[sword-devel] clean bible or bad phantasy?

Patrick Narkinsky sword-devel@crosswire.org
Thu, 05 Dec 2002 09:59:11 -0500


Thus spake "Daniel Russell"> :

> If that is the attitude that is being adopted by this group, then i
> wholeheartedly disagree with it. I find it absurd that the group would
> fail to endorse the original unvoweled text, especially considering that
> that is how Jewish people actually read nearly all of their text today!,
> nevermind the fact that God Himself allowed the authors of the text,
> ---- wait, scratch that, this does not have to include God ---, but the
> BIBLE AUTHORS THEMSELVES actually wrote the text that way.

What precise "endorsement" do you visualize?  What I hear everyone saying is
"let's go ahead and include it, but let's also include the other Hebrew
texts for reference."  Consider a parallel case: at least some on this group
regard the King James version as the best available English Translation.  I
regard it as a very nice translation done in 1611, and think that we have
many much better translations available, even out of copyright.  (In
particular, the RSV is IMNSHO an excellent translation, if a bit dated.)

Does this mean I should run off in a huff because I don't like the KJV?  No
... I just let them do their thing and I do my own. If you produce a module
that doesn't have vowel points, I'm SURE you could put it on your own
website, and I imagine that Crosswire would put it in the modules list. Even
if it required a software mod to work, you could still do it, because sword
is GPL.

However, it seems like you want someone else to do the work for you.

That's not how open source software works: you have to scratch your own
itch. I don't "feel an itch" for an unvoweled Masoretic text, so I'm
unlikely to volunteer to work on one.  I do feel "an itch" for an aspirated
Westcott-Hort with UBS4 variants (contrary to popular belief, Paleographers
think that the earliest Greek texts WERE aspirated, just not accented), so I
might well work on that one.  I don't "feel an itch" for a Windows version
of Sword, so I don't mess with it.  I do feel an itch for a Mac OS X
version, so I scratch it. I also don't feel an itch for a Mac OS 9 version
of sword - so I do all my development in cocoa.  If you don't know how,
learn!  That's what all the rest of us had to do.

Patrick

--
Patrick Narkinsky - Apprentice Pastor, Hope Community Church - 757-652-9540

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons
exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - Chesterton