AHC: The Careless Scribe - Make an Accidental Religion

This is probably going to have fairly limited appeal, but here's a bit of fun for language nerds! Your assignment is to imagine that a group of people get their first copy of a religion's sacred scripture where something is a bit off.

Some scribe has either miscopied or mistranslated a word or phrase in this copy of the scripture that alters the meaning of a sentence. The locals, not realizing the mistake, take that line and run wild with some wildly different theological interpretation from the mainstream faith leading to a totally new sect or even a whole new religion!

Pick a sentence from Old Testament, New Testament, Quran, etc. The mistake can be miscopying in the same language such as Hebrew, Greek or Arabic, or a mistranslation from one language to another like Greek to Syriac. You should probably have in mind a historical context as well, but it's not necessary.




Here's an example where a mistranslation or bad transcription can occur. In the Ethiopic book of I Enoch 90:37-38:

And I saw till all their generations where transformed, and they all were white bulls; and the first among them was a nagar, the nagar was a great beast and had great black horns on its head.

The word nagar means "word", which doesn't really make sense in context here. What this should probably read is "aurochs", an extinct wild-ox that used to live in the Middle East. The Hebrew word for the aurochs is re'em, which became rema in Aramaic. A Greek scribe probably translated the book from Aramaic and, not knowing what an aurochs was since they were already extinct by that time, simply transliterated Aramaic rema into the Greek rhema. Rhema in Greek means "word", and when it was translated by an Ethiopic scribe from a Greek manuscript, "word" was kept in the new translation.
 
Red Dwarf:

RIMMER: Everyone's entitled to their beliefs, Lister. I never agreed with my parent's religion, but I wouldn't dream of knocking it.
LISTER: What were they?
RIMMER: Seventh day advent hoppists. They believed that every Sunday should be spent hopping. They would hop to church, hop through the service, then hop back home again.
LISTER: What was the idea behind that, then?
RIMMER: Well you see, they took the Bible literally. Adam and Eve; the snake and the apple... Took it word for word. Unfortunately, their version had a misprint. It was all based on 1 Corinthians 13, where it says "Faith, hop and charity, and the greatest of these is hop." So that's what they did. Every seventh day. I tell you, Sunday lunchtimes were a nightmare. Hopping round the table, serving soup--we all had to wear sou'esters and asbestos underpants.
 
Suppose they leave the "not" out of one of the Commandments that IOTL prohibits something, and thus ends up mandating it? "Thou shalt murder" or "thou shalt steal" are unlikely to catch on, but suppose a misprint resulting in "thou shalt commit adultery"? One could read that in conjunction with Genesis 9:7 ("As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it."), and suddenly you'd have a very... different religion.
 
THOU SHALT HAVE OTHER GODS BEFORE ME: Yahweh becomes a shadowy, phantom god working behind the scenes of other, more prominent gods; coupled with not saying His name, this results in his worshipers refusing to discuss him with outsiders. Gods like Thor, Zeus, and Vishnu are seen as being mere front-men for the Absent Spider God Who Pulls Their Strings But Must Not Be Named. Judaism and Christianity become conspiratorial secret societies, assuming that Christianity exists, of course.
 
Suppose they leave the "not" out of one of the Commandments that IOTL prohibits something, and thus ends up mandating it? "Thou shalt murder" or "thou shalt steal" are unlikely to catch on, but suppose a misprint resulting in "thou shalt commit adultery"?

That's the Wicked Bible, published in 1631.

Wickedbible.jpg



Cheers,
Nigel.
 
Thou shalt commit adultery. Thou shalt not covet they neighbours ass.
You live next door to Beyonce. In insuperable theological conundrum.
 
Change "thou shalt not kill" to "Thou shalt not murder" ... the hebrew word "רצח" can be interpreted both very wide (and any form of death by hand is wrong) and more narrow (unlawful killing is wrong = state of war and with legal backing is accepted)
 
In written Chinese, the character 不 "not, do not, is not" is very similar to 丕 "grand, magnificent." Confucius said「父母在,不遠遊。遊必有方。」"While his parents are alive, the son may not go abroad to a distance. If he does go abroad, he must have a fixed place to which he goes."

So, turn「父母在,不遠遊」into「父母在,丕遠遊」and you get "While his parents are alive, it is grand for the son to go abroad to a distance." Thus, it'd be funny to have Confucius commanding people to move as far away from their parents as possible, also creating an impetus for Chinese colonization and expansion.
 
yeah ... and i'm suggesting the change happening back when it was translated over Greek (which doesn't have the difference between 'kill' and 'murder') to Latin
The way I heard it, the semantic troubles happened not in translation, but in the evolution of English specifically: to the writers of the King James Version, the word "kill" meant the same as our modern "murder".
 

Stolengood

Banned
In written Chinese, the character 不 "not, do not, is not" is very similar to 丕 "grand, magnificent." Confucius said「父母在,不遠遊。遊必有方。」"While his parents are alive, the son may not go abroad to a distance. If he does go abroad, he must have a fixed place to which he goes."

So, turn「父母在,不遠遊」into「父母在,丕遠遊」and you get "While his parents are alive, it is grand for the son to go abroad to a distance." Thus, it'd be funny to have Confucius commanding people to move as far away from their parents as possible, also creating an impetus for Chinese colonization and expansion.
Very clever! I like that. :)
 
How about some monks mistake the word Canaanite for Canine, resulting in people believing a certain saint has the head of a dog.
 
In written Chinese, the character 不 "not, do not, is not" is very similar to 丕 "grand, magnificent." Confucius said「父母在,不遠遊。遊必有方。」"While his parents are alive, the son may not go abroad to a distance. If he does go abroad, he must have a fixed place to which he goes."

So, turn「父母在,不遠遊」into「父母在,丕遠遊」and you get "While his parents are alive, it is grand for the son to go abroad to a distance." Thus, it'd be funny to have Confucius commanding people to move as far away from their parents as possible, also creating an impetus for Chinese colonization and expansion.

I think you won this :D

I'm actually surprised that this has gotten as many replies as it has because knowing a language some ancient scripture was written in or translated to is somewhat necessary.
 
I think you won this :D

I'm actually surprised that this has gotten as many replies as it has because knowing a language some ancient scripture was written in or translated to is somewhat necessary.

Well, I don't know any of the old scripture languages, but I think the reason this has attracted so many people is because A) Its a fun idea and B) This is the internet! No matter how much of niche your subject of choice is, there is bound to be many other people with at least a tangential interest in what you have to say.
 
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