🚀 go-pugleaf

Greg Hartman (ghartman@aracnet.com) wrote:
: Tony Reed wrote:
: > 
: > William Shakespeare left an Easter egg in the King James
: > Version of the Bible...
: > 
: > Check it out at: <http://www.cam.org/~treed/bill.html>
: 
: I checked out your page and there are several BIG problems with this
: theory:
: 
: 1. First and foremost, I don�t know what �East of Eden� has to do with
: this, but the word �Selah� most definitely WAS in the original Hebrew.
: In fact, it�s not even translated from the Hebrew; it�s �transliterated�
: (i.e., they use the English alphabet to mimic its pronunciation in
: Hebrew). It�s probably a musical notation, such as �forte� or �fermata;�
: scholars argue a bit over what it means. Most think it means something
: akin to �pause and reflect.� There isn�t a good English equivalent, so
: they don�t translate it (like �baptize� in the new Testament, which was
: actually orginally a Greek word).
: 
: 2. The King James was completed by 47 Bible scholars, none of whom were
: Shakespeare. I don�t know if he knew Greek and Hebrew or not, but that�s
: irrelevant. The scholars at that time wouldn�t have let a playwright
: touch their scrolls with a ten foot pole. Plays were thought to be
: sinful (remember, this is the height of the Puritan era, just before the
: Restoration). You think they�d let a guy who wrote �The Rape Of Lucrece�
: help translate the Bible? Don�t make me laugh.
: 
: Here�s a quote from Grolier�s:
: 
: �On Nov. 28, 1582, church authorities gave permission for him to marry
: Anne Hathaway of the neighboring village of Shottery.  He was 18 years
: old, and she was 26;  probably she was pregnant.  On May 26, 1583, their
: daughter Susanna was baptized in Holy Trinity.�
: 
: So we have the Catholic Church letting a fornicating, sinful writer of
: horrid, sinful plays writing the Bible. I don�t think so.
: 
: (By the way--I�m not saying I support the way the Church would have
: looked at Shakespeare or his plays. He was immensely talented; history
: bears it out. But the fact is he wouldn�t have had a chance to try).
: 
: 3. I looked up all the info I could find on the production of the King
: James Version in all the works I have access to (I�m a Systematic
: Theology/Journalism major at Mutlnomah Bible College in Portland; we
: have a 65,000-volume theological library). You�d think if Shakespeare
: helped write the KJV, it would show up somewhere. No mention. Where dod
: you hear it?
: 
: Also, the KJV was partly based on revisions of several earlier works,
: including the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560), and the
: Rheims-Douai Bible (1582, 1609). This is why they were able to complete
: the KJV in only seven years. Most of those works were completed before
: Shakespeare was born--and in Germany and Switzerland to boot (Unger�s
: Bible Dictionary, pp. 1301-1303).
: 
: 4. From 1604 to 1611, the time when the KJV was being translated,
: Shakespeare wrote and/or produced the following plays for the Globe
: Theatre, which he partly owned, at the rate of about one play every six
: months. He also acted in some of them: Troilius and Cressida, All's Well
: That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Pericles (c.1608), Cymbeline
: (1609-1610), The Winter's Tale (1610-1611), and The Tempest (this is all
: from Grolier�s Multimedia again). Busy guy, as you pointed out on your
: web page. When was he supposed to have time to translate the Bible, too?
: 
: So we have a playwright, a father out of wedlock, that the Church
: supposedly let help translate the Bible. No mention of it in history. No
: mention of it in theology. No evidence that Shakespeare knew Greek and
: Hebrew (he�d also have to know German, Latin and Aramaic for reasons I
: won�t get into here). And last but not least, the �easter egg� he
: allegedly left in the Psalms doesn�t exist unless you play games with
: the text.
: 
: This is a cute theory, though. It forces me to argue from silence for
: the most part--except for the fact that Selah is part of the original
: Hebrew. Sorry to burst your bubble.
: 
: Check out my website: "Do We Have To Give Up Our Brains For Jesus?"
: http://www.aracnet.com/~ghartman/index.shtml

On a note of skepticism, it should be pointed out that serious evidence 
supporting the chronology outlined here is entirely lacking.  It is 
certainly true that many -- at this point history, the majority -- of
Rennaissance scholars except such a chronology -- for reasons
detailed by Peter Moore on the Shakespeare Oxford Web site.  

As to Shakespeare's alleged "small Latin and less Greek," those
with even a little Latin will be inclined to suspect that this
is hardly what Ben Jonson said.  The phrase is excerpted from a 
lengthy and syntactically complex poem attached by Folio editor
Jonson to the 1623 "first folio" of Shakespeare.  In context, it 
looks more likely to be the protasis of a past contrary fact 
conditional.  

To put that in modern street language, Jonson is saying:

Oh Dude, even if thou hadst small latin and 
nothing of that finger lickin Greek stuff,
I'd still be singing your praises, man:
and even then, if that were so (that you
weren't,as thou art, a Latinist sublime)
I'd still be ranging you up there in them
poet's stars: you hang with Aeschylus,
Euripides, Sophocles, and all them 
other greats.

A little later Jonson affirms the same sentiment
by comparing the bard to Terence, Aristophanes
and Plautus, and "the merry Greek" -- whoever that
is (Bacchus, anyone?) before offering his own 
little riddle for those that like to read Jonson as a 
serious artist and humorist, and not a Tudor  hack:

.......Look how the father's face 
lives in his issue, even so, the race
of Shakespeare's mind, and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned and true-filed lines:
In each of which, he seems to shake a Lance,
As brandish't in the eyes of ignorance.....


Now, if anyone intends to claim that Jonson's
point is to deprecate Shakespeare's art, may I
gently point out that by such a proposition, you
have proved Old Ben's very point and made the
"eyes of ignorance".....your own.  

Roger Stritmatter
professor in training, the guy Thomas Larque just can't
stop calling "dumb".

Happy reading, and don't give up looking for easter eggs,
just because you were looking in the wrong place.