In Other Words

Movies and bibles

So we went to I, robot last night.  A story loosely based on Asimov’s book by the same name.  I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the story.  It was well put together, original and entertaining.  There was even some good twists.  Will smith, the main character, put down a pretty decent performance.

The really humorous thing, however, was Shazam’s reaction to the movie.  He said it was 95% excellent and 5% Will Smith.  For some odd, inexplicable reason Shazam has a real problem with Will Smith.  Something about him being smug and irritating.  Now I don’t have a problem with that, but he does. 

Its interesting how we all have an actor we really don’t like, for no clear and apparent reason.  Shazam has a problem with Will Smith while I have a problem with that dweeb who plays spiderman two, Tobey Maguire.  I believe he has the acting talent of a twisted piece of scrap metal.  Why?  I don’t know, that’s just how I feel.  What ever he does on the screen annoys the piss out of me.

Then Liana has this problem with Tom Cruise.  Just as inexplicable, but non the less omni-present where Tom Cruise is concerned.

Where does this weird feeling come from?  Is it a memory from when we were younger?  Is it something to do with the fact that we have to hate somebody on the big screen?  Is it some sub-sonic sci-fi alien attack with jellybeans?  I don’t know (though I do admit that last one might appear just slightly conspiracy theory material). 

Maybe its all, maybe its none, maybe its skittles.  What interests me more is whether everybody experiences this.  Does everybody have some actor they don’t like?  Something to think about.

In the mean time there was a comment by Jeff! Lim (the not yet legal spelling) asking me how I know the bible has been edited.  There are two interesting examples from history that I would like to raise.  Unfortunately I’m too lazy to look up their exact source right now, but I promise you that they are at least partially based on truth.

The first is an example where they did an experiment, I think it was in the 1980s, where they took a number of Jewish scholars (I believe it was a hundred) and asked them to translate the Hebrew old testament to English.  They asked them to translate the meaning of the bible.  The reason they did this was because books fade away over time and thus had to be copied from one old book to a new one, time and again (before the printing press this was the only way that books could be copied).

Very well, the scientists then compared the 100 different translations, all meant to translate the spirit of the Old Testament, and found that none of them agreed.  They all translated the book differently as they believed that different things were meant and/or intended. 

Interpreting the bible was something that the monks spent all their lives doing.  They lived in their monasteries and debated the meaning of different passages in the bible.  The rest of their time they would often spend copying the book for extra money (this was one of the few sources of income they often had). 

To prove this fact they found a very old bible in a monastery in Germany (if I’m not mistaken) that was handwritten.  The interesting thing about it was that it had over a dozen ‘corrections’ on every single page, where the monk changed something because he thought it read better or sounded better that way (or had originally been intended that way). 

Many of these modifications were found in then modern day bibles.  A third example (yes I was only going to mention two) is easy enough.  Just pick up two different bibles of two different Christian faiths and compare.  These largely different books came forth from the same source.  Only one of them can be right, yes?  Now you tell me which one.

Interesting fact:  In early monasteries dirt was considered holy and the monks actually referred to lice as ‘the pearls of god’.  Not only that, but there are actually written boasts about how long monks could go without their feet touching water.  (crossing streams and rivers was ignored for this boast).

posted by Symbol @ 29.7.04