Espouse Obfuscation

Sometimes I love this stuff for the sheer density of its language. Like the satisfaction you get from chewing on something really dense and crunchy.

"Nay, even if Plato thinks there exists one [world] of which this of ours is the image, that likewise must necessarily have similarly to undergo mutation; inasmuch as, if it is a 'world,' it will consist of diverse substances and offices, answerable to the form of that which is here the 'world': for 'world' it will not be if it be not just as the 'world' is. Things which, in diversity, tend to unity, are diverse by demutation. In short, it is their vicissitudes which federate the discord of their diversity. Thus it will be by mutation that every 'world' will exist whose corporate structure is the result of diversities, and whose attemperation is the result of vicissitudes. At all events, this hostelry of ours is versiform, --a fact which is patent to eyes that are closed, or utterly Homeric." -- Tertullian, On the Pallium

All this (and this is only a small extract from the entire argument) to say that "change is natural". This is why I love reading the old translations rather than contemporary ones: the Victorian and other pre-modern translators didn't try to dumb it down. They assumed that their readers would be intelligent and educated. This is why I don't like modern Bible translations, either--as translations, that is--the texts on which they are based is a different question. For instance, the Orthodox Study Bible I've been reading bases its translation of the Septuagint on the New King James version, and it seriously irritates me by translating what was, in the Authorized Version, translated as "stranger" in the Law as "resident alien". As in, "Remember that you were resident aliens in Egypt". Why? Is "stranger" too difficult for moderns to understand, or is it somehow politically incorrect? Every time I read it, I get a picture of Mexicans and green cards.