Monday, August 3, 2009

Name That Holy Book #03: Thickened Fluid?

Here's a snippet from one of my favorite holy books. Over all, this particular holy book is mostly non-sensical, hard to comprehend, and just plain ol' bad writing. My favorite part about this book of scripture is its excessive use of "Lo!". Of course, keep in mind that English is not the original language it was written in. It was originally written in Vogon, but was plagiarized by a certain prophet and translated into his native tongue. Any guesses?
Hath there come upon man (ever)
any period of time in which
he was a thing unremembered ?
Lo!
We create man from a drop of thickened fluid to test him;
so We make him hearing, knowing.
Lo!
We have shown him the way,
whether he be grateful or disbelieving.
Lo!
We have prepared for disbelievers manacles
and carcans and a raging fire.
Lo!
The righteous shall drink of a cup
whereof the mixture is of Kafur
This one is an easy one.

9 comments:

GCT said...

I'm glad that you are acknowledging the Vogon roots of all of these now.

Robert Madewell said...

Lo!Hath the holy and devine Vogons given us the words of piety?
Lo!That they have sucka!

GCT, Seems that just about every holy book I have looked at contains weird language. Most of them were not originally written in english*, but the translations usually come out sounding funny, anyways. Makes me think that they're written poorly in the original languages as well.

With this series, I'm already learning that it is easy to find funny language in any holy book. Just pick up a holy book and open it.

*FYI, there actually are holy books that were originally written in english (translated from vogon ;). The Book of Mormon is probably the most famous, but Mormons will contest that claim. Others include The Urantia Book and The Holy Piby.

Robert Madewell said...

I gotta say it again. The Lo!s in this particular english translation really crack me up.

Sometimes I quote the verses in a high tenor then when I get to the Lo! I quote it in a bass voice.

Or, I'll say the Lo! like how Americans shorten "Hello!" to "Hlo!".

"Lo!" also kinda looks like LOL. So, I think it would be funny to quote the passage like this.

"Laughing out loud! We create man from a drop of thickened fluid to test him; so We make him hearing, knowing.

Laughing out loud! We have shown him the way,
whether he be grateful or disbelieving.
Laughing out loud! We have prepared for disbelievers manacles
and carcans and a raging fire.
Laughing out loud! The righteous shall drink of a cup whereof the mixture is of Kafur"


Funny huh? Seriously, making fun of this book could get my head sawed off. I need to be careful.

GCT said...

LOLCat pic in 3...2...1...

Anonymous said...

"Sometimes I quote the verses in a high tenor then when I get to the Lo! I quote it in a bass voice."

You really need a hobby. Take more pictures.

Robert Madewell said...

Yeah, I hear you laughing, Anon.

FireMountainHalo said...

You mentioned The Urantia Book, i had not heard of this before, looked it up in wiki just to get an idea,very interesting. The way the knowledge in the book supposedly came about reminds of that guy they called the sleeping prophet edgar cayce.

Robert Madewell said...

The Urantia Book is pretty cool. I think it was an attempt to reconcile Christianity with the cosmology (and spirituality) of the early 20th century. However, it still gets the cosmology wrong.

Robert Madewell said...

The passage in the article is from the Qur'an.

The Qur'an Surah 76:1-5 (THE MEANING OF THE GLORIOUS QURAN by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall)
Surah 76:1-5

Many muslims despise the practice of translating the Qur'an into other languages. They claim that it is only inerrant when read in the original Arabic. This particular translation was translated by an Englishman who converted to Islam from Christianity. It was the first translation by a native speaker of English who was also a practitioner of Islam. He used archaic words and grammar to make the Qur'an sound more biblical. Hence the "Lo!"