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File under: Smarter than thou

Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the LORD hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the self-styled prophets and your Nacle rulers, the ark steadiers eyes hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which [men] deliver to one who fancies himself learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it written entirely too long ago in Jacobean English like I have said lo these many years over and over and the Bretheren would not be a listening to me:

And the book is delivered to her that is not learned in source criticism neither documentary history nor Biblical Greek nor Hebrew nor anything like unto it, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and she saith, Did I mention how smart I am and what a great teacher I am and how much time I have to waste retranslating everything into modern English in my Insitute class that I am teaching on the second half of the Old Testament so my students who are so fortunate to have such a great teacher like me to guide them because I am so scholarly and posses such depth of knowledge in the Scriptures I could so easily spend several months on Haggai alone and you would never be bored by the millions of questions I pose and the complete lack of thoughful, relevant answers when I speculate wildly about things I know nothing about?

Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as these people draw near with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the modern writings of scholarly translations: Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among these two people, [even] a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of these two wise[-nhiemers] shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent [persons] shall be hid in a morass of unintelligble comments on an obscure blog that hardly anyone reads and fewer cares about outside of a handful of self-promoters and their sycophants which will never amount to a hill of beans.

Woe unto them that seek to counsel the LORD, who have works full of darkness, and they say, Look at me! and I said that first!

Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding? Yea, unfortunately, they will.

Behold, them that would abandon the KJV for some modern translation shall break the rhetorical style of the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price and shall lose a great many obvious stylistic connections, especially those where the servant Joseph Smith noted the differences between the KJV and the quotations of the original prophet as delivered by the messenger Moroni as well as those inspired comments given to my servant that he might translate them and render their meaning and intent more clear. Those who seek to update the rhetorical style of the entire LDS canon know not the burden they would cast on the shoulders of others with their incessant complaining and noisome teeth grinding. Those who would not lift a finger to actually do anything useful, but only exalt themselves for their own purposes, shall trip and fall and be exposed for the bratty whiners they are as they seek to be seen on every street corner and in all public places with their broad phylacteries and enlarged boarders on their garments. Behold, if they would do something useful, they can shut up and do something worthwhile to actually help other people in need, to comfort the sick, and the afflicted, and the downtrodden, the widow and the orphan, rather than waste time publicly preening.

2 comments

Anonymous said... @ April 24, 2006 at 4:01 PM

Now this is a top-drawer snark. Nice job.

Ann said... @ April 24, 2006 at 9:50 PM

Man, I couldn't even read it. It's like trying to read the BIBLE or something.

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