»In the beginning

Kate sent a copy of In The Beginning, a history of the King James translation of the Bible. The initial chapters of the book chronicle the travails of other translations, and of the political and economic forces that drove translation. The author jumps about a little, and tends to the didactic rather than the scholarly in the structure of paragraphs, but does provide an amusing bit of verse about Martin Luther:

Devil: Monk on the latrine?
You shouldn't be reading matins here!
Monk: I am purging my bowels
While worshiping almighty God
You can have what goes down
While God gets what goes up.

In a twist that Ericson would love, Luther apparently had his philosophical breakthrough on the cloaca (in polite Latin).