When God talks dirty
Raunchy language in the Bible?
Was a lot of dirty talk in the Bible cleaned up by translators? I’m going through scholarly literature discussing that apparent fact.
Take Ezekiel 8:17, when God is throwing a fit at worshippers who turn their backs on the Temple. The English translation says: “Look at them putting the branch to their nose!”
The Hebrew scholar Edward Ullendorff says this literally means “and they stick their penis in my nose” — but he thinks the deity was basically saying:
“…and they fart in my face!”
Christianity is catching on the fact of its Bible having been re-written in translation.
I sit reading about the horrors that Christians have done to the Bible. As Sarah Ruden notes, it has “fallen under the muffling, alien weight of later Christian institutions and had the life nearly smothered out of it.”
She’s the noted translator of classic Greek whose new book, The Gospels, has a Jesus story that’s scarcely recognizable. Here’s John 19:5 in typical translations:
“So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them…
