The Beatitudes: A Trajectory through Time

Luke 6:20-23 (reflects "Matthew I"):

1) Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

2) Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

3) Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man,

4) Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.


Matthew 5:3-11, in the Shaprut version (reflects "Matthew II"):

1) Blessed are the humble of spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

2) Blessed are those who wait, for they shall be comforted.

3) Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

4) Blessed are the innocent of heart, for they shall see God.

5) Blessed are those who PURSUE peace for they shall be called sons of God.

6) Blessed are those who are PERSECUTED for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

7) Blessed are you when they persecute and revile you and say against you all kinds of evil for my sake, but speak falsely.

8) Rejoice and be glad for your reward is very great in heaven, for thus they persecuted the prophets.


Matthew 5:3-11, in the canonical version ("Matthew III"):

1) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

2) Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

3) Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

4) Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

5) Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

6) Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

7) Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

8) Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

9) Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.


To review a bit: My Layered Matthew Hypothesis was presented in this blog in the series The Layers of Matthew I-X, posted in October and November 2018. It is diagrammed and explained most succinctly in The Layers of Matthew VI, posted on 17 November 2018. Here is the diagram that was given there:

What we notice here, first of all, is the increasing fullness of the list of Beatitudes from Matthew I (Luke is our witness) to Matthew II (the Shem Tob Ibn Isaac Ibn Shaprut Hebrew Matthew is our witness for at least one of the intermediate forms of Matthew to which I have given this designation) and finally to Matthew III (canonical Matthew). We also notice a play on words that only works in Hebrew, based on the Hebrew root רדף, which means both "to pursue" and "to persecute," and forms a "catchword" or "linking word" between the thoughts in the fifth and sixth Beatitudes in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew. What we call "peacemakers" are "peace-doers" in Greek, but idiomatic Hebrew is "those who pursue peace." Thus, the play on words is lost when one takes Matthew out of its original Hebrew.

Text and image © 2018-2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

The earlier forms of the Pater Noster

As George Howard points out on p. 202 of Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew and the oldest and best manuscripts of Luke agree that "who art in heaven" was not originally part of the prayer, According to my hypothesis, Luke used an early form of Matthew (Matthew I), which was probably written in Hebrew, for the sayings portion of his Gospel. Thus, although Matthew I has not survived, it is reflected in Luke. The Shaprut Hebrew Matthew reflects Matthew II, an intermediate form of Matthew. So, if we want to see the original form of the Lord's Prayer, or Avinu, the best that we can do is to go to Luke XI:2. In the RSV, it goes like this:

Father, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread;

and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone

who is indebted to us.

and lead us not into temptation.

Here is how it sounds in Hebrew, in the Salkinson translation:

avinu yitkadash shmecha

tavo malchutecha

ten-lanu lechem chukenu yom b'yomo.

us'lach lanu et-ashmoteynu 

ki gam-anachnu solchim l'kol-asher

asham lanu

v'al-t'viyenu liy'dey nisayon.

And here's how it looks in Hebrew, in the form given in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, reflecting Matthew II, which is still older than canonical Matthew (Matthew III): 

אבינו יתקדש שמך ויתברך מלכותך רצונך יהיה עשוי בשמיםובארץ ׃

ותתן לחמנו תמידית ׃

ומחול לנו חטאתינו כאשר אנחנו מוחלים לחוטאים לנו

ואל תביאנו לידי נסיון ושמרינו מכל רע אמן ׃

The best texts of Luke just say "Father," but here we are back to "Our Father," which is also how Salkinson translated the Luke. Other than that, the main difference between this and Luke is that it says "may your name be sanctified; may your kingdom be blessed." This makes for a more beautiful parallelism. I prefer it for this reason, and also because, as we are told in the Gospel of Thomas, the kingdom of heaven is already among us. I believe, therefore, that if we just change the אבינו of the Shaprut version to אבא, we'll be close enough to the original ("Matthew I") version of the prayer.

Next, we will try to reconstruct the original, "Matthew I" form of the Beatitudes.

(to be continued)

Text © 2018-2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel / Can We Reconstruct Matthew I?

The title of this post is based on a text that is not even found in the Tanakh: it is in Matthew 10.5-6:

"Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel..."

These are the words of Rabbi Yeshua, but of course Paul and his gang went there anyway.

In previous posts and Facebook Notes, I've written at some length about the Hebrew/Aramaic substratum in the New Testament. I have also written (in this blog) about the so-called Synoptic Problem (which is a puzzle rather than a problem), and solved it to my own satisfaction. The result of this study was my conclusion that an early form of the Gospel of Matthew was the first gospel to be written, and it was originally written in Hebrew. It has occurred to me to wonder whether that Hebrew can be reconstructed.

Let's take a closer look.

Delitzsch:

אֶל־דֶּרֵךְ הַגּוֹיִם אַל־תֵּלֵכוּ וְאֶל־עִיר הַשֹׁמְוֹנִים אַל־תָּבֹאוּ ׃

כִּי אִם־לְכוּ אֶל־הַצֹּאן הָאֹבְדוֹת לבֵית יִשְׂרָאֵל ׃

Salkinson:

אַל־תָּשִׂימוּ לְדֶרֶךְ הַגּוֹיִם פַּעֲמֵיכֶם וְאֶל־עָרֵי הַשֹׁמְרֹנִים אַל־תָּבֹאוּ ׃

כִּי אִם־לְצֹאן אֹבְדוֹת מִבֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל תֵּלֵכוּ ׃‎

Shaprut:

בארצות הגוים אל תלכו ובערי השמרונים אל תבואו ׃

לכו לצעאן אשר נדחו מבית ישראל ׃

Modern Hebrew (approximately):

לא ללכת לשום מקום בין הגויים, ולא להיכנס לעיר השומרונים, אלא ללכת אל הכבש האבוד של בית ישראל

Delitzsch is a nineteenth-century translation of the whole New Testament into excellent (though anachronistic) Biblical Hebrew.

Salkinson is a slightly later nineteenth-century translation, intentionally more periphrastic and idiomatic. Salkinson was, however a great admirer of Delitzsch's translation, and no doubt benefitted from it.

Shaprut is from the medieval polemical work Even Bohan, by Shem-Tob Ibn Shaprut, but it appears to be much earlier than that, and is textually closest to the oldest textual traditions, the Old Latin and the Old Syriac, but is not identical to either of them.

According to my Layered-Matthew Hypothesis, which can be diagrammed thus:

the Shaprut text is a text of the Matthew II intermediate text type. Luke used Matthew I and never saw Matthew II. Matthew III corresponds to canonical Matthew. For Matthew I we have Luke's borrowings (e.g. the Beatitudes and his version of the Pater Noster); Matthew II is reflected in Shaprut; the existence of Matthew III is self-evident. Thus, no hypothetical texts are required. All of this is dealt with in the series The Layers of Matthew, published in this blog in late 2018. It is explained most succinctly in The Layers of Matthew VI, published here on November 17 2018.

The first thing we notice in those Hebrew samples above is that the Shaprut text is unpointed, as any first-century Hebrew text would be. That makes it look, at first glance, a bit like Modern Hebrew.

Modern Hebrew is an expanded descendant of Mishnaic Hebrew, used by the rabbis in the early centuries CE. Let's see if we can spot some of the differences between the Shaprut version and the modern version.

One need not be an expert to see that what at first seemed similar is actually the most unlike the Shaprut text. We see the Modern Hebrew prohibitive לא where Biblical Hebrew (and Shaprut) have אל. We see the characteristic Modern Hebrew של for "of," where Biblical Hebrew and Shaprut use other constructions. In fact, the differences are too numerous to mention. The Shaprut text is not Medieval Hebrew, or even Mishnaic Hebrew. It is late Biblical Hebrew, with an occasional Mishnaic word or expression thrown in, which is exactly what we would expect of a first-century text of this type.

According to my Layered Mathew Hypothesis, what we are looking at in the (Shem-Tob Ibn) Shaprut text is an early, intermediate stage of the Gospel of Matthew, which I have called Matthew II. Can we use Luke to recover the Matthew I form? No, in this case we can't, because the citation we are considering is an indictment of Paul's mission to the Gentiles, and would never have been included in the Gospel of Luke, which was written for the Gentiles. The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, the first to be written, was written for the Jews.

As we will see, though, the earliest stage of the Gospel of  Matthew, Matthew I, can be recovered by translating key passages of Luke, such as the Beatitudes and the Avinu (Pater Noster) into Biblical Hebrew.

Text © 2018-2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

A Voice from No Man's Land (revised and re-posted)

The events of recent weeks [This was originally published on July 21 2014, as a Facebook Note.] have caused me to do some soul searching. Many things from the past have been dredged up and re-examined. I was particularly struck today by my first encounter with Hasidism, fifty years ago, in 1964. I read Martin Buber's HASIDISM AND MODERN MAN, I read about the Baal Shem Tov, I read the TALES OF THE HASIDIM, Part I and Part II. What it really was, for me, was pure mysticism. In my youthful enthusiasm I wrote a small paper (in Esperanto, the language of those who are ever-hopeful) about the similarities between Hasidism and Transcendentalism. I was entranced by the idea of the Shekhina, the Divine Spirit, and how it becomes entrapped in the "shells," or kellipot (qliphot). It then becomes our duty and our mission to liberate them. One can best do this, it seems, by being a heretic, or at least a mystic.

I was struck today by how formative that time was. It was much more important than I could have foreseen. I met a real, live Hasid (of the Lubavitcher variety), and was duly influenced. He introduced me to the music of Shlomo Carlebach.

I eventually met Rabbi Carlebach in person. In fact, at a concert in the Berkeley Community Theater, I went up, with many others, to receive "The Rebbe's Kiss" from him. After the concert was over, he said, "Come to the shul (the synagogue), we'll dance and sing 'til the sun comes up. We followed this mad rabbi through the streets of Berkeley, dancing and singing. People came to their windows, and we shouted, "Come to the shul!" Some of them did. At one point, Carlebach stopped, and turning to us, said "I want to sing a song called Samchem. It means, "make them happy, let them be joyful." Not this silly thing that we are doing tonight, but real, true happiness and joy." Entering the shul, I grabbed a kipá that I had no real right to wear (though many politicians have done the same). Shlomo Carlebach danced and sang. We danced the hora. Rabbi Carlebach broke a string, and asked me if I had another. (I wonder if, somehow, he knew that I was a guitar player.) He was the most charismatic person I had ever met.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP-0XPpk9yU

That was in the middle '60s. In 1967 I was a hippie in the San Francisco "Summer of Love." That was another peak experience. A lot of other things happened, as the years rolled on. In the mid-seventies I consciously became a feminist. I studied and absorbed a great deal of Hinduism, over quite a few years.  At some point, perhaps in the '80s, I learned that Shlomo Carlebach's wife had left him, perhaps because of infidelitiies. [I later learned that it was because of inappropriate conduct with his female students, which is even worse.] I was crushed. One of my idols had feet of clay. Now, at the age of 71 [That was then--I am now 76.], I realize that life is not so simple, not that that excuses anything.

Please understand that I was raised as a Catholic. At some point in the dim, pre-America past, there had been some Jews in my family, and there is still the trace in my DNA [I now know that I have Jewish "DNA cousins" in the Ukraine, northwest Russia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as in the US.]. At some point in the 1980s I started to convert, but I never found the right fit. I heard about other, somewhat wilder flavors of Judaism, such as the Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley, but I questioned whether they were really Judaism. Now, of course, I wouldn't care. It's the spiritual content that counts.

Now, after many twists and turns of life's path, I have to recognize that, in a strange way, the Jews are my people. I was converted by Martin Buber, by the Baal Shem Tov, by Rabbi Nachman, by Dov Baer, by Shneur Zalman, by Isaac Luria, and, yes, by Shlomo Carlebach. Their work cannot be undone, not even by me. And that is why what is happening now [This was written in 2014.] in Gaza pains me so very, very much. Samchem, make them happy and joyful. That is my prayer now. Instead of death, let them experience the joy that is the birthright of all of us. Too many dark years have already passed. Shalom. Salaam. Peace. Peace. Peace.

Text © 2014-2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

El Gemelo / The Twin / Le Jumeau / התאום / ᏗᏂᎳᏫ

El gemelo te acompaña,
con más memoria
y conocimientos.
Escúchalo,
es tu ayudante.

The twin accompanies you,
with more memory
and knowledge.
Listen to him,
he is your helper.

Le jumeau t'accompagne,
avec plus de mémoire
et de la connaissance.
Ecoute le,
il est ton aide.

,התאום מלווה אותך
עם יותר זיכרון
.וידע
,תקשיב לו
.הוא העוזר שלך

ᏗᏂᎳᏫ ᎠᎵᎪᏁᏓᏎ ᏂᎯᏁ,
ᎤᎪᏕᏍᏗ ᎠᏅᏓᏗᏍᏗ ᎬᏙᏗ
ᎠᎴ ᎥᎦᏔᎲᎢ.
ᎭᏛᏓᏍᏚ ᎠᏨᏴ,
ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏂᎯ ᎠᎵᏍᏕᎸᏗᏍᏙ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

Luz / Lumière / Light / ᎤᎸᏌᏓ / אור

En este mundo
hay luz
y sombra
y el otro está,
siempre está.

Dans ce monde
il y a de la lumière
et de l'ombre
et l'autre est là,
c'est toujours là.

In this world
there is light
and shadow
and the other is there,
it is always there.

ᎯᎠ ᎡᏆ-ᎡᎶᎯ ᎭᏫᎾ
ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᎸᏌᏓ
ᎠᎴ ᎤᏓᏴᎳᏛ
ᎠᎴ ᏐᎢ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ,
ᏂᎪᎯᎸᎢ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ.

בעולם הזה
יש אור
וצל
,והשני שם
.זה תמיד שם

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The Light / ᎤᎸᏌᏓ

The light is all around us,
we only have
to let it in.

ᎤᎸᏌᏓ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏂᎬᎾᏛ ᎢᏧᎸ ᎾᎥᏂᎨ,
ᎢᏧᎳ ᎤᏩᏌ ᎤᏚᎳᏓᏎ
ᎠᎵᏍᎪᎸᏙᏗ ᎾᏍᎩᏁ ᎠᏴᏍᏗ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

More on Mistranslations of the Bible (III)

In the two previous installments of this series I told how I had opened the Bible at random and come across a verse that had NEVER been honestly and correctly translated into English. Only the Hebrew told what had really happened, but this had never been passed on to us, owing to a two-thousand-year conspiracy of silence. The passage in question is 1 Samuel 20.41, and it leaves no doubt about the Biblical David's sexuality: the hero and future King of Israel, author of some of the world's earliest and best poetry, was either gay or bi. So was Shakespeare, but we don't talk much about that, either.

Our dishonesty in translation (for some 2,000 years), and our obstinate silence about David's sexuality have served to perpetuate the social biases of millennia, and encouraged hateful violence against sexual minorities. But that is not all that they have done.

It is said that "all that lives, moves, and only what is dead, does not." "Moves," in this case, means "changes."When we put a religion into a tight strait jacket of social biases from 3,000 years ago, we, even if it is not our intention, condemn that religion to death. When we put ourselves into that same strait jacket, we condemn ourselves to injustice, mercilessness, and hate.

It is no coincidence that the Hebrew word for Spirit is Ruach, which can be either masculine or feminine, and its literal meaning is "wind." Like the wind, Spirit is invisible, but it is characterized by movement, and can be extremely powerful. Spirit, the source of our life, moves and changes. So must we.

Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

ᎤᏰᎸᎭ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ 74 / Naked Wisdom 74

ᏂᎦᏛ Ꮎ ᎠᎴᏂᏙᎭᏎ, ᎠᏓᏅᏌᏎ. ᎤᏩᏌ Ꮎ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᏲᎱᏒ Ꮭ ᎠᏓᏅᏌᏎ.

Ꮎ ᎠᏓᏅᏌᏎ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᏓᏅᏙ.

ᎠᏓᏅᏙ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᏃᎴ ᎩᏂᏠᏱ. ᏂᎯ Ꮭ ᏰᎵᏆᏎ ᎪᏩᏘ ᎾᏍᎩᏁ, ᎠᏎᏃ ᎾᏍᎩ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎾᎿᎢ, ᎠᎴ ᎾᏍᎩ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᎳᏂᎩᏛ.

ᎢᏧᎳ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᏓᏅᏙ.

ᎠᏓᏅᏙ Ꮭ ᎠᏲᎱᎯᏍᏓᏎ.


All that lives, moves. Only what is dead does not move.

What moves is spirit (the mover).

Spirit is like the wind. You cannot see it, but it is there, and it is powerful.

We are spirit.

Spirit does not die.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

ᏔᎵ-ᏧᎧᏅᏍᏕᎾᏗ / Two-Bulls

ᎠᏍᎦᏯ ᏗᏟᎶᏍᏔᏅ ᎭᏫᎾ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏔᎵ-ᏧᎧᏅᏍᏕᎾᏗ, ᏓᎪᏔ ᎠᎾᎳᏍᏓᎸ ᎥᎿᎢ. ᎠᏨᏯᎢ ᎠᎴᏂᏙᎯᏎ ᎤᎪᏕᏍᏗ ᏏᏅ ᏍᎪᎯᏧᏈ ᏧᏕᏘᏴᏓ ᎢᏳ-ᏥᎨᏒ. ᏂᎦᏛ ᏴᏫᏯ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᏆᏤᎵ ᎤᎸᏗ ᎠᎴ ᎤᏙᏗ. ᏂᎦᏛ ᏴᏫ Ꮎ ᎪᎯᏳᎭᏎ ᎥᎴᏂᏙᎲᏁ ᎠᎴ ᎡᏆ-ᎠᏓᏅᏙᏁ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᏆᏤᎵ ᎤᎸᏗ ᎠᎴ ᎤᏙᏗ.

The man in the picture is Two-Bulls, of the Dakota tribe. He lived more than one hundred years ago. All Injuns are our sisters and brothers. All people who respect life and the Great Spirit are our sisters and brothers.

Original photo by Heyn & Matzen, 1900. High-contrast editing by ꮨᏺꭽꮅ. Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

More on Mistranslations of the Bible (continued)

Note: The first part of this (More on Mistranslations of the Bible) was published in this blog on 11 May 2019.

Now, do we really care if the biblical David was either gay or bi? Some may, but I certainly don't. What I do care about is the absence of a single translation into English that gives us the correct, literal meaning of the Hebrew words, So far I've checked the KJV, NASB,RSV, NIV, NWT, and JB (Koren Publishers 1997), as well as the Latin of St. Jerome's Vulgate.

What we have, instead, are all sorts of fanciful renderings, such as "until David exceeded," "but David wept more," "until he exerted himself," "but David did it the most," "until he recovered himself," "until David regained control of himself."

These little tap dances around the Hebrew words are all intended to avoid one central fact: the biblical David, King David, the slayer of Goliath and the hero of Israel, also supposedly a royal ancestor of Jesus, was either gay or bi. He clearly had a homosexual relationship with Jonathan, which Jonathan's father, King Saul, condemned in the strongest terms and which became the motive for Saul's attempts to kill David.

What is important, though, is not that David, to whom some of the world's oldest and best poetry is attributed, was gay. What is important is that I have not been able to find a single version of the Bible that translates 1 Samuel 20.41 correctly and literally.

I don't claim to be a great Hebraist. If I know what those Biblical Hebrew words mean, then others do, too. But they are maintaining a silence that has now lasted almost two thousand years. This is something that we need to think about.

[to be continued]

Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler

Blue Skies

I was naked all summer
in those years,
brown as a berry,
as I cleaned the pool
or worked in the garden.
Age was still  an abstraction,
and I cared more for the sun
and my freedom
than for modesty.

How will it be
in the new place?
Age is no longer
an abstraction,
but there is plenty of sun,
my freedom is still there,
and modesty has flown the coop.
The woods behind us
will not care.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

An Acid Test for Bible Translations (Revisited)

This could be hard to explain, but if you care about biblical texts for literary, historical, poetic, religious or any other reasons, I think it is very important.

About six or seven years ago I became aware of what can only be called a conspiracy, to water down the language of the Scriptures, thereby making their words less offensive to governments and to wealthy, powerful elites. At the time, I had other fish to fry, and so said little about it, except for a Facebook Note, "The Book of Psalms and its Various Translations," and later another, "Where is Mercy?" They are reproduced in relatively recent entries in this blog.

What I found out, back in those days, was that I had half a dozen modern translations of the Bible into English that were victims of this "spinning" of scriptural meanings. I got rid of all of them.

Fortunately, there is an easy way to determine whether the translation that you use has been affected by this modern tendency to willful mistranslation to satisfy an agenda. I call it "the acid test."

If the translation you use was produced by Protestants, who use the Masoretic numbering of the Psalms (or if it is a Tanakh), go to Psalm 18. If your translation was produced by Catholics, it will will probably use the LXX/Vulgate numbering, in which case it will be Psalm 17. In either case, go to the last verse of the psalm, which will be either 50 or 51, depending on the numbering.

Our earliest sources for this psalm are in Hebrew and in Greek. If your translation includes a phrase such as "and shows mercy to his anointed," then it MAY be a good translation; if it says "and shows steadfast love (or kindness, lovingkindness, love, etc.) to his anointed," then it has DEFINITELY been affected by the conspiracy mentioned above, and I would not use it. The word used in Biblical Hebrew is "chesed" which means, and has always meant, "mercy." The word used in Greek is "'éleos," which means "pity, mercy." The three Latin translations that I use (one based on the Greek, and two based on the Hebrew) all translate the word as "misericordia," which means "mercy."

If that example of the "acid test" is too complicated, here is a simpler one. Go to Proverbs 3.3. If it says something to the effect of "let not mercy and truth abandon you," or "let not mercy and truth be far from you," then you MAY have a good translation. But if it says "let not steadfast love and fidelity ..." or some such thing, then you DEFINITELY have a translation that has been a victim of the above-mentioned conspiracy to "soften" and "spin" meanings according to an agenda.

Why does it matter? Well, here's an example. If modern Israelis are to follow the advice of Proverbs 3.3, then their relations with the Palestinians should be characterized by "mercy and truth." "Mercy" is an accountable word that is generally tied to actions. "Truth" is also pretty accountable, since something is either true or it is false. But "steadfast love" is vague, unaccountable, relativistic, and tied to nothing. In concrete terms, it does not commit to any particular type of behavior, or any behavior at all. The same can be said of "fidelity," which is vaguer and more relative than "truth." In other words, it's a weasel word. By the way, the words used in Biblical Hebrew are "chesed" (mercy), and "emet" (truth). I've known those meanings for more than fifty years, and they are the meanings that they've always had in Biblical Hebrew. Saint Jerome knew them in 400 CE, and the translators of the Septuagint knew them in about 200 BCE. Why change them now, except to assuage some people's consciences and let them weasel their way out of doing what is just (and merciful and truthful).

I should mention here that the meanings of words are subject to change over time. Thus, in Modern Hebrew, which did not exist at the time when the books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) were written, "chesed" is often used to mean "charity" or "kindness." But to introduce these meanings into an ancient text is to introduce anachronism and distortion of the original text. The best translator for an ancient text is an ancient translator. Failing that, we at least need a respectful one.

I'm not a fundamentalist. I'm a poet and a translator, and words matter to me. I hope they matter to you, too.

Text © 2017-2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

Respect / ᎪᎯᏳᎯ

ᎪᎯᏳᎯ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᎵᏍᎨᏛᎨᏍᏙᏗ ᎢᏳᏍᏗ.
ᎢᏳᏃ ᎢᏧᎳ ᎤᎭᏎ ᎪᎯᏳᎯᏁ
ᏏᏴᏫ ᏐᎢ ᎾᏍᎩᎭᎢ,
ᎥᏝᎪᎱᏍᏗ ᏰᎵᏆᏎ ᎠᎴᏫᏍᏙᏗ ᎢᏧᎸ.

Respect is the most important thing.
If we have respect
for each other,
nothing can stop us.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The Book of Psalms and its Various Translations (Revisited)

The following was published, in an earlier form, as a Facebook Note. It was republished, also in that earlier form, in this blog on 19 April 2017. The version below is updated with corrections and additions based on later information and further thought.

I'm very disappointed. Recently, after not having seen one for many years, I received a copy of Liber Psalmorum cum Canticis Breviarii Romani. It is the 1944-45 translation of the Psalms by the Pontifical Biblical Institute, ordered by Pius XII.

I expected a lot of it, because I agree with its announced premise: that the best text of the Psalms is the Hebrew text that underlies the Septuagint. Unfortunately, that Hebrew text no longer exists, and they have supposedly tried to reconstruct it. I cannot speak to their methods, but I'd like to say a few things about the results.

One expects a lot from a group calling itself the Pontifical Biblical Institute, so this translation has been very influential. In fact, the Book of Psalms in every Catholic translation of the Bible since the Second World War has been based on it. Due, I suppose, to the soundness of its basic premise, it has also strongly influenced modern Protestant translations, such as the NRSV and the NIV. All of this is extremely unfortunate.

This Liber Psalmorum, or New Latin Psalter (I'll refer to it as NLP from here on) has so far failed every test to which I have put it. Not only that: It seems to have started a very unfortunate trend in Psalms translation, and in Bible translation in general.

Recently I've noticed that modern translations of the Book of Psalms are tendentious in that they water down the original, strong language of the Psalms. The effect of this is to make the Psalms less of an indictment of the human social order, and to make them less embarrassing and threatening both to the civil governments of the world and to the institutional Church. I'll give some examples.

In Psalm 8, v. 5, the Vulgate, accurately reflecting the LXX, which itself reflects a Hebrew text older than the one we now possess, has the phrase "aut filius hominis, quoniam visitas eum," "or the son of man, that you visit him." But the NLP and its followers have "that you care for him." Now that Greek word has both of those meanings, so both interpretations are possible. But the Vulgate translated the word literally, suggesting a more intimate and direct relationship with God, something the institutional Church has always found threatening. By itself, I wouldn't say much about it, but it is part of an unfortunate pattern. The Hebrew word, by the way, doesn't have that ambiguity: it simply means "to visit." Now, my edition of the Vulgate has two versions of the Psalms, one based on the LXX and the other based on the (still unpointed) Hebrew text of Jerome's time. Both versions say "that you visit him." Likewise the KJV. But the NLP and its followers (almost all contemporary translations, including the NIV, the NASB--supposedly the most literal, and the beautiful translation of Robert Alter, 2018) give an alternate Greek meaning, despite the evidence of both the Hebrew text of 400 CE and the Masoretic Hebrew text. Only the Jerusalem Bible (Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, my edition is dated 1997) faithfully follows the Hebrew text.

I should take a little detour here, and say something about our beloved King James Version, of 1608. It contains, in my opinion, one of the last honest translations of the Book of Psalms. Where it differs from the Vulgate and the LXX, it is usually because something (often a whole verse) is missing from the Masoretic Hebrew, upon which it is based. For example, it leaves out the "NUN" verse that should be in Psalm 145, an alphabetic acrostic. But the omission had no agenda; it simply reflected the imperfect state of the Masoretic text that was (and is) available. The Hebrew text is far too important for it to be ignored, and the translators of the KJV did not ignore it. In recent years there has been a campaign against the KJV, saying that it is "not a good translation," and that contemporary translations are "better." In my opinion, neither assertion is true. The only problem I see with the KJV is that its beautiful, Elizabethan English is not always well understood today.

Another example of the watering-down process is seen in Psalm 9b (10), where the Greek and St. Jerome's Latin (both the version based on the LXX and the version based on the Hebrew text of his time) tell us that while the impious man fills himself with pride, the poor man "goes up in flames." But according to the NLP, the poor man "is vexed." The Hebrew word in the Masoretic text means "to burn," it does not mean "to vex," or "to hotly pursue."

Our last example, for present purposes, comes from Psalm 11 (Vulg. and LXX)/Psalm 12 (Hebrew and KJV), where we find (in the Vulgate, which is basically a faithful reflection of the LXX) the phrase "Propter miseriam inopum, et gemitum pauperum. . ." This can be translated as "Because of the misery of the needy and the groans of the poor. . . " The LXX  has "Because of the misery of beggars and the groaning of the poor. . . " Jerome's Hebrew-based version is even stronger: "Because of the destruction of the needy and the groaning of the poor," which is close to the Masoretic Hebrew of today. But in the NLP, the "misery of beggars" or "destruction of the needy" becomes "the affliction of the lowly" (afflictionem humilium).

Yes, let's forget that there are beggars, people in need, and let's reduce their "misery" or "destruction" to "affliction," which makes it all more abstract. Let's not offend the governments of the world, or the billionaires who own and control them.

In Florida and some other states, it is now illegal to feed the homeless or their children, and those who try to do it are arrested. To feed them is, of course, to notice them, and to admit that they exist.

All of this does not just "vex" me; it burns me up.

Text © 2011-2019 by Donald C. Traxler. 

Where Is Mercy? - Revisiting the Question

This was originally written as a Facebook Note, and published there on 18 Oct. 2015. That version was also published in this blog on 20 April 2017. I have now updated it with additional information, and so am publishing it in the blog again.

This morning I had occasion to use a biblical quote. I chose Proverbs 3.3. In the King James Version it goes like this:

“Let not mercy and truth forsake thee . . . “

But I picked up my JPS Tanakh, since it also has the Hebrew original, and read this:

“Let fidelity and steadfastness not leave you . . . “

So I checked the Hebrew:

חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת אַל-יַעַזְבֻךָ

It clearly says, “chesed v’emet,” which means “mercy and truth.” I’ve known these Hebrew words for more than fifty years. Why are they now being changed to “fidelity and steadfastness?” When I studied Kabbalah, some fifty years ago, I learned that “Chesed,” the fourth of the ten sephiroth, means “Mercy.” I started to do a little digging.

I found that this change doesn’t only affect Proverbs, but also the Psalms, and in fact the whole Tanakh (what is called the “Old Testament” in Christianity). I’ve previously written about this problem in the Psalms: see my Facebook Note “The Book of Psalms and its Various Translations,” published July 6 2011 (and republished in this blog on 19 April 2017). Psalm 136 uses the word “chesed” twenty-six times. In every case, it was translated as “ELEOS,” “mercy” in the Septuagint (LXX), made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria in about 200 BCE; in the Vulgate (St. Jerome, ca. 400 CE) as “misericordia,” “mercy;” and in the King James Version (1608 CE) as “mercy.” But now my JPS Tanakh gives it as “steadfastness” and has also changed “truth” to “fidelity.” The Revised Standard Version gives us “loyalty and faithfulness;” NIV: "love and faithfulness;" The Jerusalem Bible (Koren Publishers): "loyal love and truth;" NASB (1971): "kindness and truth;" Robert Alter's new translation (2018): "kindness and truth." What’s wrong with “mercy and truth?”

So I dug a little further, this time in my dictionaries. My dictionary of classical Greek (we don’t have the Hebrew text on which the Septuagint was based) defines “ELEOS” as “pity, mercy.” My dictionary of New Testament Greek defines it as “compassion, mercy.” My Hebrew dictionary (which largely reflects modern usage) gives “grace, favor: righteousness; charity.” In modern Hebrew it is frequently used to mean “charity.” All of this is also consonant with “mercy.” So, if the cream of Jewish scholarship in Alexandria, ca. 200 BCE, took “chesed” to mean “mercy” rather than “steadfastness” and “emet” to mean “truth,” rather than “fidelity,” who are we to change these translations? Is it required by any findings of modern scholarship? I don’t think so.

What is really happening here? At first I thought it was a conspiracy to mistranslate, and in some cases there may be an element of that. But lately I'm becoming more aware of other possibilities.For example: Robert Alter is an honest and honorable man, and he would not intentionally mislead us. And yet, he has "kindness" where the ancients translated "mercy." But "chesed" is often used in Modern Hebrew to mean "charity," which is a form of kindness. Perhaps Alter is being influenced by Modern Hebrew, which didn't exist when the Book of Proverbs was written. Semantic drift over time is clearly at work here. Robert Alter had the benefit of the NASB (completed in 1971), which may also have been influenced by Modern Hebrew, but is considered to be the most literal of contemporary translations (it underwent a revision, though, in 1995, which made it somewhat less literal). The fact is that the meanings of words are fluid over time. This means that the best translator for an ancient text is likely to be an ancient translator.

Here is just one more example, another quote I had occasion to use the other day, Isaiah 59.8:

“. . . they have made their roads crooked, no one who goes in them knows peace.” (Vulgate, KJV, et al are similar.) But my JPS Tanakh says, “They make their courses crooked, no one who walks in them cares for integrity.” I submit that the latter is willful, tendentious mistranslation. the Hebrew clearly says “will not know peace.” I don’t see how it could be any clearer. I know what “shalom” means, and so do you. The Hebrew word for “integrity” is not “shalom,” it’s “shlemut.” They are related words, to be sure, and “shalem” does mean “whole.” But the pointing has been available since about 600 CE and the word was already understood correctly in 200 BCE and 400 CE. Why should we make a ridiculous stretch and try to change it now? It is interesting, though, that in this case and in the previous one, the JPS Tanakh is out in left field, against all the others. I believe that the Jerusalem Bible (Koren Oublishers, Jerusalem, my edition is 1997) is far superior to the JPS publication.

I submit that some of these are cases of willful, tendentious mistranslation. I believe that this is a trend in modern biblical translations. I believe that this scriptural spinning is done to assuage modern consciences and to avoid offending those in power. If you’d like to see more evidence of this, please refer to my earlier Note, referenced above. God help us if we are in a world where mercy, truth, and peace are out of favor.

ᎠᏥᎸᏍᎩᏔᏱ / Florida

ᎠᏥᎸᏍᎩᏔᏱ ᎤᎭᏎ ᎤᎪᏗᏗ ᏘᏲᎭᎵ. ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎡᎶᎯ ᏘᏲᎭᎵᏗ ᎥᎿᎢ. ᎤᏍᏗᎨᏍᏙᏗ, ᎤᏯᏅᏗᏔ "ᎨᎪ" ᏲᏁᎦ ᎬᏙᏗ, ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏂᎬᎾᏛ. ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏰᎵ-ᏂᎨᏒᎾ ᎠᏓᏅᏍᏗ ᎦᎵᏦᏕᏁ ᎪᏩᏘ ᏄᏠᏯᏍᏛᎾ. ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎾᏍᏋ ᎡᏆ ᏘᏲᎭᎵ ᎤᏯᏅᏗᏔ "ᎢᏆᎾ", ᎠᏎᏃ ᎠᏯ Ꮭ ᎪᏩᏘᏎ. ᎡᏆᎨᏍᏙᏗ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏧᎳᏍᎩ. ᎾᏍᎩᏛ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎦᏂᏰᎬ, ᎠᏎᏃ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎾᏍᏋ ᎤᎾᏤᎵ ᎣᏪᏅᏒ.

Florida has many lizards. It is the land of lizards. The smallest, called "gecko" by the whites, are everywhere. It is impossible to leave the house without seeing them. There are also big lizards called "iguana," but I have not seen one. The biggest is the alligator. They are dangerous, but it is also their home.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

I Will Be Indigenous / ᎠᏯ ᎨᏒᎣᏎ ᏴᏫᏯ

I will be indigenous
to the indigenous,
a Jew to the Jews,
a Christian to
the Christians.
What I will not be
is a hater,
or an oppressor.
To me, the most important
thing is respect.
If I must be
only one thing,
I will be human,
to everyone.

Short version:

I will be indigenous
to the indigenous,
a Jew to the Jews,
a Christian
to the Christians,
and human
to everyone.

ᎠᏯ ᎨᏒᎣᏎ ᏴᏫᏯ
ᏴᏫᏯ ᏗᏜ,
ᏧᏏ ᎠᏂᏧᏏ ᏗᏜ,
ᏧᎾᏁᎸᏗ ᎠᏂᏧᎾᏁᎸᏗ ᏗᏜ,
ᎠᎴ ᏴᏫ
ᏂᎦᏛ ᏗᏜ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

A Gift for the Pirates

The photo below is a gift for the pirates. They can use it as the frontispiece for their unauthorized collection of my poems and translations.

Actually, I quite like it. It is me as I am most comfortable and most true to myself. At seventy-six years old, I will never, in this life, look better.

Thanks to all of you who faithfully follow my work, and do so without pirating it.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

Twins

They are twins born of a different mother,
and in a different year,
one is from a time that is other,
and his brother is from here.
One speaks only an indigenous tongue,
the other writes songs that are never sung.
In their differences they are a team,
and live together in a dream.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

Parts

The whole is greater than the sum
of parts regrouping,
forming a new totality,
functioning on
yet another level.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

ᏞᎩ-ᎠᏗᏍᎦᎶᏗ / Ephemeral

"ᏞᎩ-ᎠᏗᏍᎦᎶᏗ"
ᎠᎴ "ᎦᏛᎬ-ᏄᏠᏯᏍᏛᎾ"
Ꮭ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᏠᏱ ᎢᏳᏍᏗ.

"Ephemeral"
and "meaningless"
are not the same thing.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The Other

The Other intrudes
upon everyday life
with its own
opinions.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

The Alter-ego

The alter-ego came unbidden,
trailing history
and lifetimes
of experience.
His agenda,
still unknown,
is his own.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

ᎡᏆ-ᎠᏓᏅᏙ / The Great Spirit

ᎡᏆ-ᎠᏓᏅᏙ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎨᏳ,
ᎤᎸᏌᏓ, ᎠᎴ ᎥᎴᏂᏙᎲ,
ᎠᏎᏃ ᎡᏆ-ᎠᏓᏅᏙ
Ꮭ ᎪᏪᎶᏓᏎ ᎪᏪᎵᏗᏁ.

The Great Spirit is love,
light, and life,
but the Great Spirit
does not write books.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

61,000 Blog Visits, and Real Life

My wife, Sandy, and I recently changed not only houses, but countries and continents. It's enough to make anybody's head spin, and we are no exceptions to that. The best-adjusted member of the family is probably our sweet dog, Betty.

I am still drinking yerba mate, with mate cup and bombilla (having found a brand "para nerviosos" in Hollywood, Florida), but we are not in Uruguay anymore.

When we arrived here, I had not been in the United States for six years. This is not our first time living in the southeastern part of the US, but it is our first time living in Florida. I'll try to give a few of my impressions, below.

The first three people who spoke to me in Miami, spoke to me in Spanish. Some days later, when we picked Betty up from the airline cargo terminal, I also found Spanish to be the most effective way to communicate. But that was south Florida; we are now in central Florida, which is much more "white-bread."

My first impression was of excessive materialism. We are currently staying in the "canals," where almost everyone has a boat. But most do not keep them in the water. Almost every house has an electric boat lift that can lift 10,000 pounds. That may be due to the threat of hurricanes, I don't know. The owners of this rental house have about ten of everything, never just one. They are nice people, who have allowed us to stay here with Betty (not a small dog), and I don't mean to be judgmental--I'm just telling it the way it is.

There is far too little ethnic diversity in this community, at least for my taste, being originally from California. The area is popular with Midwestern "snowbirds," so in some ways it's like a little piece of the Midwest.

I'm a person who loves bookstores, and the other day we went to Books-a-Million, in Port Richey. I was looking for Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, by Robert Alter (street date December 2018). This is probably the most significant Bible translation in a hundred years. Books-a-Million had more Bibles than I had ever seen in one store, and yet they did not have this one. I asked a rather zoftig young woman with plentiful tattoos about it. She looked it up on the computer, and then rather curtly told me, "It's not something that we carry," not even offering to order it for me. This didn't give me a good feeling. Since I was already in the store, I checked out their Newsstand section. I had never seen so many gun magazines, and magazines apparently about extreme bodybuilding. In front of these magazines there had been a pile of a 2018 book that tried to show the human side of Hitler: only one copy was left. The whole experience left me in a dark mood, and I won't be in a hurry to repeat it. I ended up ordering the book (or rather, the three-volume set) from Target.

On Saturday night, Sandy and I went to Skinny's Bar and Grill, about as full of local color (and good food) as you can get. On Saturday nights they have live music, starting at 6:30 and ending at 10:00 (at the neighbors' request). This was a pleasant change, since such places usually start the music when we are already in bed. I was happy to see only one MAGA hat at the outdoor bar, the only one we've seen so far. I think the bloom is off that particular rose. The band was good, and very entertaining.

Other than that, the weather has been mostly sunny. We are in a Constitutional crisis, but I have high hopes.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

A New Translation of the Hebrew Bible

As explained in the review linked below, Robert Alter (of the University of California at Berkeley) devoted twenty-one years of his life to this new translation of the Hebrew Bible. I have ordered it, and will soon have it in my hands. I have high hopes for it.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-translation.html

More on Mistranslations of the Bible.

In the course of moving from one continent to another, I had to let go a lot of very good books. One of those that I could not carry was my JPS Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), but it was the compact edition, and the type was too small for these old eyes. Yesterday, in a thrift store, I found one that I like better, and can more easily read. It is the Jerusalem Bible published by Koren Publishers in 1962. [Not to be confused with the better known Jerusalem Bible published in 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd, which was a Catholic translation, an outgrowth of La bible de Jérusalem (1956).] In that same thrift store I also found a very handsome KJV, and a nice NIV, among other things.

Last night, before going to bed, I opened the KJV at random, to 1 Samuel, and was reading the story of King Saul's pursuit of David with intent to kill him. It's a really good story, told by a storyteller who thoroughly knew his craft. I was soon hooked. Then I came to this, 1 Samuel 20.41, speaking of David and Jonathan: ". . . David arose out of a place toward the south, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself three times; and they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded."

What did this mean? "To exceed" is a transitive verb. He exceeded what? The passage could easily be sexual. Did David "come?" I looked the passage up in my wonderful, newly-acquired Hebrew Bible. The English is the same, obviously borrowed from the KJV, but the original Hebrew says:

  עַד־דָּוִד הְִגְדִיל

  "ad-dovid higdiyl." This means "until David became great (or large). To put it in crude terms, while kissing Jonathan, David got a "boner."

Not totally trusting myself, I reviewed the relevant Biblical Hebrew grammar: the form is the Hiph'il of the stative verb גָדַל, and it means "he became great (or large, or big)." In modern English, "he got big."

The implications of this are obvious. David, who was responsible for much of what was beautiful in the Jewish culture of his time, including most of the Psalms, was either gay or bi. Based on the Hebrew words, I don't see any way around it. Nor do I have any problem with it, but there are those who do.

The world of David's time was less fastidious about such things than we tend to be. Homosexuality was a commonplace in that world, and widely accepted. I couldn't let the matter lie, so I picked up the NIV, and read ". . . but David wept more." This is clearly a mistranslation, since the Hebrew words do not mention weeping.

This morning I dug my Vulgata out of the suitcase and read: ". . . et osculantes alterutrum fleverunt pariter David autem amplius" (. . . and kissing each other, they wept equally, but David more.) What kind of sense does this make, "equally. . . but more?" It is well known that the translators of the KJV tried to be faithful to the Hebrew, and were also influenced by the Vulgate. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate claimed to base his work on the Hebrew, but actually relied more upon the first Jewish translation into Greek, the Septuagint. It is clear that they were all dancing around the original Hebrew words, which were a bit too much for them.

[to be continued]

Text © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

In the Eyes of the False / ᎠᎦᏙᎵᏗ ᎭᏫᎾ ᎦᎶᏄᎮᏛ ᎥᎿᎢ

In the eyes of the false, a lover of truth is dangerous, but a lover of truth and beauty is considered an eccentric artist.

ᎠᎦᏙᎵᏗ ᎭᏫᎾ ᎦᎶᏄᎮᏛ ᎥᎿᎢ, ᎤᏓᎨᏳᎯ ᏚᏳᎪᏛ ᎥᎿᎢ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎦᏂᏰᎬ, ᎠᏎᏃ ᎤᏓᎨᏳᎯ ᏚᏳᎪᏛ ᎠᎴ ᎤᏬᏚ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᎦᏎᏍᏙᏗᏔ ᎦᎸᏙᎳᎨᏍᏗ ᎤᎸᏃᏘᏍᎩ ᏗᏟᎶᏍᏔᏅᏍᎩ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

Udugi Translation of a Meme

I saw this on Diaspora (posted by Morgonas and re-shared by Tony Langmach):

"All the power you will ever need is already within you."

I happen to agree with this statement. Here's how it would go in Udugi:

ᏂᎦᏛ ᎤᎳᏂᎬᎬ Ꮎ ᏂᎯ ᎢᏳᏊ ᎤᏚᎳᏙᏎ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎦᏳᎳ ᏂᎯ ᎭᏫᏂᏗᏢ.

Image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The Visits

The visits to this poetry blog come from many countries. The graphic below, which is for the past seven days, is indicative:

Perhaps I should be writing this in Spanish, since the statistics are in Spanish, the language of my computer. Anyway, what you see here is pretty typical, and a picture is, as they say, worth a thousand words. I do get visits from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but there is a decided bias toward first- and second-world countries.

An interesting thing, which I was able to see in this graphic for the first time, is that "Región Desconocida" ("Unknown Region") appears to be the contested, southern part of the Ukraine, currently occupied by Russia. I had thought that it was Russia proper, perhaps the Russian troll farm. Google has apparently not wished to take what could be interpreted as a political position on this issue, and I have no desire to do so either.

I have no doubt that various governments follow my writings, perhaps because they think that I will use the Udugi language, which is untranslatable by current translation programs, for political purposes. I will not.

I am a poet and photographer, a humanist, a feminist, and a spiritual person, and that's all that I am. I don't give a damn about Shakespeare's ". . . stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." They can have it, I don't want it.

I think that, at one time, the most popular feature of the blog was its nudist/naturist slant. That is still close to my heart, but the most popular feature now is unquestionably the Udugi language. This is a surprise to me, but I am happy about it, and believe that it will be my most enduring legacy.

I thank you all for your continuing interest and enthusiasm. Wadó. ꮹꮩ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The Universal Human Condition

Nothing has changed
for a thousand years,
though we now have running water
and electrons will soon replace gears.

The well-to-do do well--
the rest can go to hell.

Our world has shrunk to fit our phone,
while the spirit is left
to dance alone.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

To See / ᎪᏩᏘ

To see well,
one must see deeply.

ᎪᏩᏘ ᎣᏍᏛ,
ᎠᏎ ᎪᏩᏘ ᎭᏫᏂᎮ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The FaceBowdler

The FaceBowdler
knows no shame,
the FaceBowdler
plays a dirty game.
Hypocrite is
its other name.
This 'crite does faithfully
play its part
to banish freedom
and dumb down art.
Would-be Bowdlers
are silly ducks,
but this effin' monster
really Zucks.

--Pog Mohoin

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

The Illustrations

The illustrations to my poems are often the inspiration for them, and become an integral part of them. The following case is an example of how it works.

The other day I was trying to get an old cell phone to work, and discovered that it still had 25 pictures on it. Among them were two nude selfies, taken in 2011. One of them interested me, both because it was from another time period and because it was so very ordinary. The old phone would not allow me to send or transfer the photo, so I photographed the screen of the phone. Here is the resultant image:

I then converted the photo to a gray-scale, black-and-white image, always the next step. In the process I adjusted brightness and contrast:

It is now a usable image, but still an unremarkable one. Another step is necessary to produce the high-contrast, virtual line-art illustrations that I use in the blog (both for aesthetic reasons and because they are easier to print):

This last step is a very delicate process, and can produce a wide variety of images from a single original. Suddenly we have a much more intense image, capable of inspiring a poem. In this case, it has the further advantage that it can now pass through social-media censorship.

Text and images © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

Note on Recent Poems

For some time now, I've been aware that my poems are getting shorter. This trend is not intentional, it's just what's happening.

Feeling a need to quantify things, I looked at my poetic output so far for the month of May. Skipping over prose and translations, there were eight poems. Their average length was 3.375 lines. Half of them were only two lines, and only one had more than four lines.

In addition to shortness, my poems are becoming more aphoristic and epigrammatic (no, I don't know how to say that in Udugi). I am, in fact, beginning to think of them as "dichos" (sayings).

Something has changed, but I'm not sure what. My poems are usually based on things that come to me, often in the middle of the night (I keep a notebook beside the bed). Sometimes they are inspired by my photography. The sources haven't changed, so I'm not yet able to explain the current, minimalist trend. Maybe someday I will be. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy it.

Thank you for being the loyal readers that you are.

Photo: Fergus McCarthy.

Desire / ᎤᏚᎳᏙ

Desire is timeless,
and never ends.

ᎤᏚᎳᏙ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏄᏠᏱᎪᎯᏓ,
ᎠᎴ ᎥᏝ ᎤᎵᏍᏓᏎ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

At Home / ᎣᏪᏅᏒ ᎾᎿᎢ

At home in past and present,
his future is assured.

ᎣᏪᏅᏒ ᎾᎿᎢ ᏧᏩᎫᏔᏅᏒ ᎠᎴ ᏃᏊᎯᏓ ᎭᏫᎾ,
ᎤᏤᎵ ᎤᏩᎫᏗᏗᏒ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᏗᎦᏂᏴᏓ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

Inner Essences / ᎭᏫᎾᏗᏢᎨ ᎨᏒᎣᏗ

It is the inner essences of things
that are important.
Our inner essence
is light and life.

ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎭᏫᎾᏗᏢᎨ ᎨᏒᎣᏗ ᎢᏳᏍᏗᏗ ᎥᎿᎢ
Ꮎ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᎵᏍᎨᏛ.
ᎠᏆᏤᎵ ᎭᏫᎾᏗᏢᎨ ᎨᏒᎣ
ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᎸᏌᏓ ᎠᎴ ᎥᎴᏂᏙᎲ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler.

ᎤᏰᎸᎭ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᏍᏗ 73 / Naked Wisdom 73

ᎠᎦᏔᎿᎢ ᎠᏍᎦᏯ ᎤᏚᎳᏓᏎ ᎤᏩᏌ ᎦᏲᎵ ᎧᏁᎢᏍᏗᏗᏁ;
ᏄᏓᏅᏛᎾ ᎤᏚᎳᏓᏎ ᎤᎪᏗᏗᏁ.

A wise man needs only few words;
a fool needs many.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

Out of the Shadows / ᏙᏰᎩ ᎤᏓᏴᎳᏛᏗ ᏂᏛᎴᏅᏓ

Out of the shadows
and into the light,
the past comes to visit us,
day or night.

ᏙᏰᎩ ᎤᏓᏴᎳᏛᏗ ᏂᏛᎴᏅᏓ
ᎠᎴ ᎤᎸᏌᏓ ᎾᎿᎢ,
ᏧᏩᎫᏔᏅᏒ ᏅᎳᏎ ᎠᏓᏩᏛᏘ ᎢᏧᎸ,
ᎢᎦ ᎠᎴ ᏒᏃᏱ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

How to type in Cherokee Script

I have at least four ways of typing in Cherokee script. Perhaps that's why I do it so much. Here they are:

"SZBE" (phonetic, literally "sounds") keyboard (Chrome browser extension):

ꭰ ꭱ ꭲ ꭳ ꭴ ꭵ
ꭶ ꭷ ꭸ ꭹ ꭺ ꭻ ꭼ
ꭽ ꭾ ꭿ ꮀ ꮁ ꮂ
ꮃ ꮄ ꮅ ꮆ ꮇ ꮈ
ꮉ ꮊ ꮋ ꮌ ꮍ
ꮎ ꮏ ꮎh ꮑ ꮒ ꮓ ꮔ ꮕ
ꮖ ꮗ ꮘ ꮙ ꮚ ꮛ
ꮝ ꮜ ꮞ ꮟ ꮠ ꮡ ꮢ
ꮣ ꮤ ꮥ ꮦ ꮧ ꮨ ꮩ ꮪ ꮫ
ꮬ ꮭ ꮮ ꮯ ꮰ ꮱ ꮲ
ꮳ ꮴ ꮵ ꮶ ꮷ ꮸ
ꮹ ꮺ ꮻ ꮼ ꮽ ꮾ
ꮚ ᏸ ᏹ ꮒ ᏻ ᏼ

Analysis: "nah" is not available, but I never use it. "yo" gives "ni." "ya" gives "quu." They must be supplied from elsewhere.


"Tsalagi" keyboard:

Chrome layout:     Windows layout:

ꮹ12ᏽꮩꮶꮬꮛꮦꮢꮔꮥꮆ     `ᏣᎳᎩᎣᏏᏲᏩᏙᏙᏦᏜᏋᏖᏒᏄᎿᏳ

ꭺꮃꭱꮫꮤꮿꭴꭲꭳꮑꮸᏻ     ᎪᎳᎡᏛᏔᏯᎤᎢᎣᏁᏕᎶ

ꭰꮝꮧꭹꭶꭿꮪꮈꮅ`'ꮒ     ᎠᏍᏗᎩᎦᎯᏚᎸᎵᏨ'Ꮹ

<ꭼᏼꮣꭵꮈꮎꮕ,.ꮏ     ᎬᏴᏓᎥᎨᎾᏅ,.Ꮒ


shifted

ꮾꮁꮗꮷꮀꮉꮭꮱꮊ()ꮡꮴ     ᏊᎱᏇᏧᎰᎹᏝᏡᎺ()ᎼᎽ

ꮖꮻꮳꮟꮨᏺꭽᏹꮼꮺꮰꮍ     ᏆᏫᏣᏏᏘᏲᎭᏱᏬᏪᏑᏤ

ꮜꮞꮠꮘꮵꮂꭻꭷꭾꮚ"ꮙ     ᏌᏎᏐᏈᏥᎲᎫᎧᎮᏠ"Ꮾ

>ꮓꮽꮯꮮᏸꮋꮇꮲꮄꮌ     ᏃᏭᏟᏞᏰᎻᎷᏢᎴᏉ

"Tsalagi," the Cherokee National Keyboard, uses all four rows of your keyboard, including those that were numerals or other symbols before. The Chrome layout has an advantage in that you can shift into ordinary Roman alphabet by using the Caps Lock key.

These two layouts are not precisely the same. Chrome has the advantage for supplying missing SZBE symbols. Windows gives a larger, more readable type. Windows can supply "yo" Ᏺ and "ya" Ꮿ, using the same keystrokes. Blending SZBE with Windows: ꮨᏲꭽꮅ (font size does not match).

Your layout results could be slightly different from mine, because my computer, purchased in Uruguay, has a Spanish keyboard.

ꮨᏺꭽꮅ (SZBE blended with Chrome layout of Tsalagi kbd)

***

SZBE keyboard: "ya" and "yo" are missing

ꮨᏺꭽꮅ (supplied "yo" from Tsalagi kbd w/ "shift-y").

ꭰꮿ (supplied "ya" from Tsalagi kbd w/ "y").

And finally, my favorite method is here:

Easy transliteration from translitteration.com


BUT, it is not always available. If it isn't, you will need to use one of the other methods.

Neither the Chrome SZBE extension nor the program from translitteration.com will accept variants from the Western dialect for the sounds, so you need to use Sequoyah's original values for the symbols of his syllabary (i.e., "tsalagi," not "jalagi").

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.