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King James Bible (History)
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Ishmael


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The Druid festival in honor of Samhain, Lord of the Dead, who comes at midnight in a flaming chariot leading the spirits of the dead to visit the world of the living was a feast of Dionysos, at which he was honored as an ecstatic god of taverns and wine -- and it is still the feast of his Christian counterpart, St. Martin.

And talking of Christians, I plucked this from a fairly fundamentalist source

Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) was the Roman Catholic that is famous for the Gunpowder Plot. On the night of November 4-5, 1605, he was caught in the cellar underneath the House of Lords. He was arrested and hanged for conspiracy to blow up the English Parliament. This was really Satan's attempt to stop the Authorized Version from finding its way into the hands of the common people. To this day, every book on witchcraft, astrology, new age religion, etc. hates that one Book, The King James Bible, more than any other. The reason is that it is blunt in denouncing astrology, etc.
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Mick Harper
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This question of what the "true religion" of the people was is an interesting one. On Applied Epistemological grounds of "what is is what was" I think it reasonable to assume that the English population en masse wasn't greatly moved by religion one way or the other. Of course the AE principle is completed with "unless there's clear evidence to the contrary" and there is clear evidence that church attendance was high then, as opposed to being low now.

But this is misleading. The Church then was much more a branch of show-biz than it is now. When there's not much else on offer, going to church becomes a whole lot more inviting -- and of course it must have been by default the social event of the week. Church authorities are always careful when it comes to bums-on-seats questions, and the English were always careful that "Protestantism" was just Catholicism without Romish flummery. And the English (and even more the Scots) have always been a bit sub-Rococo. [I once attended a Catholic service on the Isle of Wight and was shocked by the plainness of it all...the Plymouth Brethren wouldn't have had much to complain about.]

All this is a bit different when it comes to the Ruling Classes. They know that religion (or any social ideology) has the power to be mighty diversive. It may not matter what the rank-and-file are fed but they can get easily attached to what they are currently being fed, and that can be exploited by dissident elements. So the first thing to do for strict raison d'etat is to enjoin uniformity. But how uniform is England? Not very it seems, but that can be met by permitting (quietly) a whole range of Protestantisms to be offered from High Church Arminianism to Low Church Puritanism.

But this allows the bleedin' intellectuals -- who take this tomfoolery seriously -- to get involved. Doh! Suddenly it's not the Catholics you have to worry about but the people from the opposite wing!
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Ishmael


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Fawkes' stepfather, we have discovered, is Dyonisus. Does this then make Guy Fawkes a "Satyr" figure? (a Satyr is a mythical creature associated with Dyonisus -- a kind of servant of Dyonisus).

In the Dionysus cult, male followers are known as satyrs and female followers as maenads.
-- Wikipedia
Interesting fact: The King James Bible is the only translation to employ the word Satyr.

In the King James Version of the Bible, Isaiah 13:21 and 34:14, the English word "satyr" is used to represent the Hebrew sh'lrlm, "hairy ones". Wikipedia

So lets have a look then at these two sections of the KJV that uniquely mention the word Satyr....
13:19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
13:20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.
13:21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.
13:22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

Now read this...
34:8 For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.
34:9 And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch.
34:10 It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.
34:11 But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.
34:12 They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.
34:13 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
34:14 The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.

Something funny about this latter verse: the Hebrew word for ""Screech owl" found here is literally "Lilith." Lilith is, according to Hebrew lore, also the name of Adam's first wife, and part of an anti-patriarchal tradition that runs parallel to certain Wiccan ideas. Other traditions have Lilith a demon or a mother of demons.

Of course, I have highlighted already some of the eerie evocations in the verses of the Gunpowder Plot. Were the conspirators inspired by such passages? Did they have a hand in writing them?
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admin
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Could somebody provide a version of Ishmael's extracts that are definitely not influenced by the Authorised Version? (That may rule out the Good News Bible et al). It would be useful to see whether the Committee was "stretching" the original or sincerely trying to translate it for a contemporary audience.
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Ishmael


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That's very hard to find. Any English translation, post King James, is almost certainly "influenced" to some degree by the KJV. For what it's worth, here's how the New International Version translates the same passages:

-----------------

19. Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.
20 She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; there no nomads will pitch their tents, there no shepherds will rest their flocks.
21 But desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses; there the owls will dwell, and there the wild goats will leap about.
22 Hyenas will inhabit her strongholds, jackals her luxurious palaces. Her time is at hand, and her days will not be prolonged.

...and...

8 For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion's cause.
9. Edom's streams will be turned into pitch, her dust into burning sulfur; her land will become blazing pitch!
10 It will not be quenched night or day; its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation it will lie desolate; no one will ever pass through it again.
11 The desert owl and screech owl will possess it; the great owl and the raven will nest there. God will stretch out over Edom the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation.
12 Her nobles will have nothing there to be called a kingdom, all her princes will vanish away.
13 Thorns will overrun her citadels, nettles and brambles her strongholds. She will become a haunt for jackals, a home for owls.
14 Desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will bleat to each other; there the night creatures will also lie down and find for themselves places of rest.
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Mick Harper
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Well, straight off, there's a significant difference.

13:19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

13:19 Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the pride and glory of the Babylonians, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.

The reference to the Chaldees has disappeared. Why is that significant? Because the Chaldeans are the Magi and right at the heart of our story.
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Ishmael


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To be fair, in the NIV there is a footnote next to "Babylonians" that reads "...or Chaldees". I don't know why the NIV translators went in for the Babylonians rather than the Chaldees and I also don't know why they included the footnote. Is there a scholarly debate over the meaning of the original Hebrew? I've no idea.
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Mick Harper
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Be fair? Have you lost your mind, Ishmael? This is an interesting example of 'careful ignoral'. There must be a difference between the Hebrew word for Babylonian and for Chaldean (though interestingly modern historians often use the term Chaldeo-Babylonians when they're anxious to obfuscate the matter...this being in the middle of the 500-year Velikovskian hiatus). Now, this is the Word of God these geezers are translating, so you can't go monkeying around with the Hebrew and saying, "Hey, look, there's a reference to the Chaldeans here but, fuck it, let's leave the tossers out." But somebody did. Or added them in of course.
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Ishmael


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Sure. But the immediate question concerns whether some sort of reference to Satyrs was inserted into the King James, in this specific spot, in order to allude to the Gunpowder Plot and/or some wider conspiracy (a total wild goose chase admittedly but one that has proven surprisingly intriguing).

With regard to insertions, it's the Tyndale Bible that was the basis for the KJV however Tyndale neglected to translate Isaiah. Thus the KJV translators had to go back to the Hebrew directly (something called the Masoretic Text). Not being a Hebrew scholar, the best way I see to detect strange manipulations is to compare with other translations, both modern and precedental. Wycliffe is the only earlier Isaiah translation of which I am aware. I think he translated from Latin so his words reflect the work of earlier translators, rather than Hebrew scribes. Interestingly, he includes in the text an obvious reference to satyrs without using the name.

It is also interesting that both the Wycliffe and KJV, in their reference to the Princes and Nobles, both make explicit the fact that the entire aristocracy is dead. In the modern NIV, it is the country that is laid waste and the nobles discover this. Note the first sentence of verse 12. In the Wycliffe and KJV, the nobles are the object of the sentence. It is they who are no longer there. In the NIV, it is the country which has ceased to exist.

Wycliffe
The noblemen shall not be there; rather, they shall clepe(?) the king in to help, and all the princes shall be not.
KJV
12 They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.
NIV
12 Her nobles will have nothing there to be called a kingdom, all her princes will vanish away.

This is the stand-out verse of course because the Gunpowder Plot sought explicitly to wipe out the entire British aristocracy in one stroke! But since the Wycliffe version contains all the essential elements of the KJV, it looks to be a huge coincidence. A very weird coincidence that I should connect Dionysus with Satyrs and discover that the later term is connected via the KJV with "Gunpowder Plot" like prophecies in the Old Testament.

But a coincidence nonetheless, no doubt.
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Mick Harper
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I am inclined to agree but since Applied Epistemology is supposed to run with coincidences before scorning them, let's have a quick shufti at the second verse.

13:20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

13:20 She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; there no nomads will pitch their tents, there no shepherds will rest their flocks.

Another fascinating discrepancy. I had always assumed that the Bible made no mention of Arabs. I got this impression from Velikovsky who maintained that the Arabs were the Amelikites aka the Hyksos -- and by the way, the founders of Jerusalem! Now clearly there can be an innocent explanation but again it comes down to who is identifying the Arabs. Wycliff ('a man of Arabie') and the KJV are at odds with the NIV and presumably the Masoretic Text. Would a fourteenth century Englishman have volunteered this detail? One of the great contributions of Velikovsy was to show that names are hugely important when trying to reconstruct the past, but that names are the first thing that get changed when people A are referring to people B. To the total confusion of modern historians. The whole point of The History of Britain Revealed is to correct the identification of "the English".

And notice the teensy difference in emphasis between the first version which appears to suggest a distinction between Arabs and shepherds (significant if Arabs were strictly camel- and horse-bound traders) and the second which vaguely ellides nomads and shepherds as if they were all one alien element.
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Hatty
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According to what we're learning via Wireloop's Treasure Hunt, nothing in the Bible is unintentional.
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Mick Harper
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Let's test that proposition with the next verse:

13:21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

21 But desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses; there the owls will dwell, and there the wild goats will leap about.

Here we have two differences. The first is just puzzling -- why would one version say "doleful creatures" and the other specifically "jackals" since the original source cannot possibly be ambiguous about such a very clear distinction. The answer would seem to be because of the second difference, whether we are dealing with "satyrs dancing" or "wild goats leaping about". This actually, but without drawing undue attention, changes the entire meaning of the verse.

The second, modern version is pure David Attenborough. A pastoral picture of a desert containing the expected desert animals -- jackals, owls and wild goats. Nothing much happening there. King James's desert is a very different place: yes, there are animals but if you actually read the text, the lairs are not in fact lived in by the animals themselves but are occupied by "doleful creatures" whose mood will presumably not be greatly enhanced by the sight of satyrs dancing all around them. In this version somebody is very, very happy.
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Brian Ambrose



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I'd make a simple guess that the Hebrew word for jackal means doleful (I expect most animals are named after some characteristic). It all depends on how sure the translator is of which animal is identified as 'doleful' (or indeed whether the context intends the animal at all - although in this case it seems pretty obvious).
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Mick Harper
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I doubt that particular association, Bri, since in the very next verse jackals are now apparently dragons living in the lap of luxury

13:22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

13:22 Hyenas will inhabit her strongholds, jackals her luxurious palaces. Her time is at hand, and her days will not be prolonged

Perhaps you'd care to speculate why a specifically English translation should include a very strange reference to "the wild beasts of the islands" when the true (I assume) version refers only to hyenas?
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Ishmael


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Yes, it was the reference to "The Islands" that grabbed my attention. And of course "dragons" are a very "British" thing in this context (St. George, the Dragon Line through Stonehenge and all that kind of thing). Most interestingly, "The Islands" is a reference utterly unique to the KJV! Isn't that weird? Dragons, as a concept, is implicit in Wycliffe but the word is unused.
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