this as a sort of side note just to point out that, like, this view of the world that I've been advocating for a long time, that we basically just have one big lump of matter and all we do is just arrange it in different ways and put labels on it. And that's where objects, that's where everything comes from. This, I've always been really attracted to this kind of interpretation of Genesis, that this what's going on that God is a myriological nihilist and he's sort of like it's just a bunch of stuff and he's essentially just arranging it he's giving it form it's just like imposing form upon the matter it's almost quite um quite tomistic sort of taking a bunch of matter and imposing

form and that's where you get objects from i think that's really fascinating i mean uh my friend dr john nelson likes to point out to me that the first task that adam is given in genesis is naming the animals It's a task of naming, implying that you've already sort of got these creatures and Adam's task, the first rational creature, is to, you know, designate like labels. And it all sort of, when you, when you look at this text as a, as an attempted mythological account of sort of worldly origins, it starts to line up quite nicely with my my neurological nihilist picture that essentially everything we see in the world is just a bunch of matter that, that might. aligns arrange and give form and then put labels on. And so suddenly this first verse of Genesis becomes a lot more beautiful to me and a lot more sort of in keeping with my world view. If you choose to translate that in the past tense,

it kind of eliminates the possibility of that whole meeting. It just... Exactly. Exactly. And that's... Why do you think that world, that view is attractive to you? I was having a conversation with William Lane Craig years ago now. I must have been in like 2020 or something. And he's the man that made me realize that I was a mereological nihilist because we were debating an argument for the existence of God.

And I made this point, I mean, the argument was that everything which begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe must have a cause. And I said, well, when have you ever seen something begin to exist, Dr. Craig? I mean, like, really, like, I mean, a car doesn't like begin to exist. out of nothing instead it's a rearrangement of pre-existing matter and so if you're saying this is the kind of thing that god did you're trying to make an argument that you know god is the cause of the universe if beginning to exist can just mean rearranging pre-existing

pre-existing matter then i don't think that's the image of god that works for you right and he said okay i understand what you're saying Alex that you don't think that the the car began to exist it was just a rearrangement of matter but i want your your viewers to realize how radical a view you've just committed yourself to. You've just committed yourself to this view called myriological nihilism. Because if you think about it, like, I mean, do you understand what I'm saying when I say that, like, the car never began to exist? It was just a bunch of stuff that got rearranged and we called it a car, but nothing really began to exist. Well, if the car never began to exist, then the car doesn't exist, like right now. There's no point at which it began

existing. But obviously, the car exists, like it's there, but it does seem to me that, like, it never just popped into existence. All the stuff that made the car was already there. The only thing that has sort of started existing is a particular arrangement. You know what I mean? Yes. But the only thing that can recognize an arrangement of matter is some kind of mind. Because you could have a bunch of logs all like stacked up against each other,

but there's no mind to view them. They're just a bunch of logs stacked up on each other. For someone to say, oh, you know, they look like this kind of shape. And it could be used in this particular way. You need a conscious mind. And so, like, the very existence of objects becomes, like, mentally dependent. And I was like, whoa, you know, I, I don't know about all that. And I went away and thought about it.

And I think he's right. So the best way that I can describe it is by saying that, like, okay, there's a microphone in front of me. Does the left-hand side of this microphone exist? Like, yes, it does, because it's right there. You know what I'm referring to, and it's right there, and it exists in the real world. But clearly the concept of the left-hand side of the microphone requires my mind. You know what I mean? To designate it.

Left and right. And so the thing that my words are referring to is the atoms that make up this part of the microphone. Does that exist? Yes. But to call it the left-hand side of the microphone as opposed to the right-hand side of the microphone is a totally mental thing. Mental construct. All of the things that I'm referring to with my mental construct do exist. The atoms exist.

But like the distinction between the left-hand side and the right-hand side of the microphone is totally mental It's not a real distinction in the object. It's just a mental one and it's very easy to see how the left-hand side versus the right-hand side is a purely mental construction But this worldview is more radical in saying that the distinction between the microphone and the stand and the stand and the chair And the chair and the wallpaper is all a mental distinction because it's all just atoms all just arranged in various ways. And so it's a super kind of radical way of viewing the world. But I find it quite attractive.

I think it makes a lot of sense. I've seen that pop up in different cultures in the way they refer to their bodies. Really? Like, would you have a name for this part of your body? Oh, sure. Between your elbow and your wrists? Yeah.

What would you call this? Well, I'd call it my forearm. But then on the flip side, what would you call this? I don't know. But, like, other cultures would have, like, a specific name for this body part, this plane versus this plane. Yeah. And like, to us, that's not an important distinction to make.

But that's like a construct that they find valuable. But there's no, you're right, there's no. There's no real difference. It's all just one thing or like, you know, one sort of arrangement of stuff. It's funny while you were describing that worldview, because that just seems, that feels apparent to me. It's hard for me to imagine what the opposite is to believe that objects could come into existence. Well, that's why it's actually not that radical, I think.

It's a radical way of thinking about it because you realize that essentially objects don't exactly exist. Like, like, as, like a chair doesn't exist in the sense that there's no real thing, distinguishable object called a chair. Yes. But the thing that our mind labels a chair does exist, but the chair itself doesn't exist. It sounds very radical. But like you say, when, when you, when you talk it through.

It's like, well, of course, objects are just rearrangement of pre-existing matter. And so people will say, well, the thing that begins to exist is form. Like, form is a real thing. Mm-hmm. You have matter and you have form, and that's where objects come from. But this has actually been a problem for a long time. I mean, think about Plato and his realm of the forms. Mm-hmm.

Like, where does this come from? Because Plato has this problem of the one and the many. Like, well, that over there is a chair. This here is a chair. but they're like separate objects what makes them both chairs why are they both chairs what is it that they share in common

or is it having four legs I mean that chair over there our viewers can't see it that chair over there doesn't even have legs really it's sort of got this weird sculpture thing underneath it and so it can't be that and Plato's answer is well there must be this form

of chair that things participate in and so when people hear my my neurological nihilism and they go well that sounds a bit far-fetched and a bit absurd And I'm like, well, how did Plato solve this problem? By, like, imagining this realm of, like, abstract forms that all chairs, like, participate in. Like, like, this is actually a really difficult problem to solve, I think, unless you kind of bite this bullet and just say, yeah, no, like, the only distinctions are mental ones.

Do you think that applies to abstract? Do you think that there are discrete, abstract ideas or that? Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm less tempted to say so, because it does seem like thoughts and concepts can sort of actually arise where they weren't before. But the thing is, it's going to depend on what the matter of a thought is, right? Like, if you are a total materialist, if you're, was it, an elimitative, an eliminative materialist, then thoughts just sort of collapse into matter. And so, yeah, you'd have to apply your myriological nihilism to thoughts. But if thoughts are really these immaterial, special kinds of things, then they might be immune from this problem.

Actually, I thought of a really interesting argument for sort of mind-body dualism or the immateriality in the mind that a friend of mine, I think, first brought my attention to. And like, I can't remember where he got it from. There's some scholar in the world that I'm not crediting here for this. but take everything I've just said about myriological nihilism about the fact that there is no real distinction between objects there's only a mental distinction so premise one there is no real distinction between material things

premise two minds are really distinct from each other conclusion minds are not material I thought that's an interesting thought because it just seems as though my mind really is just distinct from yours. It doesn't seem like it's just an arrangement of matter that someone's put a label on. It's like, no, I have a first person center of consciousness. You have one too. We can't like merge them together. We can't like watch them sort of dance around and put a different label on it or something.

They seem really distinct. And so if I'm really a mereological nihilist about material objects, but I also really believe that minds are. distinct, then I have to think that minds are not material or that minds are a very, very, very special kind of material, which I suppose everybody does anyway. But I thought that was kind of interesting. So translation would be a lot easier if minds weren't distinct. That's probably true. Well, in a way, translation as language itself. Well, language, I think the purpose of language is I have something in my mind. And if only, like, I always, I always think if I could just like open up your brain and prod it in a particular way with like a with like a scalpel to make that thought in my mind arise in your mind

I'd love to do that because then we'd have the same thought and you'd understand where I'm coming from that tool kind of exists and it's called language I vibrate the air in a particular way that prods your brain in a particular way in an attempt to make that thought arise in your head and language and translation is just the attempt to take this thought in this head and get it over into this head, you know, and I think it often goes wrong, such as in the case of Genesis 1-1. You told me that there were like seven different problems with this, and I think we've covered like two or three of them, so. Yeah, we cover two that are things that English inserts into the text, but there's also a few things that the English omits. Ah, including out of the, what is it,

seven words in Genesis 1-1 in Hebrew. Two of them, are not even translated into english really my next question is going to be which one are they and what should they mean and that's because there's a special kind of word in ancient hebrew that you use anytime you want to specify a specific object in the world you preface it with a word that signals that you're about to conjure up a specific object rather than just like like a concept or abstract like the difference between saying a general a general thing like a specific thing yeah like think about the red telephone box yes versus i'm going to talk about the red telephone box that's out on the street right there and so there's this word that's two letters at which is

made up of alif which is the first letter in hebrew and atav which is the last letter so it's a little bit like saying a to z or a to z every time that you call out a specific object. And you could say that that's just like a grammatical article for clarity, but a lot of like the mystics or the rabbinical scholars would say that more than just like a procedural word, it's actually like an important ceremonial word and that every time you're stopping to reference a specific object, you take a moment to remember the A to Z's, the A to Z, the universe of things from which you are calling out that object to know like you were saying that an object doesn't exist in isolation an object exists as part of a universe of things that you

are pulling it out from so then every time you mention an object you're stopping to remember that chaotic entirety of all the materials in the universe and that you're just calling out a little bit of it and you're stopping to do that every time you use you. a direct object and that's definitely been lost to time like modern hebrew speakers use the word at probably with as much thought as we just use articles like a and in the but a lot of the mystical thinkers from going back a thousand years would say no this is an important ceremonial word to take a moment to communicate what it is you're doing when you are con when you are referencing in an object yeah that makes sense that yeah yeah yeah yeah

Yeah, it does. And so is this like every time you say something like there's a chair over there or, you know, go and pick up a banana or something. Like any time you say like a singular object noun, you would say this word, et. I picked up at banana. Right. In English, we would say, I picked up banana. Yeah.

That's, that's interesting. Okay, so where is that used in Genesis 1 1? So it would be in the beginning, God created at the heavens. and then et again the earth so both of those are objects heaven and earth and before those are referenced

there's that little interesting word there and then I suppose the English translators just decided oh English doesn't have this function so we can just omit those two words because they're not necessary everybody knows

when you're referencing a direct object in English it's clear from the syntax but that's a really interesting thing to do if you're claiming to be translating the inspired word of God, it's really fascinating to already in the first verse decide that there's information that's irrelevant. Yeah. I wonder if there are many schools of thought which believe in, you know, the Holy Spirit inspiring translators as much as they might inspire the evangelists who wrote the Gospels or whatever. So how should we be

trying to incorporate this into English. I mean, I want to ask about this translator that you were telling me about a moment ago, how he approaches this. I don't think he touches on that and just assumes that it's part, it's not possible. Yeah. But then it really brings up the question of why,

if you believe it's the inspired word of God, would you not try to copy that linguistic feature in the way that you speak yourself? Like if you are claiming that your worldview is derived from the Bible, wouldn't you want to talk about things the way that the Bible, like who decided that that was irrelevant information? Yeah. And I can see why it would seem that way because you're reading it and it would be a bit like translating English and we have the word A or An or the and you think,

well, the message is getting across. It's just like a word. It's just a grammatical thing. Perhaps not. But it's hard to know right. Because we don't. We don't. don't know what the intention was of using that particular word especially if you're talking about this isn't just a written language this like proto semitic script this is like some of the first time that language is ever being written down at all so it's like there may have been some of these customs that were very meaningful to people using written language for the first time that have slowly lost relevant or like slowly stopped being important after thousands of years of writing so many texts after text.

That's what happens with language when you pick a word which is supposed to have a lot of significance and meaning, but the more it gets used, especially if it's used as commonly as sort of before any object, it just starts to lose its meaning. It's why even the phrase like, I have no words, has become sort of, it's sort of lost at simple. There would have been a time when the first person to sort of say, to try to be picking a really poetic language, a word to, you know, describe their grief or something. something says, I have no words. Words cannot contain the feeling that I have. And the first person

to hear that would have gone, well, that's really powerful. What a powerful thing to say. Right. But now if someone says, words cannot express, it's sort of throw away. Exactly. Right. And that happens all the time. It is very difficult actually to pick. I definitely think that would be the function of like good poetry is like to make that to feel fresh every single time. It's exactly what I was just thinking is the poetry. I also think this is the same thing. I've always thought about this when it comes to things like public speaking. People know I've always admired people like Christopher Hitchens who can throw together these beautiful poetic phrases. And sure, there's a lot of like big words, right? But then you get this, this particular kind of public speaker that just

throws in a lot of big words. And it's kind of impressive, but it doesn't quite have the same poetic eloquence. I think maybe someone like Russell Brand is a good example of this, right? Like just you, like it's obviously sort of swallowed the pheasaurus. and he's very good at picking these words and stuff, but it never felt poetic. And I realized that, like, it seems like, it seems like poetry isn't about, or poetic speaking isn't about

picking an elegant word, but using ordinary words in an eloquent way. And that's a very difficult thing to do. And I think that's something that we have to do when our words just sort of lose their emotional, their emotional import. Because they just sort of don't have it anymore. I mean, when someone tells you,

They're devastated. You think, like, oh, okay. But I heard a footballer say that he was devastated to lose the game. Devastated. Well, you know, they say, oh, I'm just devastated. Devastated to lose the tournament. And they said on TV, it's like, okay. So what would he do if an asteroid hit his town and wiped it off?

What word would he have left? Honestly, he would probably just say he was devastated, right? And that's the problem, is that, like, you sort of, you've, you've blown up all degrees of meaning in our words. but it's inevitably going to happen. And so, I mean, thinking about that, like the word devastated, like devastation, think about what devastation is, like utter devastation. It's a very powerful concept. But when someone says, oh, I was devastated to miss that, you know, to miss that show that

I was supposed to go to or something. What does the overstating mean? Is it devustating? I don't know. That'd be a good one for the etymology nerd or somebody. Yeah, there was some, I know that there are some really interesting examples of words that sound like they should be like the opposite of something, but are not like, I think there's a really good example of this. I think it's the word nonchalant, because it's like nonchalant

is a word, is a term that we use in English, but no one says shallant, which is really strange. Actually, though, I think people sort of say shallant almost as a joke as to mean the opposite of nonchalant. And I'm sure it will be no time before it's. sort of actually becomes part of the lexicon. But I think there are also probably examples of things which sound like they should be, they should like where you have like a word like a descriptive or something where it sounds like it should be scriptive and then descriptive, but it might actually be that the word descriptive became something else.

Like it's a bit misleading in that way. We do use the word individual. Yes. There you go. That's an interesting. example, yeah. Which I think we use the word, oh, he's an individual. It almost just becomes a synonym for like person, but it's really weird that the word individual has a philosophy baked into it.

You're saying this is an entity that cannot be divided anymore. Whether or not you actually believe that, but then language kind of glazes over over time and hardens into this thing where you're just throwing around the term individual just to mean a guy or a person. I didn't know that I didn't know that that was the origin of the word individual I've never thought about it it's amazing how much you don't think about it until someone pointed out but it's like such a commodity like words just become such commodities where it's just like oh I need to refer to a person I'll use this term individual so that's what that means individual is in like divisible in the can't divide entity that you can't divide into any more parts that's brilliant and so it does start as meaning like not individual, but we just don't now have the word for individual. I must start using that word. I try and popularize individuals for people who are more sort of scattered and all over the place. It's like you're being a bit individualistic. I think you can get that to catch on. Why not? Why not? Let's

let's try it. People should start using it in common sections across YouTube and see if it catches on. Can I just say? Yes, sir. Nonchal is French word. Yes. Chalon is a French word. I see, I thought that might be the case. Yeah, so we do, it's really rare. But you do ceylon doesn't mean much. It's not the opposite of nonchalant, but a chalon person is like... What does what does chalon mean?

It's to describe a regular customer into a store. That's a shalon person. Just like, so it does mean sort of the... It's an adjective. It just means like normal average. Yeah, it's like a regular customer. And you would commonly use that in French? No, very rash.

Oh, but it is a word. It is a word. It does exist, but it is very rare. Do you do French people say nonchalon? We do say nonchalon, yeah. But you don't say chalant a lot, it is a word. Yes.

So that's why, so it's popular to say nonchalant. So that's why it's come to English. And he's got completely different means. But it's less popular to say chalant. So they never have migrated. Well, because would you say that nonchalant is an English word?

I mean, because it's, it's French, right? But it's so commonly used in English that it's probably in like an English dictionary, right? Like nonchalant. And we don't say like nonchalant. We say nonchalant. So like, sorry,

was that? It might have been an offensive impression. No, no, it's like, bravo. Bravo is the French word. You say bravo? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Bravo. Yeah, okay, so I did suspect that Shalant would be a word, at least in French,

but I didn't want to embarrass myself by saying it. I'm glad that we have, man, it's great to have a team of people finding the camera to fact checkers, right? Did you know that the word ingenious and genius have completely independent word origins? Are you serious? Completely independent etymologies. Different source languages as well? I'm not sure. I'm going to look it up.

Let's find out. Because I know that it sort of sounds like you have genius and then you have ingenious, which sounds like it should be the opposite, but they mean the same thing. They both mean clever. You know what I mean? They're not actually the opposite of each other. So they're even spelt differently, which gives you an indication that they're not actually from the same route.

So genius is spelt like with an I-U-S. And ingenious is spelt with an O-U-S at the end. According to Google, the etymology of genius comes from the Latin. I don't know how to pronounce Latin. It's like Gingere or Gingere, which means to begette. Ingenius comes from the Latin, ingenium, intellect. So you've got ingenious coming from the word for intellect and genius coming from the word to baguette. So probably to be able to produce, to be able to sort of put

put things out into the world or something like that. But they're completely independent words that have both evolved to sound very similar in English and actually mean the same thing, but they sound like opposites. Genius, ingenious, but they mean the same thing. So you can sort of put it as a riddle to people. You know, why is it that genius and ingenious mean the same thing? And I bet they'll give you five to ten different suggestions before they guess that it's just a pure coincidence that they've got completely independent etymologies and they just happen to marry up on the same meaning. I've always found that to be one of my favorite etymology facts. If you have to, if we had to do away with one of those, which version are

you keeping? Well, having just looked up the etymology, so I couldn't remember what the etymology actually was. I think the word ingenious from ingenium, whatever it was, for intellect better captures, I think, the way that people sort of use the term today, rather than the ability to produce or maybe like genius should be a word for like artistic genius. Yes. And ingenious should be a word for Einstein. And maybe that's kind of how, although Einstein did you know, forget thought experiments and stuff. But maybe that's kind of how it's supposed to be used. Maybe you're not really supposed to call, you know, like, you shouldn't say, oh, that's an ingenious piece of art. But then people kind of don't say that.

did it? Yeah, I wonder if there's like, if you consult the encyclopedia or the Oxford Dictionary, if it's like, you must use ingenious to refer to this type of thing, ingenious for people only. I wonder. But then in regular conversation, nobody pays attention to those sort of rules. So it all becomes quite a. Ingenious. It's defined, again, by Google as of a person, clever, original, and inventive. But actually sounds a lot more like the begett situation, whereas genius, the definition according to Google is exceptional intellectual or creative power, other or other natural ability.

So weirdly, it's like the definitions have sort of swapped. Yes. It should be the other way around. I don't know. But the thing about etymology that's so interesting is it doesn't really mean. matter because a word is just, the definition of a word is descriptive, not prescriptive. Yes. Right?

It doesn't tell you how a word should be used. It tells you how a word is used. I've always found it really interesting that a dictionary is entirely self-referential. Like every word in the dictionary is defined with regards to another word in the dictionary. So you could like give someone who doesn't speak the language a dictionary. And with all the time in the world, they probably couldn't work out any of the words, even if they had the whole dictionary with them because it's all completely self-referential. It's really, really interesting to think how that sort of got off the ground.

That was, what, three or four of the problems that we've covered in Genesis 1-1 so far? I think we've covered three so far. What else have we got? And the last one was about two words that were omitted from the first verse. And I think there's actually another interesting layer of information that's just omitted in the English version. And that is due to the fact that he... Hebrew, ancient Hebrew is a gendered language so that every single noun that is used has a gender that's either male or masculine or feminine and there's no possibility for a neutral gender, much like French or Spanish or something like that. So in that first verse, you would say, in the beginning, God, which would be a masculine noun.

created the heavens, another masculine noun, and the earth, which is a feminine noun. And there's a question about how much original readers are like paying attention to that, the meaning of a gender of a word that's used because like French speakers, I don't know, aren't stopping to think about, oh, I use the word for bridge. And that must be, what is the French word for bridge? What's the French word for bridge? It's masculine. It's masculine.

Masculine. But do you think of a bridge as masculine? Does that affect the way you see the object? No, not. Because I didn't think so, right? But I didn't know. I assumed not. So no.

There is one study that I think, I wish I knew who the researcher was, but they did see if there was any bias of whether, like, French speakers perceive bridges to have more masculine qualities inherently. Right. Like that they might be more sturdy. And I believe they did find, like, some detectable difference for some words. Did you hear, I don't know how much of this is true. It might just be like a Twitter thing, but people said that when they've named hurricanes after men rather than women, because you get like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy. But when they name them after men, people take more precautions because they take them more seriously

because they perceive them as more like violent and destructive. it's after coming out of helene i definitely that that is definitely very interesting to me right now that um people would be like oh we don't need to do as much for this one it's surely it wouldn't be something that they would even consciously do right it's not like if you asked people you know are you going to well they're calling it helene so do you think we should really do you really think we should have acted right now so no one's actually thinking like that but i think subconsciously and again i should clarify i don't actually know if this it might be one of those truisms that gets thrown around but i've

I've heard at least that that's the case. People at least make jokes about it. They say, like, why, like, I saw people saying, like, you know, I'm, I am not dying to a hurricane called Milton. You know, call it, call it, like, hurricane death destroyer 50,000 or something, because then it's going to scare me, but I'm not, I'm not running away from Milton, you know. And I think, look, there might be some truth. There might be some truth in that.

And it's, and there's probably something similar going on in gendered languages, right? I mean, there has to be some psychological effect. I think there definitely could be a subconscious effect, but also I think the gender of the Bible in its original language is also used for literary purposes. Like on each of the days of creation, it's interesting that that third day of creation, when God creates the land and then the plants and the vegetation, that come out of it, you see the sudden sprinkling of feminine words coming from the earth, which is another feminine word.

So it's kind of seen as one of the most feminine days of creation, the third day. And it's also interesting that Tuesday is also a popular day for Orthodox Jewish weddings. I think one, because of that emphasis on femininity, and also it's the only day that God like says is good twice so it's like a doubly blessed day and i think original reader probably would have registered that it the verse feels more feminine than other things that god were creating and so there's an interesting thing happening there of masculine weeds and masculine trees coming out of the feminine earth that you definitely could mine for some materials because definitely later like on the sixth day of creation, when God forms a woman from a masculine man, Adam, people derive

loads of meaning from that, but then paying attention to the gendered information of masculine grass coming from feminine earth is just seen as like not important. But what if that was communicating something essential about the structure of reality, the same way that people derive meaning from Eve coming from Adam. But for some reason, a lot of like fundamentalists people, I think Christians would say that they have like a biblical view of gender and that their view of gender is derived from Genesis, which seems to be a bold claim if you've decided that the vast majority of gendered material and information is irrelevant.

It doesn't matter. Yeah. It's difficult to know how that would be captured in the English language, though, is the thing. I mean, there's so much that you lose. And there are ways that you could maybe try to do it, but it would be a bit weird. I mean, for example, I know that I've been told that if you read ancient Hebrew, when you read these ancient texts, it's very clear that you're dealing with an amalgamation of authors over lots of time because the language sort of changes. It would be as if we were speaking like this and then suddenly I started speaking Shakespearean English or Middle English. Go for it.

I nearly tried to do it as an example, but I don't think I could quite pull that off. Privy. You know, like, you'd notice, right? And if you were reading it in a text, you'd realize, oh, well, this must have been written hundreds of years before this. And that must have been. Just because of the style of the text. When you translate it into English, all of that disappears. It's just gone.

You just read the whole thing in the same cadence, the same tone. And there would be ways around that. I mean, we could decide that the older Hebrew text should be translated into English a bit more King Jamesy, a bit more the and a bit more vow. But then the newer texts, the more recently written texts, we should translate into modern English just to sort of carry the point. But it would just be a very weird way of doing it. And it would seem like a very sort of experimental kind of translation because you're translating the very sort of, you wouldn't be translating the actual oldness of the text because that language is so much old. older than, you know, middle English, but you'd at least be translating the relative difference between this, this book and this book, or this part of the book and this part of the book.

I mean, I'm told that, like, mid sort of mid flow, it just switches style a lot of the time. And I don't know this. I can't confirm this because I don't speak Hebrew, but. I think a lot of translars would say the attempt to replicate that would be distracting or too much, but also if it's a feat, if it's a, if it truly is. is a literary feature of the original text. It seems pretty important to try to capture that. And what if the original person assembling the text meant for it to be disorientating?

What if they meant for it to be a bit of a whiplash? But the English Bible is translated in a way that kind of assumes that it's all supposed to be a seamless, non-interrupted, uniform. document the way that like a legal document needs to sound like it all came a decree came from one person and that had their act together and that's a huge assumption i think i would be so interested to read a translation of the bible that made this attempt to capture the how antiquated the languages to give you a feeling of how old the verses that you're reading based on the based on the kind of language that's being used. I'm not sure if anyone's ever attempted such a thing. I hope they have. If they have, then hopefully they can let me know. But, but yeah, you do lose a lot in, I mean,

that's why they say lost in translation, but it's not just because a word is wrong or because, you know, it's supposed to be that, I mean, you had this real about calling a spade a spade, which I found really interesting or this short about how what you tell us it's like the or it's it sounds very weird right we have that phrase in English you call a spade a spade

but like a spade like why not a chair or a or a cat or something more common where does that come from it was interesting that there was a surprisingly controversial video

because apparently a lot of people have never heard the phrase call a spade a spade. Oh, really? Would you use that? Yeah, I use it. Like, you would use it to say that someone's like speaking frankly about something? Yeah, I mean, it's like that guy, I like that guy.

He calls a spade a spade, you know? He says it as it is, yeah. And then like the prop that I was holding in that video to explain the origin of that phrase. I think it had a flat top. Oh, don't tell me it wasn't a spade. And in like where I'm in my area, that is a spade and a rounded one is a shovel. But then so many people. are saying like that's not a spade why are you doing that that's so confusing i'm like oh there's no

consensus about which of these shapes is a spade which by the way is like the the the exact problem with online discourse is that that you said hey i've got this interesting fact about where the phrase calling a spade a spade comes from and you're holding a shovel potentially by mistake and everyone's like hey man that's not a spade that's a shovel as if as if that i mean you could have been holding up you literally could have been holding up a book and saying it's a spade and it's like who cares man just like get on with it

you know I don't know but so spade a spade let's grant that it's a phrase that we use and if anybody watching doesn't agree with them then they'll have it on my authority at least so in the short you say that different cultures have different words like calling a cat a cat or

calling a book a book or whatever and in English it has something to do with some Latin translation Oh, yeah. Because in some, like, ancient play, like an ancient Greek play. Yes. The origin of this phrase is like something like cool a urinal, a urinal. Yes.

And it's like saying you have the audacity to call this unpleasant bathroom device, what it is. So you can imagine when somebody says, you know, they call a spade a spade, they're saying something like, look, they're calling a urinal, a urinal. You know, that there's something. They're just willing to go there, right? But then it gets, well, translated and what happens? And I guess someone thought that they weren't comfortable with that word and said we should change it to something a little more suitable for public discourse and change it to calling a shovel. Yeah, maybe a shovel that you would dig the whole. Yeah, the word itself is like, it's not literally the word for your.

It's like a trough that you like. That you would do your business in. And so some Latin translation says, well, I'm not going to say, let's call a trough a trough. I'm going to change it for the thing that the trough is dug with, which is the spade. And so we end up with this very strange sort of euphemism for a figure of speech about frankness. Yeah, exactly. That's the great irony is the whole point is that you're supposed to call the urinal, but this guy refused to. And now we have this strange phrase, which doesn't even carry the meaning anymore.

I was really hoping people would be interested in that line of thought, but it was mostly comments about my inability to identify what to call a spade a spade and instead call it a shovel. Okay. What else have we got? We talked about gendered, gendered languages. Yes, sir. Oh, this is another interesting thing that's inserted into the text. And that's when Genesis 1 says, in the beginning. God created the heavens

and the earth that word God is interesting and that it has a big capital G which is an interesting thing to do to impose onto a language like ancient Hebrew that has no distinction of any capital letters. The first letters in a sentence

are written in the same case that the last letter of the sentence is written in and whether you're referencing a verb or any type of word it's not going to be capitalized in Hebrew but English being derived from some older Germanic language that had some world view that nouns have some kind of priority in the universe and that any time you reference a noun, it should be capitalized ahead and shoulders above the other text, which is interesting. I guess English decided, okay, we're not going to do that for all nouns.

Although it's interesting. Have you ever read like a picked up something from like late 18th century? and it's like every noun is still capitalized in English. Or maybe some. I think if you read like the Declaration of Independence, words like liberty and democracy, they're all capitalized. So English, I guess, decided we're not going to do the German thing of doing this to all nouns. But it is interesting that in that first verse of the Bible,

you see a remnant of a very different philosophy that believes that now, are more important than other figures of speech, which is, I don't think, an insubstantial difference. I think is a substantial difference. Yeah, there are attempts throughout scripture to put respect on the name of God through using sort of grammatical techniques. So capitalizing the word Lord in its entirety or God or putting Jesus's words in red or things like this, which are clearly sort of not parts of the original language, but I mean, do you think it's, it could sort of cause a problem of understanding for the text, this capitalization thing?

I think it has, it's such a part of your, the worldview that you're approaching the text to as someone who is like immersed. then came out of an English-speaking environment that you may just have a priority that objects and nouns are more important than actions. And that's interesting because in ancient Hebrew, the priority is on verbs. And the verb comes before the subject as a norm.

so there's really this philosophy you're projecting onto the text that objects have some sort of priority over actions again which is a not the biblical worldview I would think yeah it's it's the importation of philosophical outlooks or biases or frameworks without yes necessarily realizing it I just remember I meant to ask on the gendered language stuff you were talking about Adam and Eve. Yes. Was Eve formed from Adam's rib? Sure.

There's definitely a lot of controversy about that. There seems to be several ways in which that's later in Genesis. Several ways in which the English translation seems to undermine Eve or to make her part seem less substantial than Adams. the big example would be the English describes Eve as being Adam's helper which is that seems like a bit of an insult

it's subservient yeah you're a helper depending on what culture you come from but other languages have like tiers of words for help where it's like oh if you just needs help with bringing in the groceries that's help like in Spanish that would be like a Yuda like just regular help but then there's like oh you pulled somebody out

or you like rescued somebody from like a raging river did you help them oh yeah but that's like an understatement of the centuries like you rescued them and I think the Hebrew word for what Eve is is not quite as extreme as like she's his official rescuer but it definitely has much more of that connotation than just being like a subservient oh i'll pick up your you know laundry for you or whatever but that mistranslation of eve being adam's helper is definitely used by a variety of groups to say that like women exist to help men with their projects yeah as opposed to rescuing them from

whatever it is that men do rescued from and so that's one way that whether that was an intention choice to minimize the role of women or whether it was just something that seemed natural to the translator because that didn't offend their worldview. Yeah. Well, it could be so subconscious. You could be reading it and you don't even think to yourself, oh, well, it's important to work out here. Is God intending to put women as subservient to man here?

That thought doesn't cross your mind because, well, women are subservient to men. that that's your worldview. She says help her in. So yeah, she's just helping. Of course that makes sense. And you don't even stop to think about it. Again, the importation of a worldview into a text. I mean, it's easy for us now to say that, well, that's a bias.

That's like a sexist bias that could have crept into the old testament. And we have to realize that people just wouldn't have even seen it as a bias. It's just the way it is. It's not an idea. It's not, oh, it's not my worldview that women have this role and men have this role. That's just true. That's just how it is. And so when I'm talking here about, and it keeps coming up, this importation of philosophy into translation, it's not like some conscious decision.

Like you're saying, somebody's intentionally trying to lower the position of women in society. It could be the case. You could see that somebody was like malevolent and was like, I hate women. And I'm in charge of this translation project. So now's my chance to insert my worldview into like to adjust. Holy scripture. Yeah, I mean, so it could have been done eventually, but it seems so much more likely to me that absent-minded kind of just, this is the way we saw the world. And so it comes out into these

nuances and interpretation that now that we have perspective on, we take issue with. Yeah. And what about the rib? I think the rib is another example of a translation issue that maybe subconsciously or consciously was used to minimize the role of Eve because from what I've read, the scholars don't believe that ancient Hebrew has a word for a specific rib bone. Like no one's ever talking about, oh, I broke this bone right here, which is interesting, like in a pre-surgical society where people have different ideas about how their body works, they don't, you're not going to have a name for appendix or your larynx because you're not thinking of dividing the body up into those terms. So much later by the time Aramaic was popular, Aramaic did have a word for a specific rib

bone that's actually like used in the Bible. I think it's talking about like a lion chewing on much like you would do. Do they eat ribs in London? I think somewhere, yeah. You're like chewing, gnawing them off the bone. Yeah, I mean there's definitely much more American thing, but I'm sure it's pretty good. Yeah, I'm getting I'm getting knots. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I'll leave that alone. But it there is a word for a specific rib bone that developed much later, but scholars would say that there's no word for an individual rib bone. So in Genesis, we read that Adam was form, Eve was formed from Adam's word, Sella, T-S-E-L-A, and that is usually translated as like a side or a part maybe even half of something like if you have

a boat you might call this a cella and this a cella like a side and all the other times that the word appears throughout the Bible it's a more equitable distribution of like this is just like a part of something or like oh you took a side of a baguette or something like that yeah yeah But then for some reason, and it's very interesting that when it's talking about Eve coming from Adams Sella, it's made as diminutive as possible, where it's not a half or a portion or a chunk or a part. It's just one tiny little rib. And that's not to say that a rib's not important because like a rib performs an important function. It protects you and does something. But it does start to have hints of misogyny if someone is.

choosing to translate that as an individual ribbone to avoid a more straightforward translation that she came from a whole side of Adam. And so, and if you look at, like, if you look at older texts for Jewish rabbinical writings on this passage, they'll bring up the idea that the original Adam was created with two heads, four arms,

and four legs conjoined at the back, almost like a big spider, and then split down the middle into two parts. And that would be, that would seem to imply a bit more of equality between these two creatures that is definitely absent from the idea of Eve being formed from just a little disposable bit of Adam's flesh. And I think if you were trying to make the case that women don't have a place in society, there's definitely one of those translations that you would prefer. It would be much more useful to your agenda than the other. Indeed.

And again, even if that's kind of subconscious, that would still be the case. Okay, quick detour back to the gendered language thing. So I wanted to ask you about that. But we were talking about this capitalization thing. Yes. And where were we? Because in that first verse. of the Bible, there's two capital words, the first word of the Bible in and the name of God

being capitalized as a proper noun. And that's really a carryover from like an earlier Germanic language. And I think that's really interesting then that when you're reading Genesis 1-1, in English, you're reading a version that is filtered through first a Greek culture with its philosophy in its worldview and then a Germanic one so there's like a level of philosophies that have been stacked philosophical palimpsest yes and a lot of those in those world views may be incompatible with those languages may have certain things embedded in them that are incompatible with the worldview or contradictory to the worldview of of the original author, especially when you think of like English developing as a mercantile language

in like maybe the Hobsburg dynasty or something like that, you have this language that was developed for the purpose of easing financial transactions and making commerce faster. And it seems like a language that's built on those priorities might have some conflict with the Bible that is one skeptical of money, skeptical of the agenda of money, and also, like, spoken by, like, wandering nomadic tribes that don't, aren't as invested in trade and goods. But English as a language is, like, obsessed with goods. And you would see that in, like, capitalizing nouns. There's, like, this obsession with, you see that connection? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You don't think about how much language has evolved for function. Yes. And we forget how much what the function is is going to affect how the language evolves. It's like the Arabic language is just like so embedded with religious language in a way that it sort of isn't here. Or maybe once was here, I mean, terms like God willing and stuff like that. And the word goodbye, which of course comes from God be with ye. God be with you, you know. And but it's sort of, it's, I guess it's less obvious.

But that's quite the point, isn't it? It's like if you look at the Arabic language, it's very clear that, you know, the word Allah is in so many phrases and you know exactly why it's there and what it's doing, whereas we forget that words like goodbye would have once just meant something like a divine blessing upon a person and now I've completely changed their meaning. So if you're reading a text that's been translated through the. word goodbye. It might be that like there's some ancient text where someone was trying to put a divine blessing on someone and someone at a particular time in the development of the English language translated that into an abbreviated version of God be with you and somebody in modern English or French or something read that and said oh they're saying goodbye so transformed it into au revoir and now you've gone from somebody saying you know I hope that God blesses you on your onward journey to

hey till i see you again you know yeah to see you later yeah that's and that's what translation does i suppose inevitably and that's why i'm kind of glad that for all the problems we have of biblical translations because it's such an important text there have in so many investigations and translations and re-translations and like it's difficult to the cultural impact is still there because people just read the n iv to their children and that's that but if you want it, if you want to find out, the information is there for you. And you can always go and learn Hebrew yourself as well. But it seems like this sort of endless fountain of problems and paradoxes. I must say, I was surprised when you said that we could potentially do an entire

episode just on Genesis 1-1. Join us next week for Genesis 1-2. But yeah, seriously, I mean, it's interesting. I hadn't really thought about the Arabic language being like just in and with spirituality and religion. I think it kind of goes unnoticed to us how much of the English language is saturated with financial terms. Even in the Bible itself, if we think about how we talk about God,

so much of it is through transactional financial terms. Like we talk about like getting called, God will call you into account someday. Or, um, Jesus paid the price. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trying to think so, or even being saved, maybe.

That's also a financial savings. It's kind of like a financial term. I know what you mean. Like, yeah, like, you know, and the word account there, you'll be called to account. It's an analogy. It's a financial analogy that becomes what George Orwell would have called a dead metaphor, where it's sort of no longer a metaphor anymore. It just becomes a phrase in its own right.

But I do. I do think it indicates the reasons for which the English language developed as a way of easing commerce that is not necessarily important to a nomadic tribe. And I think English didn't really recognize the extent to which that mercantile urge just was a part of the language until English missionaries went to like the American. America's and encountered indigenous tribes that didn't use money. And then they figured out we have no, if you have no concept of money, they were like, how can we communicate the gospel to them? Because there's like, it takes, it requires some sort of like accounting metaphor to believe that like, I have done something wrong.

So I'm in debt to God. Yeah. Who has to buy me back. Yeah. By paying the price. And if you have no concept of money, you have no idea what a debt is. There's no idea that someone's keeping a ledger that says like, oh, I lent you some money that now you must give back to me. So then it turns out they really had a hard time trying to figure out how to communicate anything about Christianity at all without referring to money.

It's only, like you say, coming into contact with. with a culture that doesn't do that, that you even realize you're doing it. It's like the air you breathe, the language that you speak is the medium through which you speak. And so you don't even notice it's the case. I'm sure that Gertrta once said of language,

he who knows one knows none. And I'm beginning to realize just how true that is. And it makes me wish that I was bilingual, more bilingual. I sort of have the odd phrase, word that's useful for my job that I can sort of pull out and use. But it does make me realize that I don't really understand the English language at all.

Because when I've tried to learn other languages, I've always been fascinated working out why this means that, you know, because it sort of means something in English that's a bit like, a bit like this or a bit like that. And yeah, like how a greeting might mean something more like peace be with you. And it's like, oh, it's interesting because in English, I can see why those words really mean something like peace and it's interesting how people in that culture might not even like cognize that that's what they're doing that that might sound to them just like hello and then sort of forgotten what the meaning is or maybe they do actually always think about

it's it's fascinating and I wish I knew more languages to to know you are right that it's only in the encountering of a language that is completely different yeah that that language can be self-aware of yeah I'm sure that Arabic speakers are all cognizant of Salam peace when they're greeting people that is a peace greeting but there must be languages that sort of have similar

kinds of translations for hello that maybe aren't as obvious I think that the word hello is it true again I'm not sure how to do this is but I hear the word hello was kind of popularized for the telephone yes like it's that there sort of wasn't really a word no one knew what to say because you'd greet someone and say

good day or you just say whatever you had to to say to them. But on the phone, you don't know where they are. You don't know what they're up to. And so there was, you didn't know what to say. Yeah. And so this word, hello sort of crops. But it could have been, I think that even like Alexander Graham Bell wanted it to be something else. Ahoy. Like, ahoy. Like a hoy. Yeah, he wanted to be a hoy. And we could have been. Because it's now gone from, uh, just being a phone term to a, to a normal term. We could have been walking around like, ahoy, mate. And it's a real, it's a bit of a shame. I think that like, halloo was another option. You know, all these different. suggestions and here we are with what kind of sounds like the most boring one but that's probably just because we're so used to it um we've covered i think five of the points so far in genesis one one that are problematic translation wise what's number six i could lump six and seven together because it's about the tail end of the verse which is the phrase of god creating the heavens and the earth and i think we've talked about things that english adds to the text and takes away from the text omits, I think a third category of ideas when talking about translation are just matters

of vocab and how vocab shifts over time so that something that meant something to someone at a particular time. If that word's not updated a thousand years later, that word may be used as a referent to a completely different idea. And so you've probably heard the idea of the phrase the heavens and the earth doesn't mean like God created the one thing and then the other thing, but rather it's a figure of speech. Thev, I think it's called a merism, where you use two opposite terms to communicate the entirety of something. So like you say, we searched for this thing high, low, and that isn't communicating too specific. I actually haven't had that idea as applied to Genesis. Interesting. So then there's.

the idea that it's just a way of saying when God started to create everything. Yeah. Which kind of goes in line with the speed of what this passage is supposed to have that it's not telling you a sequence of two things that God ordered.

It's just saying when God started to create everything. And so I think as a modern reader would read that passage and not be familiar with that, that that would be a common phrase people use at the time and think that it means that God went, okay, I'm creating the heavens. and now I'm creating the earth.

That's not necessarily what it's saying. It's just saying, possibly just saying, God created everything. Yeah, I hadn't heard that idea. That's interesting. I want to know what, like, the word earth means there in the Hebrew. I kind of want to look that up because I wonder if it can mean something like earth as in foundation in the way that we, because that would make me more convinced of this idea that we're talking about to be like high and low and everything in between.

but okay so we'd end up with like when god created everything yes and then we have this thing about formless and void and so it would be like when god created everything there what there was formlessness and then god said let there be light and it's sort of light is the landing point of the whole thing yes and i'm beginning to see how this is a bit more kind of big bangy you know it's sort of like light it's definitely disorienting to read something written by someone in 1,100 AD like rambon or some other rabbinical thinker writing about the creation of the universe in a way that's more similar to the way that like a modern scientist would describe the event it's a very uncanny feeling yeah so how would

you, given everything that we've just said, I started by saying, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then we had a full stop. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. Given everything we just said, our listeners will hopefully found it incredibly interesting. And how now do you think they should go about saying Genesis 1 1? I mean, what's your favoured sort of understanding, given everything that we've thought about today? How would you prefer to word it? I definitely think it makes sense to get through that first bit as quick as possible. Yeah.

It's worth pointing out as well that all the stuff we said here, these are sort of ideas. Like maybe there shouldn't be a gap here. Maybe the punctuation indicates that it makes it feel longer than it. These are all just suggestions. I mean, maybe the English translation that I started with is the great, perfect, you know, carrier of the original meaning. You take and leave these ideas as you see fit as to what you find interesting. And I suppose I'm wondering which ones you think are just interesting, but probably not right, and how you'd actually put it together. I do like some of those literary effects from Robert Alter.

He has a copy of the Hebrew Bible that took him like 30 years to do. And he's got a really great commentary on it. So it's like when he can't replicate a literary effect that he knows that's in there, he'll go into it. and length in the commentary. And that was one of my best purchases to feel like I'm reading this text through someone who's sensitive to these features and then knows enough to know what cannot possibly

be translated into English. And so that's been a great resource. But I think every translation, every way you try to render this verse is going to leave something out. It's going to be misunderstood by modern culture, because how could it not? It's so, it's such a different audience coming from a wildly different world that I think more than trying to find a perfect rendering of Genesis 1-1, I think the approach, making sure

you're approaching each Bible verse you read with an understanding that there's probably a lot of layers to it that have been completely lost or distorted and that you're getting like the tip of the iceberg that's been filtered through one, two or three cultures. I think it's probably more important to go into a Bible first with that awareness than trying to find the definitive rendering of a passage. Yeah. Well, I think we can treat various translations and interpretations of like an Old Testament passage in the same kind of way that we can interpret differing new testament accounts of like the person of jesus for example it's like you want to figure out who jesus is well maybe part of the reason why it's useful to have four

gospels and if this is really a divinely inspired text maybe the reason that god would choose to do it that way is because what you're really trying to get at is who this person is and if you read one person's account then another person's account then another person's account and you just what what's the sort of common thread that you pull out of them what sort of vibe do you get of who this jesus guy was That gives you a better idea of what really matters. We can swap Jesus for the Hebrew and all the different Gospels for all the different translations. And a similar effect can take place. You read this translation, that translation, that translation, that translation.

And what is it that they all sort of point to? What have they got in common in that? Maybe it gives you a better understanding of the verse. But you may not be able to directly encounter it. But through that conglomeration of different translations, you might get a sense. approximate it yes and and without committing yourself to saying that one of those translations are that's my favorite or that's the one that that works best or whatever i think well christopher i think um i think that's a good place to wrap up it's been

i i often say at the end of podcast it's been wide ranging but surprisingly wide ranging given the sort of short small focus of the subject matter i like that biblical studies is really a window into so into anthropology and sociology and grammar because it's one of the only like continuous records the Bible itself is like the only maybe continuous record of the last two three thousand years of civilization and all that so I really like that biblical studies doesn't have to be this insulated discussion about the text, but it's really kind of a window out into the world. It's not just theology.

You know, you're not just doing it. That's why I like biblical studies so much. I think over the past few years, people have probably noticed my viewers, I mean, listeners, that I've become more interested in biblical studies, which is seeming, it might seem strange. I get like an atheist being interested in theology being a bit weird, but biblical studies, like you say, it can be a very secular pursuit and a very historical pursuit. I think it's fascinating for that reason.

You have two long-form videos on your channel that are about the Bible, right? Yes. Or at least one of them is about the Hebrew language and one of them is about the Ten Commandments. Yes. Also really fascinating, I recommend people check that out. But the channel as a whole magnify, which will be, you know, tagged in a link down in the description, is mostly made up of YouTube shorts. So for those who are listening with short attention spans that want this, these incredible little golden nuggets of information, it's a wonderful place. It's a wonderful place to go and find it.

So I'll make sure that's all linked down below. But like I say, I'm sure that most people will already recognize who you are because your shorts do fantastically well and with good reason, I think. So thanks for expanding a bit today. I don't know if you often get the opportunity to sit down and talk in more long-form content about these kinds of topics. This would take 120 short videos to have covered the same ground. Yeah, exactly.

Well, I'm glad we got the opportunity to do so. And thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you.