Friday, October 04, 2024

Buying Trump

Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.
Let’s stop right there and stipulate, as the article goes on to point out, that only Trump Bibles fit the specifications. But focus a little harder, because the pedagogical problem here is, the translation IS IN A LANGUAGE NO ONE SPEAKS ANYMORE!

The KJV uses the English of the 17th century. It is English, but for most yutes it might as well be Greek. This is because English is divided into four languages, and the further in time speakers get from them, the less intelligible they are.

Old English is a closed door to anyone but scholars. Middle English pretty much is, too. You can struggle with it if you like, but if you want college students to read Chaucer before they get their diplomas, you need a translation. We keep Shakespeare in the original because, well, it’s Shakespeare, and no translation into Modern English does him justice. But it’s coming. Because we don’t speak Shakespeare’s Early Modern English anymore. We speak, read, and write Modern English. The other three are literally other languages. As I say, we force that barrier in school for Shakespeare; but why would we do it for anything else?

While the KJV was worked on by some of the great poets and writers of the age (it is indeed a monument to the language), there are better modern translations that could actually make sense to school children. Well, “sense” in the sense the words are recognizable.  The KJV might as well be in the original Hebrew and Greek.

So, if your interest is pedagogy….

But it isn’t, is it? This isn’t trying to put Bibles in kids’ hands so they’ll somewhat magically read and understand/believe (don’t get me started on that blockheaded idea). This is a grift. The idea is not to even teach the Bible. It’s just to use government funds to put money in Trump’s pocket. This is not because this clown wants to put Bibles in schools. It’s only because he wants to buy Trump.

Will kids read these? Hell, no! So what? He got Oklahoma to literally buy Trump! Mission Accomplished!
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2 comments:

  1. The Thought Criminal9:12 AM

    I wish someone would tell them that King James was a promiscuous homosexual. Ned Rorem always used the KJV texts because they were in the public domain, I wouldn't use it to set any text because of its obscurity and its provenance. I think it was what Randal Thompson used for the dreadful "A Peaceable Kingdom" on texts from Isaiah that one of my university choral groups had to sing, the incompetent phrasing he used led to some rather amusing jokes among us, Woe unto him that draw iniquity with vanity . . . . and sin as it were with a cart rope. I got a bit laugh when I asked the conductor what did it mean to sin, as it were, with a cart rope.

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  2. The Thought Criminal9:14 AM

    As I recall, drawing it back from more than half a century, that should probably read "draw iniquity with cords of vanity."

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