
The Chapter In The Bible That Appears Twice - lwc123
http://larrycheng.com/2010/02/04/the-chapter-in-the-bible-that-appears-twice/
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three14
I'm always surprised at reactions from modern readers who seem to think that
these sorts of observations are new. It's a particular type of blindness to
history. People aren't more intelligent now than three thousand years ago.

Note that we have sources that commented on duplicates by around the 8th
century, according to Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soferim_(Talmud)> see the summary comment about
Chap viii.

The Talmud describes all kinds of things that you might think are "modern" -
ironing clothes (albeit by a different method), rain gutters, complicated
financial arrangements (e.g. a contract with a managing partner and a silent
partner, the silent partner putting up all the money, but half as a loan to
the other partner and half as an investment), fertilizer, complicated property
rights (e.g. when have I established a right to prevent someone from blocking
my light or building a structure that lets them overlook my private property),
methods of fraud detection in written contracts, and so on.

People knew about these duplicates since ancient times and weren't troubled by
them. They have had explanations that aren't particularly far-fetched, e.g.
that Ps. xviii. and II Sam. xxii are duplicates because one's a historical
record of what King David said, and the other is the version he later edited
for Psalms. Perhaps modern readers have different explanations, but the mere
modernity doesn't automatically make them any better.

~~~
randallsquared
_People aren't more intelligent now than three thousand years ago._

While I agree that there's a lot to be learned from our ancestors, there's
some question about how the average intelligence may have changed over
historical times. The Flynn effect suggests that rather large changes can take
place across entire populations.

~~~
three14
The Flynn effect is too short a timescale. Maybe it was just recent
malnutrition from industrialization.

Aside from the fact that cranial capacity has been pretty stable, it's just
impossible to believe that intelligence is substantially different if you
spend time studying the Talmud, or for that matter Greek philosophers. The
Greek philosophers throw people off, because everyone remembers all the
science they got wrong.

For instance, in the Talmud, in that kind of transaction I mentioned - the
half-loan half-investment deal, where one guy puts up the money and one guy
puts up the work, the Talmud notes that the guy doing the work a) received a
loan, and b) is working to manage the other guy's investment. Putting two and
two together, he's working for the other guy for free, just because he got a
loan. I.e., he's paying interest, and therefore this is forbidden under the
prohibition against usury unless the investor pays the worker for his time.
You can't begin to wrap your head around that kind of stuff unless you have
more or less modern intelligence.

~~~
randallsquared
_The Flynn effect is too short a timescale._

I don't really disagree, mainly because the idea that our ancestors were
mostly very unintelligent compared to today's average seems absurd given their
known accomplishments. However, I do wonder from time to time if that could be
explained almost entirely by selection effects. The short timescale of the
Flynn effect could possibly be attributed to the lack of reliable tests for g
prior to the 20th century, for example...

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BioGeek
Side-by-side view of the 2 psalms in a diff viewer:
<http://i.imgur.com/ipaPW.png>

~~~
kentosi
Nice work. However, given that the Christian Bible has been translated into
English (probabaly many times over during the last thousand+ years), wouldn't
it make more sense to diff the original Hebrew version?

I'm assuming there's a website where you can retrieve this ...

~~~
Pistos2
FWIW, I did a diff of [one version of] the Hebrew:
<http://blog.purepistos.net/psalm-14-53-hebrew-diff.html>

I took the text from here:

<http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/hebrewbible/Psalms_14.html>
<http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/hebrewbible/Psalms_53.html>

and split it (more or less) into one word per line.

You'll notice that, in some cases, even when lines or sections are technically
different (characters do not exactly match), there is a similarity of words
(same roots).

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Kaizyn
I don't suppose it has occurred to anyone here that the reason certain
passages appear twice is because they merited repeating? The Bible is meant to
be read by people, and people often times take a while for a message to sink
in once they're exposed to it. So it is worth including more important points
several times to make them harder to miss. In rhetoric and writing, such
repetition is not only taught but considered necessary for good speeches and
writings.

~~~
nw
It also merits noting that hyperlinks did not exist at the time. Repetition
and duplication accomplished this function instead.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Hyperlinked Bible made me laugh. "And God spake unto them, follow this bit.ly
link to be reminded of what I did unto the town of Sodom."

Of course, then we'd have comments fields, and someone would have tagged Psalm
51 as "Dupe"... probably Adam, who would also be responsible for writing
"FIrST!!" on every Genesis update.

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jsm386
You know the Bible has two creation stories as well:
<http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/bible3do.htm> /
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_according_to_Genesis>

~~~
ja27
And three versions of the "ten" commandments: Exodus 20, Exodus 34 and
Deuteronomy 5.

~~~
jganetsk
There are also different versions of the ten commandments across religions.
(The Catholics had a problem with the ban on graven images, especially given
how many of those they had been erecting).

I don't know how this works, given that anyone can pick up a Bible and find
the ten commandments. Maybe the Catholics print their own modified version of
the Bible?

~~~
jherdman
Interestingly, the catholic church had HUGE problems with the orthodox church
during its inception for just that. If you get the chance, you should give
"Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire"
([http://www.amazon.ca/Byzantium-Surprising-Life-Medieval-
Empi...](http://www.amazon.ca/Byzantium-Surprising-Life-Medieval-
Empire/dp/0691143692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265300527&sr=8-1)) a
read. Its a fascinating glimpse into not only the early church, but the rise,
and fall, of an empire.

~~~
malkia
It started with the Bogomils, I believe it was on some doctrine about whehter
we were born in sin, or not. I haven't check wikipedia, trying to type what I
remmember from school, but the orthodox church believes that you are born in
sin, while the catholic does not. Off course there are other differences.

Atheist myself, I got married in a orthodox church to make my family happy
(grandmothers especially). I carry my wedding ring on the right hand (orthodox
rules).

But, I wonder what's the point? Such simple differences, and off course others
were the cause of wars (real, and cold) between the sects (to be objective,
they are all sects) of the christian church.

Ok, so some fights might've been okay - for example our Bulgarian church
(orthodox) "fought" against the Greek (also orthodox) to have the sermons told
in bulgarian, not greek, because... people did not understood greek. Or to
have the bible written in bulgarian.

But now the bulgarian church is fighting within itself, for stupid things like
- whether the black monks (I think those are strict monastic monks), can get
married vs. the one carrying white. Again, not going to bother checkin the
wikipedia on this one. It's just stupid :) Allow them to get married, and
continue...

~~~
jacquesm
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxo81Ok9Urk>

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johnyzee
That's nothing. There is a huge passage in II Kings 19 which is a verbatim
copy of Isaiah 36-38:

II Kings 19:
[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%2018-2...](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%2018-20&version=NIV);

Isaiah 36-38:
[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2036-38:8...](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2036-38:8&version=NIV);

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philfreo
[Psalm 53] is almost identical to Psalm 14, and the two psalms were probably
alternate versions of the same hymn before they were included in the Psalter.
The two hymns serve the same function, namely, to mourn the fact that mankind
does not seek after God and thus treats God's people cruelly. \-- Source: ESV
Study Bible (<http://www.esvstudybible.org/search?q=psalm+14%2C+53>)

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callmeed
I believe Psalm 14 is considered a "song" while Psalm 53 is thought to be an
"instructional" sermon. So they very well could be the same message/theme,
just modified for singing vs. teaching.

~~~
ars
An additional explanation (by Rashi) is that the first one is about the
destruction of the first temple, and the second one about the second temple.

I don't know why it was left out of the translation, but 53 starts: For the
conductor, on the machalath [a kind of music instrument].

And 14 starts with just: For the conductor.

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astrodust
Like a duplicated gene, the two seem to have evolved in different directions
over time.

I've read that Torah scrolls have the same kind of transcription errors
"inherited" from one copy to the next so the origin of a scroll can be traced
back.

~~~
DougWebb
Wow. I didn't know copy protection was that old. Map makers do the same thing,
by introducing intentional errors.

~~~
tierack
This isn't copy protection, or even watermarking to identify who's "leaking
the source".

Hand-copying text is error-prone, and copies are often made from copies, so
there's the chance to reconstruct a "family tree" even after knowledge of what
copied from what is lost.

See, for example, this: [http://ahds.ac.uk/archaeology/creating/case-
studies/canterbu...](http://ahds.ac.uk/archaeology/creating/case-
studies/canterbury/index.htm)

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drewcrawford
The Psalms are a collection of songs/poems collected orally at several
geographic regions in Israel. Most scholars recognize in the neighborhood of
five different independent sections.

Thus it should not come as any surprise that a given psalm appears twice with
some differences--it was recorded as it was known in two different regions.

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tokenadult
I thought this would be about the duplicate passage that constitutes 2 Kings
18:13 - 20:11 and Isaiah 36 - 38:8, although of course for that passage
neither occurrence is marked off as an exact "chapter" in the much later
numbering scheme for the Bible.

[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%2018-2...](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%2018-20&version=NIV);

[http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2036-38:8...](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2036-38:8&version=NIV);

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intellectronica
Perhaps more interesting is the case of the book of Deutronomy, the fifth book
of the pentateuch, which repeats the same stories appearing in earlier books
(often from a slight different perspective).

~~~
w00pla
I've heard (don't know if it is true) that the first sections of the bible
were only oral history. Most of it only got written up during the exile in
Babylon.

I don't know if it is true or not, but I think it should be taken into account
that such things might happen.

It is pretty impressive though that Jews have a 3000? year history - which is
pretty unique. My people were still clobbering Romans over the head with blunt
instruments 1500 years back.

Also pretty impressive that they have a history that is 3000 years old - yet I
can't seem to find 12 year old Geocity pages...

\offtopic

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j1o1h1n
The Bible is a collection of texts that has at times been revised and updated
by committees. This kind of artefact is unremarkable.

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dbz
This isn't really the first time something has happened twice.

Forty Days, Forty Nights. A white bird (dove), a black bird (raven), two of
each animal. ect. ect. Two stories- combined into one. At least a theory

