Tales for Another Time

Although the translation of the bible is something beautiful, a true work of art the original version might not have been written for us. Those who wrote it tried to explain the world to the people of their time and not to us who through science have created a theory of creation. There is one thing that I do wish to point out from the bible which might help me prove my point: “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” (Gen 3, 22) Now today, we Catholics believe that the bible says there is one god and we are in essence monotheistic. I am not questioning our belief but I do wish to point out that god referred in that “us” as if there were other gods other than him. I might be mistaken and he might be making reference between the holy trinity but this did confuse me for a second. Now it might have been an error of translation (which I find unlikely) or some other kind of mistake. It makes no sense either that the translators would be willing to leave that word as it is there which can lead to think that the bible says there is more than one god. Ishmael said that only gods new the difference between good and evil and I agree with him. We might be fooled by the feeling of superiority we have but that is all. I would agree that the church and those who translated the bible did want to make clear that after that moment man did know what was good and bad. But even if that were the meaning why did it say us in such way as to make clear that there were others that knew this before man? I would say that if this were the way it had been written in ancient Hebrew (or at least the meaning had been preserved.) then this bible simply wasn’t meant for us because we live in a different context. Now this is a very different context which I believe we don’t really understand. The reason for this is that the bible had been written thousands of years before it was translated in to this version. There is no possible way we can understand the way in which people lived in that time. There might have been things that were said in the Hebrew version which might have been sarcasm, or similar things for which you need to know the context. Now there are important works of literature that have become classics and have been written quite some time ago, like Don Quixote or Shakespeare plays. The difference is that we have a greater amount of records and more information to draw a clear picture of what that truly means above from what the words say. That “us”, if translated correctly might mean that it was meant for a polytheistic culture and would then mean that we have been interpreting the bible all along in a different way that what it was meant to.

I would say that the bible might have been better off without a written version of it. I say this because although there would never be a hard copy of the original, it would change and adapt to the time. Although part of the original meaning might have been lost, as there always is it wouldn’t suffer this type of deterioration in which we might ponder what a verse means for as long as we want and almost for sure we will never find one true answer. I must also be clear in one thing which is that these aren’t the words of god and never where. These are the answers to questions of a different time for different people and which were interpretations of tales said by generations. As far as we know the story might have been deteriorated going from mouth to mouth enough time before it was written for it to have lost some of its meaning. We were desperate for answers to questions which are hard to respond. We did find answers but they weren’t necessarily the right ones nor are those written on the bible.

I would also like to add that the reading of Ishmael did in a certain way give me a bias when the moment came to read the bible. The interpretations that he gave to Cain and Abel did affect the way I would’ve otherwise read these chapters. I believe it would be better to read the bible before Ishmael that way we can form our own opinions before, without any partiality rather than having another book affect them in any way.

The Catholic Church has done no good to us when it comes to all of this. For centuries it has blinded us with fear of death if we weren’t to believe exactly in to what the bible said and interpreted as the Church said. Very recently has there been a greater liberalism in this sense and we have been able to go against all of this and realize that maybe what they have been saying to us all along hasn’t been right. As a Catholic I disagree with parts of the bible which don’t go with what we know right now. I might be looking it from a taker’s point of view but I believe that today’s theories are against what the bible says but still we have to take in count that it has been a book which hasn’t changed greatly in thousands of Years.

Now, why would a book so dependent on the context not change even if the people do and can make it go out dated? Why did the translators decide to put that us right there? In the beginning why did god seem so human?