I'm having another go at Arabic. Here's an attempt (by a Christian) to translate the final chapter of the Qur'an followed by a commentary. Arabic and other translations here.
In the name of God, the compassionate and merciful one.
I seek refuge in
the lord of humans
the king of humans
the god of humans
from the evil of the whisperer who hides, who whispers in the hearts of humans,
from spirits,
from humans.
Commentary:
This is the Qur'an's final surah, a nicely turned piece notable stylistically for its three-stage chiasmus.
There are rising levels of divine description lord > king > god that psychologically encourage increasing trust in God. These levels are matched by declining stages of evil the whisperer (traditionally Satan); spirits (jinn) > humans. The effect is to create deliberately asymetrical pairs: god trumps whisperer; king trumps spirits; lord trumps humans.
There is a superb example, too, of onomatopoia: the whisperer in Arabic is al-waswasi. There is also evidence of internal assonance/rhyme: the whisperer is one who hides (al-khannasi), this recalls the word for 'humans' (an-nasi)
Spiritually the whisperer might be recognised in the voice in the heart that brings crippling self-doubt or anxiety. As many would recognize, this voice is a far more powerful enemy than external 'spirits' or other humans. The surah envisages finding refuge from such inner anxiety in God.
The surah is commended in various in traditional interpretations (tafsir), together with the previous chapter (113: Daybreak) as a strong prayer against spiritual attack.
Creation stories
In our first Bible for Bluffers session, we were looking at the Creation stories in Genesis and contrasting them with the Babylonian creation story (notes on our blog here).
Familiarity breeds contempt and it's possible not to realise how radical the Jewish stories are. Stick them next to the Babylonian myth and the effect is astonishing. The Enuma Elish is full of violence: the Earth is made from the blood of murdered gods (I'm awaiting the ITV adaptation) and humans are created at the end as mere slaves.
By contrast the ancient Jewish stories want to persuade us that the world is a place of relative order and safety that can be trusted and enjoyed, and in which we have freedom to join in the creation process.
The Jewish (and Christian) stories imagine that God is not someone to be feared, to be enslaved to (or to rebel against), but rather someone who approaches us generously with an offer of friendship.
Several thousand years later the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich wrote: 'He who is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is also lowliest and meekest, most friendly and most gracious'.
I'm rather thankful that the ancient Hebrews got us off to such a good start...
Familiarity breeds contempt and it's possible not to realise how radical the Jewish stories are. Stick them next to the Babylonian myth and the effect is astonishing. The Enuma Elish is full of violence: the Earth is made from the blood of murdered gods (I'm awaiting the ITV adaptation) and humans are created at the end as mere slaves.
By contrast the ancient Jewish stories want to persuade us that the world is a place of relative order and safety that can be trusted and enjoyed, and in which we have freedom to join in the creation process.
The Jewish (and Christian) stories imagine that God is not someone to be feared, to be enslaved to (or to rebel against), but rather someone who approaches us generously with an offer of friendship.
Several thousand years later the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich wrote: 'He who is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is also lowliest and meekest, most friendly and most gracious'.
I'm rather thankful that the ancient Hebrews got us off to such a good start...
More initmacy from Julian
For truly our Lover desires that our soul cleave to Him with all its might and that we evermore cleave to his goodness, for of all things that heart can think, this pleases God and soonest succeeds.
(Showings, ch. 6)
(Showings, ch. 6)
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A Point of View
John Gray is writing/broadcasting some interesting stuff.
I don't quite agree with everything he has written here, particularly his final conclusion that it doesn't matter what you believe. I don't think he's recognised that there's a difference between 'belief that' (which he rightly wants to avoid as a fundamentalistic fallacy) and 'belief in', which is more open to his valuation of myth.
Unless there is some sort of 'belief' (i.e. some sort of semi-/conscious acceptance of a mythical framework to make sense of the world) than it seems to me it is impossible to do 'practice'. Belief enables action... Nevertheless, knocking Frazer's view of religion on the head is a sensible thing.
I don't quite agree with everything he has written here, particularly his final conclusion that it doesn't matter what you believe. I don't think he's recognised that there's a difference between 'belief that' (which he rightly wants to avoid as a fundamentalistic fallacy) and 'belief in', which is more open to his valuation of myth.
Unless there is some sort of 'belief' (i.e. some sort of semi-/conscious acceptance of a mythical framework to make sense of the world) than it seems to me it is impossible to do 'practice'. Belief enables action... Nevertheless, knocking Frazer's view of religion on the head is a sensible thing.
Review of Anathem, Neal Stephenson.
Several years ago a science PhD student virtually compelled me to read Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. I think it followed a discussion about how to get scientists to enjoy reading novels, and whether serious scientific ideas could find expression in good fiction. Despite resembling a brick, and containing not a few dense paragraphs about WWII code, the plot was good and Stephenson’s unashamedly nerdy-but-keen style had me intellectually hooked, too.
I’ve since ploughed (I choose this verb advisedly) through two of the three volumes of his Baroque Cycle that mix an evocation of the world of seventeenth century philosophy, the rise of capitalism and piratical swash-buckling. In the first two novels in the sequence I have to admit that I think that the balance of educative lecture-to-entertainment ratio is rather skewed towards the former – but hey: it got me thinking about global economics and the flow of money... In Anathem however I think he’s achieved a better balance.
On the intellectual side Anathem melds together a number of themes, particularly platonism, mathematics, quantum theory and consciousness. (In simple form: do mathematical formulae have a reality outside of our heads? Would they take the same form in parallel universes? Could such ideas be shared between universes by sentient beings?).
Stephenson also plays with ideas about how different forms of thinking deposit socially and culturally. He sets his pure scientists within monastic communities playfully reversing the historical relationship between science and religion (think what the Church would look like if Moses were replaced by Pythagoras, Jesus by Plato).
Carrying all this is a rip-roaring plot. I found echoes of older sci-fi (notably Clarke’s Rama novels, and Greg Bear’s The Way series, for example): an alien ship turns up and disturbs a planet’s culture; questions arise about how they will relate etc.. Well-worn it may be, but I think it works – especially when you factor in the kung-fu, some sympathetic characters, and a fair dose of humour. Stephenson’s invention of a whole new language, particularly when applied to philosophical ideas (‘Occam’s razor’ becomes ‘Saunt Gardan's Steelyard’), also helps to avoid the novel becoming too didactic.
Readers from a faith perspective will quickly pick up an antipathy to various expressions of religion, several of which bear an uncanny resemblance to American evangelical Christianity and others to Catholicism. However there are hints of a more sympathetic treatment of liberal forms of faith. The treatment of religion in the novel has presumably been the subject of several reader comments, as I note that Stephenson’s own website issues something of a clarification, reminding readers that the views expressed are those of the narrator, not necessarily the author. Stephenson also mentions the more liberal Christianity practised by his parents (embracing evolution and non-fundamentalistic ways of reading scripture) which he commends, noting that the book was dedicated to them.
In all, a thrilling and often funny page-turner that also got me pondering the philosophy of maths. Someone who can write a book that does both things, is clearly one talented guy.
I’ve since ploughed (I choose this verb advisedly) through two of the three volumes of his Baroque Cycle that mix an evocation of the world of seventeenth century philosophy, the rise of capitalism and piratical swash-buckling. In the first two novels in the sequence I have to admit that I think that the balance of educative lecture-to-entertainment ratio is rather skewed towards the former – but hey: it got me thinking about global economics and the flow of money... In Anathem however I think he’s achieved a better balance.
On the intellectual side Anathem melds together a number of themes, particularly platonism, mathematics, quantum theory and consciousness. (In simple form: do mathematical formulae have a reality outside of our heads? Would they take the same form in parallel universes? Could such ideas be shared between universes by sentient beings?).Stephenson also plays with ideas about how different forms of thinking deposit socially and culturally. He sets his pure scientists within monastic communities playfully reversing the historical relationship between science and religion (think what the Church would look like if Moses were replaced by Pythagoras, Jesus by Plato).
Carrying all this is a rip-roaring plot. I found echoes of older sci-fi (notably Clarke’s Rama novels, and Greg Bear’s The Way series, for example): an alien ship turns up and disturbs a planet’s culture; questions arise about how they will relate etc.. Well-worn it may be, but I think it works – especially when you factor in the kung-fu, some sympathetic characters, and a fair dose of humour. Stephenson’s invention of a whole new language, particularly when applied to philosophical ideas (‘Occam’s razor’ becomes ‘Saunt Gardan's Steelyard’), also helps to avoid the novel becoming too didactic.
Readers from a faith perspective will quickly pick up an antipathy to various expressions of religion, several of which bear an uncanny resemblance to American evangelical Christianity and others to Catholicism. However there are hints of a more sympathetic treatment of liberal forms of faith. The treatment of religion in the novel has presumably been the subject of several reader comments, as I note that Stephenson’s own website issues something of a clarification, reminding readers that the views expressed are those of the narrator, not necessarily the author. Stephenson also mentions the more liberal Christianity practised by his parents (embracing evolution and non-fundamentalistic ways of reading scripture) which he commends, noting that the book was dedicated to them.
In all, a thrilling and often funny page-turner that also got me pondering the philosophy of maths. Someone who can write a book that does both things, is clearly one talented guy.
Review: The Stature of Waiting
This is a book that was recommended to me, I believe 14 years ago, by the former archbishop of York on some kind of preordination retreat. Only now have I got around to reading it.
It is a fairly short book-length meditation on passivity: the condition (the author argues) we are all likely to experience at some time, and which is perhaps increasingly prevelant in our time.
By passivity ('passion', or waiting) Vanstone means that uncomfortable condition of being made subject to something beyond our control - illness, unemployment, frustration at work, old age. These are things that rob us of our power and independence, and thus potentially of our dignity and self-worth.
Indeed Vanstone predicts that technology will not necessarily increase our independence and sphere of autonomous action, but in many cases instead make us even more susceptible to to frustration as we depend on even greater systems beyond our control.
Being made a 'patient', being rendered a passive subject by illness or unemployment is clearly a bad thing. And yet Vanstone notes that the passion narratives in Mark and John speak of almost nothing but Christ's passivity. (There a particularly nice study in ch. 2 of how verbs describing Jesus shift from active to passive in Mark, and in John how the images of energetic work and day give way to night and inactivity/powerlesness).
Western culture has typically mostly come to value production, creativity and those who can do active things. Vanstone offers a nice critique of any assumption that this is natural, pointing out that prior to the nineteenth century 'idleness' or 'leisure' was the mark of civility, not work. Rather, he argues, the valuing of activity (the work ethic) can be seen as the necessarily ideological myth that enables the growth of capitalism.
Vanstone notes though that we may be moving out of the capitalist phase and its need for producers, and instead we are perhaps moving towards the need for consumers (i.e. for passivity, once more). If so we need to reclaim the value of being rendered passive (and Vanstone gives some interesting examples of how even the ill or the weak can sometimes hold a key and powerful role in a society.)
Nevertheless the myth of activity remains, and Vanstone suggests it may ultimately be rooted in the Christian tradition of describing the God in whose image we are made as 'pure act' and all powerful creator, as impassible.
And yet are we to say that anyone who is inactive, reduced to dependence or passivity is less than human, or less fully made in God's image? Here Vanstone's careful exegetical work on the latter part of the Gospels revalidates 'passivity/dependence' by suggesting that the primary purpose of the Passion stories is not to show that Jesus death sacrificially atoned for us, but rather that his passion as a whole (his acceptance of being 'handed over' and loosing his freedom) gives dignity to all such experiences. 'Glory' is found as much in God's acceptance of passivity in Christ, in his waiting in love for a human response (will Israel's rulers turn to him?), not just in his actions.
Vanstone thus fundamentally modifies the view of God's impassibility. God is certainly not, by nature, dependent on the world, not manipulable by us, and thus is indeed impassible. However God voluntarily adopts passibility - God makes space for the other (us) to respond freely - in the loving hope of relationship. There is a wise insight that the lover is often depicted not as the active one, but as the one who patiently (passibly) waits. So it is shown to be in God, when the supreme moment of the revelation of God's glory in Jesus is his surrendering of himself into the hands of men.
Surrunder, passibility, suffering, receptivity are all, according to Vanstone, modes in which the world is endowed with meaning and significance. The world needs us to be more than just creators, we need also to be receivers: those who value life in their being made subject to it, who notice its value, beauty, even its terror. In doing this mere existence becomes endowed with grandeur.
It is a fairly short book-length meditation on passivity: the condition (the author argues) we are all likely to experience at some time, and which is perhaps increasingly prevelant in our time.
By passivity ('passion', or waiting) Vanstone means that uncomfortable condition of being made subject to something beyond our control - illness, unemployment, frustration at work, old age. These are things that rob us of our power and independence, and thus potentially of our dignity and self-worth.
Indeed Vanstone predicts that technology will not necessarily increase our independence and sphere of autonomous action, but in many cases instead make us even more susceptible to to frustration as we depend on even greater systems beyond our control.
Being made a 'patient', being rendered a passive subject by illness or unemployment is clearly a bad thing. And yet Vanstone notes that the passion narratives in Mark and John speak of almost nothing but Christ's passivity. (There a particularly nice study in ch. 2 of how verbs describing Jesus shift from active to passive in Mark, and in John how the images of energetic work and day give way to night and inactivity/powerlesness).
Western culture has typically mostly come to value production, creativity and those who can do active things. Vanstone offers a nice critique of any assumption that this is natural, pointing out that prior to the nineteenth century 'idleness' or 'leisure' was the mark of civility, not work. Rather, he argues, the valuing of activity (the work ethic) can be seen as the necessarily ideological myth that enables the growth of capitalism.
Vanstone notes though that we may be moving out of the capitalist phase and its need for producers, and instead we are perhaps moving towards the need for consumers (i.e. for passivity, once more). If so we need to reclaim the value of being rendered passive (and Vanstone gives some interesting examples of how even the ill or the weak can sometimes hold a key and powerful role in a society.)
Nevertheless the myth of activity remains, and Vanstone suggests it may ultimately be rooted in the Christian tradition of describing the God in whose image we are made as 'pure act' and all powerful creator, as impassible.
And yet are we to say that anyone who is inactive, reduced to dependence or passivity is less than human, or less fully made in God's image? Here Vanstone's careful exegetical work on the latter part of the Gospels revalidates 'passivity/dependence' by suggesting that the primary purpose of the Passion stories is not to show that Jesus death sacrificially atoned for us, but rather that his passion as a whole (his acceptance of being 'handed over' and loosing his freedom) gives dignity to all such experiences. 'Glory' is found as much in God's acceptance of passivity in Christ, in his waiting in love for a human response (will Israel's rulers turn to him?), not just in his actions.
Vanstone thus fundamentally modifies the view of God's impassibility. God is certainly not, by nature, dependent on the world, not manipulable by us, and thus is indeed impassible. However God voluntarily adopts passibility - God makes space for the other (us) to respond freely - in the loving hope of relationship. There is a wise insight that the lover is often depicted not as the active one, but as the one who patiently (passibly) waits. So it is shown to be in God, when the supreme moment of the revelation of God's glory in Jesus is his surrendering of himself into the hands of men.
Surrunder, passibility, suffering, receptivity are all, according to Vanstone, modes in which the world is endowed with meaning and significance. The world needs us to be more than just creators, we need also to be receivers: those who value life in their being made subject to it, who notice its value, beauty, even its terror. In doing this mere existence becomes endowed with grandeur.
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