Thank you Dedalus!
I was thinking the exact same thing when I first read it!
Rabbi Responds to Jehovah's Witnesses
by DevonMcBride 33 Replies latest jw friends
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asleif_dufansdottir
And she's blithely passing that smugness onto her children.
You can call it smugness, I prefer to think of it as pride in their heritage and determination to continue their own religious beliefs despite the overwhelmingly Christian culture we live in, where it is assumed that their religion is wrong.
Translations are inherently inferior to understanding the original language. You always lose something in the translation, no matter how minor (one reason the Jews always insisted on their children learning to read Hebrew throughout the centuries of the diaspora). BTW, Hebrew isn't a dead language...it's always been the "liturgial" language of the Jews, and is now the official language of Israel (spoken & written).
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dedalus
You can call it smugness, I prefer to think of it as pride in their heritage and determination to continue their own religious beliefs despite the overwhelmingly Christian culture we live in, where it is assumed that their religion is wrong.
Fair enough. Pride in one's heritage and so forth is important and good. However, the rabbi-type-person used that pride to denigrate another person's religious beliefs, and more than that, another person's intelligence. (The bit about a five-year-old being able to speak and read Hebrew is stupid, because it's scientifically established that language is easy to acquire when you're a child, very difficult to acquire when you're an adult.) Of course, missionaries are similarly insulting when they turn up on your doorstep -- they imply that the household is wrong, whatever religion he or she is. Here, the rabbi and the missionary are each doing different versions of the same thing.
Of course translations are inferior, and of course they're, by necessity, interpretive -- and having said that, some translations are quite remarkable. But it's unreasonable to expect that, if I want to read and discuss Dante, Goethe, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Proust, Kierkegaard, and Aristotle, I need to learn and master Italian, German, Russian, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Greek. (Nevermind other problems of translation -- i.e., the Italian I need to read Machiavelli isn't the same as the Italian I need to read Calvino.) It's also unreasonable to suggest that, if I have read these writers in translation, I'm not entitled to an opinion of their work. Your brainiest Oxford professor has to read some works in translation from time to time.
One good idea is to compare different translations of the same work (which is yet another way Witnesses go wrong -- they are so mired in the NWT, they miss the opportunity to see how beautifully certain verses can be rendered in English).
For what it's worth, I've been told that Hebrew is a beautiful language.
Dedalus
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anti-absolutist
Call it pride or call it smugness, it is still ARROGANCE for ANYBODY to suggest that their religion is better or more right or more.... blah, blah, blah....
I find it tremendously IRONIC that Christians believe that the Jews were the chosen people for centuries but lost that standing when they rejected Jesus, thus making Christianity the TRUE religion!!!!!!
It is equally IRONIC that the Jews reject Christianity so strongly, calling Jesus the greatest traitor to ever walk on this planet, thus proving that they are STILL the CHOSEN people.
Myself, I have a great amount of faith in HUMANS in general. We are well on our way to realizing that ALL religion is (I am still open-minded enough to use Rutherford's quotes when useful) a snare and a racket!!!!!!!
Oh!!!!!!! and by the way, I am absolutely NOT, in any way trying to recruit new people for my new religion, by making these comments!!!! Just in case anybody IS looking for a NEW FAITH, though, it is called: "The disorganized fellowship of non-denominational Bible students". Donations are greatly appreciated.
By the way, as far as the new religion goes, I have limited enrollment to just me, so no future self-satisfying requests by me, for your support will be requested.
Brad