Incidentally, while looking for a funny and punny Book of Job title for my post about Mike Rowe and the Creation (gag) museum, I came across this site, which states that they couldn’t put the Revised Standard Version of the Bible on their site anymore. Why not? Because the National Council of Churches of Christ owns the copyright for the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in the USA and told them to take it down.
Isn’t the Bible supposed to be the word of God? And now it’s copyrighted?
Incidentally, and coincidentally, I just found out that not only does the Book of Job declare that unicorns are real, but there is a museum for them in Kentucky… and it’s probably the most scientifically accurate museum for miles around.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Well, sure it is: Copyright usually extends to a few decades post-mortem of the author. The bible is supposed to be only recorded by humans, but actually been drafted/dictated by the holy spirit, so they actually have to claim copyright as his agents, otherwise they would have to admit that Nietzsche was right when he said that god is dead.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:23 am
now all that is left for them is to copyright God(tm) and that’ll take care of the creationists
-jb
August 9th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t copyright require original authorship? If man had no hand in its writing, then copyright doesn’t apply. But if man did apply sufficient skill/judgment, then that same interference would necessarily taint the word of God with man’s imperfection. They want to have their cake and eat it too, and the cake doesn’t even exist!
August 9th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Yeah and God is really pissed that they’re making money off His Words,,,
I expect they’ll get hit with a really big tornado,,,soon,,,
I really think churches should be taxed as corporations. After all, they’re some of the biggest money makers around.
Maybe we could get enough “new” money in the tax base to pay for real education,,,as in biology and astronomy.
GAry 7
PS. that was a sop to your biology buddy.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
you wrote, “Isn’t the Bible supposed to be the word of God? And now it’s copyrighted?”
The Bible itself isn’t copyrighted but particular translations are. There are English translations that are freely available.
you wrote, “…the Book of Job declare that unicorns are real…”
Not all translations use the word “unicorn” in Job. I don’t know the languages and so don’t understand the translation issues, but modern translations, including the RSV, do not use the word “unicorn”. I did get a kick out of the Unicorn Museum parody site. Thanks for the link.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Well, it works so specific translations like the NIV, RSV, NRSV, ESV or TLV are copyrighted, since people did put work and money into the process of going through and comparing manuscripts and older translations, updating the language, publishing and printing the version, etc. If you look through the intro to a modern translation like the NIV or ESV, for example, there are stipulations as to how much of it you can copy or quote in a book before it’s considered to be beyond the bounds of fair use.
The historic KJV version, however, is public domain, and so is still useful for being free, despite the archaic language and faulty translation paraphrases, like the unicorn bit, as well as some other places where old currencies are transposed to pennies, farthings, and pounds. But that’s what biblical commentaries are for. Asimov’s is pretty good for secular interpretation, for example.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:35 am
What I want to know is how the authors of the KJV managed to get unicorn when everyone else got “wild ox”. Of course, I’m sure that there are far too many people out there who will just take this as more proof that all the versions besides king james are wrong. Cause we all know that god spoke ye olde english, right?
August 9th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Under U.S. copyright law anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. If you create a new adaptation of an existing work it is protected by copyright law.
Presumably the Churches of Christ censored out all those inconvenient passages about the meek inheriting the Earth and how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:43 am
It’s the particular translation that is copyrighted…
…which should serve as a useful reminder to Biblical literalists that a translation is a creative act, not some automatic or mechanical process. Each translation is an act of interpretation, in both senses.
In other words, just about everybody who claims to believe in the literal truth of the Bible actually has little idea what the Bible literally says because they’ve only ever read it in translation.
And that’s before you even get started on the number of variations in the source material in the original language or in intermediate translations (e.g. the Vulgate). Trying to study the Bible in the original actually seems to be a pretty good cure for literalism — see for instance “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart Ehrman.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Darn! That’s the end of my bible quoting days, I don’t wanna end up with a copyright lawsuit on my derrière.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:48 am
OK everybody, look up the difference between trademark, copyright and patent. They are often confused:
http://www.lawmart.com/searches/difference.htm
The original post however is situationally ironic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony ) and quite amusing. Thanks BA!
August 9th, 2007 at 10:58 am
How strangely un-Christian of them. I’m sure Jesus would approve of such a d-bag move.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I’m a graduate of that crazy university that you mentioned earlier, Bob Jones University. (Note: I did not take any science classes at said university, and I don’t share in their fundamentalism, homophobia, etc. etc.) At one point I attended a meeting with a Bible translator by the name of Hans Bernard. He told us that, as Carl points out, each translation is copyrighted, not the original text of Scripture.
The reason that modern day translators keep the copyright on their translations is so that other publishers can’t resell their translation without helping to pay for the translation costs. Also, it prevents people from mixing the translators work with other “inferior” translations.
So it’s about money–these translators do have to make a living, after all–and about the intellectual purity of the translation. Not about claiming exclusive ownership over the Word of God.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:16 am
The Unicorn Museum is actually a parody of the Creation Museum, as it says in their About page:
“The Unicorn Museum is a parody of the Creation Museum, a religious-based institution which opened its doors in Petersburg, KY on May 28, 2007. . . . We at the Unicorn Museum think this is hogwash and is about as likely as the chance of unicorns being real. Interestingly however, the Bible itself mentions unicorns by name a total of nine times and so we at the Unicorn Museum find ourselves stuck in a strange quandary. If the Creationists are right and the Bible is accurate, it means that Unicorns are real and we’re gonna have to get some of those suckers stuffed and on display pretty fast if we want to be taken seriously as a reputable museum. Ah the perils of epistemology.”
August 9th, 2007 at 11:24 am
OK, you’ve got to check out the Mr. Deity video on the subject at
http://www.grouper.com/c/Funny/Mr_Deity_and_the_Book_Episode_9/1806062#ml=o%3d12%26fpl%3d68726%26fx%3d
BTW, the other videos are also hilarious
August 9th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Translators copyright holds over many versions of the Bible. The Authorised Version (a.k.a. the KJV) is old enough to be out of copyright in most countries, but is still covered by old Letters Patent in the UK meaning that it has to be licenced from the Queen’s Printer (now part of Cambridge University Press) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or from the Scottish Bible Board in Scotland.
The upshot of this is that virtually all translations from the original Greek/Hebrew texts are still in copyright (older translations tended to be from the latin Vulgate text, with the exception of the Authorised Version). The Revised Version of 1895 (and its derivative, the American Standard Version of 1901) are notable exceptions.
One project of note is the World English Bible, an online project that has created a public-domain version of the Bible that isn’t over a hundred years old.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:43 am
I didn’t think there were any examples of the original text still around.
Besides, under the law the Bible may be copyrightable, but it seems pretty hypocritical to me to claim ownership over what you claim to be the word of God. Even if you are only claiming ownership of a translation of it the words are still supposed to be those of God. The law is on their side, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hypocritical.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:50 am
About those unicorns and oxen, it works like this:
When the Bible got translated into Greek, they used the word monokeros because that was what the Greeks called the wild cattle of Asia. That was because of the way the various Mesopotamian peoples, but especially the Persians depicted them in full profile so that it looked like the horns were a single horn. The Greeks knew better, that’s just what they called them.
When Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, he used the Greek version rather than the original Hebrew. Now his Greek was fair, but not always up to snuff (better than his Hebrew, though). So, he hit this word he didn’t know. “Monokeros, what’s that? Well, it means “one horn”, so I’ll just call it unicornus.” And that’s how unicorns wound up in the Bible, not to mention a lot of demons who are really screech owls. Modern translations work from the oldest available original texts, KJV and the like are translations of a translation of a translation.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Actually, there’s the Cincinnati Museum, which is just across the Kentucky/Ohio border from the Fairy Tale Museum. The Fairy Tale Mausoleum is “just down the road” from the Greater Cincinnati Airport. On the Cincinnati Museum’s Omnimax, they’re going to be showing a film about the two Mars Rovers. I’m hoping to make it to see it.
What’s more interesting, is that Kings Island is also in the Greater Cincinnati area, but gets 3 million visitors a year. (Ham and company were making a big deal about reaching 100,000 visitors, a little while back.) So, that means The Beast and are more popular than their museum.
August 9th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Careful there J.D. Harper! Don’t be writing stuff in here that makes sense or you will throw the atheists into a tizzy!
August 9th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
That doesn’t explain how it ended up in the AV, which used the hebrew Masoretic texts for the OT. Of course the answer could be that the AV translators were relying an awful lot more on the Vulgate (and the Douay-Rheims translation of it into English) than they were claiming. Although that would have given them ‘rhinoceros’ in Job – the AV seems to be alone in using ‘unicorn’ here.
Job 39:9
Vulgate: “numquid volet rinoceros servire tibi aut morabitur ad praesepe tuum”
D-R: “Shall the rhinoceros be willing to serve thee, or will he stay at thy crib?”
AV: “Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?”
August 9th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Well hey, if it works for the Scientologists, it can work for bible translation publishers, eh? If I had time and inclination, I’d publish my own humorous translation…
August 9th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
The sole advantage of being raised on the King James Bible is that I was the only one in my high school English classes who was able to read Shakespeare and other similar vintage literature and really understand it without Cliff notes. I just roll my eyes in pity for folks who think KJV is “the” translation.
By the way, it’s too early to write off ALL of Kentucky. Down near Mammoth Cave, they have a place called “Dinosaur World”. Much better than I expected, made a decent attempt to teach and get kids excited about real dinosaur science, including all the bits about “millions and millions of years ago”.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
WWJC–What would Jesus Copyright? As mentioned before translating is itself an original work. Sort of the way Disney takes the Seven Dwarves, gives it is own style and copyrights the movie. Which makes it ironic that they advocated extending copyrights to 100 years. Mickey you’ll be public domain someday!
August 9th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
I suppose this is just like classical music CDs not being in the public domain; the sheet music is public, but the actual performance is copyrighted. In this case it would be the translation of the book in question is copyrighted for a stupid-long time.
At least direct authorship isn’t (legally) attributed to any dieties. Then, if christians had their way, it would never come out of copyright under U.S. law which is life of the author + some absurd number of years.
August 10th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Having looked at the site claiming copyright of the RSV, I can catagorically state for the record that they are nothing to do with the church grouping, “churches of Christ”
The group holding said copyright is the “National Council of Churches USA”
Although by the time Phil has release this from the spam filter, there will be lots more posts and no one will think to go back over the already read posts to see if there are any more new posts, so no one will read this post so why am I bothering
August 10th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Black Cat Said:
“I didn’t think there were any examples of the original text still around.”
You mean the autogrpah copies.
‘original text’ simply means the text in the original language. Scholars don’t rely on one manuscript–they use all mauscripts of the original text and ancient translations to recreate the original text free of scribal errors. If, for example you read the introduction to the nestle-Aland text of the NT, you will see that what they are trying to recreate through their editorial choices is the bible that was used as the lectionary in the church in Alexandria around 150 AD. Trying to get to any text older than that would be extraordinaril difficult and uncertain.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Most already nailed the main error with Phil’s tongue-in-cheek post, copyright pertains to the individual translation, work of many people. And thanks Rob and DemetriosX for the information about Job 39:9. I’ve never seen a translation using unicorns. How bizarre.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:21 am
The New American Bible translates that word as “wild ox.” Bit of a far cry from unicorn.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Dr. BA, please help!! Today Classmates.com covers your entire post! I don’t see an x for a close button…………….
August 10th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Didn’t L Sprague deCamp address that years ago? I remember reading his book in high school, maybe junior high – the dragon on the Ishtar Gate and so on.
KJV is a beautiful work but not a faithful translation. Among its many flaws as a translation is that it took what were Greek works in a living, vital, even colloquial register (the gospels especially) and rendered them in what was even at the time archaic and formal English.
Bible translators often have an ax to grind. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get paid for their work.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I wouldn’t worry about not being able to access the RVS on line. The site has the King James translation which is stunning prose whether you believe it or not.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
[...] Phil has linked to an interesting new project. The Creation Museum looks like a bit of a dump; I wouldn’t waste my time or money, but this place… well, it might be worth planning a whole trip to the States. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. The The other museum. by I Wish I Knew, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License. Read More Post a Comment [...]