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In The Beginning & The Keys of Egypt
Hieroglyphs The Keys Of Egypt was written by husband-and-wife archaeological team Lesley and Roy Adkins. It is subtitled "The Race to Crack the Hieroglyph Code," and starts with a short chapter that introduces the eventual winner of that race, the Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion, and mentions his most serious rival, the Englishman Thomas Young.
The book goes on to examine Napoleon's expedition to Egypt which both brought the Rosetta Stone to light and started a period of French and European fascination with ancient Egypt. These were the two catalysts for the riddle's eventual solution.
This is a well-written book that looks at the struggle and race for translation and the political and academic machinations (often both combined) that surrounded Champollion. It is essentially a biography of Champollion, who grew up and worked amid the turmoil of the Napoleonic era. The story is a compelling one and the authors have done well to make it at times fascinating.
As a genre I find that 'scientific biographies' tend to be a little overblown and flowery, the writing not quite precise -- and Keys suffers from these shortcomings. I also felt that while the book is subtitled "The Race to Crack the Hieroglyph Code" it really only focuses on Champollion, while he is the eventual winner a little more effort in examining the others involved in the effort would have improved the book.
The Bible It can be argued that the King James Bible has had as large an effect on our language today as the work of Shakespeare. 'In The Beginning' has at its core the story of biblical translation, a topic you may think anything but fascinating. McGrath has done a good job in making this a compelling book.He starts, as one may expect, with the story of Gutenberg and his first printed bibles. Before arriving at the King James he covers Martin Luther, the rise of Protestantism in Europe, Henry the Eighth, more than one hanging, and several other bible translations and translators. Along the way he manages to dispel a few myths I had held about biblical translation and the King James in particular. I always thought that it was the King James version that introduced the idea of the main body in roman type and words inserted to clarify meaning in italics, but it was actually an earlier English translation known as the Geneva Bible that first implemented this idea. After explaining the technology, theology, politics and linguistics nuances that led King James to permit (but not fund) a new translation, McGrath tells us how the translation was accomplished organizationally before examining some of the nuances of the translation itself. Some of the language in the King James was archaic even when it was published; translators had been instructed to lift from previous translations all the way back to the partial translation of William Tynsdale published 90 years earlier, and this at a time when the English language was going through the huge changes of the Elizabethan era. McGrath examines this aspect, pointing out such things as changes in verb endings and personal pronouns.
I found the book patchy. McGrath does a much better job covering the story up until the translation. It is harder to get a feel for how the translation was accomplished and how the various teams worked, and when he comes to examine some of the nuances of the translation, the text makes much harder going. If this had not been a part of the topic that interested me a great deal, I may have lost interest.
ConclusionBoth books may have their flaws but both are well worth the read. It is important to realise the history of science and language that have brought us to our current place and both these volumes do a good job of illuminating the past efforts of men who worked under entirely different pressures than we find today.
You can purchase both In The Beginning and The Keys of Egypt from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
If you're intersted in decypherments you should look at John Chadwick's Decipherment of Linear B and more recent literature on that topic, a stunning intellectual feat done without the benefit of any Rosetta Stone.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A shame. The King James Bible was almost certainly based on his translation. I've seen estimates that as much as 80% of the King James Bible was actually his work.
Like so many great reformers, he was put to death. His last known letter before he died is especially tragic to read.
The Tyndale Society
Has anyone in the last couple of decades attempted a translation from the oldest possible sources for the Bible's contents?
While I'm sure it would piss off a few here and there (see what happened with Jewish scholars when those scrolls were translated a while back) it would be interesting to compare a direct translation based on modern understanding to the more popular current versions that have passed through multiple interpretations through multiple cultural lenses.
In university, I was an Enlgish major with a habit of studying other languages - specifically, French, Russian and Old Icelandic. Studying human languages, you quickly realize that there are many ways to express the same abstractions - a realization that has helped me as a programmer.
Yeah, the review could have been better. I would have like to known more about some of the linguistic problems sovled on both books.
Not that I'm an atheist or anything, but I've been developing a feeling off late, that religion was introduced in ancient times as a deterrent against perceived immoral/harmful behavior. In the absence of effective law-enforcement agencies, the best way to encourage people to act peacefully/etc was to lay down a set of rules of "acceptable behaviour" and make it known that breach of the rules would result in punishment in the form of hell or alternately reward in the form of heaven.
I think the world has developed enough now, that we no longer need religion as a deterrent. It serves more as a tool for discrimination/fanaticism, rather than what it was intended for.
Not sure if there are other people who've thought along these lines...who knows, I may be the ONE :)
*wears Matrix goggles and gets back to work*
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I told pharaoh to use Pretty Good Pharaoh Privacy on those damn cartouches. France was just a mote in Isis's eye at the time, but even then I knew they would turn out to be nothing but troublemakers.
One thing to note are the political motivations behind the translation of the King James Bible. This translation was mandated to be used in all Church of England services, IIRC. It was instrumental in helping King James wrest control of England from the Catholic church to the Church of England (controlled by the monarch, i.e. James himself). This gave the British monarchy significantly more power in their own country, as well as preventing such a large portion of the funds from being diverted to the Vatican.
As a spiritual and literary work, the King James Bible has had an immense impact on western culture. It has also had a large impact on Great Britain, and, in turn, its many former colonies. Mute your sound beforehand, but there are some interesting articles about King James and the period here.
www.clarke.ca
Well, I personally think its unfair to start the history of the bible at the time of the printing press. A Grand Funk Electric song captures this best - "You've got the English translation of the Roman translation of the Greek translation of the pure Babylonian". Indeed, the King James translation of the Bible is one of many English translations of the Bible. Starting one's Bible history from ca. 1450 (when the Bible first began being pressed) simply does not seem fair to me.
The first translations were made ca. 200 BC, and was the "Septuagint" - from Hebrew to Greek translation (the Old Testament). It was not until ca. 400 AD that the Hebrew version of the Old Testament was translated into Latin; the New Testament was translated from Greek to Latin -- the Old Testament was re-translated. The manuscripts on which these translations were based are no longer present in the whole.
In my opinion, there is a rich history to be told in the differences between translations of the Bible from original to later versions. Hell, one could back into European translations of the Bible and teach an entire story based upon the discrepancies of copies of the hand-written versions.
There's a rich history to the translation of the Bible. Google for it.
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
On a related note, people interested in these books may be interested in this story (via metafilter) about how the Qu'ran as it's known now may be a mistranslation of the original.
KJV is not even a little 'responsible for the inversion of "thee/thou/thy."' It was using these in the familiar sense, which was the sense used in the greek original of the NT, and thus was REINFORCING the original connotation of these words rather than inverting it...
m l
o st -recent/msg10071.html
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/m971211c.ht
http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-m
http://www.bartleby.com/61/66/Y0026600.html
http://www.kencollins.com/why-05.htm
...just sliced your reply in two.
Sorry, but when faced with the two choices of:
(a) There is a god, and he caused the creation of religion
and
(b) There is no god, and religion is an institution that has its roots in superstition and social control
One has to make the most likely choice given the evidence at hand. Most logical, lucid people who discount that which cannot be proven find themselves coming to logical conclusions.
It amazes me how some people (not necessarily you) will suspend the very logic which they use in every other aspect of their life just for the chance to believe in something or someone that, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist.
A man comes up on a priest banging his head against the wall -- clearly frustrated. The man asks him, "what's wrong?"
The man, who has been celibate all his life, replies, "We just retranslated the oldest manuscript available. The word is 'celebrate'!"
The point being that of all possible documents you could hold a copy of in your own language, a modern translation of the Bible is about as close to the closest possible meaning in your language of the meaning in language 0 of document 0 as you could possibly have of any text of similar origin and antiquity.
And all that without invoking a single phrase of mumbo jumbo...in saecula saeculorum Amen, Amen
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...