Still an atheist

Posts, messages and threads, 2024–2026

When I quit the state church at 16 I never would have thought that one day I'd be reading the New Testament in the original language ;) Still an atheist, but it's exciting both linguistically and in terms of cultural history...

I'm not religious, but after I began learning Greek and Latin, I've become much more involved with the Bible and Christian texts. Both because they're important literary texts, and to understand the intellectual development, but it's also fascinating to see the incredible range of indexes, tools, book editions, apps etc that have been developed around the Bible and the biblical languages.

Matthew at Easter

I've started two projects. One is reading the Bible in the original language (well, since I don't know Hebrew I figured I'd do the Old Testament in Latin and the New in Greek...) Have a nice readers edition of the New Testament, and have a great Anki (spaced repetition deck) with all the sentences, which means that when I finally get to the weekend and sit down with the book, it actually goes pretty well! But I've also ordered a Latin/Greek bilingual Bible, so it would be kind of cool to first get the hang of the Greek and then use it as support for the Latin ;)

The result is that I can spend 20 min on this every day, and when I get up early on the weekend and take out my Tyndals Greek New Testament I read it almost completely fluently, and can focus on what is being said and how. (And funny that I've never read the Bible before at all... I know a lot of the stories of course, but I haven't even read the gospels "cover to cover").

From letters to a historian of religion at Høgskolen i Innlandet (February 2024) and a professor of classics at NTNU (January 2025)

So Easter got used for reading the entire Gospel of Matthew in Ancient Greek, then Latin, and then Icelandic (why not? ;))... It didn't go that fast, even though I knew pretty much all the words, at least in context. I have a bilingual Greek/Latin dictionary, so it's pretty cool to be able to use the other language if you're unsure. Also fun to see how many times a Greek word just gets used directly in Latin.

I also found a lovely old German explanation of the New Testament at the thrift store in Løten, with German in Gothic type and lots of Greek quotes. Not reading it through cover to cover, but it's really cozy to look things up in it now and then. It's fun to read in it about controversies I see on Twitter — when it comes to the parable about how it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than to get a camel through the eye of a needle, is this a literal eye of a needle, or do they mean a well-known narrow gate into Jerusalem that was called "the eye of the needle" (so "difficult but not impossible")? I've seen this discussed on Twitter and Tiktok, but they (of course) talked about this 130 years ago too.

It's incredible how many references I've found just to Matthew since I began reading it — from American politics to references in literature etc, some of which I wouldn't even have picked up on as references before.

I've also been listening to Harry Potter in modern Greek on evening walks, and it's kind of special when a word you just learned in a biblical context turns up in Harry Potter. For example the word ἐταράχθη from right at the beginning when Herod hears about the savior: "ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἡρῴδης ἐταράχθη καὶ πᾶσα Ἱεροσόλυμα μετ' αὐτοῦ"... It's the same word (in slightly newer clothes but absolutely recognizable) that Dursley uses about all the people in cloaks walking around in his town, in the first chapter of Harry Potter!

I'll note that I wish someone told me to read the Bible sooner (I'm not religious). Having only read a tiny percentage (Matthew), I've already encountered so many references in literature, some obviously biblical but I wouldn't have had the context, some I wouldn't have caught.

14 April 2025 · @houshuang

In the weekend, I got up early, made a fire, sat down, and opened the Tyndale's Bible. This was the first time I was seeing the entire text as a continuous unit. And I felt like I could read it almost fluently, effortlessly – being able to focus on the plot, the language, the implications. I was reading the New Testament in Greek. Actually reading!

February 2025 · networkedthought, "The language learning holy grail"

Bondestudentar

Started reading Bondestudentar by Arne Garborg yesterday, without knowing anything about it. The first couple of sentences were a bit heavy, even though it helps that I've read a bit of Ibsen and taken part in reading Haugtussa out loud, aarle and silde and words like that.

But what struck me was how glad I am that I've been reading the Bible (as literature — I'm not a Christian), because I recognized exactly the Bible quotes that were being discussed and that made the poor guy so confused — didn't we just read that the birds get food even though they don't work, and that people who believe in God shouldn't worry about food and clothes? So why are we standing here in the muddy cold earth at six in the morning, struggling?

Also fun that Garborg chose exactly this episode to start the book — both to situate Daniel and his family in the poor outskirts, but also to show that Daniel was sharper and "thought more" than the people around him.

Otherwise I think that the meta-story itself, the farm boy who goes to the city to study and on the one hand becomes alienated from his own family and local culture, but also struggles to be accepted in an urban educated culture, when it comes to clothes, language, cultural references, eating habits etc — this must be an incredibly universal story... I thought a bit about the novel Stoner by John Edward Williams, but also about friends I have in China who grew up in the countryside and went to the city to study. There are of course many details that can differ — from a poor farm in Western Norway with a boat to Oslo, or moving up in class from a Pakistani family at Nordstrand to the university in Oslo... It can go well or badly, you can become arrogant like Erasmus Montanus or not...

And while in Garborg's time it was the church and religious studies that was the most important opportunity, and you therefore bring in everything around the parents' religiosity, the role of the local priest etc, for Stoner's main character it's about weird literary theories that his parents can't understand.

"Mennesket"

"Mennesket" by Wergeland is I think maybe the most challenging text I've come across of "classical Norwegian literature" (so not including modern experimental literature). The main problem is that it requires a very detailed knowledge of the Bible, which isn't very widespread anymore.

Of course everyone read the Bible back then, and got an incredible vocabulary out of it... I'm not a Christian, but I've started actually reading the Bible — and it's incredible how much you suddenly recognize in literature that comes from there, that you weren't even aware of.

The creation story in three languages

I happened to be sitting in the library at MF Høyskolen and pulled the Vulgate, the Septuagint and Luther's Bible off the shelf and read the creation story in parallel. Just for fun, and mostly to see how much of the Greek and Latin text I could understand — I'm absolutely no Bible scholar or theologian. But I already noticed an interesting thing — what I learned as a child was that the earth was "empty" before God created anything... And Luther says "wüst und leer", the Vulgate says "inanis et vacua", but the Greek text says "ἀκατασκεύαστος" — "unprepared"... No deeper insight, but fun to be able to sit and wonder about things like this myself.

In 2026 I'm going to read the Old Testament (in Greek, Latin, and KJV) and for each month try to find interesting cultural expressions inspired by what I've read — I've already started with Genesis, and read Cain by Lord Byron, am waiting for Cain by Jose Saramago from the library, have just picked up Joseph und seine Brüder by Thomas Mann(!), seen the movie "In the beginning — The bible" from 1966, and listened to Die Schöpfung by Haydn...

From a letter to an old friend at Klassekampen, December 2025

It's amazing how many times I've seen references to parts of Matthew in literature and discussion, and how much I've gained by having read it. Still plan to continue, but for 2026 I've decided to focus on the Old Testament. Loose idea is to read through the whole thing in 2026...

17 December 2025 · @houshuang

I'll be jumping between the Septuagint, Vulgate and KJV, and I'll have a big focus on exploring cultural creations inspired by different chapters – paintings, sculptures, classical music works, novels, poetry...

17 December 2025 · @houshuang