mordorbund
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Posts posted by mordorbund
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7 hours ago, The Folk Prophet said:
Now for the terrible... they moved I Feel Pretty from the start of the 2nd Act to immediately following the rumble. This was terrible. It absolutely killed the emotions and tension from the rumble. I had noted that they hadn't done I Feel Pretty earlier. And partly I thought they'd cut it. And I wasn't sad. I Feel Pretty is, and always has been, the worst song from the show. It's a throw away song. And I dislike it. But....it's popular. So I would have been surprised if they'd actually cut it. But in the 1961 version it comes at a point where having a throw away song is acceptable. It's kind of before the story really starts moving again, and before the second Act drama really starts to build. So it's always been fine. But putting it right after the rumble was not fine. It was really bad. I'm actually shocked that such a horrible decision was made with it.
I seem to remember the director of the 1961 version saying he changed the song order for reasons similar to what you’re describing. After the rumble it was supposed to be Officer Krumpke. The director decides it’s too silly. That just escalated their gang war to a precipice you don’t climb down from….. and they’re going to play dress up? So he puts Cool there instead.
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Mothers Day. The bishop let everyone know that there was some goodies for all the mothers in the ward but wanted to hand out extra goodies to mothers in superlative demographics. Newest mother, most grandchildren, and so on. Being a helpful* teenager, I tried to assist my mother to stand up when the bishop prompted for “oldest mother”. I think even mom was surprised when the ensuing POP echoed loudly across the chapel.
*helpful and obnoxious are synonyms, right?
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Paul, who teaches the Law is the schoolmaster that brings us to Christ, doesn’t seem to recognize the fulfillment in Jesus until after his miraculous conversion. I think a reading that comports with Paul’s experience and subsequent counsel and actions is that the Law was the instructor (for the lay understanding of schoolmaster) or guardian (my interpretation) until Christ came along as the new instructor. He introduced the curriculum or covenant they follow now.
Jacob 4 informs us of the Nephite perspective that the Law of Moses was given with the intent to point their souls to God and Christ. With due respect to the future Paul, Jacob seems to place it in the personhood of Christ, referencing the name of Jesus directly. However, even he seems to recognize that this is hermetic knowledge because he wants his posterity to know that he and his people knew of Christ before His coming. If this is the plain purpose of the Law, then why does the obvious need to be stated? I rather suspect that this personhood of Christ in Jesus was recognized as a mystery among the larger Jewish population but well-known among the Nephites.
For those that like to split hairs, Jacob says the intent is to point souls to “Christ” (or God, depending on how you read a pronoun) so he may be talking a bit more generally that the purpose is to instruct people sufficiently that they may develop faith unto salvation. In this respect, I rather think that anyone who can prepare for 2 back-to-back sabbatical years also recognizes that God blessed him sufficiently (perhaps even abundantly) and exercises the kind of faith that reconciles him to God.
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Perhaps I can be clearer on the relationship between the Doctrine and Covenants and the KJV. If an elder is sent out to some branches he may be counseled to “strengthen the churches” where he goes or to even “confirm the members in the church”. If leaders wanted it to sound KJV-ish they might say “thou shalt strengthen the churches”. But if they want to actually use KJV verbiage they will lift the words directly from Acts 15:41 where Paul “went through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches”. If D&C 24 were received today with the prevalence of the NIV then Joseph Smith might have been told to continue in … strengthening the churches.” Whereas if Young’s Literal Translation carried more cachet he would “continue in … confirming the assemblies.”
So my question about foreign translations involves specific wording in languages I know nothing about.
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9 hours ago, person0 said:
In Spanish we use the LDS edition of the Reina-Valera translation dating back to the 1500's. It is very much akin to the KJV in its language as it pertains to Spanish.
On my mission, we used a 1960 revision from a different publisher which obviously lacked the footnotes which are included in the LDS edition.
Did the Book of Mormon or Doctrine & Covenants follow the wording of the Reina-Valera?
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12 hours ago, MrShorty said:
Serving a mission in Quebec (and, as far as I know, other French speaking missions) we missionaries "officially" used the Louis Segond translation.
And how closely did the French translation of restoration scriptures follow the wording of the Louis Segond translation? --if you still have access to both.
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Does anyone know how the Church handles the intertextuality problem in other languages? Is there an official Bible translation for other languages? Does the Doctrine & Covenants mirror that language? If there is no official translation, does it follow one of the popular ones? Or does it just ignore them altogether?
Some English phrases that sound a little odd:
- confirming the churches D&C 24:9, Acts 50:41
- celestial and terrestrial D&C 76, 1 Cor 15:40
- Book of Mormon Isaiah, Isaiah
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On 4/1/2022 at 9:15 PM, Vort said:
PS To finish answering: I suspect the new English LDS edition of the Bible will look much like the current one. I could be wrong, though, which would be interesting.
PPS I'm hoping to hear @mordorbund's input.
For starters, I don’t know that there’s a new edition of the scriptures coming out. This is a question I’ve been kicking around in my head for a while.
From what I can tell, scripture is given to people in their own language. Or rather, in their own scripture language. The New Testament was written in the Greek of that period and, rather than citing Hebrew references to the Old Testament, the authors quoted from the LXX. Similarly, I mentioned before that the Book of Mormon (and the Doctrine and Covenants for that matter) reference a KJV translation of Old and New Testaments. Further, when working on the New Translation of the Bible, a great number of the changes Joseph Smith made was modernizing the verbs (getting rid of the -eth endings).
It strikes me that God wants His teachings in scripture to be approachable. @Anddenex quoted an article saying the KJV is the most doctrinally accurate, but the clause before that quote clarifies that the accuracy comes from latter-day revelation directly quoting the KJV. We know what constitutes “dead works” because we have a section in the D&C about it.
For these reasons, I’m not convinced that the KJV has to remain locked in as the Bible of the ongoing restoration so long as that link is maintained. If it was primarily the language or the poetry that God wanted us to get from the Bible (and I have heard some people argue that the difficulty is a feature to force the modern reader to really grapple with the text) then I would think we would be encouraged to follow Joseph Smith’s example and try to learn some Hebrew and Greek. The international Church may use Book of Mormon translations when working with new and potential converts, but in short order they’ll be encouraged to read it in the original language to capture the poetry and literal style. Instead I see the restoration going out to every nation, kindred, people, and yes — even tongue.
For the English tongue, the KJV translators have provided a template for about 200 years from now — when restoration scripture is updated ensure that the Bible text uses the same verbiage. That can be done with an in-house translation of the Bible (if the Church has developed a prominence that such a translation is viewed as akin to KJV or NIV and not the New World Translation) but I think it’s more likely that the Church will select a modernish translation that it can have the rights to and match the restoration text to it.
Actually, the more I think about the more I think is that we’ll accept Bible illiteracy and not try to preserve the textual links. The KJV will continue to be the Bible in the Gospel Library app, but instructors will be encouraged to use a Bible comfortable to them and their class. The manuals may have a note suggesting the reader reference the modern revelation that springboards from a given verse, but I think really it will just reference the restoration principles. Isaiah passages about Zion will not necessarily refer Church classes to Nephi or the D&C but will still have a discussion about how to strengthen the stakes of Zion.
In my mind the link between restoration scripture and the Bible is known by many who make a study of both but not all. For those that are curious, the footnotes do a really good job of mapping those links and serious nerds will see the occasional article in the Church periodical of the time. For everyone else, that connection is already lost. If ever the Church encourages the use of modern translations we'll be less likely to stumble into that relationship but the odd article will prompt those that otherwise missed it to mark their Bibles with those missing connections (and probably JST notes too). That is, until BYU or Book of Mormon Central develops an app that augments your digital Bible with the KJV footnotes.
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The Book of Mormon says God’s way is to appoint “just men” to teach His people. Sorry ladies.
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7 hours ago, Carborendum said:
At some point, we're going to need a more plain-language / modern language version. And that may be the death of Christianity (as we know it). While we can try to modernize the language somewhat, I believe we can't sufficiently dumb-down the language enough for the average person in America to read and understand while sufficiently preserving the literary mechanisms of the Bible as we know it.
(Not necessarily for Carb, just spring boarding here). This is actually what prompts my question. When the medium gets in the way of the message the medium gets supplanted (when the medium is the message then then the people get supplanted).
As far as the Church goes, the Bible is valuable “as far as it is translated correctly”. It may be worth reading as a window to an ancient people, poetry and story telling, or as protolanguage of the early states, but I think the Church uses the KJV 1) to inform modern Saints about God’s dealings with other covenant people and 2) to preserve a context for the revelations of the Restoration (including the Book of Mormon).
Other churches have shown that the first goal can be met if the scholars are kept in control or the leaders provide sufficient commentary to control the laity’s understanding. We could work with the NRSV if we want to stay close to our roots.
The second goal is difficult with any other translation. As @Just_A_Guy noted some of the phrases and passages in the have meaning because of their intertextuality with the KJV. If we switch to a new translation would it be best to also update the language of the other scriptures to match? Or should the Church treat the context as already lost and cut it loose?
- Just_A_Guy, Vort and MrShorty
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There’s actually another question which I really want to discuss but I wanted to make sure we think through and appreciate what we have.
Why do you suppose the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses the King James Version of the Bible? It was popular in Joseph Smith’s time, but why has it continued to be used?
Keep that response in mind as you answer the following: What does the next LDS edition of the Bible look like? How will it keep those aspects you described above while keeping the text approachable for a new generation?
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3 hours ago, LDSGator said:
One of the many, many, many issues is with the more whacky conspiracy theories is that you can’t disprove them. If you say “You know, we’re not all lizard people.” The true believer will just say “Well, you are evil or part of the conspiracy so you’d say that.”
Avatar checks out.
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I’ve written before about the priest-king model I think of with the Nephites. With that background, here’s my take:
QuoteA lot of these questions assume that the Nephites church organization was similar to what we have today. Let me know if this is not so.
Not so. Many ordinances were the same, but they may not have had the same offices we do. There’s no indication of a First Presidency for instance. The relationship between the church and state are definitely different.
QuoteI was always under the impression that the lesser priesthood (levitical) was not had in the America’s since there were no levites. But we see in Mosiah 18 that Alma was given some sort of authority since he was baptizing people. Was Mosiah granting Alma the authority to establish a church and granting him power to ordain akin to us receiving callings and stewardship from our leaders?
Alma had church authority in the land of Nephi under King Noah. When he began to do something similar in the land of Zarahemla he could only do so with permission from Mosiah.
Any church operating needed the king’s permission, and if it was the king’s church it needed his approval. I do think your comparison with the modern church has similarities. I already have authority to baptize, but may only do so when authorized by a bishop.
QuoteWas Alma or Mosiah the head of the church?
Mosiah
QuoteIf Mosiah was the head of the church, how is it that Alma the elder appointed Alma the Younger to be the head of the church at his death?
Some speculation on my part, but I wonder if this was a way of appeasing the precursor to the king men. By appointing Alma high priest (who then ordains his son as successor) Mosiah may be appeasing future kingmen by creating a role similar to the Levitical order that largely functions apart from the monarchy.
In another post I’ve added the following:
QuoteFrom what I can tell, Nephite monarchies are patterned after the Melchizedek royal order rather than the Davidic. Although the Davidic line has narrow priestly authority (Solomon dedicated the temple, and I think he may have offered sacrifice there as well), and a limited participatory role in the liturgy and ordinances. By contrast, Melchizedek kingship entails the roles of priest and king (and possibly prophet - Nephite kings are not ordained by a prophet like Samuel or Nathan, but are sustained by the voice of the people). The church under both orders was a "congregation" system where members were part of 1 national church whose worshipped centered in the temple city. Zeniff's "holy envy" seemed to allow for room to recognize a more localized form of worship that involved synagogues. At least, I don't see synagogues showing up among Nephites until they begin interacting with the Lamanites.
Given the speculation that the kingmen were a violent manifestation of a debate raging from the time of the Nephite/Mulekite merger, I wonder if the possession of the brass plates gave Mosiah a leg up in the claim for kingship because he could use Pauline arguments to show that their Melchizedek order was greater than Davidic. In Zarahemla we see the "congregation" aspect at Benjamin's farewell address when Mosiah is coronated. When Alma returns he brings with him the local synagogue model. Mosiah supports this and appoints Alma high priest, but Mosiah is still the head of Alma in church matters. In the affair of the wayward sons Alma writes to Mosiah seeking counsel. It was not a legal matter, but Alma recognized Mosiah's authority over him. Mosiah does not deny his authority, but emphasizes the stewardship he has been given (like a stake president telling a bishop "you have keys; turn them")
- Carborendum, Just_A_Guy, CV75 and 2 others
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22 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:
Everyone wants a green lawn, but no one wants to do what it takes to keep those little reprobates away . . .
Twice a year Grandpa would close the windows and spread fresh horse manure on the lawn. Kept the grass green and the neighbors away.
- Vort and Just_A_Guy
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I think the Interpreter Foundation had an article with some overlap several years back. My Google fu is not powerful enough to find it but the gist was that the scriptures elsewhere contain the phrase “rod of iron” and while it may be a scepter, staff, or crook, only Nephi gets us thinking about it as a handrail. The author then explores some literary implications that follow if we adapt these other meanings.
- Carborendum, Vort and Just_A_Guy
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3 hours ago, Grunt said:
Anyone there? Traveling again. I e met some awesome forum members in my travels.
I’m an hour away in northern Virginia. Depending on when you’re here you might be able to make it to the DC Temple open house* or a fireside my stake is putting on about the history of the DC Temple.
*Tickets are required but they are free.
The American History Museum has a sunstone from the original Nauvoo temple.
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14 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-24-the-sabbath-day
All sorts of good things in that chapter.
This chapter has some good things too. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-27-work-and-personal-responsibility?lang=eng
2 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:Do you not do chores, shopping, cooking, and other housekeeping over the weekend? That is part of our labors too.
Doesn’t count. Also, retired people are under severe condemnation.
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9 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:
1) Because for biological/physiological reasons, the vast majority of females cannot compete with the vast majority of males in the vast majority of sports, and the string of losses that would result from compelling them to do so would be demoralizing for females
Here’s a site that compared the best of high school boys versus the best of Olympic women in track and field events: https://boysvswomen.com/
The Olympic athletes don’t fare well.
- NeuroTypical, MrShorty, Just_A_Guy and 1 other
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On 1/25/2022 at 11:31 AM, Traveler said:
Now days the owner's manual say things like "Do not drink the battery fluid".
Maybe they shouldn’t make it so tasty….
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On 12/3/2021 at 11:57 AM, NeuroTypical said:
Banning things work quite well. You may notice this happy forum has basically zero spam/pr0n/anti stuff. The mod team probably bans and blocks between 10-30 spam attempts each year.
And I applaud you and your fellow mods for keeping this site clean this way. It makes it a really enjoyable experience to come on here when I’m taking a break from working on my home computer where I just made $19410 on the last three weeks. Everyone is able to get this easy work. Message me and I’ll send you the link for rewarding successs!
- JohnsonJones, Vort and NeuroTypical
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6 hours ago, Traveler said:
When I was in high school (about 60 years ago) I went with some friends on a SCUBA trip to southern California. On one particular day (towards the end of our trip) after finishing a rather long dive we gathered our equipment together on the beach; we found ourselves in a cascade of events that would be broadcasted to the world as front page news in news papers, on radios and televisions.
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On 11/28/2021 at 6:29 PM, LDSGator said:
Call it my “Nifong” sense of justice, but I truly think the majority of prosecutors would indict their mother for littering and give her 30 years in the state pen if they thought it would further their career and appease the pitchfork carrying mob. Maybe it’s not the same for everyone in their office, I guess.
In fairness, consider the sort of mother who rears a child into a law career….
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I gave you a trophy but the emoji says it’s “thanks”.
Musicals
in General Discussion
Posted
I recently saw In the Heights. I think it had the ability to be a good film but it has too many failures working against it.
Spoilers
In the Heights had enough stage popularity to suggest that it could connect with large audiences. It was the popular hip hop musical before Hamilton (others had tried but did not have either the story or the production values to carry it — sorry Bring on da Noise fans, not sorry Bring it on fans). The general theme is about a neighborhood of people seeking out their individual dreams (and I tend to think most of these are facets of the American dream) with one character in particular carrying a sub-theme of gentrification.
In my mind, the biggest thing they messed up was jumbling the songs. It was clear to me that the songs were getting played in a different order because the lyrics belonged elsewhere (or else when). A good (bad) example of this is the love song between Benny and Nina. It was framed as a recollection of the love they shared over the past summer, but both the lyrics and the dance would have fit better if they were actually in love in the moment and not reminiscing. Abuela’s song lost a lot of oomph because they wanted to keep the lotto winner a secret. She sings of the sacrifices her mother made to bring her to New York and make ends meet. Abuela carried on her work. And then the key line: What do you do when your dreams come true? She’s finally arrived to a point where she can have some financial breathing room. What do you do? We’ll you die of course (so sad, so tragic)! No!! You share it and help others with their dreams! But that gets lost because she’s just singing about shuffling off this mortal coil and not about winning the lottery (not to mention it makes the reveal at the end a deus ex machina because they’ve already denied ever finding out who won).
The second class of grievances I have are things that chip away at the main theme. I already mentioned the failing of Abuela’s song. Nina is thinking about not going back to Stanford — not because of how much it costs her dad (which looks to be the concern from the play) but because of racism directed towards her. This pulls away from the theme because lottery winnings can help in one case but not the other. The cousin is an activist. There’s a few nods towards gentrification and I think there used to be a subplot about some hoodlums but his big draw now is DACA. The specific problem with this is that it takes him too long to get to this issue so it’s resolved almost as quickly as it’s discovered. Additionally, combined with Nina’s changes it firmly locks the film into the Trump presidency instead of something more timeless.
Finally there were some stylistic choices that felt out of place. 96000 at the pool worked, as did the street dancing for the title song. They built to it and you could accept it. But the neon air writing at the start of 96000 didn’t work. It came out of nowhere and didn’t go anywhere. The dancing on the side of the building from Nina and Benny’s love song could have worked if they were in the moment (like the La La Land fantasy dance/flying scene) but as a memory it fell flat. The love interest was unlikable so they shouldn’t have pursued the happily ever after ending. And the entire framing was fraudulent.
I will say, listening to the Latin beats in the songs had me longing for Santana to write a musical. I think the music and story had promise, but too many reactive story choices and poor design decisions brought it down.