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Dear ShaBot: Study Your Tech Like Your Torah

May 10, 2006 10:00 AM
Tags: comics, humor, jewish, language, religion, technology

I am sorry to be pedantic, but the Torah has been "translated" to binary, from the moment it was transcribed into a computer. Computers store data in a binary format. The Torah is stored on computers.

And, strictly speaking, you don't translate to binary in the linguistic sense; you are just encoding and then storing the exact same data in a different format (e.g. ISO-8859-8). It's transliteration, not translation: 1's and 0's instead of א's and ב's.


Comments: Dear ShaBot: Study Your Tech Like Your Torah

Well, that does seem a little overly pedantic. I do agree with your second point (transliteration), but regarding the first, I think their point is that it's never been PUBLISHED in binary, which I doubt you can dispute. I could translate the Torah into Swahili, but if I don't put it into some sort of book form, then it might as well never have happened.

Posted by: Jay on May 10, 2006 10:21 AM | permalink

Published vs. translated? Who's pedantic? And doesn't a CD-ROM count as publishing? Hahahaha.

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on May 10, 2006 10:36 AM | permalink

A CD-ROM is a fine medium for publication, but one would still need a binary viewer to see it in binary. Sort of like publishing a book in invisible ink, right? I mean, if you had access to a black light, you could read the book, but it's still not much of a publication.

Posted by: Jay on May 10, 2006 11:09 AM | permalink

It's hard to try to describe that to people, and since most people have no clue, so you can have a screen showing a bunch of 0s and 1s over and over and people will be impressed.

Posted by: Od-ll on May 10, 2006 12:28 PM | permalink

Well, there's also stuff like Strong's Concordance, where every Hebrew (and Aramaic) word is given a number based on its alphabetical relationship to the other Hebrew (and Aramaic) words used in the Tanakh (including the Torah). But 01 is not "God" (which is really several words in Hebrew:
'El, 'Eloah, 'Elohim, Yahweh)—it's "father" ('ab).

Posted by: Keesey on May 10, 2006 12:45 PM | permalink

I think the crux of it is that he has mistakenly understood "binary" to be a language, rather than a format (never mind the issues of encoding).

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on May 10, 2006 1:25 PM | permalink

Well, yes, you're right.

Posted by: Keesey on May 10, 2006 2:10 PM | permalink

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.