[eliben]

Funny coincidence - I'm just rereading this book now, and I think I like it more than the first time (~11 years ago). Getting older makes me appreciate Steinbeck even more.

But I'm not entirely sure about his discussion of the word "timshel" in the original Bible. I'm a native Hebrew speaker, and I don't read any "may" into it - it's more of a declaration of the future like "you will rule/control it" rather than "you may rul/control it".

[randomsearch]

That's interesting. Steinbeck researched his books extremely thoroughly, so you'd expect for something so central it'd be correct. Would be good to follow this up with experts now that we have the luxury of the internet.