“Those who know Arabic are jinn among humans, they can see what nobody else can. Imam Shafii
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
— Matthew 19:24 (NIV)
You know this Bible quote. I am certain you’ve seen it countless times. It might be your favorite chapter and verse. But why a camel? Well, ‘camel’ is a misnomer — a mistranslation immortal. The intended object was ‘rope’, specifically a thick twisted rope: a hawser.
Which is the more eloquent simile:
it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle…
it is easier to thread a hawser through the eye of a needle…
Why is this obviousity never mentioned?
The Bible Hub, an online resource for Bible scholars, provides English language variants for every chapter and verse, among them Matthew 19:24. Click that link to compare 28 translations regarding a rich guy’s odds of entering the Kingdom of God.
Mistranslations are the coin of many a realm, perhaps this one most appropriately so. I am hardly the first to learn, two millennia after the coin was struck, that the writer intended something comparable to a thread.
What is the camel doing in the sewing kit with the needles and threads anyway? The original metaphor roots in Aramaic language, one of the Semitic languages that use consonantal roots to convey meaning:
An alternative scripture, The Qur’an, provides just such a footnote. Here is one from the well-respected translator M.A.S. Abdel Haleem:
The gates of Heaven will not be open to those who rejected Our revelations and arrogantly spurned them; even if a thick rope a were to pass through the eye of a needle they would not enter the Garden.
— Quran “The Garden” 7:40 M.A.S. Abdel Haleem translation 2004
Haleem inserts this footnote for 7:40:
Not ‘camel’. The roots of the words for ‘camel’ and ‘thick twisted rope’ are the same in Arabic and ‘rope’ makes more sense here (Razi).
Each of us originates in the bubble that is the womb, and proceeds into a larger bubble — a system of approved myths inherited upon birth. Mythical systems accrete over the centuries, they become the stuff of culture, of family, of traditions — of a certain mythos. Xenophobia is a fear of the foreign mythos, the strange, the other-wordly.
You’re talking about the dregs of society who have a way at doling off the rest of us. Not in our neighborhood, Bill.
Three monotheistic religions spring from myths. The triad started with the patriarch Ibrahim’s sexual relations with that woman (Sara) and with that woman (Hagar). Ibrahim stands atop an isosceles triangle, isosceles because Judaism and Christianity are more familiar with each other, they are the points at respective ends of the shorter line of the triangle. Together, they celebrate something called a Judeo-Christian tradition.
Bill, have you ever heard of a Judeo-Islamic tradition, a Christo-Islamic tradition? Hang out with scimitar lovers and you’ll die by the sword. Live safe or die, that’s our motto.
The progeny of Isaac and Ishmael revere their father Ibrahim, but they do not visit the mother of the other. A brother discarded at birth becomes a grotesque creature during centuries of banishment.
My birth certificate states that its described birth was “legitimate” — that I am not a bastard. Legitimate and illegitimate bring baggage to the children thus belittled. Do they not? Are there any possible connotations that suggest “bastard” might be a loaded word?
Takes one to know one, bastard. Your father was probably born in Kenya, too. We’d like to see if your birth certificate has an “il” erasure. Just the facts, man. Just the facts.
Yesterday was “Columbus” Day, it was also “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Columbus myths are more important to its proponents than Columbus facts. Fortunately for them, those who favor myth have techniques such as confirmation bias to keep the 25th suggestion for an Indigenous Peoples Day safely at bay.
I listened to a disquieting interview yesterday with author Carol Delaney on her book Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem. Delaney offered much more than a standard defense of Columbus Day, she accurately and disturbingly connected the dots that most Columbus proponents ignore. In other words, Ishmael be damned.
She proudly connected those dots to illuminate an ambition far larger than a couple continents — the apparent need for never ending condemnation of Islam in polite company. Forever and ever, amen.
A few salient points on population movement:
The expulsion of Jews from Spain was completed in 1492, the expulsion of Muslims was completed in 1609.
The ethnic cleansing in the Americas began in 1492
The Inquisition in Spain was already underway in 1492
There still exists a longing nostalgia for the Crusades today
The Crusades are yet described as purely a matter of self-defense.
The sacred myth informs the non-indigenous that Columbus was a faithful Italian Catholic tasked with restoring Jerusalem to Christendom — or at least Judeo-Christendom — through a two-speared operation, from the east as well: completing the aims of the Crusades and the object of the Inquisition.
Columbus stumbled onto a foothold role that established ports for the grim slavers to reap the benefit of clockwise flowing ocean currents. These currents were perfect for purposes of logistic maximization. Cargo circuits brought plentiful human resources from Africa to “get the job done” in a properly fulsome manner. After emptying human cargo at the ports of Columbine discovery, they could deadhead those empty craft and load up bipeds in Western Africa. A logistical marvel of the first order.
Discarded human resources at the bottom of the sea
Portugal supplied missionaries to convert indigenous peoples surrounding the Amazon, pacification brought us Brazil, Spain pretty much tamed the rest of what is now known as Latin America. Access to pagans made possible by craven Conquistadors who rammed through the soft underbelly of the western portions of North America to the wealth of California and the expanse of Texas.
Welcome Europeans?
Does it matter a whit that the colonizers spring from European stock, possess Caucasian physiognomy, have a skin color not tanned by either the sun or made golden under a set of purple ultraviolet ray emitters?
You were probably offended by that Dove advertisement that got all you political correctors lathered. What’s wrong with being white? To the victors go the spoils. Says it all. That’s all you need to know, all there is to know. Get with the program or take the next flight out.
Some decades ago I read the confessions of a language fanatic — she was unapologetic about toting foreign language books to the beach. I have not been able to find that article on the internet, actually any article about readers who find escape that way, now my interest really piques.
Speaking of piquing, here is a peek at two vacationers who look upon language references as beach books, but they’ve chosen different dictionaries to read. That’s what I do — just ask Lisa. Last minute check before leaving the house: have I packed enough language tomes?
Oxford to the left of us, Wehr to the right.
I’ve affixed Arabic-alphabet stickers to my keyboard to make life easier — electronic text editors know how to connect the letters correctly and smoothly. However it is important to write by hand while learning Arabic, it’s akin to hiding the calculator while memorizing multiplication tables.
Left-handers are accustomed to covering up what they write as they write, so it’s revealing to actually see my writing without contorting my writing hand. Calligraphic design is already demanding work. The Roman alphabet is as clumsy as Roman numerals, isn’t it? They did not even have minuscules available to lighten things up, perhaps they just liked to SHOVT a lot. Well, it is true, to paraphrase John Cleese, that they had an empire to run. There is that.
Methinks their alphabet was fashioned with stone-chiseling in mind.
Does “ex” take the ablative or the dative?
As a left-handed calligraphic hobbyist I have to lift my hand frequently to know what is happening. Arabic calligraphy flows from designs inherent in the alphabet. Rather than arranging letters chosen from A to Z, you recognize the minute detail that permits extravagantly wild art with unambiguous pen strokes. This allows the pen wielder to proceed without limit, a dot or two or three makes everything explicable.
However you’ll experience heightened subtlety when you include the ten diacritical marks available in Arabic script. Reading a text that contains the full range of marks gives the writer and the reader a means of communication faithful and considerate of each.
These ten marks are omitted in normal written communication. The small fonts selected for most published works also make text too busy. How do you critically distinguish letters and words if diacriticals are in the way. Once you have seen an Arabic word a hundred times it is hardly necessary to bludgeon a reader with something she already understands quite well.
Of course this is why those marks only appear in scriptural texts or instructional language books. Clarity is critical, each and every millimeter of the way. The author cannot assume that a reader has seen each word hundreds of times already. I personally recommend acquiring the incomparable Sugar comes from Arabic.
Back to Wehr. Arabic is based upon a system of roots: constant consonantal characters in a specific sequence: A SaFaRi into the SaHaRa. The most useful Arabic-English dictionaries are organized by root. Looking up those roots is not easy for a beginner. Now there are ingenious online sources and mobile apps available to grease the learning process.
Learn from your mistakes. I often encouraged my German students that way —the learner who makes the most mistakes gets the most gold stars 🙂
When you announce your vegan beliefs expect incredulity, perhaps not visceral, perhaps visceral. Make public your support of Palestinians to self-determination and expect raw nerves to flare — it comes with the territory. Or am I tilting at windmills? Why must Palestine be a verboten topic?
Misunderstanding happens to “the least of these, my brethren” (Matthew 25:34). I mentioned recently that I am the green sheep in the family. Do I hold a lightning rod aloft, inviting impending doom? I guess.
I live in an area of the country noted for its borders — political, racial, climatic, geomorphic, social: there are others. Our planet does not need more division and more rancor. Welcome the green, the black and the rainbow. Welcome the stranger.
Sudfeh Vegan Cafe
Languages fascinate me intensely. Learning them lightens my spirit and dispels an illusory separation. We are all one. I lived and studied in Germany, a country that knows something of borders — their erection and their dissolution. Loving languages is a joy that requires patience, but it rewards that patience by several orders of magnitude. Or is it a waste of time, a conceit if you already speak THE international language — one dipped in the blood of imperious arrogance. Just saying. Colonialism is not dead. Were that it were.
My intense interest in the Middle East began in 1967 when I began to seriously study its physical, cultural and religious geography. Study makes friends of pain and joy. I was living in West Germany in 1972, at the time of an ill-fated Olympics in Munich. Stasi was still going strong in East Germany. That same year I learned about Savak and the Shah of Iran from my fellow exchange students of the University of Tehran — a full seven years before the revolution in their ancient land, one with the longest continuous civilization in history, one that started with Cyrus the Great. Many cool people are Persian. Yes they are 🙂
Perhaps this is an overlong preface to my topic. I hope not, but please accept my apology if it is.
Let me meld two curiously similar joys and pains — veganism and Palestine. Mix them together and you have The Palestinian Animal League. That kind group of animal activists knows that “acting like an animal” is an expression to deflect misbehavior of a specie with an overdeveloped ego that imposes their self-righteous “superiority” to the innocent fellow sentient beings possessing inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, though it be inexpedient to the self-described exceptional.
We’re not the top dog, we are the arrogant yapping selfish being that always takes advantage. Are we not a part of the cycle of life? Who made us the boss? What is the difference between cannibalism and meatism? I suggest that the difference between eating the flesh of your own and eating the flesh of an other is as trivial as the difference between apples and oranges — both are fruit. Human flesh and the flesh of any other sentient being — both are meat.
Let me now lighten the burden of writing. I yield the pen to The PAL. They know more about themselves than I. Expect joy.
billziegler1947 