@slightlyflightyone Yeah, it's NIV. I am much more knowledgeable about the state of Christianity in Roman times than I am about the modern status of the religion, and I noticed while I was doing research into the meaning of plemora.

It feels odd. IDK. Self-serving in a kind of grimy way? Most of their money is spent on "administrative overhead" and ministry.

@eleanor It’s pretty par for the course with a lot of religious organizations. Believe it or not, a lot of people just use the fact that people have strong emotional ties to their religion to make a buck.

@slightlyflightyone That's awful :( My husband's family is deeply religious in what I find to be a fairly positive way -- they're liberal methodists who came out of the bible belt and live on the coast now, and involve themselves with community-building and local charities. My grandmother was evangelical and lost a fair amount of money in a faith-based pyramid scheme when I was growing up, which is one reason I've never quite been able to connect with the church as much as my in-laws want, heh.

@eleanor Yeah, I’ve not been religious for many years myself, but grandmother has given a lot of money to organizations that a non-believer can easily see are just profit-driven. Televangelists in particular.

Luckily for her, she’s got a multimillion-dollar estate, so it’s not destroying her livelihood, but she’s definitely been taken advantage of.

@slightlyflightyone I guess I've always been sort of desensitized to the idea that there are quasi-cult-leaders hiding under the wings of organized religion, especially like you said televangelists, but for some reason the idea of the BIBLE being subject to COPYRIGHT horrifies me in new and unexpected ways.

I don't mind translators getting paid and I understand that there are printing costs and I can see how people would want control of the Word I just...

I dunno. It still feels weird.

@eleanor If it’s copyrighted, then that means they get money from every translation of NIV to other languages, too. That’s probably got something to do with how much money they get.

@slightlyflightyone That's a thing?
It's a thing to translate a translation instead of translating the earliest copy of the text you can access?
Why is that a thing? AAAA.

I mean, I KNOW why it's a thing, I just. It says such horrifying things about the relevant religions that the academic in me studiously avoids that I can't quite cope.

I'll stick with the OAB, thanks.

@eleanor Because if you have something that presents itself as an accurate translation in a modern language, it’s easier to find people who can translate it to new languages.

@slightlyflightyone I am stubborn and come from the school of thought that thinks it's better to do something right if you're going to do it :(

I understand intellectually that this is not always possible, particularly for languages that have a small number of speakers who are not necessarily in possession of a classical education, but that is an intellectual understanding.

In my heart I am bothered by the degradation effect.