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Source: (consider it) Thread: Is it fertilizer or is it sh*t?
georgiaboy
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At yesterday's high mass I was struck by a line from the Gospel (of the barren fig tree):

'Let it be for another year and I will fertilize it.'

I had remembered this from a previous translation as 'Let it alone until I dig around and put manure on it.'

Which led me to recall a NT teacher quoting an older version as 'I will dig it and dung it.'

Which leads me to ask: Are we getting to 'nice'?

'Fertilizer' to me and to most moderns, I would suspect, is something one buys in bags at the garden shop. Rather sanitary.
'Manure' is a bit more graphic and smelly.
'Dung' seems almost fresh and steaming.

So it would seem that translators are drifting farther from what I would suspect is the vivid original text. But I don't know, having 'small Latin and less Greek.'

Any reactions?

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by georgiaboy:

So it would seem that translators are drifting farther from what I would suspect is the vivid original text. But I don't know, having 'small Latin and less Greek.'

Any reactions?

Yes - I don't think there's drifting into niceness here. Big piles of shit are a commonplace part of farming. It's not the text that has drifted - it's the sensibilities of us urban moderns. If you're reading the text and getting distracted by the poo, you're missing the point, which is that "digging and dunging" is doing the best you can for the tree, with a whole load of hard work. On the farming scale, it's not unusually stinky, and it would be a mistake to be distracted by "Ewww".

So if the word "fertilizer" gets people past a squeamishness about manure, it's OK with me.

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Alan Cresswell

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quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
So if the word "fertilizer" gets people past a squeamishness about manure, it's OK with me.

Providing it also doesn't reduce the hard work aspect.

We're not talking of adding a packet of Magi-Fig-Grow™ to a watering can and sprinkling it around the tree. This is digging - into soil baked dry by the sun, getting as close as possible to the roots (with care so as not to damage the roots). Then piling in a considerable amount of manure (several kg, probably over 100kg) - maybe even some pushing it carefully by hand around the roots. Finally, putting the dug out soil back on top.

A considerable investment in time and effort, and manure, to give the tree one last chance. When the initial case for cutting it down was "I've made a considerable investment in time and effort on this fruitless tree".

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LeRoc

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Philippians 3:8 contains the word σκύβαλα, which quite possibly meant shit, but which modern translations render as rubbish.

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Brenda Clough
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Excreta of all sorts has considerable agricultural value, especially in a time when there were no chemical fertilizers. Night soil was regularly gathered in London and sold to farmers in the country. And fullers and tanners in Rome kept big jars by the door, so that (male) passers-by could pee into them. There's a lot of things you can do with gallons of pee.

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Adam.

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The Greek is βάλω κόπρια (balO kopria), "I will put dung." Is this wanting to sanitize scripture, or an assumption that many readers of a translation (or auditors if liturgical contexts are in mind) won't realize that dung is a fertilizer?

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Belle Ringer
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quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Excreta of all sorts has considerable agricultural value, especially in a time when there were no chemical fertilizers. Night soil was regularly gathered in London and sold to farmers in the country. And fullers and tanners in Rome kept big jars by the door, so that (male) passers-by could pee into them. There's a lot of things you can do with gallons of pee.

I think we lose something when we distance people from reality. I have read articles about kids who don't know meat comes from cows and pigs, they think it comes from the store. When translators go along with sanitizing the wording, they are participating in distancing people from reality.

That's part of a broad movement to hide anything unsavory, like kick the homeless out of our town, put Mom in a "home" so we don't have to deal with problems of aging, buy man-made fertilizer that has only a few of the minerals needed for truly healthy plants because it's faster and "cleaner" than nature's own horse shit.

How about clarity of wording by saying "fertilize with shit" to make clear both the act and the substance?

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Albertus
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quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Excreta of all sorts has considerable agricultural value, especially in a time when there were no chemical fertilizers. Night soil was regularly gathered in London and sold to farmers in the country. And fullers and tanners in Rome kept big jars by the door, so that (male) passers-by could pee into them. There's a lot of things you can do with gallons of pee.

Not the least of which, of course, is activate your compost.
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Albertus
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I suppose the other reason for not reading out loud the words 'dig it and dung it' is to avoid the, to people as frivolous as I am, almost irresistible temptation to slip into a sort of Rambling Syd Rumpo or at best Walter Gabriel accent.

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Mamacita

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quote:
Originally posted by Adam.:
The Greek is βάλω κόπρια (balO kopria), "I will put dung." Is this wanting to sanitize scripture, or an assumption that many readers of a translation (or auditors if liturgical contexts are in mind) won't realize that dung is a fertilizer?

I think Adam. is on to something here: that the modern listener might not be aware that poop is fertilizer and fertilizer is poop.

I note in some of the posts above, as well as in this list of English translations:that some (mostly older) versions use "dung" as a verb. And I just think the modern ear would hear "I will dung it" as really strange.

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Leorning Cniht
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quote:
Originally posted by Mamacita:
And I just think the modern ear would hear "I will dung it" as really strange.

I think "manure" as a verb sounds less strange. "Well-manured flower-beds" are something that one heard about from time to time.

Belle Ringer complains of people being distanced from reality - kids thinking that chicken grows in plastic packets and so on. You have to meet people where they are, though, and I suspect that most people today don't encounter manure as fertilizer. (This isn't because artificial is "cleaner", more sanitary or less stinky, but because there aren't enough horses.)

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Chamois
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Originally posted by georgiaboy:

quote:
So it would seem that translators are drifting farther from what I would suspect is the vivid original text
This.

A lot of the Bible is sanitised in translation. This seems to have been going on for centuries. For example, I only learned recently that in Jeremiah 20:7 Jeremiah actually accuses God of "seduction" and "rape". The NIV translates these two verbs by "deceive" and "overpower" and every other English translation I've found comes up with an equally sanitised version. The force of the original poem is completely lost.

I'm also told on good authority that in Isaiah 64:6 "filthy rags" should be translated "used sanitary towels"

I'm really sorry that I don't know Hebrew. When you read a translation you're inevitably getting something filtered through the translator's attitudes and prejudices.

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Adam.

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Just remember that whatever commentary or other authority you're getting claims like the ones in your post from are also full of "attitudes and prejudices." This post comes with attitudes and prejudices too.

FWIW, your claim about Isa 64:6 looks pretty hard to argue with to me (though I'm sure someone's tried).

As for Jer 20:7, though, it's true that those words can have the nuance you suggest, but that's hardly their 'plain meaning' and they don't have to have that nuance here. There's an exegetical fallacy called "total transfer," where you take a nuance a word can sometimes have and assume it has that everywhere.

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Chamois
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Adam, point taken. I should certainly have cited my source for the Jeremiah passage interpretation, which is the Jewish Study Bible.

Why do you think that the words "don't have that nuance here"?

[ 01. March 2016, 13:28: Message edited by: Chamois ]

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Brenda Clough
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In our Bible study last night we were looking at 1 Samuel, in which Jonathan meets David. Something about their souls being knit together. I immediately wanted to pipe up that they couldn't have been -knit- together. The craft dates back to about 800 AD, well after David's time. But I kept my big mouth shut.

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Chamois
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When a broken bone heals people often say it has knitted together. I don't think needles and wool necessarily have to be involved in "knitting". But I could easily be wrong.

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Brenda Clough
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I'm not saying the use of the word was inaccurate. I am saying it was an anachronism. If the text had said that David had Friended Jonathan on Facebook we could immediately recognize the problem.

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Chamois
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But "Friending someone on Facebook" has a single, definite meaning. The word "knitted" has multiple meanings. My concise Oxford dictionary gives two main groups: 1. form close-textured cloth of interlocking loops; 2. unite intimately by means of common interests, marriage etc.. Each group contains multiple sub-meanings e.g. knitting your brow, repairing or joining together bone etc.

So it isn't an anachronism to say two people's souls were knitted together, it's just using the second group of meaning rather than the first.

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LeRoc

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quote:
Chamois: But "Friending someone on Facebook" has a single, definite meaning.
Have you checked this with today's youth? I wouldn't be surprised if they'd started using it for other stuff already.

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leo
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I smiled a little when I read the word 'manure' on Sunday.

I was tempted to pronounce it in a West Country accent.

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BroJames
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This raises an interesting translational question. In Jesus' day, virtually no other fertiliser would be envisaged than dung. (And copra used to be (maybe still is) a major traded product. Though I don't know how many people would immediately recognise it as manure)

Nowadays manure is only one way of fertilising soil. In British English we talk about manuring plants/beds/gardens so that would probably be a good translation - but I think fertilise is probably equally good as I don't think the 'dungy-ness' of the fertiliser is particularly important here.

If it were a farmer and a field we'd talk about muck-spreading, but separate 'muck' from 'spreading' and it no longer has the specialised fertiliser meaning. It would sound odd, even laughable, if the "vine dresser" had said he was going to put muck on the tree.

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Baptist Trainfan
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There is actually a Coprolite Street in our town ... bet that most people haven't a clue what it means!
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Adam.

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quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Adam, point taken. I should certainly have cited my source for the Jeremiah passage interpretation, which is the Jewish Study Bible.

Why do you think that the words "don't have that nuance here"?

Sorry, I sounded too sure about something that wasn't what I was really trying to say.

I guess my point was that you were taking the translation "overpower" as a 'sanitized' version of the 'original' word "rape." But, the original doesn't say "rape;" it says חֲזַקְתַּ֖נִי you exerted strength over me. I'm sure such phrasing could be used to refer to a rape, but that doesn't mean it always does (and I couldn't find any examples of it meaning that in a short search).

"Overpower" is a pretty good literal translation, it's not a sanitization. If someone wanted to argue that we should hear a nuance of sexual violence in the text, I'd listen to the argument (my mind isn't made up against this possibility), but that still wouldn't make the translation sanitized. At worst, it would mean it's overly literal or wooden.

[ 01. March 2016, 19:47: Message edited by: Adam. ]

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Adam.

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Second thought: JSB is normally a pretty good study Bible, but that doesn't make it infallible. Does it give an argument for why it understands a sexual nuance here? Or a reference to an argument that does?

The good things about study Bibles is that you're getting experts' opinions in very brief accessible form. The problem with study Bibles is that you're getting experts' opinions in very brief accessible form.

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Albertus
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quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
... copra used to be (maybe still is) a major traded product. Though I don't know how many people would immediately recognise it as manure...

Um, not many, I'm afraid. Copra is dried coconut meat. I think you're confusing it with something else, possibly beginning with copro-. Or guano, perhaps? The basis of the fortune of 'The House of Gibbs/ Who made their dibs/ From selling the turds/ Of foreign birds'.
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Chamois
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Originally posted by Adam:

quote:
JSB is normally a pretty good study Bible, but that doesn't make it infallible. Does it give an argument for why it understands a sexual nuance here? Or a reference to an argument that does?
The JSB doesn't give an argument but Abraham Heschel writes the following about Jeremiah 20:7 in his book The Prophets (1962) :

"The meaning of this extraordinary confession becomes clear when we consider what commentators have failed to notice, namely, the specific meaning of the individual words. the striking feature of the verse is the use of two verbs patah and hazak. The first term is used in the Bible in the special sense of wrongly inducing a woman to consent to prenuptial intercourse (Exod. 22:16 [H. 22:15]; cf Hos. 2.14 [H. 2:16]; Job 31:9). The second term denotes the violent forcing of a woman to submit to extra-nuptial intercourse, which is thus performed against her will (Deut. 22:15; cf Judg. 19:25: II Sam 13:11). The first denotes seduction or enticement; the second, rape……..The words used by Jeremiah to describe the impact of God upon his life are identical with the terms for seduction and rape in the legal terminology of the Bible. "
Heschel, A., The Prophets, Harper and Row, New York 1962, p144.

Heschel cites W. Rudolph, Jeremia (Tubingen, 1947), p.113 on this point but I haven't consulted this source myself.

Heschel was one of the great 20th century Hasidic scholars so pretty mainstream in exegesis as far as I understand these things.

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Adam.

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Thanks for the references. I still call illegitimate totality transfer.

Patah definitely can mean seduce in a sexual sense, and reasonably often does. But it reasonably often doesn't too. Like in 2 Sam 3:25, where I'm pretty sure Abner is not seducing King David. The spirit in 1 Kings 22:21 isn't trying to have sex with Ahab, but get him to go to persuade him to fight at Ramoth-Gilead. Do you think that Psa 78:36 is accusing the wandering Israelites of trying to have pre-nuptial sex with God? [I've stuck to uses of this verb in the Piel, as it can mean very different things in other conjugations.]

As for hazak, I looked at those examples, and it's not clear to me that it means 'rape' in those verses. As I said, the word means to overpower (in other conjugations, it can mean to empower, or just to be strong).

Deut 22:25 might be the best case. The sentence says that a man "hazaqs her and lies with her." This certainly describes a rape. But, that doesn't mean that hazaq means rape, it still seems to mean 'overpower' here; it needs to be complemented with 'lie with' to get the meaning of rape across.

Judg 19:25 is another story about rape, but hazaq doesn't seem to name the rape. One man (to whom she is concubine) hazaqs her and then hands her over to men who rape her (the Hebrew for this is "knew her and kept on vexing her"). In the context, this is clearly rape, but most translators understand hazaq here as something like 'seize.'

2 Sam 13:11 is part of another story about rape, but the rape doesn't seem to be narrated in this verse. Amnon (the rapist) hazaqs Tamar (the survivor) and then says "come and lie with me." She says no, and he does it anyway. It seems clear here that hazaq doesn't mean rape in this verse; it's what happens before he asks for consent. 'Seize' would be better. The best example would actually be 2 Sam 13:14. There we get a sequence of three verbs which together do mean rape: Amnon's act is described as "he hazaqs her, and he humiliates and lies with her." Again, hazaq seems to need 'lie with' to complete the meaning and get 'rape.'

Hazaq is used 355 times in the Hebrew Bible, 82 times in the qal (same conjugation as Jer 20:7). I haven't looked at all of these, but many clearly have nothing to do with rape. For instance, in 1 Sam 17:50, David hazaqs Goliath. Psalm 27:14 instructs us to "wait for the Lord, hazaq, and may our hearts be strong." In Zech 8:13, Israel is blessed by God so that their hands may hazaq.

So, were does that leave us? We have one word which is sometimes used to mean sexual seduction (without any other word to signal 'sexual'), but also very often means other forms of enticement, persuasion or delusion. We also have another word with very wide range of meanings, including to overpower someone, which is occasionally (in a tiny fraction of its uses) used to describe the overpowering that occurs during some rape, but only when other words in the sentence make clear that that's what we're talking about. To claim that translating those terms with their normal meaning, and not importing a sexual context when there is no trigger in the text, is 'sanitizing' is completely off-base.

If you want to claim that some readers may have formed connections with images of sexual violence: sure, maybe. Not the same as the claim you made, though.

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Adam.

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I should add, those last two narratives in particular (Judg 19; 2 Sam 13) really belong on the "this is in the Bible but it stinks" thread. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth to simply mine them for lexicographical inquiry. But, if we want to do serious work on sexual violence in the Bible (and someone has to), we do have to do that work.

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BroJames
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quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
... copra used to be (maybe still is) a major traded product. Though I don't know how many people would immediately recognise it as manure...

Um, not many, I'm afraid. Copra is dried coconut meat. I think you're confusing it with something else, possibly beginning with copro-. Or guano, perhaps? The basis of the fortune of 'The House of Gibbs/ Who made their dibs/ From selling the turds/ Of foreign birds'.
Yes you're quite right. Brain fart moment on my part [Hot and Hormonal]
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quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
Nowadays manure is only one way of fertilising soil. In British English we talk about manuring plants/beds/gardens so that would probably be a good translation - but I think fertilise is probably equally good as I don't think the 'dungy-ness' of the fertiliser is particularly important here.

I can understand why you would come to that conclusion, but as someone who believes these are the words of God Incarnate trying to teach us about repenting and about perishing, I'm not ready to decide that the literal image presented in the parable is unimportant.

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Chamois
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Originally posted by Adam:

quote:
To claim that translating those terms with their normal meaning, and not importing a sexual context when there is no trigger in the text, is 'sanitizing' is completely off-base.

If you want to claim that some readers may have formed connections with images of sexual violence: sure, maybe. Not the same as the claim you made, though.

I disagree. It's clear that some very respected scholars HAVE made connections with sexual violence. No "maybe" about it -they've expressed their views in published texts including the Jewish Study Bible. You disagree with their interpretation. That's fine, the Bible is dialectical and disagreement and argument is the traditional method of exegesis particularly in the Jewish tradition. As I said up-thread, I'm not a Biblical scholar, I don't know any Hebrew and therefore I'm not in a position to argue translations with you on my own account and I'm not going to try.

However, in my opinion you are being a bit too dismissive of other people's interpretations here, both up-thread when you asserted that the word doesn't mean rape in this context and now when you are asserting that putting this verse forward as an example of sanitising is completely "off base". But you'll need to take this up with the scholars who maintain this position, not me.

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mr cheesy
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Actually, tree fertilisation is a tricky subject because it isn't so straightforward as it would be with an annual crop. Trickle-feeding urine can, in some circumstances, give good results - presumably because the liquid is able to dissipate in the soil and reach the tree roots.

Compost/dung - well not so much. It is common in some parts for trees to be manured or mulched, but the effects may be largely explained by the effect it has on the growth of weeds and pests rather than the direct impact on nutrients.

In fact, if you really wanted to have an impact on the growth of trees, you need to supply the soil, preferably near the roots of the tree, with slow-release nutrients. Like a body.

Which gives the passage a rather different complexion.

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arse

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Honest Ron Bacardi
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You also need to bear in mind the passage is talking about a fig tree.

Anyone walking in the hills around the mediterranean will have noticed many fig trees growing wild. But if you have ever stopped to look at them, you will see that many indeed do not bear any fruit, or rather where the fruit seems to abort and drop off while green.

Figs have two forms of plant - the one that bears edible fruit, and the "fruitless" ones. These latter are called caprifigs, and the small green fruits are in fact the ones that contain viable seeds. A caprifig tree is never going to bear edible fruit.

Figs also suffer from another problem. If you plant them in fertile soil, they will grow like the clappers at the expense of bearing fruit. One standard way to get round this is root-pruning. Indeed, if your soil is fertile, one standard recommendation is to excavate a hole, line it with paving slabs, backfill it with soil and plant the tree in it.

But if you root-prune, you have to look after the tree carefully for a couple of years to make sure it doesn't die.

So in terms of the husbandry, if you have a non-bearing fig tree, you need to determine whether it is a caprifig or maybe it's just having life too easy. Root-pruning and fertilisation (and watering) would do that.

[ 02. March 2016, 09:57: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]

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Anglo-Cthulhic

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mr cheesy
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That's also interesting - so over fertilising may actually have a negative impact on fig production.

The one thing I know about figs is that they require the death of a particular type of male wasp to be fertilised. They don't just have to brush past, they actually get trapped inside the female flowers of the plant.

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arse

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Honest Ron Bacardi
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Yes, the fertilisation relies on a specific species of (tiny) parasitic wasp, which crawls in through the aperture at the end of the caprifig. I didn't know that it was a one-way street for the unfortunate specimen performing it though.

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Anglo-Cthulhic

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mr cheesy
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On the lifecycle of the fig wasp.

I apologise for the above where I was using fertilise in two different contexts. To be clear: the wasps are needed to pollonate the fig plant. This isn't anything to do with the nutrient fertility of the plant as far as I know.

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arse

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BroJames
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# 9636

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quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Figs also suffer from another problem. If you plant them in fertile soil, they will grow like the clappers at the expense of bearing fruit. One standard way to get round this is root-pruning. Indeed, if your soil is fertile, one standard recommendation is to excavate a hole, line it with paving slabs, backfill it with soil and plant the tree in it.

But if you root-prune, you have to look after the tree carefully for a couple of years to make sure it doesn't die.

So in terms of the husbandry, if you have a non-bearing fig tree, you need to determine whether it is a caprifig or maybe it's just having life too easy. Root-pruning and fertilisation (and watering) would do that.

Yes, and for a long time, I have thought that the "dig round" is just that, root pruning.
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BroJames
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quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
Nowadays manure is only one way of fertilising soil. In British English we talk about manuring plants/beds/gardens so that would probably be a good translation - but I think fertilise is probably equally good as I don't think the 'dungy-ness' of the fertiliser is particularly important here.

I can understand why you would come to that conclusion, but as someone who believes these are the words of God Incarnate trying to teach us about repenting and about perishing, I'm not ready to decide that the literal image presented in the parable is unimportant.
Well I entirely agree with you about the words of Jesus being the words of God Incarnate, and that he is trying to teach us about repenting and about perishing. IMO, Luke has already made a decision about which Greek word to use to represent a word that Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic.

The task of the translator into English, it seems to me, is to find the word or phrase that best represents the meaning that was intended by Luke as far as we can tell, trusting that Luke has made a good job of presenting the words of Jesus (by which I mean I am not interested in trying to second guess Luke's choice of words and go back to some hypothetical Aramaic original).

Sometimes a literally accurate word can distort or distract from the intended meaning
quote:
For example, the RSV (1952) reads in Psalm 50.9, “I will accept no bull from your house.” In today’s English, that means something quite different from what the translators intended! The NRSV accordingly and appropriately renders the verse, “I will not accept a bull from your house.”
(from here)
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W Hyatt
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Yes, translation is always a tricky thing, which is one reason why this is my favorite board. The end result is important, but there's never a single, completely accurate result.

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Adam.

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quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:

I disagree. It's clear that some very respected scholars HAVE made connections with sexual violence. No "maybe" about it -they've expressed their views in published texts including the Jewish Study Bible. You disagree with their interpretation. That's fine, the Bible is dialectical and disagreement and argument is the traditional method of exegesis particularly in the Jewish tradition. As I said up-thread, I'm not a Biblical scholar, I don't know any Hebrew and therefore I'm not in a position to argue translations with you on my own account and I'm not going to try.

However, in my opinion you are being a bit too dismissive of other people's interpretations here, both up-thread when you asserted that the word doesn't mean rape in this context and now when you are asserting that putting this verse forward as an example of sanitising is completely "off base". But you'll need to take this up with the scholars who maintain this position, not me.

If this is an offer to agree to disagree and move on, I'm fine with that, and I'll thank you for the conversation and references (from which I genuinely have learnt a lot by thinking through questions I wouldn't have otherwise), and maybe we can leave the fine people who want to talk about fertilizers on this thread to talk about that.

But, your post does seem to invite a conversation about the conversation, and I'll offer a first response in that vein, which you're obviously free to ignore if you feel you're done here (or if the hosts tell us we are).

Firstly, your first post mentioned translators' "attitudes and prejudices," and you accepted my (friendly) amendment that commentators (including you and me) have those too. So, I should be honest about mine, which are somewhat mixed. Part of me, the more 'personal' / 'confessionally committed' part really doesn't want Jeremiah to have called God a rapist here. It's a vile image, and I don't want to find it in the text. But, the scholarly part of me wants to just do solid philology and reach whatever conclusion I reach. Another scholarly part of me has just written a paper on the blinding of Saul in Acts 9 as an emasculating punishment (building on Brittany Wilson's work here), and would be very intrigued by a Hebrew Bible precedent for God (mis)treating a prophet in a way that figures him as female. So, my biases are conflicted here.

I hope I don't come across as too dismissive. I spent an hour last night examining texts written in an ancient language to try to evaluate the view for myself, and wrote this up as a ship post. Given the other demands on my time (which happen to include translating Jer 42 for a doctoral seminar I'm in right now), that's as non-dismissive as I can afford to be.

Heschel and Rudolph are fine scholars, but that doesn't mean they were always right. Whoever wrote the Jeremiah section of the JSB is probably a fine scholar too (as it is, in general, a good publication), but that doesn't mean that she or he is always right. Good scholars make mistakes, and there's a reason D.A. Carson coined the term "illegitimate totality transfer:" because he saw good scholars making precisely the mistake I think I've identified in their work.

Heschel points out that other commentators disagree with him. Clearly, the modern translators (in your words "every other English translation I've found") you were accusing of 'sanitizing' disagree with him too. Are you sure you're not being overly dismissive of their work?

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Chamois
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Adam, thanks for the discussion. I've enjoyed it.
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Gramps49
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Wished I saw this one earlier.

Growing up, when we fertilized our garden, it was barnyard manure.

Today, when I fertilize my garden it is compost, which in reality is barnyard manure mixed in with other organic properties.

Actually love the smell of that stuff as I mix it in with the soil.

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rolyn
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# 16840

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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Philippians 3:8 contains the word σκύβαλα, which quite possibly meant shit, but which modern translations render as rubbish.

KJV has it down as dung which would make the verse consistent with Python's -- Life's a piece of **** when you look at it.

[ 10. April 2016, 11:22: Message edited by: rolyn ]

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Baptist Trainfan
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# 15128

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Our town contains a Coprolite Street. "Coprolite" is, of course, a polite name for fossilised dinosaur dung (mined and used for fertiliser and even munitions in this area).
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Alan Cresswell

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Doesn't have to be dinosaur do-do. Fossilized mammoth etc remains too.

But, munitions is a shit use for the stuff (it's a crap use of any resource IMO).

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Brenda Clough
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Manure is the easiest way, in a non-industrial context, to get the chemicals you need for gunpowder. Manure, and urine, were always valuable -- it's only in the last few centuries that it's been purely a waste product. The fullers and dyers in Jesus's time used urine to bleach wool -- there'd be a jar by the street door, so that passers-by could contribute. In Dickens' day there was an entire occupation gathering dog poop (euphemistically termed 'pure') to be used in tanning leather. I assume they figured out a way to distinguish it at point of sale from other kinds of manure.

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Albertus
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Isn't, or wasn't at one time, Harris Tweed washed in urine at some point during its manufacture?
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Brenda Clough
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I wouldn't be surprised -- although I also wouldn't be surprised if that bit has been quietly dropped out of the company history. Urine's famous for its bleaching qualities -- they used it on togas to get the wool white (which is why it cost more and thus was a status symbol). Roman prostitutes used to go blonde by washing their hair in urine. Which is why aluminium bleaches were such a technological advance!

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Curiosity killed ...

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Apparently urine was used in production of Harris Tweed, the final washing after weaving.

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mr cheesy
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# 3330

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Urine has been used in clothing manufacturing historically as a mordant to fix dyes.

Dogshit was used in leather manufacturing.

I'm not sure this has been done for a long time - but then given the majority of dyeing and leatherworking is now undertaken in far-flung places out of the view of us (or maybe most of us?), I wouldn't be surprised by anything.

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