For nearly two millennia, the Holy Bible has been translated, retranslated, and adapted into countless languages and versions. Each translation reflects not only linguistic scholarship but also the theological, cultural, and historical context of its time. From ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts to modern digital editions, the story of Bible translation is a fascinating journey through human civilization itself.

This comprehensive guide explores the most influential and widely-used Bible translations, examining their historical origins, translation philosophies, and lasting impact on Christian faith and scholarship.

Can you correctly answer these 6 questions on the origins and history of American Thanksgiving?

Station Idents and Interval Signals

Lilliburlero

Trumpet Voluntary

Above: Used for many years on the BBC World Service (formerly the General Overseas Service) before news bulletins Lilliburlero is a traditional Irish tune.

Above right: The European Service signature tune, the Trumpet Voluntary. Attributed to Purcell on the label, but now generally thought to be by Jeremiah Clarke.

Right: The Call Sign for the Pacific, Eastern, Colonial and North American Services. The original recording dates from 1948

Eclipse tables in the Dresden Codex were based on lunar tables and adjusted for slippage over time. //

The Maya used three primary calendars: a count of days, known as the Long Count; a 260-day astrological calendar called the Tzolk’in; and a 365-day year called the Haab’. Previous scholars have speculated on how awe-inspiring solar or lunar eclipses must have seemed to the Maya, but our understanding of their astronomical knowledge is limited. Most Maya books were burned by Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests. Only four hieroglyphic codices survive: the Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex, the Paris Codex, and the Grolier Codex. //

They concluded that the codex’s eclipse tables evolved from a more general table of successive lunar months. The length of a 405-month lunar cycle (11,960 days) aligned much better with a 260-day calendar (46 x 260 =11,960) than with solar or lunar eclipse cycles. This suggests that the Maya daykeepers figured out that 405 new moons almost always came out equivalent to 46 260-day periods, knowledge the Maya used to accurately predict the dates of full and new moons over 405 successive lunar dates.

The daykeepers also realized that solar eclipses seemed to recur on or near the same day in their 260-day calendar and, over time, figured out how to predict days on which a solar eclipse might occur locally. “An eclipse happens only on a new moon,” said Lowry. “The fact that it has to be a new moon means that if you can accurately predict a new moon, you can accurately predict a one-in-seven chance of an eclipse. That’s why it makes sense that the Maya are revising lunar predicting models to have an accurate eclipse, because they don’t have to predict where the moon is relative to the ecliptic.” //

“The traditional interpretation was that you run through the table, eclipse by eclipse, and then you rebuilt the table every iteration,” said Lowry. “We figured out that if you do that, you’re going to miss the eclipses, and we know they didn’t. They made internal adjustments. We think they’d restart the table midway. When you do that, you go from having missed eclipses to having none. You would never miss an eclipse. So it’s not a calculated predictive table, it’s a calculated predictive table plus adjustments based on empirical observations over time.”

“This is the basis of true science, empirically collected, constant revision of expectations, built into a system of understanding planetary bodies, so that you can predict when something happens,” said Lowry.

A simple proposal on a 1982 electronic bulletin board helped sarcasm flourish online. //

The emoticons spread quickly across ARPAnet, the precursor to the modern Internet, reaching other universities and research labs. By November 10, 1982—less than two months later—Carnegie Mellon researcher James Morris began introducing the smiley emoticon concept to colleagues at Xerox PARC, complete with a growing list of variations. What started as an internal Carnegie Mellon convention over time became a standard feature of online communication, often simplified without the hyphen nose to :) or :(, among many other variations. //

Between 2001 and 2002, Mike Jones, a former Carnegie Mellon researcher then working at Microsoft, sponsored what Fahlman calls a “digital archaeology” project. Jeff Baird and the Carnegie Mellon facilities staff undertook a painstaking effort: locating backup tapes from 1982, finding working tape drives that could read the obsolete media, decoding old file formats, and searching for the actual posts. The team recovered the thread, revealing not just Fahlman’s famous post but the entire three-day community discussion that led to it.

The recovered messages, which you can read here, show how collaboratively the emoticon was developed—not a lone genius moment but an ongoing conversation proposing, refining, and building on the group’s ideas. Fahlman had no idea his synthesis would become a fundamental part of how humans express themselves in digital text, but neither did Swartz, who first suggested marking jokes, or the Gandalf VAX users who were already using their own smile symbols. //

Others, including teletype operators and private correspondents, may have used similar symbols before 1982, perhaps even as far back as 1648. Author Vladimir Nabokov suggested before 1982 that “there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile.” And the original IBM PC included a dedicated smiley character as early as 1981 (perhaps that should be considered the first emoji).

What made Fahlman’s contribution significant wasn’t absolute originality but rather proposing the right solution at the right time in the right context. From there, the smiley could spread across the emerging global computer network, and no one would ever misunderstand a joke online again. :-)

The story goes that, when E.L. Cord purchased a controlling stake in the Duesenberg motor company in 1926, he instructed the Duesenberg brothers to create the finest automobile they knew how to. As a result, the brothers developed the Duesenberg Model J, and while it was impressive in many ways, it was the straight-eight under the hood that stole column inches in the day.

From the 'eight' came 265 horsepower at 4,200 rpm, effectively doubling the grunt on offer from contemporary Cadillac or Packard models, and therefore more than delivering on the brief set by Cord just two years prior. It checked in at 1,150 pounds, and at the time, the Model J's crankshaft retailed for $605 in the parts catalog — more than what a brand-new Model A would set you back. This was anything but a car for the people, and more a statement of sheer excess, with the 419.7ci straight-eight taking center stage. 

Very few revisions would be employed over the years, although an 'SJ' variation of the engine did arrive some years later, sporting a supercharger. This addition saw output swell from 265 to 320 horses, and this particular rendition of the Duesenberg would remain America's most powerful road car until the 1950s. It demonstrated just how far ahead of the game the now-defunct Duesenberg automaker was in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

General Motors has been around for a long time — 117 years, in fact, as of the date of this writing in 2025. It was founded as a holding company by William C. Durant in September of 1908, and the first thing it did was purchase the Buick Motor Company. Over the intervening century and change, 43 different auto companies have operated under The General's banner, running the gamut from famous marques like Cadillac, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile to companies like Oakland, LaSalle, Sheridan, and McLaughlin that only big car nerds like me remember.

As our nation nears its 250th birthday, Ken Burns’ miniseries should give us a newfound appreciation for the sacrifices of our ancestors.

Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft engineer, says his lean original has grown roughly 50 times in size. Rather than critique today's version, Plummer took to his Dave's Garage YouTube channel to offer a window into Task Manager's scrappy origins, including the thought process behind its development, and his unfortunate decision to include his home phone number in the source code.
https://youtu.be/yQykvrAR_po //

Early Task Manager versions could bring Windows to its knees if users gave processes real-time priority or trigger Blue Screens of Death. But Plummer didn't see preventing user choices as his responsibility.

"I believe the operating system should be the arbiter of what's allowed, and that my job was not to second guess it."

Thirty years on, Task Manager endures. As for what was the most important line of code? It isn't a line, according to Plummer. It's a habit.

"It's the habit of eating your own dog food and accountability that says if a number is wrong or a window flickers, I take it personally until the fix ships. He added: "It's a product of a time and a culture that allowed ownership over time to translate into craftsmanship.

"It's the habit of assuming that the user is trying to accomplish some real work. Ship a build, make a flight, save a document, and my job is to just fix things and get out of the way.

"And it's the habit of resilience. If the tool itself gets stuck, revive it. If the system is starving, work in reduced mode," Plummer said. "If the user needs a chisel, don't give them a Nerf bat." ®

Emily Katz Anhalt’s latest book, Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times, makes a powerful case for relearning the lessons of Herodotus.

Though ancient Greek historian Thucydides is arguably the father of political science, he was preceded on the scene by the father of history, Herodotus. Though some have called him the father of lies because of the tall tales he tells in his Histories, Herodotus’ account of the war between Greece and Persia marks the first attempt in the West to analyze battles, cultures, and political leaders in such a way as to construct a meaningful narrative that sheds light on the forces that propel history. //

In today’s volatile political environment, reality is under siege. Influential voices at all extremes of the political kaleidoscope—some cynical opportunists, some blinded by ideological certainties—craft narratives and interpretations drawn not from fact but from fantasy. Purveyors of falsehoods prey on human gullibility.  … Extremists gain powerful support from anyone uninterested in learning facts or unwilling to moderate an opinion based on evidence and logic. Some argue that we are each entitled to our own reality, or that objective facts are inherently prejudicial, or that factual evidence is fake news. Captivated by misleading and demonstrably false narratives, we forfeit our capacity for compassionate, humane interactions and we imperil human survival itself.

What Herodotus offers to moderns trapped in such an environment is a method for assessing the past and the present that is grounded in evidence and the proper interpretation of that evidence. “Herodotus introduced the concept of objective truth, derived not from personal preference or authoritative pronouncement (whether by a political or divine authority) but from factual investigation and empirical deduction and analysis,” Anhalt notes. Though it is true that Herodotus includes fanciful stories and bizarre legends in his Histories, he also provides the necessary criteria for evaluating their veracity.

Whereas Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days begin with invocations of the muse, Herodotus writes on his own authority; indeed, the first word of his book is his name! Like Homer, he recounts memorable deeds, but he does so in a way that excludes the actions and interventions of the gods. Instead, he “concentrates on human conduct, beliefs, and choices and their consequences. Not divine but human behavior emerges as a potent force for change in human events.” //

“For Herodotus, the human capacity for self-deception constitutes an unseen but determinative force in human life. Three powerful autocrats—Croesus, Astyages, Cyrus—deceive themselves into thinking that supernatural signs validate their desires and confer control over future events. … Nothing compels Croesus to attack Persia, Astyages to try to kill his grandson, or Cyrus to attack the Massegetai. They just want to,” she writes. “Lust for greater territory and power, like a king’s lust for his own wife [Candaules] or sailors’ greed for a passenger’s money, needs no further explanation. But self-deception feeds human appetites and makes supernatural signs worse than useless.”

The human propensity for self-deception is often highlighted in the Histories, a fatal flaw that can only be overcome by “self-reflection and self-restraint,” the very things that Herodotus’ barbarian autocrats lack. And yet, the Athenians are not above a little self-deception of their own. //

Why then, if the Greeks are as susceptible to deception as the barbarians, were they able to defeat the Persians? Because their sense of history and of the repeated patterns of cause and effect that connect one generation to the next empowered them to learn from the past. (Anhalt intriguingly argues that the Greek word for truth, aletheia, means “not forgetting.”)

Persian autocrats like Darius and Xerxes, on the other hand, refused to study, consider, or be instructed by past errors. “While discussion enables the Greeks to absorb facts and recognize wise counsel, the Persians ignore factual evidence and fail to learn from previous experience,” she notes. In his preparation for the decisive naval battle of Salamis, she further observes, “Persian king [Xerxes] makes unilateral decisions. He lacks discernment and access to dissenting opinions. He draws incorrect inferences from misleading external appearances. In contrast, Greeks benefit from constructive debate.”

Another way of saying this that most readers will recognize from their schooldays is that Xerxes falls prey to the consequences of hubris. However, whereas most of us were taught that hubris means overweening pride, Anhalt argues that “hubris in Greek meant excessive, unrestrained desire, ambition, and overconfidence. It frequently involved impulsive, short-sighted violence, specifically violence redounding to the harm of the perpetrator. … In Greek, the opposite of hubris is not ‘humility’ or ‘modesty’ but sōphrosunē, meaning ‘wisdom,’ ‘prudence,’ ‘self-restraint,’ ‘moderation,’ even ‘chastity.’ … [Hubris is that which] liberates the ruler’s most violent impulses and frees him to wreak havoc.” It makes him believe that he can, like the gods, fulfill his sexual lusts without consequences. So fall the tyrants of the earth.

A Concorde flew so high over the Red Sea that the mighty US Navy got scared and rushed F-14 Tomcats to intercept it. So fast was the jet that only when a veteran pilot chasing it took out his camera and zoomed, he realized their blazing target was the supersonic airliner //

“As we swung our nose in the direction of the vector we got, I got an immediate lock on an extremely fast and high-flying aircraft,” recalled David “Hey Joe” Parsons, the Radar Intercept Officer in the rear seat. The AWG-9 radar displayed a large lead cue, something you only see when the target is moving extraordinarily fast at altitude. The Tomcat began to climb. //

The Television Camera System should have provided a magnified visual, but the angle and altitude difference made the picture blur into haze. Parsons reached down into his flight bag and pulled out his personal 300 mm camera lens. He spotted a thin white contrail far above them. He steadied the lens, focused, and the shape came into clarity. “As I twisted the lens, the beautiful silhouette of the Concorde came into focus.” There was no threat. Only grace. //

Contrary to popular imagination, the Tomcat did not chase the Concorde speed-for-speed. An F-14 does not drag race a Mach 2 airliner. Instead, it turns toward the point the radar predicts the target will be, accelerates, climbs, and allows closure rate to do the work. For a moment, two icons of aviation existed in the same piece of sky, one built to defend, the other built to outrun time.

It might have the first-ever version of UNIX written in C

A tape-based piece of unique Unix history may have been lying quietly in storage at the University of Utah for 50+ years. The question is whether researchers will be able to take this piece of middle-aged media and rewind it back to the 1970s to get the data off.

I remember one day resolving to do arduous work in 2 Chronicles. Studiously plowing through the reigns of Solomon through Jehoshaphat, I came to 2 Chronicles 21:20 and laughed outright. The text reads, “Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings” (italics added). Being a wordsmith myself, I smiled at this bygone scribe relieved at this monarch’s death. Evidently Jehoram was not well liked. The editorial statement provides a light touch—comic relief, if you will—to the Chronicler’s usually routine kingship formula.

As I study and teach, I find I read the Bible ever more slowly, and as I do, I smile more and more frequently. I listen for its humor. My emotions span sorrow, understanding or joy as I empathize with the characters who cross its pages. I chuckle at many passages, even while acknowledging the sadness they may contain. Consequently, I believe it’s possible to read many verses, stories and even books through the lens of humor, indeed to see portions of the Bible as intended to be very funny. An appropriate response is laughter. I’ve come to this conclusion: Humor is a fundamental sub-theme in both testaments.

Weddings at Notre-Dame are exceedingly rare because the cathedral is not a parish church and does not normally conduct sacraments for individual couples.

As the seat of the Archbishop of Paris and a national monument, it serves primarily as a site for major religious and state ceremonies — Masses, funerals and national commemorations — rather than private events.

Only the archbishop can authorize a wedding there, and such dispensations have been granted just a handful of times in its 860-year history.

Lorentz, who hand-cut oak beams using 13th-century tools and methods, had asked the archbishop earlier this year for permission to wed in the cathedral he helped save.

“It’s the happiest day of my life,” Lorentz told reporters.

“I want to share my love — our love — with the whole world, with everyone who needs it.”

The radiation warning symbol should not be confused with the civil defense symbol designed to identify fallout shelters. For more information about the latter, view the collection item Civil Defense Fallout Shelter Sign.

Radiation Warning Symbol (Trefoil)
Radiation warning symbol

The civil defense symbol for a fallout shelter consists of a circle divided into six sections, three black and three yellow. The general form is very similar to the above however there is no central circle. The Office of Civil Defense originally intended fallout shelters to use the radiation warning symbol with the circle in the center and the three blades, but this idea was rejected because a fallout shelter represents safety whereas the radiation warning symbol represents a hazard.

The three-bladed radiation warning symbol, as we currently know it, was "doodled" out at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley sometime in 1946 by a small group of people. This event was described in a letter written in 1952 by Nels Garden, head of the Health Chemistry Group at the Radiation Laboratory: "A number of people in the group took an interest in suggesting different motifs, and the one arousing the most interest was a design which was supposed to represent activity radiating from an atom."

The first signs printed at Berkeley had a magenta (Martin Senour Roman Violet No. 2225) symbol on a blue background. In an earlier letter written in 1948, Garden explained why this particular shade of magenta color was selected: "it was distinctive and did not conflict with any color code that we were familiar with. Another factor in its favor was its cost... The high cost will deter others from using this color promiscuously." Explaining the blue background, he said, "The use of a blue background was selected because there is very little blue color used in most of the areas where radioactive work would be carried out." //

Despite Garden's view to the contrary, most workers felt that a blue background was a poor choice. Blue was not supposed to be used on warning signs, and it faded, especially outdoors. The use of yellow was standardized at Oak Ridge National Lab in early 1948. At that time, Bill Ray and George Warlick, both working for K.Z. Morgan, were given the task of coming up with a more suitable warning sign, a blue background being too unacceptable. Ray traveled to Berkeley and picked up a set of their signs. Back in Oak Ridge, Ray and Warlick had their graphics people cut out the magenta symbols and staple them on cards of different colors. Outdoors, and at a distance of 20 feet, a committee selected the magenta on yellow as the best combination.

The Office of Civil Defense originally intended fallout shelters to use the radiation warning symbol (yellow background with a magenta circle in the center of three magenta blades) but this idea was rejected because a fallout shelter represents safety whereas the radiation warning symbol represents a hazard. The above version of the national fallout shelter sign was introduced to the public by the Defense Department on December 1, 1961. It was intended to only be used with federally approved shelters. Unlike this example, these signs often had yellow arrows below the words "fallout shelter" to indicate the direction to the shelter. In 1962, contracts were negotiated for the production of 400,000 aluminum outdoor signs and one million steel signs for indoors.

Supersonic cruise generated fierce aerodynamic heating, raising the skin to temperatures that would alarm passengers on any other jet. At the nose, engineers recorded figures as high as 261°F (127°C). The wing leading edges often reached about 212°F (100–105°C), while most of the fuselage settled between 194 and 203°F (90–95°C). //

At those temperatures, the entire 202-foot Concorde stretched by 7 to 12 inches. That expansion was most visible to the crew at the seam beside the engineer’s station, where the caps went in. //

The ritual of sealing a cap in the fuselage became most famous during the retirement era. On British Airways Concorde G-BOAG’s delivery flight to Seattle in 2003, flight engineer Trevor Norcott slipped his BA cap into the expansion gap while supersonic over Canada. As he later explained, “The Hat was meant as a permanent link between the aircraft and the crews.” Hours later, as the jet cooled on the ramp in Seattle, the seam clamped down, locking the cap inside. To this day, visitors walking past G-BOAG at the Museum of Flight unknowingly pass a hidden time capsule wedged between metal panels.

A rare shot shows the Concorde taking off with the NASA 905 carrying the Space Shuttle

A landmark work of over 100 scholars, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution provides unique line-by-line analysis explaining every clause of America's founding charter and its contemporary meaning. Second edition completely revised.

• An unprecedented collaborative work of 114 leading scholars, with over 200 original essays
• Completely revised, nine years following the original landmark work
• Foreword by Edwin Meese III, 75th Attorney General of the United States

The reviewer begs the reader’s indulgence for combining a book review with an appreciation of the author. Yes, Leonard Read is my guide and inspiration, and I was thrilled to learn of the republication of Government: An Ideal Concept (FEE, 1997, $12.95 paperback). This book is to me much like the fruits of scripture.

In 1982, I wrote to Read asking if he still believed what he had written in 1954. His reply: Just the other day I re-read Government: An Ideal Concept. Today I wouldn’t change a word of it. All of my books have been consistent with this book you like.

I have read all of Leonard Read’s books; they are consistent. Read is constant in character and consistent in thought. Given his premises, his freedom philosophy, as he called it (to disassociate himself from the anarchists who had appropriated his earlier use of libertarian), is consistent and corroborated by history. Read has grasped and described a natural law.

In Government: An Ideal Concept, he limits himself to basics and a few clear examples. Other issues and secondary points he leaves for other books, other writers. The argument of this work is logical, consistent, and neither circular nor abstruse.

Read is never a polemicist but warns against provoking antagonism with unnecessary personal attacks and criticisms of error, when what is needed is self-improvement and demonstration of truth. Although he says Government: An Ideal Concept is an essay in clarifying his own thinking, he writes with the authority and serenity of someone already possessed of a truth.

Not at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 nor when Read wrote Government: An Ideal Concept, says Read, was there any well-defined . . . principled, spelled-out ideal theory of government or liberty. The founders attempted to limit government, but lacking was a well-defined theory or positive rationale as to why limitation.[1]

Read was familiar with political and philosophical ideas from earliest writings to the present. Yet he was convinced that extant theories of liberty and government were inadequate and that this lack would have to be supplied before American society could secure the Blessings of Liberty cited in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution.

Read’s plan is to try to justify government, an effective but surprising strategy for one who sees that government, the immune system of society, designed to protect from internal and external dangers, has itself grown unhealthy, and, by proliferation, become an agent of social dysfunction. He seeks to understand the healthy state of government in society as the ideal—a key word in this book’s title. Properly limited government, he asserts, because it is necessary, must be a positive good rather than a necessary evil.

Fundamental to Read’s theory of limited government is his analysis of social versus individual problems, and the role of force and coercion in society. By definition, government is organized force. It monopolizes the legal use of force in those geographical, social, and economic areas under its jurisdiction. Read posits, Man’s purpose on earth is to come as near as possible in his lifetime to the attainment of those creative aptitudes peculiarly his own. He then explains why all of creative human emergence can only be a personal, voluntary undertaking. This leaves those actions of man which impair the source of creative energy and stifle its exchange, and also the actions which are parasitic on the flowing energy as the only social problem. To remove these inhibitory actions, it is necessary to restrain aggressive force and/or penalize those persons who indulge in it. Read explains why force can only restrain, never create. Therefore, the only proper use of force is to restrain aggressive use of force and fraud.
...