My friend Paul Davies must be the least regular blogger in the world. In fact, I didn’t even know he had a blog until he mentioned it on FaceBook and he hasn’t posted since 2008. Anyway, his latest post is a little translation problem that is well worth a look at:
I know of an ethnic group which has no word for ‘God’. The translators of the Bible decided to use the word “Dios,” which is Spanish for God. However, this group do have a word for ‘spirit’, because they believe that there are many spirits, for example in the trees, in the waterfalls, and of the animals. These spirits can be good, bad, or indifferent to humans. Because the group do not have a word for the Devil either, the translators used their word for ‘spirit’ with a suffix which means “the biggest” to describe the Devil.
If you have any thoughts on this, go over to Paul’s blog and make your comments there. It might encourage him to write more!
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