Arrrgh!

I wish I had a copy of this, because it’s absolutely hilarious. My friend found a Bible in a used bookstore once. It was one of those simplified study Bibles, and it had been smuggled (I would imagine) into China in the 60s, where it was translated into Chinese. The copy she found was the English translation of the Chinese translation of the original simplified English translation (did you follow all that?) It had some really great stuff in it. I only remember two of them, and only one is a really bad metaphor, but the other is funny for another reason, which I will explain when I address it.

The first funny bit was from the 23rd Psalm. After it had been through all those translations, it came out something like this: “So, though I am walking in a really dry place between two hills where animals kill each other, your spirit showers down and soaks me.” (“Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow…”)

The second funny bit would really only make sense to someone familiar with the KJV. As most people learn, the very shortest verse in that very wordy translation is: “Jesus wept.” It is located in John 11, which recounts the story of Christ raising Lazarus from the dead. The rather…inelegant translation was quite funny. It was something like: “Jesus was very sad because he was a friend to Lazarus and Lazarus had died because he was not there to save him. He was overcome with emotion on seeing Mary and Martha, the sisters of this man Lazarus, and he was so sad he began to cry.” I am sure I didn’t quote it quite right–the original probably managed to cram a few more words in there. It was just really funny because the person who did the translation back into English felt that was the right moment, in a fairly self-explanatory story, to go into detail about why Jesus was sad. There was one other little tasty tidbit in there: “He stinks of rotten meat.” That kind of changes the meaning of “Surely he stinketh,” don’t you think?

There were a lot of other “laugh out loud” moments in that Bible. I need to find out if she still has it. Thanks for reminding me of it 😉

There was one Kirk Cameron (the actor from Growing Pains who turned fundy) did on a banana’s existence being proof that there’s a God. He used the grooves in the banana and put them up to his own hand, showing that they fit perfectly and that only God could have done this. The only problems with this are 1.) Wild bananas are cultivated specifically to become this way, and have evolved, and 2.) It was pretty ironic that he was waving a banana in everyone’s face while adamantly denying the fact that he is a primate. I put a link below… he calls it “the atheist’s nightmare.” How does he explain a pineapple?