Aloha

[Whateverist]

I'd be interested to hear more about your early religious experience and what it is you believe now.  I get the feeling that for you it is as if you've decided to address nature as a whole and in its parts as an other or even Other.  You have apparently spent a lot of time learning to translate, I'm guessing in order to allow you to dig into the bible.  So I'd also be interested in what esteem you hold the bible now.  How important, if at all, is it for you to identify as a Christian?  If you're willing and more comfortable not sharing this widely, I'd happily welcome a PM.  I'm more than willing to reciprocate with my own background if interested.

I went to Sunday school as a kid in many different church's. My mother was a seeker who talked to us kids about Jesus. Jesus became my invisible friend. I would take Him on bike rides and show Him beautiful things and teach Him what I was learning in school.

At 9yrs I was badly injured and a pastor that had recently randomly visited our house and inviting us to His church, would visit me in the hospital and gave me my first bible. Long story short, he is now my stepfather having married my mother when I was 16.

So, early on I had access to his extensive library and took full advantage. His mentors were all heavy into Greek so I was exposed to it early on.

When I got older I would ask him and our pastor friends questioned about the grammar like, "Is that word a present participle". They would say, "Yes but..."

Eventually, my stepfather bought me books on translating, interlinear and lexicons so I could answer my own questions.

My life was very good and just kept on getting better and better until I didn't look or live anything I was taught about life. My other problem was all the "Yes but..." answers.

I eventually went heavy into Greek grammatical inflection as Greek is highly inflective. Greek is a precision Swiss watch and English is a sundial at night! As I taught myself how to hyper-literally translate the inflection(declension, conjugation), I started to see problems in the English translations and theology. However, my life made perfect sense!

As I continued, my own theological prejudices were smashed! I could see the protestant manipulations, the Latinizations such as 'salvation', 'sin', trinity' and 'spirit' and general academic dishonesty. Nobody seems to know how to translate an anarthrous construction or articular construction, a pronoun, a predicate or prepositions!

I also learned how they justify their dishonesty which they learned in seminary school with high sounding grammar manipulative tools.

When did the church forget that those letters were originally written to illiterate fishermen and farmers whom understood what was said and historically kicked ass!

I hold God and the bible in the highest esteem. The Greek bible is absolutely gorgeous filled with treasure.

However, the church, not so much. Yet, you can't talk to them. So I wrote a Kindle eBook Wake Up Call William McCoy. We have to wait and see what happens. It will be in print soon, I hope, and retitled "The Power of the Universe".

I've also study many sciences starting with geology at 6yrs. Currently doing experiments with vacuum mechanics inspired by studying squirrels!

christianos translated "Christian" is first christos with means 'anointed' and -ianos is a Latin adjectival word ending meaning "belonging to" as outsides gave us that name. In that sense, I love it! But, ask 10 different professed Christians what Christion means and you will get 10 different loosely paraphrased answers they learned from people whom went to seminary and passed an ordination test so that we can be sure that they are telling the truth--gag!

Thank you and I'm glad you put this here in the intro section (no snarkiness allowed).

I had a similar early childhood, throwing every other Frito from my lunch over my shoulder for Jesus on the way to first grade.  My imagination also filled in much from the little bit I heard about the Christian mythos.  But we stopped going to church before I started attending school.  Unlike you I never read the bible itself, let alone translate anything from it. Got to tell you, I'm not a big fan of it.

I wonder where you locate your God.  Is it something 'out there', grander than the cosmos itself?  Or might it be something 'inside', something in our psyche rather than in the world itself.  I've come to the conclusion that the former perspective is a projection of the latter.  

I wonder if your insights as a translator lead you to regard the concept of the supernatural differently than so many other believer do.  I can make no sense of it, personally.  Can you?