Transcript: Episode 0107
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WEBVTT 00:00:37.392 --> 00:00:39.712Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.712 --> 00:00:40.752 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.752 --> 00:00:41.832 Mahler. 00:00:41.832 --> 00:00:44.572 And I'm still, whoa. 00:00:44.572 --> 00:00:49.392 Today's Stone Choir is the final, final, final episode of the Septuagint series. 00:00:49.392 --> 00:00:52.672 This is what we've been calling the bonus episode up to this point. 00:00:52.672 --> 00:00:59.872 We haven't selected the name for it yet, so you know what it's going to be, but I don't know as we're beginning recording what we're going to call it. 00:00:59.872 --> 00:01:12.672 The prequel episode number 99 with the context window in this episode, are two parts that are bookending the seven parts content of the Septuagint story itself proper. 00:01:12.672 --> 00:01:31.012 This episode is going to exclusively focus on what the process should look like for a future translation of the Septuagint in English, so that you as a reader don't have the problem that we have had for the last 18 months working on this project, which is very simply this. 00:01:32.472 --> 00:01:43.212 Brenton, Lexham, Netz, and another one that we'll mention, all have the same problems, which are that they don't necessarily exclusively rely on the Septuagint. 00:01:43.212 --> 00:02:03.772 Even though they call themselves Septuagint translations, there are decisions in terms of the content included or excluded or word choices that are sometimes derived from the Rabbinic text, which when you were endeavoring to discover exclusively what is in Greek without any Rabbinic influence, becomes useless. 00:02:03.772 --> 00:02:07.712 So on one hand, many of you have already gone out and bought one of those Bibles. 00:02:07.712 --> 00:02:08.352 That's great. 00:02:08.372 --> 00:02:09.292 Use it. 00:02:09.292 --> 00:02:19.172 Not criticizing them and saying they're terrible for the sake of being a Bible, in the sense of here's what I read at home, here's what I study, here's what I look at. 00:02:19.172 --> 00:02:25.472 The problem is if the question you're trying to answer is does this say exactly what the Greek says, you can't know by looking at any of those. 00:02:26.132 --> 00:02:30.052 Even the Nets, which has lots and lots of footnotes, it's a very academic version. 00:02:30.052 --> 00:02:33.272 It's not necessarily going to identically reproduce what's in the Greek. 00:02:33.272 --> 00:02:37.432 So that problem has yet to be solved today. 00:02:37.432 --> 00:02:41.292 What we're going to describe, many of you are going to laugh at. 00:02:41.292 --> 00:02:43.912 I'm going to tell you right up front, it's going to seem over the top. 00:02:43.912 --> 00:02:48.972 Some of the rules that we've come up with, some of the processes we're going to recommend. 00:02:50.012 --> 00:02:53.272 This is by far the most INTJ episode that we've ever done. 00:02:54.172 --> 00:03:01.412 Both Corey and I are INTJs, we love contingency planning and working through things in elaborate fashion. 00:03:01.412 --> 00:03:04.012 This is one of those. 00:03:04.012 --> 00:03:19.012 While that seems silly for most people in most of your life, I want to give you a couple of examples of places where you see the same processes and assiduous attention to detail that doesn't strike people generally as crazy, because you know why they're doing it. 00:03:20.292 --> 00:03:25.332 One example would be, as we're recording this, I'm going to be having surgery next week. 00:03:25.332 --> 00:03:26.792 The one that was deferred a while ago. 00:03:26.792 --> 00:03:29.732 By the time you're listening, I will have already had surgery. 00:03:29.732 --> 00:03:36.352 So before the surgeon cuts me open and puts his hand inside my body, I hope that he cleans his hands really well. 00:03:36.352 --> 00:03:39.972 I hope he scrubs good and long, all the way up to his elbows. 00:03:39.972 --> 00:03:45.952 Like when you've seen a surgeon scrubbing down usually in a TV show, it looks ridiculous. 00:03:45.952 --> 00:03:47.832 It looks like this guy is crazy. 00:03:47.932 --> 00:03:54.692 If he knew nothing about germs and you watched a surgeon scrubbing for surgery, you would think he had lost his mind. 00:03:54.692 --> 00:03:59.172 It seems like a bizarre ritual that serves no purpose whatsoever. 00:03:59.172 --> 00:04:12.632 But once you understand germs and you understand surgery, that a man is being cut open, his body is being rent in a way that is not intended by God to solve a problem, in this case, it's not something mean, it's something beneficial. 00:04:12.632 --> 00:04:18.732 Then the fact that the surgeon is doing this seemingly over-the-top cleaning ritual makes perfect sense. 00:04:18.732 --> 00:04:25.372 You don't want to introduce any contaminants into the body past the skin barrier that's there to keep that stuff out. 00:04:25.372 --> 00:04:35.812 Because although our immune systems are very good at fighting off pathogens, they have a much harder time once they get past certain layers of defenses. 00:04:35.812 --> 00:04:46.792 So God has given our bodies layers of defenses and the surgical theater also has layers of defenses to keep germs away from when the two collide. 00:04:46.792 --> 00:04:55.492 When the external environment collides with the inside of the surgical patient's body, you don't want anything getting in or out except for what is intended. 00:04:55.492 --> 00:04:56.752 It means no germs. 00:04:56.752 --> 00:05:01.032 It's a very simple process once you understand why it's happening. 00:05:01.032 --> 00:05:03.792 If you knew nothing about germs, it would seem ridiculous. 00:05:03.792 --> 00:05:09.572 And 200 years ago, if you saw surgical theater, it would seem like butchery compared to today. 00:05:09.572 --> 00:05:10.012 And that's why. 00:05:11.272 --> 00:05:18.852 Another example of contaminants causing problems, or something I mentioned before, I used to own and operate a distillery. 00:05:18.852 --> 00:05:26.992 A distillery is basically like a brewery or a winery with the additional step of boiling for purification essentially. 00:05:26.992 --> 00:05:39.492 When someone is brewing or fermenting wine, the hard part that they have is that they have their liquid, their water, they have their sugar source, and they have their yeast. 00:05:40.292 --> 00:05:47.072 And when the yeast feeds on the sugar, it produces lots of delicious alcohol and lots of other flavors as well. 00:05:48.692 --> 00:06:01.972 The problem for the brewer or the vintner is that any flavors that are produced in that process that are off flavors, which would typically be introduced by some external contaminant, those go into the product. 00:06:01.972 --> 00:06:12.592 Because after a brewer is finished brewing or a vintner is finished with wine making, aside from light filtering and maybe some aging, it goes into a bottle and that's what you drink. 00:06:12.592 --> 00:06:21.232 So in my case, distilling was the much easier version of that because what we brewed wasn't particularly good beer. 00:06:21.232 --> 00:06:23.712 It was very, very sour beer. 00:06:23.712 --> 00:06:30.472 The purpose was never the flavor of what was in those giant vats as we were producing that beer. 00:06:30.472 --> 00:06:33.912 The purpose was the alcohol and some of the flavors, but not all of them. 00:06:34.552 --> 00:06:37.732 So when you distill, you're stripping away most of that stuff. 00:06:37.732 --> 00:06:44.512 You're throwing it away entirely and leaving the pure distillation of a much smaller portion. 00:06:44.512 --> 00:06:48.872 So distilling is much more forgiving than brewing or wine making for that reason. 00:06:48.872 --> 00:06:57.452 When you look at the cleanliness and purification steps that are necessary in brewing and wineries, they seem over the top too. 00:06:57.452 --> 00:07:01.312 They do a lot more than we necessarily had to do in a distillery. 00:07:01.312 --> 00:07:11.532 Not that we were being sloppy by any means, but simply that no flavors that we would be concerned about wouldn't get stripped out by the spirit making process. 00:07:11.532 --> 00:07:19.192 When it goes into the bottle and you drink it without anything apart from filtration, contaminants will do damage to the process. 00:07:19.192 --> 00:07:21.992 They'll do damage to the final product. 00:07:21.992 --> 00:07:35.452 So that's just a couple small examples in the world where we see that keeping things pure as you're going through the process sometimes looks a little silly from the outside until you understand what it is that you're trying to keep out. 00:07:35.452 --> 00:07:44.692 Very simply, the process that we're going to describe today, what it is intended to keep out is the contamination of the rabbis. 00:07:44.692 --> 00:07:52.372 Once we have made the case as we did in the previous seven episodes, the Greek scripture is breathed out by God, we simply don't want anything else. 00:07:52.372 --> 00:07:56.752 And we don't want anything that's been influenced by anything else other than the Greek. 00:07:57.852 --> 00:08:05.792 So, the process that we described today will seem over the top to some of you, to some it will make perfect sense, but that's the reason why. 00:08:05.792 --> 00:08:16.452 We have to keep contamination out at every step of the process, because otherwise the leaven of the Pharisees is going to get back into the system. 00:08:16.452 --> 00:08:19.192 The whole point is to get it out and keep it out. 00:08:19.312 --> 00:08:23.652 I mentioned that there are the three examples of Brenton, Lexham and Nets, which are available today. 00:08:23.652 --> 00:08:26.132 You can download all those online. 00:08:26.132 --> 00:08:27.092 They're fine Bibles. 00:08:27.092 --> 00:08:29.752 I've mentioned specifically Brenton. 00:08:29.752 --> 00:08:35.652 I like it the least primarily because it is basically King James English. 00:08:35.652 --> 00:08:38.632 I was looking this up earlier to see if I could make this claim. 00:08:38.632 --> 00:08:49.172 What I wanted to say was that Brenton's is basically about a 200-year-old translation of the King James using the Septuagint. 00:08:49.172 --> 00:08:57.152 What I wanted to say was that that was the first translation into English after the King James, which turned out to almost be true. 00:08:57.152 --> 00:09:07.812 There was one significant translation of scripture prior to Brenton, which was around 1844, was when it came out, so you've been working on it for a while. 00:09:07.812 --> 00:09:11.552 The previous translation was from a man named Charles Thompson. 00:09:11.552 --> 00:09:12.452 I'd never heard the name. 00:09:12.612 --> 00:09:15.512 Some you probably have, but most you probably haven't. 00:09:15.512 --> 00:09:18.032 Charles Thompson is one of the founding fathers. 00:09:18.032 --> 00:09:20.052 He was an Irish-born man. 00:09:20.052 --> 00:09:28.492 He was an orphan who became the secretary of the Continental Congress for all 15 years that it was convened. 00:09:28.492 --> 00:09:36.212 Later in his life, he translated the entire Septuagint into English, and he published that in 1808. 00:09:36.212 --> 00:09:38.392 He was obviously living in America at the time. 00:09:38.392 --> 00:09:39.872 He was speaking American English. 00:09:40.612 --> 00:09:48.992 So the Thompson translation has significantly less archaic formulations than Brenton. 00:09:48.992 --> 00:09:53.292 We'll link in the show notes in a link to his page because it's just very interesting. 00:09:53.292 --> 00:09:59.772 I had no idea when we began that one of the founding fathers made the earliest Septuagint translation into English. 00:09:59.772 --> 00:10:01.052 That's really cool. 00:10:01.052 --> 00:10:12.672 A friend was looking at it earlier today as I was working on Final Prep for this episode and it seemed like some of the renderings were pretty interestingly different from the others in ways that hopefully are consistent with the Greek. 00:10:12.672 --> 00:10:14.152 We'll go look later. 00:10:14.152 --> 00:10:20.712 There's a fourth one in the mix that you can consider and it's certainly worth checking out just for its historical value. 00:10:20.712 --> 00:10:27.112 In 2027, there is another translation that will be coming from Oxford University Press. 00:10:27.112 --> 00:10:30.032 It's going to be called The Ancient Christian Study Bible. 00:10:30.912 --> 00:10:37.152 And the intention is for that to become basically the new or the next Orthodox Study Bible. 00:10:37.152 --> 00:10:45.652 But the team that's working on it is Acumenical, as on just Orthodox guys, there are Protestants, there are Catholics working on it, which I think is a very good thing. 00:10:45.652 --> 00:10:55.352 I think it's important for that sort of project not to have your own particulars creeping into the translation decisions you're making. 00:10:55.352 --> 00:11:04.532 Because remember when we're talking about a translation, we're talking about plain words, we're talking about men communicating with other men. 00:11:04.532 --> 00:11:09.432 And theology is an additional layer on top of that. 00:11:09.432 --> 00:11:38.152 So one of the beauties of the fact that the Septuagint was recorded in Quinae Greek is that there are many other exemplars of Quinae Greek from that period, both before and after, that a translator can look at to help understand how did they speak in that day, how were they using various words and phrases, what concepts when they're expressed in one form in Greek would translate as a concept, as a thought, into English. 00:11:38.152 --> 00:11:53.052 It's very valuable when you have a big corpus available to you beyond just the text you're translating, because there are some cases where if you're just looking at the text, you may not be able to tell exactly what the author meant. 00:11:53.052 --> 00:11:55.572 Now in the case of a book, you do your best. 00:11:55.972 --> 00:11:58.612 In the case of scripture, that's not acceptable. 00:11:58.612 --> 00:12:16.712 And so the blessing that the church has is that God put scripture into a very accessible, relatively simplified version of Greek that translates fine in any other European language and a number of others, but like European language is going to be the closest cousins. 00:12:16.712 --> 00:12:24.392 This is a tremendous boon to anyone who's doing translation work, because they can get the thoughts clearly into another language. 00:12:24.832 --> 00:12:32.132 And then, if there are certain ways, certain traditions want to articulate their theology on top of that, you explain it. 00:12:32.132 --> 00:12:37.192 That's why there are pastors and priests to come along and say, here's what this means in our context. 00:12:37.192 --> 00:12:38.332 That's fine. 00:12:38.332 --> 00:12:45.212 It's good for the language itself to be neutral as much as possible, not influenced by anyone's theology. 00:12:45.212 --> 00:12:52.152 Because, as we've said many times, when we have disagreements among the various bodies, at most one of us is right. 00:12:52.972 --> 00:13:02.432 So, given that rule, it's best not to be messing with the text of one simple language, translating it into another simple language. 00:13:02.432 --> 00:13:06.372 Let the language be the language, and let the theology be the theology. 00:13:06.372 --> 00:13:11.052 The theology doesn't have to reshape the language, just to make sure no one gets anything wrong. 00:13:11.052 --> 00:13:12.552 That's a bad approach. 00:13:12.552 --> 00:13:15.192 That's why we have these bookstores that are so full of books today. 00:13:15.192 --> 00:13:19.752 You have Bibles for kids, Bibles for women, Bibles for role players. 00:13:19.752 --> 00:13:20.632 It's insane. 00:13:21.272 --> 00:13:24.432 Let the Bible be in English and let there be one of them. 00:13:24.432 --> 00:13:26.572 So we'll get to that in the end. 00:13:26.572 --> 00:13:30.152 We'll put a link in the show notes to the Ancient Christian Study Bible. 00:13:30.152 --> 00:13:33.712 It's certainly not going to meet our criteria that we're going to present here today. 00:13:33.712 --> 00:13:36.072 Maybe it would be a better option than the other four. 00:13:36.072 --> 00:13:36.632 I hope so. 00:13:36.632 --> 00:13:37.712 That'd be great. 00:13:37.712 --> 00:13:42.012 Because the things we're going to describe today is going to be many years before such a thing exists. 00:13:42.012 --> 00:13:46.312 In the meantime, we need to be reading the Bible from the original Greek as best we can. 00:13:47.032 --> 00:13:51.352 So, I hope that this Ancient Christian Study Bible pans out. 00:13:51.352 --> 00:13:54.732 You know, I'll get a copy when it comes out and we'll see. 00:13:54.732 --> 00:13:55.272 Whatever. 00:13:55.272 --> 00:13:56.912 It's going to be better than what we have. 00:13:56.912 --> 00:13:59.032 And that's one of the most important things. 00:13:59.032 --> 00:14:08.452 The Masoretic text, the Rabbinic text derived Bibles that we have today are worse than any of the Septuagint Bibles that are also out there. 00:14:08.452 --> 00:14:11.972 Ultimately, what we want to have is a Bible that's free from the yeast of the Pharisees. 00:14:13.232 --> 00:14:18.112 So, what we're going to describe today is basically the team structure. 00:14:18.112 --> 00:14:22.692 Basically, I'm going to be describing a project management role. 00:14:22.692 --> 00:14:26.692 This project of translating the Septuagint cleanly with no interference. 00:14:26.692 --> 00:14:28.812 What should that look like? 00:14:28.812 --> 00:14:30.892 This is by no means exhaustive. 00:14:30.892 --> 00:14:32.872 This is by no means moral. 00:14:32.872 --> 00:14:35.252 These are pragmatic rules. 00:14:35.252 --> 00:14:40.652 So, when we say do it like this, it's to achieve the sort of cleanliness I just described. 00:14:41.072 --> 00:14:43.572 The point is to keep the contamination out. 00:14:43.572 --> 00:14:49.352 We believe that these rules, if they are followed, will keep the contamination out. 00:14:49.352 --> 00:14:55.472 We equally believe that if these rules are not followed, the risk of contamination goes way up. 00:14:55.472 --> 00:15:02.232 Even by degrees, these little one rule at a time, you strip it away, you increase the risk of contamination. 00:15:02.232 --> 00:15:07.892 One of my favorite movies and one of the only movies I like from before about the early 90s is The Andromeda Strain. 00:15:08.312 --> 00:15:11.492 It's based on a Michael Crichton novel from 1969. 00:15:11.492 --> 00:15:13.752 The movie came out in 71. 00:15:13.752 --> 00:15:19.112 It's dated, but it's not that dated in terms of the ridiculousness of it. 00:15:19.112 --> 00:15:33.992 The reason it came to mind as I was thinking about this is that one of the key elements of The Andromeda Strain is basically they have a microbe from outer space and they're going to try to deal with it in isolation because it was killing people, it was hurting people. 00:15:34.512 --> 00:15:36.972 They get it into this facility. 00:15:36.972 --> 00:15:43.292 It was specifically designed to contain some Zeno-sourced pathogen. 00:15:43.292 --> 00:15:52.832 And the structure of the facility and all the rules that they came up with in anticipation of such an event was specifically designed to keep in any earthbound contamination out. 00:15:52.832 --> 00:15:56.292 So when they worked on the pathogen, they knew that that was all they were looking at. 00:15:56.292 --> 00:16:02.852 So a lot of the book and a lot of the movie is detailed around the specific layers of defenses. 00:16:03.372 --> 00:16:12.852 And if any one of those layers of defenses were breached, the pathogen could get out and something from earth could get in and confuse the whole thing. 00:16:12.852 --> 00:16:17.132 So when we describe this process, the same mentality is in mind. 00:16:17.132 --> 00:16:21.532 When the surgeon cuts me open and he didn't scrub his hands that well, maybe it'd be fine. 00:16:21.532 --> 00:16:25.412 Maybe his hands happened to be clean before he got there for surgery. 00:16:25.412 --> 00:16:28.552 And so all the scrubbing that day didn't turn out to be necessary. 00:16:28.552 --> 00:16:30.312 But you don't want to take the chance. 00:16:30.312 --> 00:16:33.772 You do it not because you know it's absolutely going to prevent the problem. 00:16:33.772 --> 00:16:37.292 You do it because it significantly reduces the risk of that sort of problem. 00:16:37.292 --> 00:16:38.632 So just keep that in mind. 00:16:38.632 --> 00:16:40.492 These are not moral rules. 00:16:40.492 --> 00:16:46.732 And I say that because right off the bat, we're going to be getting to some things that some people will feel they're moral condemnations. 00:16:46.732 --> 00:16:47.972 That's not the case. 00:16:47.972 --> 00:16:50.072 These are hygienic matters. 00:16:50.072 --> 00:16:51.112 They're cleanliness rules. 00:16:51.112 --> 00:16:53.092 They're not moral rules. 00:16:53.092 --> 00:16:56.692 In other contexts and other places, they wouldn't matter at all. 00:16:56.692 --> 00:17:00.732 Basically, what we're going to be describing here are four teams that will be working together. 00:17:01.412 --> 00:17:05.132 You have a core translation team that will be working directly on the text. 00:17:05.132 --> 00:17:11.232 You have a non-air-gapped research team that would be giving sources to that core team. 00:17:11.232 --> 00:17:25.932 And the non-air-gapped research team is the one that's able to interact with sources that are going to be contaminated by the rabbinic authorship or by church fathers and others who were themselves contaminated to some degree by what the rabbis said. 00:17:25.932 --> 00:17:36.252 So the non-air-gapped research team is going to be interacting with external sources like patristics that may well have been themselves influenced by the rabbis. 00:17:36.252 --> 00:17:41.592 Their job is to keep the rabbinic influences away from the core team. 00:17:41.592 --> 00:17:47.932 So nothing that the core team ever sees will be unvetted for that sort of contamination. 00:17:47.932 --> 00:17:51.732 There's also going to be an advisory team or an editorial team. 00:17:51.732 --> 00:17:54.372 But in this context, they're not managers. 00:17:54.372 --> 00:18:05.032 They will be reviewing basically what the librarians are sending in, and they'll be reviewing what the translators are sending out, just to sort of make sure that everyone's on the same page. 00:18:05.032 --> 00:18:11.692 The rules that we're going to describe that are most stringent for the translators won't apply to these other two teams because they kind of have different purposes. 00:18:11.692 --> 00:18:13.712 We'll explain that in a minute. 00:18:13.712 --> 00:18:22.472 And we have a legal and clearance team because a lot of what is going to be used here will be externally sourced from copyrighted materials. 00:18:22.472 --> 00:18:42.952 And one of the fundamental goals at the end of such project needs to be to release an English translation of the Septuagint that is unencumbered by copyright, free for reproduction, as well as the apparatus that includes everything that the translation team used documenting in Greek or whatever other languages. 00:18:42.952 --> 00:19:04.632 Here's exactly what the guys who are translating the Bible, here's what they were looking at, showing the entire genealogy of every word choice made in the Bible, both because it would be incredibly valuable for studying and also to sort of let external viewers read and vet and determine that, yeah, this was a good translation effort. 00:19:04.632 --> 00:19:11.312 If mistakes, errors or whatever crept in when the apparatus is published side by side, then sure, you can see all of it. 00:19:11.312 --> 00:19:19.712 You need a legal and clearance team because it will require permission from a bunch of rights holders to also publish their stuff for free. 00:19:19.712 --> 00:19:22.332 So you need negotiation, you're going to need checks to be cut. 00:19:22.952 --> 00:19:30.892 And all that is a necessary part of producing the finished work that will bear fruit for centuries to come. 00:19:32.392 --> 00:19:49.592 Part of the reason that some of this may seem excessive or extreme to some of you, is that just how easy it is to ignore the things that influence you, even not to notice them at all, it's extremely easy to miss those things. 00:19:50.292 --> 00:20:13.952 And I thought about this yesterday when I was writing an article that maybe it will be out by the time this episode is released, but there are probably a dozen different things that I reference or straight up cite in that article that have clearly influenced me to the degree that I am aware of them, I've memorized them, I was writing these things down, citing them from memory, not looking them up. 00:20:14.752 --> 00:20:43.492 And so even if I recognize that initial layer, that first layer of influence, insofar as just the sheer fact that the thing exists in my memory, and even if I account for that, if I deliberately ignore that and make sure that I don't permit it to influence other downstream thoughts, the problem is at some point it becomes sufficiently attenuated in any man's mind that you can no longer do that. 00:20:43.772 --> 00:20:57.832 And so, maybe there's that second order or third or fourth order effect, where you don't realize that you've made this particular decision because of some influence, three or four rungs up the ladder. 00:20:57.832 --> 00:21:02.292 That is the reason we want to take this level of precaution. 00:21:02.292 --> 00:21:09.312 As Woe said, sometimes you'll see church fathers or others, and there's no citation to the rabbis. 00:21:09.312 --> 00:21:12.052 There's no citation even to the rabbinic text. 00:21:12.812 --> 00:21:22.012 But if you look at the argument that they are making, it's clearly drawn from rabbinic sources, because that was a second or even a third order effect. 00:21:22.012 --> 00:21:28.972 And so the goal is to minimize that, to eliminate it to the degree that it is possible. 00:21:28.972 --> 00:21:35.332 And that is the reason for taking these sort of seemingly extreme measures. 00:21:35.332 --> 00:21:43.332 For those of you who speak German, those sort of as an aside, but it ties in to this because of the structure of the thing. 00:21:43.332 --> 00:21:48.972 There are some editions of the Septuagint translated into German. 00:21:48.972 --> 00:21:49.972 You can buy today. 00:21:49.972 --> 00:21:50.892 They exist. 00:21:50.892 --> 00:21:52.532 Some of them are pretty good. 00:21:52.532 --> 00:21:55.092 You have the Ralphs, the Göttingen. 00:21:55.092 --> 00:22:08.232 The Göttingen is the, and I mean that in uppercase letters, it is the academic version of the Septuagint, other than obviously the Greek itself, because obviously that has the Greek. 00:22:08.232 --> 00:22:09.212 It has all the sources. 00:22:09.212 --> 00:22:10.172 It has all the annotations. 00:22:10.172 --> 00:22:13.992 It has the apparatus, but everything else is basically in German. 00:22:13.992 --> 00:22:16.132 So you're going to have no German for that one. 00:22:16.132 --> 00:22:27.652 But as far as not academic versions, just for everyday reading, although with quite a healthy number of footnotes, there is the Septuagint Deutsch, which was released in 2009. 00:22:27.652 --> 00:22:29.912 I happen to have that version on my desk right now. 00:22:29.912 --> 00:22:31.512 It is also a good option. 00:22:31.512 --> 00:22:32.532 And then the Ralphs. 00:22:32.532 --> 00:22:42.792 The reason that the Ralphs and the Göttingen are relevant is that they will be relevant as we go through this episode simply by virtue of their position in the academic landscape. 00:22:42.792 --> 00:22:59.052 But the structure that the German Bible Society, I'll just give the name in English, used when they were creating the Septuagint Deutsch, the most recent version in modern German, very readable translation, they did a little bit of what we're recommending. 00:22:59.052 --> 00:23:01.252 They did not use the same sort of safeguards. 00:23:01.252 --> 00:23:13.792 They didn't do the air gapping and the isolation, but they did have small teams of academics who were versed in relevant areas translating this, and then they had an editorial oversight board that helped to organize this. 00:23:13.792 --> 00:23:21.172 And then obviously, because it's the German Bible Society, a decent size corporation, they had the legal team as well. 00:23:21.172 --> 00:23:43.172 The step that they did not take, that we want to take for this version and for any other similar project in any other language, whether it's a European language or if it's, say, Japanese or Korean or something else, whatever it happens to be, the vitally important step that we want to take is that isolation of the translators themselves. 00:23:43.172 --> 00:24:00.072 And the ability to restrict the sources they're using, not in the sense, many here restrict and they think negative, not in the sense of a negative, but rather in the sense of not permitting things that have been contaminated to be in front of the translators when they are doing this vitally important work. 00:24:01.372 --> 00:24:07.112 You don't want to permit any sort of contamination, as Woe mentioned with the examples that he gave. 00:24:07.112 --> 00:24:15.052 There are certain contaminants that may seem very small, but they can have profound effects downstream. 00:24:15.052 --> 00:24:21.832 Another example of that would be, for those of you who are more familiar with working in the kitchen, say canning. 00:24:21.832 --> 00:24:31.712 If you don't properly sanitize the can, what goes into the can, then what you get back out of the can is not going to be what you wanted. 00:24:31.712 --> 00:24:37.552 As we all know very well, it's going to be the little expanded can that will probably kill you if you eat it. 00:24:37.552 --> 00:24:42.972 Another example that comes to mind simply because I moved a bunch of chicken feed yesterday. 00:24:44.012 --> 00:24:51.592 When I fill up the drums that I use to store the chicken feed long-term, I dust diatomaceous earth on top of it. 00:24:51.592 --> 00:24:55.692 The reason I do that, it's a similar concept here. 00:24:55.732 --> 00:24:57.232 It's not exactly the same. 00:24:57.232 --> 00:25:03.432 But the reason that I do that is that it removes some of the insects that inevitably get into feed. 00:25:03.432 --> 00:25:09.832 Anyone who's been around animals, worked on a farm knows, granary weevils are basically omnipresent. 00:25:09.832 --> 00:25:12.132 You can almost not get rid of them. 00:25:12.132 --> 00:25:27.132 But if you dust the feed with diatomaceous earth, it will kill them or at least the larva so they won't continue that life cycle in your grain and you won't open up your 50, 60-gallon drum six months in the future and realize that it's full of bugs. 00:25:28.232 --> 00:25:29.252 The same sort of process. 00:25:29.252 --> 00:25:35.772 You're trying to get rid of that contaminant before it reaches the final product. 00:25:35.772 --> 00:25:40.352 That's what we want to do with this structure and with this setup for the translation. 00:25:40.352 --> 00:25:49.032 The goal is to have a faithful translation of God's Word without any of what the rabbis tried to pass off as God's Word. 00:25:49.032 --> 00:25:52.912 As we went over in the previous episodes, there are a lot of problems. 00:25:52.912 --> 00:25:55.012 We're trying to get rid of those problems. 00:25:55.012 --> 00:26:04.292 And so the extremity, as it may seem, of the effort, of the design is absolutely warranted because it's the only way to be certain. 00:26:04.292 --> 00:26:12.632 And as Woe said, each additional layer, each additional step, just decreases the odds of that contamination reaching the final product. 00:26:13.592 --> 00:26:26.992 Any step you take, any additional step you take, in order to increase that gap, in order to increase that security, in order to cut down on the risk of contamination, is a good thing. 00:26:26.992 --> 00:26:27.972