Putting Complex Words into Basic English
A reader wanted us to make a translation of a complex bit of words from
a university president. It turned out the writing (from a talk) made no sense and was thereby untranslatable into normal English or Basic. I then looked for a complex bit of writing to test Basic and to test my being able and test our translation dictionary which is able to be downloaded by all.
This account is taken from a newspaper column by Paul Trambrino, Ed.D., Ph.D.
Why do we have the Apostles' Creed?
Church statements of belief generally make strong the beliefs against those errors that the
writers of the church statements thought most danger at the time. For example, The Nicene
Creed, made up in the fourth hundred years, is makes a strong statement on the Deity of Christ,
because it is directed against the Arians, who said it was untrue that Christ was fully God.
The Apostles' Creed, made up in the first or second hundred years, states strongly the true
state of his being a man, having the material body, of Jesus, because that is the point those who were against the general belief
of the time (Gnostics, Marcionites, and later the Manicheans) said was untrue. ( See I John
4:1-3).
In this way the Apostle's' Creed states, I have belief in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. This goes against the Gnostic idea that all physical existence is bad and that God did not make it.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who became with young by the Holy
Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary. This goes against the Gnostic idea that the true Christians were strong in taking that God had taken the state of man state or a man's
body. Some of them separated Christ, whom they gave credit to be in some sense
godlike, from the man Jesus, who was at most an instrument through whom the
Christ made statements. They said that the man Jesus did not become the one or instrument
of the Christ till the Spirit came upon him at His baptism, the first taking into the religion, and that the Spirit left Him before the nailing to a cross, so that the Spirit had only a short and thin connection with material substance and man. Other Gnostics state that there were never a man Jesus at all, but only the form without substance of a man, through which wise teachings were given to the first supporters. Against this, the true Christians stated that Jesus was formed through the act of the Holy Spirit (in this way going against the Gnostic position that the Spirit had nothing to do with Jesus till his Baptism). That He was given birth (which had the sense that He had in fact a physical body, and not only a form without substance), that He was given birth of a clean girl (which made true that He had been special from the first minute of His existence, and not only from the taking the baptism.)
Suffered under Pontius Pilate. There were a great number of stories going round about gods, who had gone to death and were given new existence, as stories used as the sign of the new living of the plants and trees every spring after the seeming death of winter. If you put the question, "When did Adonisu go to his death, you would hear either, "Long ago and far away," or, "His death is not an event in earthly time." Jesus on the other hand, went to death at a point in time and place in history, under the authority of Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea from 26 to 36 CE, or in the last 10 years of the rule of the Emperor Tiberious.
Was nailed to a cross, was dead, and buried; he went down into Hades. Here the Creed hammers
again the point that Christ was truly dead. He was not only seeming. He was nailed in
a post. He went to death. He had a material body that was placed in the earth. He was not
only unconscious - His living existence left His body and went into the place of the dead. It is a common belief among Christians that on this special time He took those
who had gone to death with belief in the word given under the Old Covenant - Abraham,
Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah and others - and came with them out of the place of the dead and into heavenly bright. But the Creed is not interested with this point. The statement to the going down into Hades (or Hell, or Sheol) is here to make it clear that the death of Jesus was not only a loss of conscious or uncommon sleep, but death in every sense of the word.
The third day he came up from the dead, he went up into heaven, and is seated at the
right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the
living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church. The
Gnostics had belief that the most important Christian statements were keep for the
select. The right belief was that the full word of the Gospel was to be
put forward to all living men. For this reason the special word "catholic", or over all the earth, which made them from the Gnostics.
The communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins. The Gnostics gave great thought that what men needed was not making a request to be free of anger, but knowledge. Being without knowledge, not wrong, was the question. Some of them, with the belief the body to be a bad trick and untrue, had lives of not giving in to normal desires. Others had the belief the body is quite separate from the soul and that it was not important what the body did, because it was completely disgusting anyway, and its acts had no effect on the soul, (a sort of antinomianism, a step back from the law giving authority to do wrong.) They then lived lives that were not going against normal pleasures at all. One way or the other, the idea of making request to higher power was strange to them.
The resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. AMEN..
The chief purpose of the Gnostics was to become free forever from the signs of material and the chains of the body, and to go back to the heavenly land as "pure spirit". They completely put away any idea of the new birth of the body.
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This account is taken from a newspaper column by Paul Trambrino, Ed.D., Ph.D. Oct 1, 2005. Our translation uses the base words with the verse addition; each learner has knowledge of one of three such special interest word-lists for business, science or verse. The words from verse are : cross, god, heaven, soul, spirit.