The picture above is part of a map of Mars drawn by the Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli in the 1870’s. It shows the famous oceans and canals of Mars, which many believed were evidence of an advanced civilization on the Red Planet. His observations served as the basis for H. G. Wells’ famous novel, The War of the Worlds, as well as many other works of fiction. In fact, many astronomers were firmly convinced for decades, by Shiaparelli’s observations and their own, that Mars had canals and had, at least once, harbored a great civilization.
The problem was, Shiaparelli never said there were canals on Mars.
The astronomer wrote that he had observed canali, an Italian word that could be translated into English as “canals,” but which is more properly translated as “channels,” something completely different and which sheds an entirely new light on the subject.
Of course, since the first photographs from the Mariner 4 space probe in 1965, we have known that Mars is not the lush world of oceans and channels that once it had been thought to be. Instead, it is a cold and barren, dusty and windblown world of Moon-like craters and vast plains, occasionally marred by a few huge, deep canyons that once had served as conduits of water, though not for billions of years.
The point is that, even in contemporary times, a simple mistranslation of one word, led generations of scientists and writers to believe, indeed to base their life’s work on, the premise that Mars had canals and, thus, evidence of advanced intelligent life. The mistranslation of one word.
I am a freethinker and, thus, probably not the best person to discuss issues of faith. However, I find it amazing that fundamentalist Christians are so eager to believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and factually and dogmatically infallible when one must consider that many of the events described in both the Old and New Testaments were written of decades or even centuries after they allegedly took place. Many of the documents that Christians now call the Bible were gathered together and debated in various councils and conventions during the early centuries of the church. Some gospels were dismissed, others were accepted, based on the political conditions existing in the Roman Empire and the church at the time. And, the translations of some documents from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, into later forms of those languages or into Latin could contain misinterpretations of words and phrases with far greater consequences than those of the astronomers who relied on the erroneous translations of Shiaparelli’s work.
John Shelby Spong, the former Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey, writes in his book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1991), that part of the popular interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is based on the translation of one word which could be translated in seven different ways. (More on this in a later post).
Even if one does believe in a great and benevolent power guiding the universe, is it not too much to believe that human error in translating documents over centuries could occur, that stories passed down from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth could be changed and altered by the time they are placed on paper or papyrus? Even if one does believe in the basic foundations of Judaism and Christianity, is it not just a bit too much to believe that every single word of the Bible is absolutely and undeniably correct?
If not, may I offer you a deed to some canals I have for sale on Mars.
