The Queen James Bible

Interesting thing I just stumbled upon: The Queen James Bible. It's a version of the 1769 King James Bible that re-translates parts typically used to condemn homosexuality in order to clarify the historical context of the verses. You can read the Editor's rationale for their treatment of these passages here on their website.

Apparently King James himself was most likely a homosexual or bisexual himself. I wonder what he would think about this new book named in his honour.

You are the potash of the earth

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot."
Matt 5:13

In our last Greek class of the semester, our Prof blew our minds explaining this passage. Now I feel that it is my Christian duty to share this information with you.

First of all, we need to know that the way that this passage is normally translated from the Greek messes with its meaning. A more literal translation of this passage would read:

"You are the salt of the land; but if the salt has been made useless, with what will it [the land] be salted?"

Once we realize that the word "taste" in the English is an interpretive flourish by the translator, it is easier to understand why my Prof made the outlandish claim that this passage is not about table salt, it's about potash.

Potash is also a salt, a different salt than NaCl (table salt), but a salt nonetheless. And the Greek word τὸ ἅλας that we find in Matthew's gospel isn't the word for table salt. It is a generic word for all salt, including salt like potash that is used today as fertilizer (and was used as fertilizer way back in Jesus' day as well).

The more common interpretation of this passage is that the "salt" that Jesus refers to is something that preserves food. So metaphorically, theologians suggest, Christians are what "preserve" the Earth.

But I think my Prof is right when he says Christians are not the "preservers" of the land, we are the "fertilizers" of the land. My Prof might be in the minority of theologians who suggest this, but I have come across others (including a former CMU Prof who blogged about this in 2009). The idea of Christians as a salt fertilizer is consistent with the Christian idea that we lose our identity, we dissolve our ego and become one in Christ so that we can serve God (Matt 10:39).

He made some further claims that I have not been able to verify but he also said that when potash is in the soil, its potassium leaks out, and the potash becomes gypsum, something that is "thrown out and trampled on": further support for the notion that this passage is about a salt fertilizer, not a salt preserver.

So if Jesus says that we are fertilizers of the Earth, what does that mean for us exactly? Unlike the more traditional thinking, we are not meant to purify the Earth, rather, we are meant to scatter and be the agent that allows good things to grow.

I can't help but think about the decline of the Christian church in reference to this passage. Perhaps at the height of Christendom, the land was a little too salty, and it choked out the other plant life. We have biblical references to the practice of over-salting a city to destroy it (Judges 9:45). Soil that is too salty is lifeless. I think the significance of Christians as fertilizers, a significance that has been obscured for too long due to mis-translation, is Good News for Christians today. It seems to be telling us that the decline in Christian churches may not be as worrisome as we think: we are simply returning to the right concentration of Christian fertilizer required to do God's work.

''Pray like this...''

I just finished reading Prayers of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz. He went back to the Peshitta (that's an Aramaic translation of the Gospels that possibly dates back to the 2rd century CE) and came up with a new translation of the Lord's Prayer with extensive commentaries about the different ways each line could be translated. Here is his translation below:

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,
Focus your light within us -- make it useful:
Create your reign of unity now --
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.
Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back.
From you is born all ruling will,
the power and the life to do,
the song that beautifies all,
from age to age it renews.
Truly -- power to these statements --
may they be the ground from which all my actions grow: Amen.

I considered his commentaries about the facets of meaning of the Aramaic words and came up with my own English translation:

O Immanent Source that vibrates through the Cosmos
Prepare and sanctify the land for the growth of our experience of you.
Consummate this mutual yearning for unity.
Our deepest desire is that the Earth aligns itself with your purpose.
Give us as much as we need to sustain body and soul.
Clear away the negativity of our past, restoring us as we re-establish right relations.
Do not let us follow false illusion and fall into inner turmoil
but free us from our own ignorance.
Your energy creates a fertile healing harmony in the Earth
Moving together, changing, moving together
We meet you in the Great Mystery.

A couple of notes about my translation:

I made a deliberate effect to avoid light imagery because it is falling out of vogue in the inclusive language ethos of the United Church. Apparently people who have darker skin are sometimes offended by the association of ''light'' with positive things and ''dark'' with negative things.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the word ''purpose'' in line four, but I couldn't seem to come any closer to the concept than that. Also, ''right relations'' seems kind of awkward and un-poetic, but again, I was unable to find anything more poetic to capture the idea. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment!

Mark 9: 14-29 Jesus heals a child who has an evil spirit

In this section, Jesus comes back down from the mountain after the transfiguration and there is a man waiting with the disciples who stayed behind. The disciples are all standing around scratching their heads because they weren't able to cure the man's son of the evil spirit that possessed him. Probably nowadays this ''evil spirit'' would be called epilepsy.

So the father implores Jesus to help him, and Jesus tells him to have faith, to which the father replies something along the lines of ''I have faith! Help me out where I need faith''. The semantics of this seem slightly different in French: Je crois, aide-moi car j'ai de la peine à croire! Things like this always remind me that it would be different again in ancient Greek, so if you want to have a really detailed understanding of the Bible, you'd better not be reading it in translation. Fortunately for me, I don't believe that the Bible is the inspired literal word of God. I don't believe that God speaks any human language. I really liked when my minister described the Bible (in a private conversation with me) as ''A chronicle of peoples' struggles with faith: first the Hebrew people, then the early Christians''. That's a great working definition. 


I met an American missionary in France whose translation of choice was the King James version. I was asking her what the best translation was. She didn't really have an opinion on it; she read the King James version because she had grown up with it. It's a bit disappointing for me to think that there are people who believe so strongly in Christianity that they will travel the world to proselytize, yet don't seem to have taken steps to ensure the utmost accuracy of their message. To some people, the Bible is the literal word of God, but I would like to point out that it is definitely not the literal English word of God.


That was a pretty big aside, so now we'll go back to the story. Evil spirit. Dad struggling with faith. So next, they bring the affected boy out, and Jesus notices that people are watching and starts to talk to the spirit and tell him to get out (is this showmanship?). So the boy starts to go into convulsions and foam at the mouth and all that, and then he is really still (I'm no doctor but this sounds like epilepsy, right?). Everyone thinks the boy is dead but Jesus takes him by the hand and pulls him up. Later the disciples ask him why they couldn't heal the boy, and Jesus says that the only way to deal with this kind of thing is with prayer. I love it.

So if I was writing the heading for this story, instead of something along the lines of ''Jesus heals a child with an evil spirit'', I would call it ''Jesus talks to an epileptic boy, watches him have a seizure and then helps him up''. Of course, I haven't finished the book of Mark yet, but I really don't think there was any follow up on this kid. Did he actually get cured or did he have another seizure the next day? Does it matter?

I'm not looking for miracles, I'm looking for some practical advice. Some things can only be dealt with through prayer. I can't go around curing epileptics; I'm not a doctor. I could, however, help an epileptic up after a seizure. Well, once I called an ambulance when someone was having a seizure (for the record, there isn't much you can do except move things out of the way so they don't hit anything while they are convulsing).

Not all healing is bodily. We live in a world of mystery. What happens to us when we are not in our frail human bodies is a mystery. Some things can only be healed through prayer.