- Old Book Review by a Master.
- Truth in Political Reporting.
- Eternal Vigilance Alert.
- Faith in Faith?
- Was Poe a “Great Poet” (if only in French)?
The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel—half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern—which was about every sentence or two—he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc., and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass” was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.
Mark Twain on the Book of Mormon. I had no idea until Tuesday morning that Twain had read the book or commented on it. But I agree completely with “The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures,” which was a note so comically false that I couldn’t keep my promise to the Mormon missionaries to read the whole thing.
There is this weird assumption on the part of the media that if a candidate can be hurt if their comments are misconstrued then it is the solemn duty of the media to misconstrue those remarks.
This news coverage is justified in passive constructions. “The Obama campaign opened itself up to attack,” or “The Romney remark could reinforce a negative image.”
…
For once, I’d like a pool report to tell the truth “Candidate x got off the bus and addressed an enthusiastic crowd with the exact same platitudinous crap he said four hours earlier to another equally enthusiastic crowd. There was no sense to it whatsoever, but man, these people really ate it up. And his enemies will twist his words into slightly offensive shapes and make a big dumb boring hullaballoo about it until the nation finally stirs itself to end this thing with their votes.”
That last paragraph got “quote of the day” at Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
Romney doesn’t like firing people, and Obama doesn’t think government built your business. Can we give it a rest now? Ninth Commandment, anyone?
[R]eligious believers should not put their trust in the supposed fair-mindedness of liberals. From their point of view, asserting greater government control over religious institutions is necessary to ensure justice, and involves a legitimate reinterpretation of the boundaries of religious freedom guaranteed by theConstitution.
Faith, in the Christian life, has nothing to do with a subjective belief that does not admit rational justification (not even Kierkegaard quite said that), because faith begins not with the subject of faith but its object—the Trinitarian life of God. It consists not of assent to some proposition but the entrustment of one’s being to God’s providence. Faith does not originate in the individual believer’s own efforts, but is rather a gift of grace to the believer, usually received in baptism, as one means among many of participating in God’s own life.
Thomas Cothran on some puerile post-Enlightenment notions of faith (“Against Faith in Faith“).
The reason the French labor under the bizarre misapprehension that Edgar Allan Poe was a great poet … is that so much of his verse was translated by Baudelaire.
David Bentley Hart on the art of translation.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 