Wednesday, July 27, 2005

CC's linguist friend comments on the "Language of Reverence" debate

"Obviously the only suitable candidates for the language of reverence would be late Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic. Of course, sanskrit would be a strong candidate, since that is the language of reverence for about, well, I'm not sure what the population of India is, and if I cut it in half so I'm just referring to Northern India, that would probably come out about right..."

He then suggested that in keeping with the "language of reverence" concept, we should ape the Muslims and have all the UUs learn the languages of reverence as he doubts the sources of authority would carry the proper impact in translation. He suggests we all start with late Greek and reccomends a thurough knowledge of Septuagint translation of the Old Testament and the Nestle-Aland reconstruction of the text of the Greek New Testament. For special terms in the "langauge of reverence," UUs should turn to Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and Walter Bauer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Of course, there is the fact that both of these books are translated from German so a proper appreciation of the terms requires that one should read the originals.

CC
almost certain that he was kidding.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Way to "old school" for me, I suggest Klingon or Elvish (Tolkien) as the new languages of reverence.