February 16, 2009, 8:53 am by dc-agape.

Since 1&1 will not allow php editing of the blog format, I have been trying different techniques of getting two gadgets onto this blog site.  I think that I like this method better than having to add the gadgets to the bottom of rotating posts. 

I have included a page that allows you to look up specific verses from BibleGate.com.  Once you have entered the verses you want to read into the search engine, you will have the opportunity to change which translation you would like to read.  The NIV is the default translation.  But, go ahead, and see how some of the other translations compare to the NIV.  Have fun!

The second page I have included has the Google Translate command.  Choose which language you want this entire blog site to be presented in and read to your heart’s content.

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February 16, 2009, 7:37 am by dc-agape.

I want to add a page to this blog that describes the “Holy Texts” I am using in this experiment.  At the beginning I had thought that using only two, the Zondervan New International Study Bible would be enough.  This book, of course includes both the “Jewish” Bible and the Christian New Testament. 

But as I have begun to do research on both the Old and New Testaments it has become quite clear that both Books have been arbitrarily created.  Many Books that were part of the same religious movement were either removed (The Jewish and Christian Apocrypha) or left out (The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Kabbalah, and the Jewish Pseudepigrapha).  This became overwhelmingly obvious to me when I did the research to write my post on The Synoptic Problem.  Since I am a gay Atheist and an analytical chemist this dearth of missing material sent up massively large red flags.  Why were these other Books removed or left out completely, what do they say, and do they give more insight into the experiment?

This of course brings up one more “Holy Book” that has been denied by both the Christians and the Jewish faiths…the Holy Qur’an.  Since I am exploring the Abrahamic faiths the Holy Qur’an is a required read.  All the other texts split off from mainstream Judaism around the 100BCE to 100CE, why should I not include the “Holy” of the other son of Abraham?  True, the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Mohammad in between the years of 610CE and 632CE, and as a result they are the youngest Holy Documents, but they are still related to the Abrahamic faith.  I just have to hope that I have chosen the best English translation…it is known that such things are acceptable to the Muslim.  I will quote a portion of a hadith written by Iman ibn Hajar ‘Asqulani to use as an explanation as to why an English translation is acceptable:

The Holy Qur’an was first revealed in the language of the Quraish and such of the Arabs as were in their neighborhood and spoke the chaste Arabic idiom; then it was permitted to the other Arab tribes to read in their own idioms, to the use of which they were habituated from their childhood and they differed (from the pure idiom) in the pronunciation of certain words and vowel-points.  Therefore none of them was compelled to leave his own idiom for that of another, because of the difficulty which they would have experienced in doing so, and because of their great regard for their own idioms, so that they might easily understand the significance of what they read.  All this was subject to the condition that there should be no change in the significance.

الإيمان الباري شرح الفرنسيسكان Sahih بخاري 

(Hadith)  (vol. ix,p24)

So with this concept in mind I would have extreme difficulty understanding the Holy Qur’an in the Quraish language but if the significance was not changed it should be acceptable to read the Holy Qur’an in English.

I will be using The Holy Qur’an: with English Translation and Commentary by Mualana Muhammad Ali. This is the New 2002 edition by Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’at Islam Lahore Inc, Dublin, Ohio 43016.

Hopefully I will not run into either legal or religious persecution for the use of this “Holy Book”.

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