A friend sent me one of those emails that are constantly making the rounds filled with old quotations complaining about ridiculously high prices that now seem ridiculously cheap. An example from 1955: “Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging 7 cents just to mail a letter?”

As it turns out, the 1955 postage rate was only 3 cents per ounce, and I can remember from my childhood in the sixties mailing letters for a nickel. These ruminations led to other memories of the days when pocket change counted for more than tiddlywinks.

Some Coca-Cola drink machines charged 10 cents for a large (12 ounce) bottle, or 6 cents for a small (6.5 ounce) bottle. I recall when most of them jumped to 15 cents for the large bottle, and I remember being shocked and appalled at having to pay 25 cents for a Coke at a summer camp I attended. It was a hot day — my thirst overcame my financial prudence and I ponied up a whole quarter, feeling completely ripped off and wondering what my mother would think of my profligacy.

In my first grade class, we were given the opportunity to buy ice cream at a specific period of each day: popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, Brown Mules, or (my favorite) Nutty Buddies for five cents each. I begged my parents to give me a nickel a day out of their budget for this frivolous expense. It was more about status and belonging than it was about sugar or calories, because during that period which was set aside for the consumption of dairy treats, those who partook not had nothing more to do than enviously observe those who did. My parents reluctantly agreed, and placed a nickel in my wallet each night for that purpose.

One day, for some reason I can no longer recall, I didn’t buy any ice cream. When my father discovered the nickel still in my wallet from the previous night, he added another nickel. The next morning he congratulated me on my self-discipline and frugality, which I accepted without revealing that fiscal virtue had played no part in my abstinence.

“Whenever I find the money still in your wallet,” Dad said, “I’ll reward you by adding the same amount to what’s there.”

Even at that tender age, my math skills were sharp enough to realize that I had struck a gold mine. Some of the other kids at school always seemed to have money, and now I would become one of those kids. I quit eating ice cream altogether.

At an interest rate of 100% per day, compounded daily, within a week my father (who only made $64 a week at that time) could no longer afford to keep his promise. I had to settle for a five dollar bill when I should have had $6.40. I kept that portrait of Mr. Lincoln in my wallet for weeks, and I walked the halls of the school feeling as if I owned the place.

I think my mother eventually convinced me to commit that five dollars to my savings account at the local bank, increasing my balance from $25 to $30. Several years later that balance had grown to around $125 through deposits of birthday gifts and compounded interest at 4.5%. I withdrew the original $25 with which my mother had opened the account, took it to the local jewelry store, and bought her a silver pitcher for Mother’s Day. She still has that pitcher.

That title isn’t a mispelling. See if you can figure it out. I bet Stu will.

Several years ago, while going through an intense Nietzsche phase (from which I still haven’t fully recovered) the thought occurred to me to go back and reread the Bible with more open eyes than those I employed in my earlier readings when I considered myself a devout Christian. I never acted on that impulse, but it recurred to me (how Nietzschesque) as I recently read H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History. By now, my religiously-inclined readers are probably grunting in disapproval of my perspective, but bear with me. After finishing Wells’ somewhat outdated but still worthy Outline, I nearly picked up my Oxford Annotated RSV — but having read through the Bible several times already I knew what a large project that is (1189 chapters plus Apocrypha), and I wanted to read some other things on my shelf, so I put it off.

My son John, who is now teaching English in Korea, corresponds with me by email. Not knowing of my half-baked intentions, he suggested out of the blue that we read the Bible together. John recently discovered a more meaningful connection with Christianity, and if that were all I knew about John I probably would have politely declined. But I also know that John has explored Buddhism and other alternatives, and that he’s intelligent and has a great sense of humor. I enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to spend more time conversing with my son, as well as to revisit an old passion of mine with someone who is likely to contribute to a most interesting discussion.

I don’t think that either of us intends to convert the other. We’re probably both expecting that the text itself will do that. It will be interesting to observe the results. Although I take a critical perspective on the text and I’m a tenacious agnostic, I don’t rule out the idea that I can be changed by this experience. In fact, I embrace it. If Fitzgerald and Henry James can transform me, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I might find some personal benefit in the collection of human insights and inspirations known as the Bible as well.

John chose the New Internation Version for his reading. That’s a fine translation, despite it’s somewhat conservative associations — two of my college professors contributed to it. But I chose to use the Oxford Annotated RSV instead, because unlike the NIV I’ve never read through the entire RSV, and I appreciate the notes in the Oxford Annotated volume. Besides, I always think it’s a good idea to compare translations, if for no other reason than to avoid projecting too much into the translator’s choice of specific English words. The RSV is a more literal translation than the NIV, but the latter often conveys the original sense better — so comparing and contrasting them yields food for thought.

Additionally, I dug up my Hebrew text of the Old Testament and my Hebrew lexicon so I could dig deeper whenever questions arose about the text.

John and I began corresponding, and so far our discussion has not disappointed me — although I’ve probably been doing too much of the talking. John has a busy life, so we’ve had to take it very slowly. We’re just through chapter 14 of Genesis now (a fascinating chapter, that). But I don’t mind taking my time. In fact, I decided (after catching myself in a couple of mistaken assumptions about the Hebrew text) to use the opportunity afforded by John’s preferred pace to fulfill a desire from more than thirty years ago: I will simultaneously read the entire Hebrew text in parallel with the RSV.

Last night it occurred to me that while I’m at it I might as well also make use of another volume that’s been collecting dust on my shelf for the last thirty years. As the oldest known translation of the Old Testament into any other language, and because of its influence on the New Testament and later Christianity, I will also read the Septuagint in Greek at the same time. I have already observed many interesting details of this translation — both extremes of cases in which the Greek has been bent into a literalist Hebraism on the one hand, and cases in which the Greek obliterates the Hebrew meaning on the other.

For an example of the former, in Genesis 2 when Yahweh (or Kurios in Greek) instructs Adam not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge for “on the day you eat it, you shall surely die,” the Hebrew for “surely die” is mot tamut, literally “die by dying” — the reiteration is for intensive effect. The Greek translates this literally as thanato apothaneisthe.

On the other hand, the word play of that same chapter becomes lost in the Greek. “Adam” is Hebrew for man, so the term is used interchangeably in the chapter as a name and as a noun. The Greek chooses to render it as “anthropos” exclusively until the injunction against eating the fruit, in which it is translated as “Adam,” then switches between the two afterwards. The whole pun on dust (adamah in Hebrew) is also lost in the Greek chous.

Even more striking, and rather funny, is the phrase “she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” In Hebrew, woman is ishah and man is ish. The -ah suffix can be used for a feminine as it is here, or it can mean “towards” or “from” — thus the pun. It almost works in English, if you can invent some suitable meaning for “wo-” (it actually comes from the Old English wif “wife, or woman”), but the Greek murders it: she shall be called gune because she was taken out of andros. That must have left a lot of Greek readers scratching their heads.

By reading the Greek also, I’ll make a smooth transition into the New Testament when we get there. At the rate we’re going, that should be in about the year 2017.