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Tuesday, May 20, 2003

"THOU SHALT COMMIT ADULTERY" - NOT!

This isn�t very relevant to PaleoJudaica (although it is the P Decalogue) but it�s funny, so I�ll post it. It�s from a review by Christopher Hitchens in the New York Times of Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries, on the making of the King James translation (via Arts and Letters Daily):


"'God's Secretaries': Blessed Are the Phrasemakers"

This work was refined and prepared in order to be heard and memorized, by a congregation still largely illiterate, and to be recalled in time of trouble or of need. Print was secondary: no doubt the audience of the later misprinted 1631 edition, when instructed by Exodus 20:14 that ''thou shalt commit adultery,'' understood that a ''not'' had been omitted at the press rather than in Sinai.


I wouldn't be so sure�

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