Word: scribes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is a character in The Satanic Verses, a scribe named Salman, who commits an unthinkable sin. His job is to write down the revelations of God as recited by Mahound, Rushdie's fictional prophet. But the mischievous scribe repeatedly changes Mahound's words. When the prophet finally realizes that Salman has corrupted the text of his holy book, he explodes, "Your blasphemy can't be forgiven." The proper punishment for Salman's crime is death, but Mahound is merciful and spares his life...
Actually, this passage did not spring from Rushdie's imagination: similar accounts of Muhammad's temptation were recorded a millennium ago by Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari and other authoritative Muslim historians. Today's Islamic scholars, however, do not consider the story authentic. Like the section dealing with the scribe Salman, this episode is seen by Rushdie's critics as a blatant attempt to undermine the Koran as the word...
Doonesbury scribe Garry Trudeau and Bloom County maestro Berke Breathed could not be reached for comment. The two artists and satirists also are the recipients of journalism's second-highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize...
Unfortunately, American views of British art tend to echo the Chinese court scribe who is said to have remarked, in a letter to George III, that his Emperor was not unmindful of the "remoteness of your tiny barbarian island, cut off as it is from the world by so many wastes of sea." Modern British art, that is to say, tended toward the provincial, the marginal, the literary and the cute; it cultivated nuance and eccentricity at the expense of broader and grander pictorial concerns; it was anecdotal and too much tied to a fascination with human society -- little-island...
Ancient records indicate that the Chinese spotted five more supernovas in the next millennium, all in the Milky Way galaxy, and some of these starbursts were also noted by other cultures. The brilliant supernova of A.D. 1006 was seen and described by an Egyptian scribe named Ali ibn Ridwan and by European monks. The exploding star of 1181 was noted by the Japanese. But it is the supernova of July 4, 1054, which suddenly blazed in the constellation Taurus, near Orion, that is perhaps most significant to present-day astronomers. It exploded only about 6,000 light-years away...