Dr Paul Allen

There is a Hebrew word that we transliterate as tan, with the feminine form tannah, which refers to jackals. It occurs, for instance, in Malachi 1:3, where God declares that, according to the NIV,  “Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”  That is straightforward, and it makes excellent sense in the context. But here is the problem. From the same root, there is also another word, 'tannin', which usually means a regular snake or serpent but can also signify a monster, sea serpent, or sea monster.  The word is used in this sense on multiple occasions to refer to the mighty monsters of the deep seas, probably implying whales. But it also looks as if it might conceivably be a plural for tan, jackal.  On several occasions in the Hebrew Bible, the words are confused, even by translators who should have known better, and that confusion has left a long shadow in English readings. On multiple occa...

In 1603 James VI and I became the first monarch to rule over England, Scotland, and Ireland together. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Have you ever attended a frustrating meeting where nothing much seems to get done? The Hampton Court conference , held in 1604, was like that. When James VI of Scotland rode south to London on the way to the coronation that would make him James I of England, Puritans presented him with a petition, pleading for freedom from man-made rites and ceremonies in worship. Since over 1,000 leaders of these reform-minded Christians signed the petition, James could not ignore it. He called for a conference of churchmen and theologians to be held at Hampton Court , one of the royal palaces. But his attitude toward the event was signalled by the wording of the summons, "for the hearing, and for the determining, things pretended to be amiss in the Church." [our italics] The Puritans thought that the Church of England had kept too many Catholic practices. ...