The standards for the proof of the existence of god are in decline

Allyou have to do to reproduce the literary style of "the" Bible (by which they apparently mean the King James version) is to convene a few committees of early 17th-cntury scholars and let them argue it out. Worked the first time.

That's awesome! you win my vote, for what it's worth (about as much as the grammatical "wonders" of the Bible, no doubt)

Alas, we have a serious shortage of living early 17th-century scholars right now.

Maybe that could be the next proof: all the authors of the bible are dead, therefore god exists. It would make about as much sense.

Does anybody else think that the passage from 1st John reads better backwards than forwards?

I am truly at a loss as to what these bozos are trying to prove.

I thought that the Christian God (the standard Christian view with which I'm familiar) didn't wish to have his existence easily proven.

Thus, believers do not ask why there are no flaming letters in the sky saying "I am God and You Better Worship Me You Pinheads."

So, are they continually trying to argue that their God was too stupid to cover his tracks?

1 John? Virtually all textual scholars acknowledge that 1 John was modified to support the Trinity over a thousand years after Jesus' existence. Were all the modifications over the years inspired by God, or just the original text?

Well according to Grant Morrison, his entire comic series The Invisibles can be read backwards as well as forwards.

Since this is an entire work, and not just a single isolated passage, I think this definitively proves the superiority of drugs and Morrison's personal wank-magic over Christianity.

The same folks are running a contest for righteous rap lyrics. I'm thinking some folks here might be interested in this. The slaughter of the Midianites, for example, has the makings of a great rap piece.

Hmm ... I don't think that you follow the usual progressions that the bible has in it's lines. For example, verses are often grouped in seven, where the first verse deals with the spirit and the remaining six deal with more secular things.

As much as you insult the DI of sounding like blathering idiots when they leave their topics of expertise, you sound like a blathering idiot in this post.

That is just sad. How deluded do you have to be to take that as an argument for divine inspiration of the bible? From a logical point of view any re-ordering of a list of declarative sentences is equivalent to any other. At least some of the Muslim scholars who make such claims for the Koran have actually done some complex (if dubious) math to reveal a rich, hidden, and (supposedly) humanly unduplicatable structure.

It's not hard at all to find an existing literary work that passes the test. Any of the works of Nostradamus, for example, make exactly as much sense read backwards as they do forwards.

Can I collect my $10,000 now?

Couldn't you just submit the Bill of Rights (although it wouldn't work on a sentence-by-sentence level), or perhaps the enumeration of royal wrongdoings ("He has waged cruel war...", etc)in the Declaration of Independence, or am I missing the idea?

yup, now you'll have a bunch of people worshiping the squid. You can make a fortune. All you have to do is send out FREE Holy Ink, then include a card telling them in order to release the power of the squid in their lives they only have to send you a donation of... well, YOU pick the amount... which will activate the power of the squid and they will gain blessings... health... wealth... whatever.

Heck, you can take a bunch of "verses" or paragraphs from Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary," and they contain the same message either way:

ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.

ABILITY, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

vs:

ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

ABILITY, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world's marketing the race would become graminivorous.

So there ha!

Let's select a random passage from a certain book and try to invert it...

---------------------
9. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.
8. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.
7. Linnæus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds--and there is no plant so unproductive as this--and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there should be a million plants.
6. There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair.
5. Although some species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly, in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.
4. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage.
3. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life.
2. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great that no country could support the product.
1. A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase.
-------------------------

The argument is preserved either way! Hallelujah, the prophet has spoken!

I didn't put "sic" after straiter; I know it's a real word meaning more stringent or more confined, as in strait jacket.

I'd direct them to the Crab Canon from Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter...

Virtually all textual scholars acknowledge that 1 John was modified...

The only scholars that fundamentalists hate more than scientists are Biblical textual scholars. ESPECIALLY ones that provide evidence that the Bible has been modified multiple times over the centuries.

Actually, I think the translation may be the key to getting something to sound like the Bible. So, let's take your squid passages, translate them to some language that has a grammatical structure absolutely nothing like English, then back again (using a cheap internet translator of course). Trying it with Japanese:

Worships the squid, because that is the beautiful animal.

Those have the many arm for the sake of, bejeweled and the muscle and are extreme with the avaricious suction cup and the hook.

There is a strongly sharp bill where and it pulls to sacrifice in those and should tear.

And we have known that it is the predator who has lain hidden in the deep sea which is prepared because those consume us.

Fear the Cephalopoda, raise to awe of glory.

However you avoid the fact that the he the point squid is wise, is consumed with that the joy of existence is found.

Well, it still makes more sense than the Bible.

I'm sorry, I take back my scathing remarks about you, Mr. Myers. It is apparently the contest who is ran by remarkable idiots. I'd be a little surprised they claim literacy on the census; they do not even seem to have a child's understanding of the Bible.

Wasn't there a Seinfeld episode that was shown in backward scene order? Did I win?

1 And the one squid came up from the deep and beheld the garden of algae, and it was good.

2 The one squid for shame saw the folly of his fellow squid, for they knew not the law.

3 No squid shall partake of the forbidden snail.

5 If thou have a tentacle that offend thee, chop off that which forsake the law.

6 Whichever squid taste of the snail shall feel the knife and the batter before the fire and oil at the hand of the supreme Calamari maker.

PZ, seriously, you should continue and submit it. It would be worth an entry on why you got rejected. You could expose this stupid contest (or more than you have).

It's interesting how an apologetic argument for the unique correctness of their own religion so easily moves back and forth between Muslims and Christians. The Qur'an actually includes this argument as proof of its own authenticity. (Sura 2:23 and Sura 17:88.) To anyone with half a brain, of course, it is proof of the Qur'an's stupidity.

That was beau-TEE-ful, PZ!

I may never eat calamari again.

*sniff*

I think the best way to continue it is for commenters here to submit their own string of verses, and then we concatenate them. The multiple authors bit will cinch its correspondence to the bible.

With a little bit of revision, I don't see any reason why you couldn't have the squid poem make sense no matter what order the lines were in - forwards, backwards, rotated, or all jumbled. As you mentioned, they're just a set of simple declaratives.

Reminds me of a programming language I wrote once that was designed to operate regardless of the symbol system used. Be interesting to see what the hebrew bible would look like in that... probably a bunch of NOPs. Hmm, so it did work.

Of course, nothing anyone submits will cut it.

If you really want to fool them you'll have to:

1) learn either Greek or Hebrew, Hebrew would be best since there are already plenty of rejected Greek manuscripts for the New Testament. (i.e. Gospel of Judas)

2) write it on a parchment you can artificially age and fake the date on.

3) bury it in a tomb in Israel, or a cave somewhere out near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.

4) tell some biblical archeologists where they are.

I was under the impression that the Bible wasn't divided into verses until long after they were written. Wiki tells me it was around 1550.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapters_and_verses_of_the_Bible#Verses

"Son, I am able," she said, "though you scare me."

"Watch," said I. "Beloved," I said.

"Watch me scare you, though" said she. "Able am I, son."

Alas, we have a serious shortage of living early 17th-century scholars right now.

have you checked the conservative think tanks? i think the Cato Institute is hoarding most of them.

they are offering a $10,000 prize to any atheist or agnostic who can replicate the unique literary style of the bible

I guess that "atheist or agnostic" clause saves them from having to award the prize posthumously to Joseph Smith for his Book of Mormon. Or do that think that was divinely inspired as well?

I'd enter their rap lyrics contest on the subject of righteousness, but they won't let me use degorative words.

A Markov chain probabilistic recoding does a pretty good job:

Verily, And this world to kill me? The same day circumcise a certain man laid him. The woman of man hath no more; Of judgment, because the Father hath sent me, but the darkness knoweth that ye have died? Jesus said unto the Jews, Will he talked with him a worse thing in adultery, in me? the judgment is my commandments. And a sinner or whether it is passed by, he gave he that living water? Art thou didst send unto him, saying, I am the eyes of mine, but when it abideth ever. These things were shut where David was? So they may be born blind. -- http://www.markovbible.com/john/

If someone can just recode the bible enough to pass these people's spam filters, I'm sure the Nigerian scammers will be all over their measly $0.010 MILLION DOLLArs!

Early written Hebrew lacked both vowels, whitespace, and punctuation. It makes it very difficult to read unless you already know what it is saying. Effectively many of the texts are more of a memory aid than an accurate transcription. Within the first five books there is also extensive use of repitition where the same words/phrase will be repeated one right after the other. You don't usually find this in the English translation although the Fox translation does keep some of the feel of the Hebrew. All of this is what you would expect from texts that originated with an oral tradition. Keep the vagaries of the Hebrew in mind whenever you come across a fundamentalist that wants to take a "literal" interpretation of an English translation of Hebrew text.For the New Testament, most of it was written in Greek. Whenever any crazy argument is made based upon unusual grammar, one of the first questions I ask is about the grammar in the original. It may very well be that the style used was the norm for the original at the time in which it was written.A similar piece of nonsense that was used to argue for the divine nature of the Bible was "The Bible Code". The book is otherwise known as how to prove the existence of God through a serious misunderstanding of statistics, probability, and search.

There is a certain type of historically myopic Christian that believes the Bible is the only surviving piece of literature from antiquity.

I guess that "atheist or agnostic" clause saves them from having to award the prize posthumously to Joseph Smith for his Book of Mormon. Or do [they] think that was divinely inspired as well?

There are numerous religious sects which use the King James translation as a literary template for their own holy books. Another example is the Holy Piby, which is one of the sacred texts of Rastafarianism.

If you're making a list of sins, it just doesn't matter what order they're in. I suspect we could find sections of the Koran or other legalistic religious works that consist of a series of injunctions and declarations, and they'd make as much sense forward and back;

Sweet Lady Isis, any techno song will meet that standard!

For a purely religious example, I'd suggest the Declaration of Innocence from the Egyptian Book o' the Dead.

I have not reviled the God.
I have not laid violent hands on an orphan.
I have not done what the God abominates . . .
I have not killed; I have not turned anyone over to a killer.
I have not caused anyone's suffering . . .
I have not copulated (illicitly); I have not been unchaste.
I have not increased nor diminished the measure, I have not diminished the palm; I have not encroached upon the fields.
I have not added to the balance weights; I have not tempered with the plumb bob of the balance.
I have not taken milk from a child's mouth; I have not driven small cattle from their herbage...
I have not stopped (the flow of) water in its seasons; I have not built a dam against flowing water.
I have not quenched a fire in its time . . .
I have not kept cattle away from the God's property.
I have not blocked the God at his processions.

Etc.

1. Delotharist cometh in glory

2. The wonder of the Hofagamer dost render the Furbasticator speechless

3. Never shall the jaws of the Procliviation sever the back of Inwankination

4. Delotharist is not born of man
__________

Sorry people I was not trying to win any prize... just wondering if I could hammer out a few sentences with more meaning and usefulness than much in the Bible... and I dare say I think I did!!! Wow... Miss Inglese would be proud of me now!

Let us settle the argument once and in the open for all, it does not matter what your believe, or don't believe, this is about comprehension. Prehistoric beings can't help here, those are theories this is fact.

And these asshats clam to have knowledge of anything grammatical? They claim the singular skill of comprehension?

Shi'ite. The Bible is ludicrously easy to mock. Just write like an inbred halfwit mystic on too many drugs and you've got it.

It's better if you have multiple personalities to author each book, of course.

Unique literary style? What style is that? The bible contains hundreds of styles which reflect the writings of just as many authors who were writing to different audiences for different purposes over many, many centuries. And the bible has been edited myriad times.

This kind of stuff drives me crazy. Are the people who made up this stupid game even aware that the bible was written in a language other than English? Have they read the texts in their original languages? Have they thought the consider the context in which various passages were written? And are they even aware of their own cultural hermeneutical lenses in interpreting scripture?

#0 - I love me some TMBG.

"have you checked the conservative think tanks? i think the Cato Institute is hoarding most of them."
Nomen Nescio

Oh that is so unfair to seventeenth century scholars, who whatever their other faults, were able to translate a massive long work with confused grammar and often obscure meaning using idioms over 1600 years old at the time in two languages. To say nothing of producing it in a lovely poetic style that has rarely been matched in English (with rare exception the grandiose language of the KJV IS not found in the Bible).
The Cato Institute can only wish they were that good.

This is from the Song of Salmon:

O thou who dost persist, put thine foot in front of thine foot as dost one who walks with feet.

Thou art the vineyard which hast beckoned me. As I lie with mine face to the redreamer within the holey places where dweleth my staff. Shall I give to thee a pearl necklace or shall the seed of the lord jumpeth into the darkest place?

Blessed be the branches betwixt the branchy things with those rounded bits. I shall cleave to thee every evening lest ye ache in thine headish regions.

Reading a biblical passage backwards sounds so heavy metal.

sounds like somebody has a case of the pygmies and dwarves.

Did any one actually look at the contest rules? Hardly what I would consider winnable.

* o qualify a participant must present a document published between 1000 BC and 2000 AD, in English, and of between 2600 and 3000 words. This document must be readable in the reverse sentence by sentence and communicate the same meaning as when read normally.

* Simultaneously a contestant must present their essay of similar construction between 2600 and 3000 words in English. The subject is limited to the seven pillars of wisdom as revealed by King Solomon, and as played in the board game Inheritance®. Both items have to be presented at the same time.

* No poetry or matter of an offensive or indecent nature is allowed. The published writing has to be in letter or essay format, and the submitted document for phase two also has to be in letter or essay format. Both are subject to the reverse comprehension standards found in 1st John, and as presented in following pages on this site, from the New Testament of the Bible.

As silly as "The Bible Code" was, I think something along those lines would be a much more compelling "proof" of the existence of divine inspiration than this simple verse reversal. That is, can you write a moderately long essay, that will produce other legible texts after selecting every n-th character for more than 1 value of n? Maybe require many values of n but allow legible text to be embedded within noise, not the entire encoding be legible.

But this would still only be maybe compelling but not a proof. I'm sure that, while maybe difficult, this is not an intractible problem. That is why "The Bible Code" needs to show not just improbability of occurence, but real prophecy, that real events are described in an ancient text.

I'm considering submitting one of the books of the Apocrypha.

Apparently the people who made this argument are unaware of even the most basic of information from Biblical studies. Lots of passages in the Bible use a poetic structure common in that period, the inverted parallelism or chiasm. It basically runs through a series of ideas or key words and then runs back through them in reverse.

A
B
C
D
C'
B'
A'

Miracle? No, like so many allegedly miraculous aspects of the Bible, it is simply a consciously constructed facet of its composition.

http://blue.butler.edu/~jfmcgrat/blog/

Its an unordered list of bullet points! I'll go grab the latest PowerPoint presentation I made, I think it had 3 of 'em!

I think they owe Monty Python $10,000.

Ye Godly
Be
Idiots

Idiots
Be
Ye Godly

Fork. It. Over. (Over. It. Fork.)

This so hurts my brain...

please stop.

...owe...owe...

And if you are in doubt as to which We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a sura like it, and call on your helper, besides Allah, if you are truthful. (Qur'an 2:23)

I think this is a remarkable demonstration of ecumenicism on the part of Christian fundamentalists. *grin*

Heck, could it possibly have been written without any vowels at all?

Yes it could. In fact, fully one half of the modern Bible is written without vowels. *ducks and runs*

Does 'prior art' count? There is a book, "The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden" which not only duplicates the bibilical style, but some of it was once biblical, and the rest had been considered for inclusion in the bible. The last time I saw it was decades ago, but it was as weird as the bible itself.

Since the bible is still a work in progress -- with the work being done by humans -- any claim to 'divine origin' is laughable.

OT: how long before PZ writes about today's Diesel Sweeties?

Rachel Rev: No.

What I can't get over is why would they even come up with this? What use could their god have for making it read the same backwards, not even a secret code or anything? Was he that concerned that his creation would be so stupid they couldn't read it properly forwards?

Aren't you missing the "eth"s, though? For example, you say:

Fear the cephalopod, and stand in awe of its glory.

Shouldn't that be:

Feareth thee the cephalopod, and standeth in awe of its glory.

Just asking.

I want to see the FSM version of this, too. I don't have time to do it myself. I'm looking forward to it.

With the "eth"s.

Okay, I wrote this essay a while back. Feel free to submit:

Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead

I've read it backwards a few times and the meaning might change a little bit, but you might be able to fool the judges.

The palin-drone, it burns!

This rivals the hydrogen-peroxide thing for inanity.

to qualify, a participant must present a document published between 1000 BC and 2000 AD, in English, and ...

"If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texas!"

(Actually, I think it's just a publicity stunt for their Inheritance game, not that that makes it any more bearable.)

Have they ever taken a look at the Tao Te Ching? It is full of mix n' matchable stuff like deliberately ambiguous portions that can be read in various ways if reordered. The bible is hardly the best example of that kind of thing. I assume they wouldn't accept that as evidence of the Tao Te Ching's divine origin but happily find divinity and new deep thoughts in every section of the bible whose order they monkey around with. *cough* *confirmation bias* *cough* Sorry. Had something caught in my throat.

Anyone seen the News Radio episode where Mr. James' book is a flop in America, but a huge hit in Japan, so they translate it back into English and Jimmy does a reading? Hilarious:

"The original title of this book was 'Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer' but I see now that it's... 'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler'... you know what it is... I had the book translated in to Japanese then back in again into English. Macho Business Donkey Wrestler... well there you go... it's got kind of a ring to it don't it? ...I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo... dung. ...Glorious sunset of my heart was fading. Soon the super karate monkey death car would park in my space. But Jimmy has fancy plans... and pants to match. The monkey clown horrible karate round and yummy like cute small baby chick would beat the donkey."

[Cough] I can do better than a mere 2600 to 3000 words. I can give you a famous novel where a 12,913 word passage can be read in forward or reverse sentence order and keep the exact same meaning.

It's from Molly Bloom's soliloquy in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Oh great and wise is thy Flying Spaghetti Monster. Ramen.

In loftiest heights doth he dwell o'er the dominion of the Earth.

And his noodly appendage shall toucheth those who believeth in him.

Looketh upon thine Pirates for they foretelleth his coming unto to the world.

Blessed are the Italian grandmothers who toileth o'er the sauce in thy pot for they are his chosen and his chosen are many.

Behold the glory of the Flying Spaghetti monster.

Well, all you unbelievers can go suck a squid!

I was firm atheist. On a bad day I might slip into agnosticism, but then I'd put the whiskey away and I'd be OK again.

But now... now, that I've read the unquestionable logic of this contest, I'm reborn! I'm saved! I have seen the light! They finally did it! Solid evidence of His divinity!

Sweet Jesus, bring the rapture today!

Your Brother in Love,

OEJ

I got a not so nice surprise when I loaded up my iGoogle homepage today. The quote of the day was:

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
- Michael Crichton

Suffice it to say I wasn't very amused.

Completely off-topic, but Jerry Falwell is dead.

http://franksatheisticramblings.blogspot.com/2007/05/that-was-unexpecte…

He that respects the squid is wise, and shall avoid being consumed by it, yet will find joy in its existence.

.... it's been a while since I refreshed the masthead of my blog.

CCP says "All you have to do to reproduce the literary style of "the" Bible (by which they apparently mean the King James version) is to convene a few committees of early 17th-century scholars and let them argue it out. Worked the first time."

In terms of pure literary merit and influence, the KJB is a masterpiece, and one of the very few (the U.S. Constitution is the only other that comes to mind) written by a committee.

Still doesn't make it divine, except in the sense that all great art is divine.

Wow! Who ever knew that every Larry King column ever written was evidence for the existence of God?

Reinder said : "Completely off-topic, but Jerry Falwell is dead. Cause of death is unknown at this point. "

I am going to go out on a limb here and go with the crazy guess of Heart Disease/stroke?

T.R.Shashwath beat me to "Crab Canon" from Godel, Escher, Bach, but I'd like to go further and submit the whole book as being a much more impressive work than an excerpt from the Gospel of John, given the incredibly self-referential nature of the book and the way its structure reflects the subject matter. Anyone who's read Hofstadter's book simply has to acknowledge that it was divinely inspired...

Look, the ways of God are mysterious, ok? So, sure, the bible is a guide to life. But that doens't mean you actually do what it says. No, it's a test to see how you act in a world that contains the bible. Presented with such a transparent fake, do you snort with derision, or do you hypocritically use some of it to justify your prejudices while completely ignoring anything that you don't like?

If you believe in the bible, you must think god is an idiot, so you go to hell.

Ohhhh that wacky god.

Shouldn't that be:

Feareth thee the cephalopod, and standeth in awe of its glory.

No. The suffix "-eth" marks the third person singular indicative in English. Your sentence is in the second person singular imperative.

Believe it or not, not everything that sounds "old-timey" is correct. Grammar actually has rules.

I thought it was King James who wrote it. :)

Tucked in the recesses of my brain somewhere is an image of my Medieval Histories professor quoting Justin on the process of translating the NT. From what I recall, he thought the Greek was especially wretched.

To whatever extent a contemporary English transation of the bible is in a "unique literary style," that style is the result of the translators. The oldest copies of the original-language texts are so over the map that linguists can actually go back and peg different sections as being written by different authors over a very wide range of time. A certain passage of Judges is so old that in the original, it reads like a couple of stanzas of Chaucer's Middle English stuck into the middle of your morning newspaper's front page story. In translation, though, it flows along with everything else.

"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

clearly, someone needs to submit Time Cube.

here's the first bit of it translated from English to Italian and back :

"
That strange mentality you possession in order to adore an old one out of order Hebrew like the creator God.
NO God generates itself.
No God can even exist within our universe of the opposite ones.
The opposite ones exceed the entity.
The entity is equal the cancellation the dead women of the opposite ones.
Diabolic instructed "Stupid singolarità" - the cubical one ignores Wisdom of the human being more test and the larger Thinker.
"

clean up the grammar a little and ... presto!

My nomination is here:

http://www.mediamessage.com/OURCHIVE/slandered.htm

Well, my mother tongue is Hebrew. Jesus's mother tongue was Hebrew, too. He did not speak even one word of English. There are many old Hebrew books written by the greatest Jewish sages that are read just like the Bible, the same grammar, the same panctuation, the same syntax; the Thalmude, the Mishna, even the Passover Hagadah.
Heck, there are so many mistranslations in the King James version of the Bible that at times I have questioned how well the translator really mastered the Hebrew language.

Ahh, the Christians are now stealing from the Muslims. That old canard, that the Koran has irreproducible beauty, thereby proving it's divine source. Of course, the standard is based on the Koran itself since all poetry (and even grammar) in Arabic is judged in terms of how closely it matches the Koranic pattern.

At least the Koran has the advantage of some unity of style, since it was built over only a couple of centuries, instead of being a pastiche of works reaching into the depths of history.

My question: Do the litanies make sense backwards in the original Greek? Koine grammatical structures aren't perfectly isomorphic with English ( ;-> ), so it's entirely possible that there exist interline references, even meter and rhyme, that give the litanies more internal structure. I know that's true for Hebraic sections, where the poetic structure is broken in English translations.

From Enki's first epistle to the Athenians:

1. In my bed, I await the day of salvation. In the market, I await my Lord's return. In countless dark ports, I call upon his name. He lifteth up my eyepatch, and maketh me to see.
2. From joy and freedom, I cry unto the Lord. I rejoice in his name. He leadeth me into his holy places. With his love, he leads me. With his hand, he shows me the way. With his staff, he chastises me.
3. Without merit, I wait for the day of my rescue.
4. Verily, he lifteth me up with fire, that I might behold his glory with mine eyes, that I may bring word to his children that the LORD is one Lord, Father, Son, and Spirit, and that they are holy.
5. Shall we not rejoice? We have now, even today, received a precious gift from the coffers of his, more valuable than gold, and more beautiful than the jewels of his shining chariot.
6. Stop, ye who are born of women. Cry out for mercy. For the Lord knows thy beginning, and thy endings, even those who annoint the unlearned in Liberty will he lay low.
7. His sails are of samite, and his main mast like unto the cedars of Lebanon. His standard reminds us of our eternal rest.

What if you played the sections of the movie Memento backwards? Then the forward plotline would be in reverse, and the reversed plotline would be going forward.

Rivlin,

The general belief is that Ol' Josh's mother tongue was Aramaic, not Hebrew. By 1 AD, Hebrew was already primarily a liturgical language and not a low-register language. So imagine the translation from common Aramaic to Greek to Vulgar Latin!!! Only God knows what the original was - and that's not even to start on the ambiguity in liturgical Hebrew.

Pixel did this a while ago:

http://pixelcomic.net/257.shtml

Anyone who's read Hofstadter's book simply has to acknowledge that it was divinely inspired...

No, but I'll acknowledge that it was intelligently designed.

Doesn't this contest amount to saying that no human could write like that? I.e., even if its claim were true it would be a mere argument from incredulity? (And if they really believe no human can write like the Bible, then why specifically exclude original compositions? If it really was some divine style that couldn't be produced by humans, wouldn't that still apply even if the humans tried really hard?)

No poetry or matter of an offensive or indecent nature is allowed.

They have even found a way to disqualify the Bible.

Heh. If those guys were truly sincere about their "criteria", all i'd have to do is show up with a copy of George Perec's Life: A User's Manual, And collect.

And he has ALSO written a whole novel without the letter e. Dunno about cephalopods, though.

Frog,

The Book of Hoshea (Jesus), which is not part of the old testament (just like the Book of Esther), is written in Hebrew. The sarcophages discovered in 1980 in the City of David in Jerusalem, supposedly in a family burial place of Jesus and relatives, have ancient Hebrew names on them written in Hebrew letters.

We claim that from a grammatical perspective no book has been written like the Bible, nor is it easy to do so.

So what does that make Finnegan's Wake? The Koran?

Since this is an entire work, and not just a single isolated passage, I think this definitively proves the superiority of drugs and Morrison's personal wank-magic over Christianity.

Not to mention Discordianism.

For it is written, "Lo, the tentacled stirrer of deep waters shall bring to nothing the cunning of the lowly decapod."

For man shall not eat of the shelled fish.

But render unto the squid that which is of the dominion of the squid.

That, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the squid."

Want not what the squid wants, but what the mighty leviathan grants in his wisdom, power and glory.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo

Rivlin,

Assuming what you set out to prove, eh? First of all, those sarcophagi are still highly suspect. Second, the few quotes we have in the gospels all point to aramaic. Third, Esther is a liturgical work, not every-day business dealings.

Maybe Jesus was a priest or a rabbi. Maybe he was a carpenter. Maybe there were a whole bunch of Jesi! Maybe old Josh was a figment of Paul's imagination.

The truth is there is no way to actually know anything about "Jesus", anything at all. You have one Jesus from the dead sea scrolls who is a radical militant anti-Roman zealot. You have Paul's Jesus. You have Gnostic Jesus who was never really alive. You have the Jesus of James' Church, who was just a founding prophet.

Whatever Jesus you find, is the Jesus you went looking for. I see an empty room.

I seem to remember that the Phantom (or was it Phoenix?) spoke like this throughout that movie "Mystery Men"... and then the rest of the characters got annoyed about it, and mocked him.

This is so easy! I'll just send in a Book of Mormon! I'll show those idiots they haven't got the only Divinely written Scripture extant! Who do they think they are?

And he has ALSO written a whole novel without the letter e. Dunno about cephalopods, though.

Well duh. Obviously you can't use the word "cephalopods" in a book without the letter e. I suppose you could write about octopus and squid and nautilus though; and you'd have to leave out the cuttlefish.

I submit Naked Came the Stranger. It is a fictional story written in the past by several authors under a single, mythical pseudonym for the purpose of hoaxing its target audience. As observed in Wikipedia, the book is "a poorly-written, literarily-vacant work" that is an "inconsistent and mediocre hodge-podge, with each chapter written by a different author." I think the contest organizers may be swayed by the stylistic parallels.

I took a Bible as Literature class in high school and it was at a time that I already knew I was an atheist. One assignment was to write our own psalms in the same style as the bible. It was fun, I wrote some beautiful psalms, got an 'A' and had a nice chuckle to myself.

a document published between 1000 BC and 2000 AD, in English, and of between 2600 and 3000 words. This document must be readable in the reverse sentence by sentence and communicate the same meaning as when read normally.

The Eye of Argon is a bit too long. What a shame.

I'm sorry, PZ, but you and God are both amateurs. Ayn Rand pulled this off for fifty pages in Atas Shrugged.

1. There is no unique definition of "The Bible". The first definition, the Roman Catholic bible, was done about three centuries after the death of Jesus. The first "protestant" bible was defined by Martin Luther 15 centuries after Jesus. And Luther wasn't sure if "Revelations" belonged in the bible. Not surprisingly, the bible doesn't define itself. This "loophole" allowed Joseph Smith to add books to the bible.

2. The principal founders of christianity, Jesus & Paul, did not express any intention of creating such an entity. Certainly Jesus never hinted that his gospel message would be written and become the "inerrant word of god". And Paul, as he diligently wrote epistle after epistle to different churches, never realised he could write one epistle explaining the new doctrine and send it to all churches.

3. There was very little, if any, attention given to preserve "master" versions of any of the books in any bible. We really do not know who wrote the books, or how corrupted they became - both intentionally and unintentionally - over time by copyists and translators. (see Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus').

All in all, a very suspicious & inauspicious foundation for a supposedly inerrant & divinely inspired tome.

What, no mentions of The Boomer Bible?

And lo, take unto ye all the sentences of thy writings, and divideth them with semicolons into awkward fragments; and forgetteth not to begin each with "and", to keep it holy.

I gotta say, this whole thread is a great clearinghouse for poking holes in the Holy Book. I'll have to bookmark it.

A bible without vowels? What, was it posted on Pharyngula before being distributed?

I just tried this with one of the Icelandic sagas: Egil's Saga, written between the years 1220 and 1240 A.D. (according to Wikipedia). Seems to fit the bill well enough!

-Thorstein Egil's son received baptism when Christianity came to Iceland, and he had a church built at Borg.
-He was true to the faith, and a good man.
-He lived to be old, and died in his bed; he was buried at Borg by the church which he had built.
-From Thorstein have come numerous descendants; many great men, many poets: they are of the stock of the Myra-men, as are all who sprang from Skallagrim.
-It long held good of that kin that the men were tall, and great warriors, some too were of prophetic sight.
-They were of two distinct types: for in that stock have been born the handsomest men in Iceland--such were Thorstein Egil's son, and Kjartan Olaf's son, sister's son of Thorstein, and Hall Gudmund's son, also Helga the fair, Thorstein's daughter (about whom Gunnlaug Worms-tongue and Skald-raven quarrelled).
-But the more part of the Myra-men were very ill-favoured.
-Of the brothers, sons of Thorstein, Thorgeir was the strongest, Skuli was the tallest.
-He dwelt at Borg after the days of Thorstein his father.
-Skuli was long time out freebooting.

and reversed:

-Skuli was long time out freebooting
-He dwelt at Borg after the days of Thorstein his father.
-Of the brothers, sons of Thorstein, Thorgeir was the strongest, Skuli was the tallest. -But the more part of the Myra-men were very ill-favoured.
-They were of two distinct types: for in that stock have been born the handsomest men in Iceland--such were Thorstein Egil's son, and Kjartan Olaf's son, sister's son of Thorstein, and Hall Gudmund's son, also Helga the fair, Thorstein's daughter (about whom Gunnlaug Worms-tongue and Skald-raven quarrelled).
-It long held good of that kin that the men were tall, and great warriors, some too were of prophetic sight.
-From Thorstein have come numerous descendants; many great men, many p
oets: they are of the stock of the Myra-men, as are all who sprang from Skallagrim.
-He lived to be old, and died in his bed; he was buried at Borg by the church which he had built.
-He was true to the faith, and a good man.
-Thorstein Egil's son received baptism when Christianity came to Iceland, and he had a church built at Borg.

Ta da!

Where's my $10,000?

I'm currently reading the Bible from cover to cover for the first time. My religious "education" restricted itself to the narrow selection of passages deemed safe for use in the Catholic mass; there was no serious discussion of the applicability of Biblical morals and behaviour to the present day, let alone historical or literary criticism.

Halfway through the Old Testament, overall impression I get is of a banal work with abundant repetition, glaring inconsistencies, irrelevant details, and much that is demonstrably wrong. It really amazes me that this was the best package that could be assembled from all the ancient Christian texts, and therefore I suspect that one could reverse or reorder many Biblical passages without detriment.

Well according to Grant Morrison, his entire comic series The Invisibles can be read backwards as well as forwards.

That is nothing. Gustave Verbeck (aka Gustave Verbeek) made a comic, "The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo", that must be finished by reading backwards upside down.

He made 64 (!) of them, whereupon he looked at his work and found it good.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Nice, I haven't heard that one. (And now I'm glad I haven't. :-)

But have you heard about the Chicken chicken chicken research? The paper is here [pdf].

@MikeM #59 and clutterb #75:

The problem with "Feareth thee the cephalopod" is the "thee" rather than the "-eth". You can make "Fear ..." sound archaic by using the more emphatic "Fear thou ...", but not "Fear thee ...". However, "-eth" is used not only for third person singular indicative but for second person plural imperative. Thus "Feareth the cephalopod" would be syntactically OK. It's similar to modern German, where you might say to one child "Geh ins Bett" ("Go to bed"), but if you want to send both your children to bed you say "Geht ins Bett".

Peter, I am currently doing the same (I also come from a Catholic background where I was paradoxically discouraged from reading it... although now that I am learning what it says I understand why). I entirely agree with your conclusions.

I think Corporal Baldrick's war poem from Blackadder must surely qualify for the prize:

Baldrick: This one is called "The German Guns."

George: Oh, spiffing! Yes, let's hear that!

Baldrick: "Boom boom boom boom / Boom boom boom / BOOM BOOM, BOOM BOOM--

Edmund: "BOOM BOOM BOOM"?

Baldrick: How did you guess, sir?

George: I say, sir! That is spooky!

And they could get away with awarding him a turnip...

From the Gospel of Barry Mann:

I'd like to thank the guy who wrote the song
that made my baby fall in love with me...
Who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp
Who put the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong
Who put the bop in the bop-she-bop-she-bop
Who put the dip in the dib-de-dip-de-dip
Who is that man, I'd like to shake his hand
He made my baby fall in love with me (yeah!)
When my baby heard bomb-a-bo-bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp-bomp
Every word went right into her heart
And when she heard them singing ram-a-lama-lama-lama-lama-ding-dong
She said we'd never have to part

And now backwards ...

She said we'd never have to part
And when she heard them singing ram-a-lama-lama-lama-lama-ding-dong
Every word went right into her heart
When my baby heard bomb-a-bo-bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp-bomp
He made my baby fall in love with me (yeah!)
Who is that man, I'd like to shake his hand
Who put the dip in the dib-de-dip-de-dip
Who put the bop in the bop-she-bop-she-bop
Who put the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong
Who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp
that made my baby fall in love with me...
I'd like to thank the guy who wrote the song

Ce n'est pas possible! Je l'ai déjà fait!

James McGrath and others, the literary pattern (chiasm? chiasmus?) was used in the story of Jesus going to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, in Luke. Textual scholars have concluded that the story of his passion and weeping was inserted later, because it breaks the pattern.

I learned that from "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" by Bart D. Ehrman.

Speaking of books, has anyone read Jonathan Weiner's "Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior" yet? It sounds interesting and if he did as good a job as in "The Beak of the Finch," I'm going to have to get it.

Yes, and it's excellent! I'm using it in my neurobiology class next fall.

I think it's better than "The Beak of the Finch".

I'll just have to order a copy, then.

I once read the Bible backwards and it told me to drink lots of beer, do lots of drugs, and have lots of unprotected sex...oh wait, no, that was when I played Stairway to Heaven backwards.

I once read the Bible backwards and it told me to drink lots of beer, do lots of drugs, and have lots of unprotected sex...oh wait, no, that was when I played Stairway to Heaven backwards.

Damn, I wish I hadn't been slacking and had gotten in on this earlier. Little did I know, I had an unparalleled work of art with me at the grocery store:

Bananas
Milk (2 percent)
Bread
Frozen broccoli (bag, not box)
Yogurt (plain, low-fat)
Grapefruit juice (if it's on sale)
Pretzels or some kind of snack

From One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
By Dr. Seuss

My hat is old.
My teeth are gold.

I have a bird
I like to hold.

My shoe is off.
My foot is cold.

My shoe is off.
My foot is cold.

I have a bird
I liked to hold.

My hat is old.
My teeth are gold.

#64 John, Can you give me the page number in Ulysses that the passage starts on?

Mark Twain wins!

"I am full of imaginary tortures," I said, "but I do not think I could be any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get rid of them?"

"There is no occasion to get rid of them since they do not exist. They are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there is no such thing as matter."

"It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it."

"Explain."

"Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter propagate things?"

In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were any such thing as a smile.

"It is quite simple," she said; "the fundamental propositions of Christian Science explain it,and they are summarized in the four following self-evident propositions:

1. God is All in all.
2. God is good. Good is Mind
3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter
4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death,evil, sin, disease.

"There--now you see."

It seemed nebulous; it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with some hesitancy:

"Does--does it explain?"

"Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it."

With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backwards.

"Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is God. There, do you understand now?

"It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--"

"Well?"

"Could you try it some more ways?"

"As many as you like; it always means the same. Interchanged in any way you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was before. It was a marvelous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and the occult."

"It seems to be a corker."

I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it.

"A what?"

"A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, of profound thoughts--unthinkable ones--um--"

"It is true. Read backward, or forward, or perpendicularly, or at any given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in statement and proof."

"Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they prove I mean, in particular?"

"Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove:

"1. GOD--Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?"

"I--well, I seem to. Go on, please."

"2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it clear?"

"It--I think so. Continue."

"3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding. There it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell. Do you find a weak place in it anywhere?"

"Well--no; it seems strong."

"Very well There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity I. Physical-Passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, disease, death."

"Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it."

"Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. I. Moral-Honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?"

"Crystal."

"THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. I. Spiritual-Faith, wisdom, power, purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal mind disappears."

"Not earlier?"

"No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are completed."

"It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship,as I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the processes of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting; go on, please."

"Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears. Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as to make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, 'the last shall be first and the first shall be last,' that God and His idea may be to us--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be all-inclusive."

"It is beautiful. And with what exhaustive exactness your choice and arrangement of words confirm and establish what you have claimed for the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably produce only temporary absence of mind; it is reserved to the Third to make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the Second could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of it--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect would disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes another remarkable specialty to Christian Science--viz., ease and flow and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must be a special reason for this?"

"Yes--God--all, all--God, good God, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit, Bones, Truth."

"That explains it."

(From Christian Science by Mark Twain)

Well according to Grant Morrison, his entire comic series The Invisibles can be read backwards as well as forwards.

That is nothing. Gustave Verbeck (aka Gustave Verbeek) made a comic, "The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo", that must be finished by reading backwards upside down.

He made 64 (!) of them, whereupon he looked at his work and found it good.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Nice, I haven't heard that one. (And now I'm glad I haven't. :-)

But have you heard about the Chicken chicken chicken research? The paper is here [pdf].