[darcs-users] Open Source Hebrew Roots Bible; darcs the right software to use?

[Ted Walther]

On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 01:52:53PM -0500, Simon Chappell wrote:
>On 4/3/06, Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com> wrote:
>> On 4/3/06, Patrick McFarland <diablod3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > The King James Bible, while almost insulting to bibles by calling
>> > it a bible, is not copyrighted and is a public domain work.
>>
>> Right, which is why I thought it was weird to copyright a derivative
>> of it.  Again, I'm not a lawyer, perhaps that sort of thing is just
>> fine.
>
>The original poster just stated that they wanted to licence the
>resultant derivative work. IANAL, but I'm sure if they add content to a
>public domain work, that their additions would be eligible for
>copyright consideration, even if the base work was not. Then the
>combination of the public domain base work (i.e. the KJV) and their
>changes (copyrighted) would be released under a licence.
>
>Not how I'd do it, but it sounds legit to my non-lawyer thinking. I'd
>just make my changes public-domain and publish the combination under a
>name that helped people understand that it was a derivative of the KJV.
>KJV++ anyone? KJV 2.0 perhaps?
>
>Out of interest, will you be accepting volunteers? My Hebrew is
>terrible without a copy of Strongs to hand, but I would be delighted to
>help with proof-reading.

Definitely.  My main technique is as follows:

Open up Strongs.  Find an innocent seeming word.  Look it up in the
back.  In the back, the numbers are in roughly Hebrew-aphabetic order.
Toss away the vowel points, which were added to the text a thousand
years after it was written.  Hebrew scholar Karl Randolph endorses this
technique.  Then look at the words forward and backward to see if any
turn out to be exactly the same.  Then find some English word or phrase
that covers all the meanings of what used to be separate words.  Then
substitute that one in for all appropriate Strong's numbers.  In the
changelog entry, document the information from Strongs, the Hebrew
transliteration, then the substitution.

Another technique is that, as I read various books and they mention
mistranslations or better translations, I make a note, then make a patch
based on that, and refer to the book or person or url who came up with
the change, describing their rationale.

For instance, the Hebrew text of Job supports the inclusion of the final
few verses of Job which are only found in the Greek text, but explaining
how it does this isn't trivial.

So not only will this be a "more correct" King James, but it will be
fully self-documenting.  People will be able to go through and
cherry-pick only those changes which they agree with.  Which is why I
was interested in using darcs.

I don't plan to do a thee/thy/thou substitution in the beginning mainly
because it would take so long.  But if someone submits a changeset that
does the whole thing, I will happily apply it.

Like Linus with the Linux kernel, I want each changeset to only change
one thing.  If you are changing thou to you, then I'd like that to be
all you do in that changeset.

Anyhow, that is the vision, and I'm still not sure if darcs will let me
do what I need without too much trouble.  Maybe I should go away and
mock up a few use-case scenarios so you can see what I mean.  I'll try
to have that ready in a day or two.

Cheers!

Ted

-- 
          It's not true unless it makes you laugh,                           
     but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.

Eukleia: Ted Walther
Address: 5690 Pioneer Ave, Burnaby, BC  V5H2X6 (Canada)
Contact: 604-430-4973