irregardless
The aroma of the bacon that Linda is frying fills 7H with glory and causes the mouth to water. Nevertheless, notwithstanding, nonetheless, and irregardless of the rumbling stomach, I'm not having breakfast, because my mind is working right now - - semi-working, sort of at half-staff, but working - - and if I eat breakfast, the carbo coma will set in almost immediately and my May Day morning will be reduced to a long winter's nap; and I'm thinking carpe diem while the brain works.
Which, carpe diem, seize the day, seize the moment, always brings to mind that when Joe was a little boy he brought home the information that his friend's dog was named Caesar. Joe asked him, "Why did you name him that?" and the friend said, "Because whenever I run, he seizes my pants with his teeth." Works for me.
Across the room, on the corner of Linda's desk, facing me, is the automatic picture frame, a gift from loved ones, into which family with the access code load photographs that rotate randomly through the day, from five o'clock every morning until, what?, I think nine o'clock every evening. A picture stays up some five seconds, then moves randomly to the next one. Just now: a closeup of Pacey, Kristen's cat, peering at me.
We mind Pacey when Kristen is away, including just over the past weekend. He's a good kitty.
As my brain flag is lowered from half-staff, what was on my mind?
Well, that at this age, stage and Time of life, a most favored and fun activity for me continues to be Bible study. My regret is my lack of energy/motivation to mentor the adult Sunday school class, or to offer the midweek Bible study gatherings and EfM Bible sessions that I did for so many years. There are moments and Times when I really miss all that. It was stirred up again during yesterday's final session of our Episcopal-101 confirmation class/inquirers' seminar, by questions that were raised, that I loved:
When was the Bible first written?
Which Bible translation is correct, and how do we know?
Oh, my! Jiminy Jeepers! Those are questions for exploration by a committed long term Bible study group or Sunday school class.
Our Bible is two parts, Old Testament and New Testament, one original writings in Hebrew, the other original writings in Greek. The Hebrew Bible that we call the Old Testament is a compilation of 39 (Protestant) or 46 (Catholic) or 24 (Jewish) or some other number of individual books that were written and edited, first in Hebrew, later a Greek translation and expansion, over hundreds of years by prophets, priests, scholars, scribes, editors, and others; some of the writings based on ancient campfire stories told to explain various natural and apparently supernatural phenomena and experiences and observations of wandering peoples as they developed their relationship with their ancestors and with nature, life, deities and eventually One God of Creation, Adonai Elohim who named himself to Moses as I AM, which is to say Being Itself. Over Time, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament came together, eventually, very late, traditionally but not for certain in the first century of the Common Era (CE), being canonized by Jewish authorities into an agreed volume. Its Jewish organization and content are not identical to our various Christian contents and organizations. A foundation of Christianity, the Hebrew Bible might be called Heilsgeschichte, holy stories of the Jews' developing relationship with their God. Beyond that brief sketch, the subject is dizzyingly complex beyond a short answer to a Sunday school question. There is no reasonable answer to the question "When was the Bible first written?".
The part of the Bible that Christians call the New Testament consists of some 27 individual books by various authors; all but about seven undisputed letters of Paul are anonymous with arguable authorship and debatable dates of writing, but were assigned names that became traditional; books that came together by general agreement and acceptance, but with some severe contesting, into the second or third century CE, out of a possibility of perhaps several dozen books (see Early Christian Writings), dropping books that failed to meet general criteria for inclusion in the canon, including presumed authorship and inconsistency with then-developing church doctrine.
In the case of the New Testament, our source documents and translations are based on copies of copies of preserved letters, on oral stories about Jesus that were passed along for at least a couple of generations before being reduced to writing, and on some presumed, hypothetical, very early documents dating soon after the death of Jesus. Earliest extant transcripts are copies of copies of copies of copies of transcripts and pieces, by scribes, that include many significant and insignificant differences amongst them; so that identifying "autographs" (what the original authors originally wrote) is a scholarly exercise that is far from certainty. There is no answer to "When first written?" or to "Which translation is correct?".
One of my favorite examples of not knowing for sure, though being able to speculate including based on commonsense, what the author originally meant and wrote, is a little story at Mark 1:40-45, in which an exhausted Jesus is met by a leper, who challenges Jesus to heal him. We love a translation that has Jesus filled with compassion and glad to heal the man. Other translations, for example, see the story in the New International Version (NIV), report that Jesus was indignant, or filled with anger. Which was it? Compassion (the source Greek manuscript has σπλαγχνισθεὶς "splagchnistheis") or anger (the source Greek manuscript has ὀργισθεὶς "orgistheis")? Which? a scholar's answer is not some idiotically pious certainty that of course our sweet and gentle and mild Jesus was delighted to help the poor man, but a consideration that, if one word is original and the other word is a revision or "correction", which change makes the most commonsense? What did whoever anonymous-Mark was, write and intend to say? Both versions go on to say that Jesus sternly ordered the man, the healed leper, to say nothing to anyone. It makes no sense to conclude that someone changed the text from "compassionate" to "angry"; but it makes complete sense to conclude that someone changed the text from angry to compassionate, to reflect Jesus as we prefer to remember him. This conclusion, that Mark said Jesus was angry, indignant, is supported by the scenario that Jesus was trying to get away from people who were hounding him to do something for them; and by the fact that after Jesus healed the leper he sternly ordered him not to tell anyone (and cause even more crowds to mob him for healing).
The same story is told at Luke 5:12f, but Luke omits telling Jesus' frame of mind, leading me to think that Luke possibly didn't want to say what he read in Mark, that Jesus was angry. IDK.
I remember a Bible study session long ago, when I suggested that Jesus was being sarcastic, and a horrified person protested that Jesus would NEVER have been sarcastic. Abysmal, blind, ignorant, pietistic nonsense. Jesus was true God and true man, is our creedal doctrine. Was he human? Did he have a girlfriend? A wife? Or - - how about the allusions in Secret Mark? How about his adolescence into manhood? Except for Matthew's and Luke's very different nativity narratives, the gospels tell us basically nothing until the day he was baptized by John. And even Luke's story of Jesus in the Temple at age twelve fits Luke's gospel-long agenda of tying Jesus to Jerusalem and the Temple. So, was Jesus ever angry?
Do you remember the scene in the rock opera "Jesus Christ, Superstar" when Jesus was so beset with a wild mob of people demanding something from him that he's crushed down and finally in frustrated exasperation leaps up screaming, "HEAL YOURSELVES!!"?
Jesus was not always the sweet simple soul of kindergarten Sunday school - - remember how angry he was in the story of his driving the moneymakers out of the Temple?
Serious and dedicated Bible study can take us down many challenging paths and rabbit holes!
Enough for now. Third mug of hot & black and still no breakfast. But Time for a nap anyway, all the same, irregardless, nevertheless and notwithstanding.
RSF&PTL
T
Fr Tom, irregardless is not a word, you should use regardless. No, irregardless becomes a word if enough people use it long enough to put it into general use and acceptance, it's how language evolves and develops!