Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Thursday 19 December 2019

Christian Evangelical Problems.

Many East Asian languages
"are barren in abstractions,
which provided the most appalling difficulties
when it came to translating Holy Writ.

"To give just one example,
he cited the text God is Love.
In Rhadés there is no word for God.
In fact, these people didn't get the idea [of God] at all
without a great deal of explanation.
And there is no word for Love.

"So the text came out in translation:
The Great Spirit is not angry."

- from Norman Lewis: A Dragon Apparent -
Travels in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, 1951.

This problem began conveniently to be solved
by the liquidation of "tribes" such as the Rhadés of Viêt-Nam
through slave labour for Michelin.
Then, after the French were expelled,
came the Americans
and carpet-bombing, Agent Orange,
total war...
now total capitalism
and slavery abroad.


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