Elder-Miller, 1961

"The Lord hath decreed that the dead should be interred in coffins made of crystal, of hard, resistant stone, or of wood that is both fine and durable, and 

that graven rings should be placed upon their fingers."

Official Baha'i, 1992

The falcon-hunting verse

"When in hunting you use birds of prey, make mention of God. Then whatever they catch for you is lawful, even though you find it dead." 

Elder-Miller

"If ye should hunt with beasts or birds of prey, invoke ye the Name of God when ye send them to pursue their quarry; for then whatever they catch shall be lawful unto you, even should ye find it to have died." 

Official Baha'i

Notice both official versions are much larger. Comparative Elder/Official word-count is 20/42 words for the falcon-hunting verse -- 25/38 for the coffins. Words have been added to change their outcome. 

In the case of the hunting verse they rounded out things by adding "beasts" to Baha'u'llah's "falcons." Were they trying to help Baha'u'llah be systematic and complete? Nothing could make the Kitab-i-Aqdas either systematic or complete! The hunting verse by officialdom became so elaborate it exceeds Baha'u'llah's entire century's worth of  instructions about marriage! Oddly, it adds a detail Elder-Miller never saw about when you say the invocation, while falcon-hunting.

Officialdom's coffins verse rendering is especially revealing to analyze. It has likely had Baha'i leadership sweating bullets for a good while. Even if it were not an age of deforestation and dwindling hardwoods, the command to be buried in such rarefied coffins is absurd to modern eyes. It is interesting indeed to see what they have done to the verse, and clearly their gears have been grinding on this one. It also will provide an example of a common human error in religion: To think like religious managers, analyzing "What if?" That is, many people take an approach to religious scriptures and doctrines that analyzes "If people  do Thing A, then that will lead to Thing B, which would lead to Thing C." Based on this, they decide if a religious teaching is good or not, or they try to alter it to fit with their logical ideas about outcomes. This is thinking like a franchise manager instead of a devotee, and it's one way that religions wander from their original impulses.

Notice that hardwoods are no longer needed, just "fine and durable" wood.  Now, hard woods (hardwoods) are a definite genus of wood and everybody knows what they are -- Mahogany, Oak, Ebony, etc.  But the Baha'i managers were thinking, "We'll get criticized for this, this will lead to more deforestation of declining hardwoods," etc. So they changed Baha'u'llah's intention to mean any sort of wood -- even a composite or false wood probably -- that is "fine" and durable. This makes the assumption that Baha'u'llah wanted the hardwoods because of their durability. How is this known? It isn't. The Baha'i officials are deciding "The reason Baha'u'llah specified hardwoods must have been for logical reasons because they are durable." This is invention, and making religion into crass utilitarianism. Maybe he wanted hardwoods because he liked them? Maybe there was some esoteric, occult reason? Maybe it was just God's Command etc.? It also begs the question: If Baha'u'llah was an omniscient "Manifestation of God," why did he not know that hardwoods would become rare and threatened, requiring Baha'is to get coffins made from them?

Elder-Miller Kitab-i-Aqdas

I find it very interesting that "beautiful" is missing from the official version and has been replaced with "fine." This is a downgrade from "beautiful." It is hard to think that neither Elder nor Miller, nor the consultants they consulted, knew what the Arabic word for "beautiful" was or that they mistook it. Milder and Elder had no difficulty translating "Blessed Beauty." But the Baha'i administration apparently did not want the word beautiful here. Knowing how they think, "beautiful" further indicated something expensive. The translators were trying to think Communistically and come up with burial rules that the common masses could follow. 

But is this what Baha'u'llah intended? It seems to me that he wanted the Baha'is, indeed, to be opulent people and a cut above. Indeed, the Persian Baha'is that I knew during my years in the Baha'i Faith tended to be a glamorous type of Iranian -- nice clothes, nice cars, jewelry. And they were closest to the Baha'i cultural source. Or is "beautiful" too subjective? Not objective enough? But didn't he really say "beautiful"? And isn't the Kitab-i-Aqdas loaded with subjective statements by Baha'u'llah?

Finally the administration altered the command for "rare stones." They don't have to be rare, but merely "hard, resistant." Again, this is Baha'is assuming it was all for practical purposes. But maybe rare was what Baha'u'llah wanted? According to Baha'i verse engineers a Baha'i coffin can now be made of any commonplace material so long as it's "hard" and "resistant" -- including fake stone, composites, or epoxy. 

Although Baha'u'llah said nothing about "hardness" or "resistance" the Baha'is introduced that idea with two separate words not found in Elder-Miller while jettisoning "rare." He also said nothing about "durability" (relative to the wood) which the Baha'is added while dispensing with a truly intended "beautiful." Baha'i translators decided that Baha'u'llah -- in his request that Baha'is have coffins of beautiful hardwoods, rare stones, and crystal -- was speaking in error. He didn't know his own true intent. All that he was meaning to say was: "God has commanded that the dead be buried in durable coffins." 

Note that people already used durable coffins before Baha'u'llah showed up.

These verse changes demonstrate, indeed, the human tendency to approach religious scriptures like franchise managers applying logic and asking "What might happen?" instead of taking a religion at its word. It's also a demonstration of a particular Baha'i mindset for raising up science and objective rationales as equal or superior to their own religion -- despite the real orientation of their founders.  The translation choice by the administration betrays a belief that everything in religious law is given for practical, logical reasons having an objective and scientific basis. But where is the objective content in things Baha'u'llah refers to continually -- things like the 'splitting the moon,' the 'odor of God,' and a 'red spot' beside an extremely-placed divine lote tree?

Everything about the translation approach that Haifa Baha'is take is intended to avoid damage to their fortunes. It is not an honest approach that respects  this decidedly mystical religion. The Elder-Miller translation lets you see all the invention and alteration-of-texts that Baha'i officialdom is engaged with. And it becomes clear why they hid the text from the west for 120 years.

How to Get Rid of the Polygamy in the Baha'i Faith? Translation Tricks!

Here is how the Baha'i Administration rendered the line allowing more than one wife to make it come out differently. It is an exercise in subtlety and mind-spin well worth studying:

Elder-Miller:

"God has ordained marriage for you. Beware lest you go beyond two (wives), 

and whoever is satisfied with one of the handmaidens, his soul is at rest and so is hers."

That's straightforward, clear and has a natural feel. Quite clearly this verse assumes polygamy as normative, but gives a warning connected to "going beyond two" wives. Then the fellow content with one wife is praised. A fourth translation of this verse exists, used in Samuel Graham Wilson's book "Baha'ism and It's Claims" (1915). By all appearances it is a translation by the English Orientalist and scholar Edward G. Browne. If that is the case it has some authority. It is probably the oldest translation we have, and closest to the source, and by an Englishman into English. Look at it carefully:

Edward Granville Browne:

"God hath decreed you to marry. Beware of marrying more than two, 

and whosoever is content with one, attaineth peace for himself and her."

Notice the "beware lest" of Elder and the "beware of" of Browne and how similar those are. Based on these it's merely advising care and caution in going beyond two wives. That is to say, Baha'u'llah is simply saying: Be wary about going beyond two wives.

Anton Haddad, a member of the faith and a Baha'i promoter cited as the first Baha'i in America, proffered a version very different. In the Haddad translation the words "beware lest" (Elder) and "beware of" (Browne) come out as "beware not" --a critical difference in meaning.

Anton Haddad:

"Marriage is enjoined on all, but beware not to marry more than two wives, 

and he who is contented with one only, he and she will be in ease and happiness."

This is a drastic difference from both Elder and Browne. A sense of prohibition is evoked. It should be noted that Anton Haddad, who had a western first name, was a Baha'i, the first Baha'i to set foot into North America according to Baha'i sources. Thus we would have had both western sensibilities averse to the Aqdas' polygamy content, plus a strong motivation to alter the meaning in his translation to make it palatable to the west.

He was not reported to be a grammarian or a scholar of Arabic. By contrast Earl Elder, the lead translator for the translation from Great Britain, was a scholar of Arabic. Further, Elder's preface states that he had his translation reviewed by two other Arabic scholars, Will Orick and Rev. Cady Allan, who was able enough in Arabic to make punctuation recommendations to Elder. Obviously the "marriage verse" would have been a point of particular focus in the minds of the translation team; they would have certainly known that this was the biggest "scandal" element in the text from the point-of-view of the western Baha'i promoters and the verse of greatest interest. Thus they would have taken  care with it so as not to be accused of distortion. Remember Earl elder was a scholar of Arabic whose translations of Arabic were published by academia. He had a translator's reputation to protect. Thus Elder-Miller have more credibility than the Baha'i evangelist-to-America Anton Haddad.

Haddad's "Beware that" seems to set up a rule; a requirement compared to Elder's "beware lest" and Browne's "beware of" which merely warn. Yet Haddad's "beware not to marry" is still not a firm prohibition in any case. Not a clear prohibition such as could be easily seen in any simple phrase like: "Do not marry...", "Thou art forbidden to marry," or "Thou shalt not marry" or simply "marry not more than..." The warning "Beware not to go through the Ghastly Gulch" is not the same as the directive "Do notgo  through the Ghastly Gulch." And clear "do not" statements were no difficulty for Baha'u'llah elsewhere in the Kitab-i-Aqdas. 

Meanwhile, Haddad leaves it obvious, in the "more than two" sentence, that two wives are at least no problem in Baha'u'llah's New World Order. Thus this translation did not confound Baha'u'llah's words adequately for the neo-Baha'i translation committees of Wilmette and Haifa. Based on the Elder-Miller translation, Baha'is had two problems with Baha'u'llah's marriage sentence. Namely, the first half of it, and the second half. The first half makes two wives seem fine. The second half fails to forbid anything -- even when tricked out by the partisan Baha'i promoter-to-the-west, Anton Haddad. Watch how differently Baha'u'llah's two sentences later 'developed' in official Baha'i hands:

Official Baha'i Version:

"God hath prescribed matrimony unto you. Beware that ye take not unto yourselves more wives than two. 

Whoso contenteth himself with a single partner from among the maidservants of God, both he and she shall live in tranquility."

A little word-switching and word additions go a long way

It feels even more different still, doesn't it? And suddenly sounds clearly prohibitive! Lots of engineering and fakery, I think, is in that translation. Let's analyze it.

Notice that they took the Haddad approach of constructing the sentence as a sharper prohibition like his "beware not to," but used "beware that you..." instead. This opened it up into a question (Beware that you what?) requiring new words. They could then double back and build the sentence as something clearly prohibitive. 

Notice Elder-Miller came up with 30 words for Baha'u'llah's statement, Haddad 31. The official Baha'is cranked out 38 words.  They also expanded it from two sentences to three. Your mind should immediately alert you: They have added words. More significantly, the feeling of the verse is now different from start to finish. It is a very carefully constructed translation. (It must be, it took them 120 years.) It's in the way officialdom's version gives you "impressions" that the real tricks are.

First, in soft-focus, it's far more formal. It has an atmosphere of warning not present in Elder-Miller which sounds casual by comparison. And it somehow ends up with the appearance and feeling that both forms of polygamy -- two-wives and also 3-or-more -- are being prohibited by Baha'u'llah, with monogamy required. How does it conjure this impression not found in the other two versions?

Notice that the Baha'i officials used a sharp construction similar to Haddad's "beware not," that is, "beware that." This allowed them to expand the sentence and rebuild it carefully, making it prohibitive.  They developed his "beware not to marry" -- already looking like an elaboration compared to Elder/Browne -- into a more complex "Beware-that-ye-take-not..." The nebulous problem word "beware" has been effectively sidelined by sentence expansion, made into a prefix instead of a central player in the sentence. Then a powerful phrase "take not..." rises up at center stage. 

After creating their own "beware that..." they even doubled-up prohibitory constructions by using Haddad's "not" in their 2nd construction "take not." 

"beware that" | you | "take not." 

The sentence contains two sharp word pairs; a redundancy of prohibitory word-constructions, whereas there was not even one prohibitory construction in the earlier Browne/Elder translations. 

Elder-Miller Kitab-i-Aqdas

Review the Elder version above. It clearly assumes two wives as normative and quite acceptable in these two simple lines: "God has ordained marriage for you. Beware lest you go beyond two."Baha'u'llah reportedly had at least four wives. 

What kindly uncle wouldn't say "beware!" and "careful!" to a young man considering three or more wives? 

Let's start with an understanding of the word "lest." The direct meaning of "beware lest..." in the Elder-Miller version is simply: Be cautious or you'll end up going beyond two wives. "Lest" is soft. It is refers to possible events that might occur. 'Let us not do this thing, in case [lest]  this other thing might happen.' In this case, the Elder-Miller phrasing means: 'Marry, but be cautious or you might end up with more wives than is best.' The official version of "beware that" implies that a hard line is being drawn and a requirement is being made. 

Note: I invite all those with qualifications to translate Arabic into English to give their opinions about the most honest translation of this particular verse, where Elder-Miller got "beware lest" and officialdom got "beware that." Please send your opinions to me at julian "at" west.net. I will post them. Many of the Arabic-script pages are available online for viewing.

From cautionary advice to "thou shalt not"

Significantly, the phrase "take not" does not exist in Elder-Miller nor anything like it. There is no "do not," "don't," "refrain" or even "avoid" in their version. How did officialdom manage to find "take not"? This is probably the cleverest thing in the translation. It subliminally tweaks western conditioning from the "shall nots" of the Bible. Even though it's a sentence technically allowing two wives, the mind hears "Take not" and it sounds just like the prohibitive phrases of The Ten Commandments. I am sure this associative trick was intentional.

From gentle guy-talk to fiery admonishment

Elder's "Go beyond" implies a soft border to wife acquisition. How far can men go in these matters? It sounds as if collecting wives was easy and typical. "Take" (the official rendering) has negative connotations to the mind -- taking resources, stealing something. "Take" sounds aggressive and implies weddings. Both the Elder and Haddad versions are relaxed and informal in tone. Elder-Miller seemed well capable of translating Baha'u'llah's many fire-and-brimstone moments; the many hyper-adamant demands he makes, and those loud moments are well-represented throughout their translation. But in their version Baha'u'llah was not saying anything so challenging to the polygamous order as to warrant an adamant phrasing or even precise words. Fitting with this view, Baha'u'llah's use of "handmaidens" and soft-edged "go beyond" imply he intends a collegiate, 'one-of-the-boys' tone as he addresses his men about the matter of marriage.

This makes sense considering this is the realm of the personal and there had to be many believers with more than 2 wives.  By contrast the official rendering -- with terms like "take not," "shall," and "contenteth himself" -- is unctious and sharp, loaded with stern rebuke.  I simply don't buy that this is an accurate translation. I believe that the Elder-Miller rendering is the honest translation, and not the 120-year-late offering by the Wilmette/Haifa Baha'i establishment.

From a passive description to a prescribed action

Another neuro linguistic trick in officialdom's version is the use of "whoso contenteth himself" as against Elder's "whoever is satisfied." Elder's phrase passively describes a situation: "Here are some polygamous men. A few of them are contented with one wife." In the official version the passive description of a few contented men has morphed into a phrase that sounds like a prescribed action. "Is satisfied" refers to what some men "are." "Contents himself" refers to what men should do. The phrase "contenteth himself" admonishes "Content yourself!"

Mind games: From 'consider the wisdom' to -- "This is how it's going to be"

In the second half of a brief sentence giving fundamental Baha'i marriage advice for 1,000 years, the Elder version has Baha'u'llah simply pointing to a wisdom in having just one wife. He commends it to the men as having results that are worthy of consideration: "whoever is satisfied with one...his soul is at rest." (He apparently had some disharmony among his wives.) It's as if he's pointing out to them: 'Look at men like Hassan and Hamid, with just one wife. Such fellows tend to have less drama.' For this section the Baha'i translators pull out every trick in the book to change it's feeling and direct the mind differently.

The "whoever" of Elder implies a random volunteerism; that perhaps a few men might consider the wisdom of one wife. But officialdom's "Whoso contenteth himself..." makes monogamy appear to be specified; as if requested. 

The use of 'shall live' (in describing the monogamous couple) employs the classic prophetic, ordaining voice -- a voice common to Baha'i literature that points toward a future world. From a sentence that merely made an observation about the advantages one-wife husbands may have ("his soul is at rest') the Baha'i officials transformed it into a sentence that appears to prescribe it as the one mode-of-life for the future. It became prescriptive and predictive instead of merely observational, as if Baha'u'llah is describing an army of future monogamous Baha'i couples and ordaining their monogamy together with their happiness: "He and she shall live..." 

Then this state is associated with good things, better things than Baha'u'llah had mentioned in the Elder-Miller version. The modest "his soul is at rest" of Elder-Miller comes out differently in the official version:  "He and she shall live in tranquility." Somehow Elder-Miller missed "live" and also the future-pointing "shall" -- but the Baha'is found it. With "shall live" -- unseen in either Haddad or the Elder version -- the monogamous state has been subtlety associated and correlated with life. Life is always naturally counterpoised against death. "Life" and "living" are powerful concepts. Everybody wants life. "Shall live" suggests both the continuance of life itself, but also prosperity, nice things, everything humans want.  (And yet it's the polygamous Muslims who are presently taking over Europe and out-birthing the Europeans.) "Tranquility" is also a richer term than "at rest." Thus the Baha'i translation, once it points to the one-wife idea, associates even stronger positive ideas with it than Baha'u'llah himself did. And where did "his soul" go? 

All this subtle neuro-linguistic programming by Baha'i officialdom is effective for unthinking, impressionable people -- the sort of people who populate the Baha'i Faith. They have built in a "flow" to their two sentences. With the first sentence the possibility of two wives is acknowledged, but with a feeling of admonishment and criticism of that state not present in Elder-Miller. The next sentence creates a feeling that the "two wives" is suddenly, in a trice, outlawed with monogamy raised up as the  ordained state, and the one acceptable state, of the future.

So in the official Baha'i translation a mere warning about the difficulties of having 3+ wives, and an approbational comment about the men who keep one, has become an apparent prohibition  of any form of polygamy.

Yet the thing still faileth. Because the thrust they created for the final sentence contradicts the first sentence:

"Beware that ye take not unto yourselves more wives than two."  

Only the artful, meme-resonant construction of their last sentence held any hope, for Baha'i obfuscation artists, of burying Baha'u'llah's first sentence in oblivion:

Whoso contenteth himself with a single partner from among the maidservants of God, both he and she shall live in tranquility."

It still remains: The text of the Baha'i "Most Holy Book" clearly allows Baha'i men to have two wives. To combat this perception, all the confused minions of officialdom can say to a Baha'i harem-seeker is, perhaps: "Yeah, but then you won't live in future. Um, er, at least not with "tranquility!" The fact stands, too, that many monogamous marriages are stormy and contain conflict, while many polygamous marriages are relatively happy. Studies of the Mormons easily reveal this. Thus the suggestion of Baha'u'llah, even in Elder-Miller, that monogamy guarantees harmony or prevents divorce is not particularly valid in the first place. America has long had laws against polygamy and all marriages in our two  centuries have been monogamous; yet our divorce rates are sky high! (Perhaps if the Baha'is had accepted the fundamentally Islamic worldview present in their actual scriptures they would have grown much more powerfully than they did.)

It took Baha'i officialdom 120 years to come up with an Aqdas rendering containing enough monkey business to try to slide the Aqdas past their constituency without a mass exodus. Certainly their long suppression of the book starting early is the only reason a "Baha'i Faith" even exists today, rather than being some forgotten Islamic sect long dead. Yet they had to come out with it eventually. I imagine they sent the verse back to translator after translator saying, 'No, it needs to come off differently.' But notice how they have still failed, after all that holding off, to transform an ancient Islamic viewpoint into an honest feminist religion. 

I have not acquired a copy of the belated 1992 Aqdas Apology of 315-pages. I don't enjoy reading the words of anonymous would-be world-controllers as they create sophisticated lies. But I have no doubt it contains paragraphs and paragraphs of spin-doctoring, associated with this verse, to convince Baha'is that this verse doesn't say what it apparently says. They were abrogating and annulling this verse already by the time of their preliminary controlled leak called the "Synopsis and Codification of the Kitab-i-Aqdas."  That was where the first noises arose in Bahailand that there was 'something wrong with the Kitab-i-Aqdas.' In that belated sop thrown to the believers in 1973 we saw the first obvious "administrative" efforts in damage control.

I believe that the translation offered by the Baha'i institutions -- of this marriage verse and other verse -- is mendacious. I believe it falsifies Baha'u'llah's Arabic statements in pursuit of their agenda to keep their constructed religion popular and growing no matter what the reality of the original religion. And yet there is more nasty  business in the official translation...there is more!

Julian Curtis Lee Mickunas

March 2012, The Saint Francis

http://kitab-i-aqdas.info/