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Re: orion-list Re: Dumb questions department.
At 12:13 PM 10/11/99 -0300, you wrote:
>Shouldn't we be trying to find out what the things actually _say_ and
>what specific scrolls _are_ before we start looking for "hidden meanings"?
Absolutely.
>After all, finding out what is actually there is the first step in
>doing research...no?
Yes. And looking for what may be hidden there is pure subjectivity. "I see
that the qumranites believed in flying saucers and pink elephants..." This
is the kind of nonsense that anyone can claim to see when they examine
documents from a subjective rather than historical perspective.
>Could we also translate 'Moreh Tzedek' properly? I realize that I am
>awfully picky about translations into and from English (or Hebrew or
>French, or OE, for that matter), but, then, I've done so much translating
>across the years that I'm very sensitive to sloppy, semantically loaded
>translations by people who clearly had an insufficient knowledge of the
>target language... and had a bias to begin with.
The reason folk dont render it accurately is because they are most likely
not rendering at all. Instead, they are reading what someone else has
written without bothering to look at the texts themselves. In other words,
too many people are dependent on secondary sources. Scholarship cannot
proceed on that basis however.
Best,
Jim
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
email- jwest@highland.net
web page- http://web.infoave.net/~jwest
'Mythology is what never was but always is.' Stephen of Byzantium
For private reply, e-mail to Jim West <jwest@Highland.Net>
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