Reading the blog of Victor Mair, I noticed Mair’s respect for James Legge’s translations of the Chinese classics into English (especially over Giles’s translations), which Mair recommends even over most translations into modern standard Mandarin and
I picked up a copy of Li-Young Lee's translation, but haven't read much of it yet. Near the end of "chapter 4", it says, "The first cause, it seems the progenitor of God." (page 9). Is "God" accurate? I only took a semester of Mandarin back in Fall-2013. This edition has the Chinese on the left page with the English on the right. In the introduction it has the Perennialist bullshit about how all religions, East and West, are the same (p.xiii). That's something that turned me off of most English translations of the Bhagavad Gita. In the translators notes it says,
"We may never truly know who authored Dae De Jing, although it seems strange to us that Dao De Jing would have been attributed to Laozi is the book were not written by him, dictated by him, or based on his teachings."
The last option is definitely not the same as the first two: Hebrews is def. Pauline but no credible scholar thinks Paul wrote it, or dictated it. The translators further say "we have been able to comprehend it as a unified whole." However, the only way to truly rule out any redactors of any ancient text is to compare MSS, and I'm assuming that is a lot harder to do with the Dao De Jing than with the Bible.....
The character translated "God" here is 帝 (Dì). Pleco's Outlier Linguistics dictionary for Chinese characters says its original meaning was the base of a plant, and means "highest ruler".
I seriously recommend S.Mitchell's translation as well as an English commentary, and maybe some academic articles on it. Maybe visit a Daoist temple in China? Don't give up on it after just one read. I would also love to see you review Manu Smriti (but don't use Wendy Doniger's translation, she's a bit antique).
The correct response here should be reading the Zhuang Zi, which I will read at some point this year. Mair didn't like Mitchell's translation, and the commenters say he doesn't know Classical Chinese:
Legge (who is quite useful here) says religious Daoism is a phenomenon that appeared well after the introduction of Buddhism into China, and has little to do with the philosophical Daoism of the Dao De Jing and Zhuang Zi (which makes sense).
Manu Smriti, incorrectly translated as "Laws of Manu", is the Hindu equivalent of Code of Hammurabi/Leviticus. In Hinduism, you have arthashastra (Kautilya), Kama Sutras (Kama Sutra, among others?), and Dharma Shastra (Manu Smriti, Vishnu Smriti, et al). Dalit activists pretend Manu was actual Hindu law in ancient India (it wasn't and this is where the British messed up). There are six classical commentaries on Manu and the first translation of it into a European language was into French. It was first translated into English by a German scholar whose native language of course was German. The Doniger translation is actually worse than that one so I recommend any other English translation. Some think there was no historical Manu but the argument is the same argument that mythicists give for the ahistoricity of Adam ("his name means, 'man', so he couldn't have existed!"-which isn't a good argument IMO).
The Bhagavad Gita is considered "Shruti" or higher scripture whereas Manu, Arthashastra are "smriti" or lower scripture. However, most English translations mistranslate chapter 18-mainly "cattle rearing" where it should read "cow protection" as in the updated Prabhupada translation (2009). So could review Bhagavad Gita instead of Manu, or could read Uddhava Gita-which is from the 11th Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, and is much more philosophical. I remember a Hindu priest discouraged me from reading it because it was "too philosophical", LOL. So for that reason I'd check it out.
One book I don't recommend re: Indian philosophy would be S.Radhakrishnan's anthology since the text-type is hard to read. He has the main text but it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the classical commentary and his own since he has pretty much the same font size and text type for those two. The best modern intro to Indian philosophy would be something by Jon Ganeri or Matthew Dasti.
https://sacred-texts.com/hin/cjw/index.htm-older translations of Shankara's works, though the "Vivek-Chudamani" or "Crest Jewel of Discrimination" is disputed as pseudepigraphic-though it's certainly within the same school of thought as Shankara. Shankaracharya is believed to be an incarnation of Shiva and the premier Hindu philosopher. Some mistakenly think though that his school drove Buddhism out of India whereas in reality it was a combination of the Islamic Conquest and the emerging bhakti movement.
You're welcome. Real quick, did you put up a review of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"? I saw your reading list and noticed you aren't a fan of it. My friends invited someone from the San Francisco Zen Center way back in 2016 and he gave a talk on it, but being nine years ago, I don't remember much of it.
"Real quick, did you put up a review of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"? I saw your reading list and noticed you aren't a fan of it."
I came close to buying it (it was $2), but just previewed the first chapter, in which everything that guy said about posture was blatant lies (fortunately he was consistent in the lies). So I didn't buy it and instead bought Niebauer's No Self, No Problem, in which the preview was at least interesting. :-)
Edit: I flipped through some more pages of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and didn't like it; I found the text confusing.
Okay, I noticed you recommend reading the Gospel of Matthew over Dao De Jing. Richard Carrier (who has since banned me from commenting on his blog) said it is the least historical of the four gospels. I know that the Sermon on the Mount cannot be translated back into Hebrew or Aramaic without losing the wordplay and the scene where he calls Kepha (Peter) his "rock" makes more sense in the Greek than in either semitic language. I have a master's in theology and my professor who taught my class on G.Matthew wrote this book a few years ago: https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2020/5/3/book-note-matthew-within-sectarian-judaism
Though AFAIK he doesn't mention the whole debate about linguistic style.
G.Scott Gleaves' book notes that the Gospel of Matthew shows no signs of being "translation Greek" and was definitely an original Greek work.
I picked up a copy of Li-Young Lee's translation, but haven't read much of it yet. Near the end of "chapter 4", it says, "The first cause, it seems the progenitor of God." (page 9). Is "God" accurate? I only took a semester of Mandarin back in Fall-2013. This edition has the Chinese on the left page with the English on the right. In the introduction it has the Perennialist bullshit about how all religions, East and West, are the same (p.xiii). That's something that turned me off of most English translations of the Bhagavad Gita. In the translators notes it says,
"We may never truly know who authored Dae De Jing, although it seems strange to us that Dao De Jing would have been attributed to Laozi is the book were not written by him, dictated by him, or based on his teachings."
The last option is definitely not the same as the first two: Hebrews is def. Pauline but no credible scholar thinks Paul wrote it, or dictated it. The translators further say "we have been able to comprehend it as a unified whole." However, the only way to truly rule out any redactors of any ancient text is to compare MSS, and I'm assuming that is a lot harder to do with the Dao De Jing than with the Bible.....
The character translated "God" here is 帝 (Dì). Pleco's Outlier Linguistics dictionary for Chinese characters says its original meaning was the base of a plant, and means "highest ruler".
https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing
"I'm assuming that is a lot harder to do with the Dao De Jing than with the Bible....."
Two pre-Han copies were discovered in tombs (the Guodian Chu slips and the Mawangdui silk texts).
I seriously recommend S.Mitchell's translation as well as an English commentary, and maybe some academic articles on it. Maybe visit a Daoist temple in China? Don't give up on it after just one read. I would also love to see you review Manu Smriti (but don't use Wendy Doniger's translation, she's a bit antique).
The correct response here should be reading the Zhuang Zi, which I will read at some point this year. Mair didn't like Mitchell's translation, and the commenters say he doesn't know Classical Chinese:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=57211
Legge (who is quite useful here) says religious Daoism is a phenomenon that appeared well after the introduction of Buddhism into China, and has little to do with the philosophical Daoism of the Dao De Jing and Zhuang Zi (which makes sense).
https://books.google.com/books?id=fpcuAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
"I would also love to see you review Manu Smriti"
I already have a lot to read this year, so I am unlikely to read it this year. What is this book about?
Also, thoughts on my book list?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KOCR-qSvx0vi0XU18pglwh84NVkk2i0DANdHeM4xMmo/edit?tab=t.0
Manu Smriti, incorrectly translated as "Laws of Manu", is the Hindu equivalent of Code of Hammurabi/Leviticus. In Hinduism, you have arthashastra (Kautilya), Kama Sutras (Kama Sutra, among others?), and Dharma Shastra (Manu Smriti, Vishnu Smriti, et al). Dalit activists pretend Manu was actual Hindu law in ancient India (it wasn't and this is where the British messed up). There are six classical commentaries on Manu and the first translation of it into a European language was into French. It was first translated into English by a German scholar whose native language of course was German. The Doniger translation is actually worse than that one so I recommend any other English translation. Some think there was no historical Manu but the argument is the same argument that mythicists give for the ahistoricity of Adam ("his name means, 'man', so he couldn't have existed!"-which isn't a good argument IMO).
The Bhagavad Gita is considered "Shruti" or higher scripture whereas Manu, Arthashastra are "smriti" or lower scripture. However, most English translations mistranslate chapter 18-mainly "cattle rearing" where it should read "cow protection" as in the updated Prabhupada translation (2009). So could review Bhagavad Gita instead of Manu, or could read Uddhava Gita-which is from the 11th Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, and is much more philosophical. I remember a Hindu priest discouraged me from reading it because it was "too philosophical", LOL. So for that reason I'd check it out.
One book I don't recommend re: Indian philosophy would be S.Radhakrishnan's anthology since the text-type is hard to read. He has the main text but it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the classical commentary and his own since he has pretty much the same font size and text type for those two. The best modern intro to Indian philosophy would be something by Jon Ganeri or Matthew Dasti.
https://www.bridgew.edu/department/philosophy/dr-matthew-r-dasti
https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781000728033_A39126515/preview-9781000728033_A39126515.pdf-link to a preview of Ganeri's book.
https://sacred-texts.com/hin/manu.htm-Buhler's outdated but still accessible English translation
https://sacred-texts.com/hin/cjw/index.htm-older translations of Shankara's works, though the "Vivek-Chudamani" or "Crest Jewel of Discrimination" is disputed as pseudepigraphic-though it's certainly within the same school of thought as Shankara. Shankaracharya is believed to be an incarnation of Shiva and the premier Hindu philosopher. Some mistakenly think though that his school drove Buddhism out of India whereas in reality it was a combination of the Islamic Conquest and the emerging bhakti movement.
Thank you for the reply.
You're welcome. Real quick, did you put up a review of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"? I saw your reading list and noticed you aren't a fan of it. My friends invited someone from the San Francisco Zen Center way back in 2016 and he gave a talk on it, but being nine years ago, I don't remember much of it.
"Real quick, did you put up a review of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"? I saw your reading list and noticed you aren't a fan of it."
I came close to buying it (it was $2), but just previewed the first chapter, in which everything that guy said about posture was blatant lies (fortunately he was consistent in the lies). So I didn't buy it and instead bought Niebauer's No Self, No Problem, in which the preview was at least interesting. :-)
Edit: I flipped through some more pages of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and didn't like it; I found the text confusing.
Okay, I noticed you recommend reading the Gospel of Matthew over Dao De Jing. Richard Carrier (who has since banned me from commenting on his blog) said it is the least historical of the four gospels. I know that the Sermon on the Mount cannot be translated back into Hebrew or Aramaic without losing the wordplay and the scene where he calls Kepha (Peter) his "rock" makes more sense in the Greek than in either semitic language. I have a master's in theology and my professor who taught my class on G.Matthew wrote this book a few years ago: https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2020/5/3/book-note-matthew-within-sectarian-judaism
Though AFAIK he doesn't mention the whole debate about linguistic style.
G.Scott Gleaves' book notes that the Gospel of Matthew shows no signs of being "translation Greek" and was definitely an original Greek work.