aa5874

You are embarrassing yourself. Once there is no one-to-one mapping of any two languages the TRANSLATOR must provide his OWN personal interpretation.

A person who translates any written source of antiquity should be aware of the use of language and culture of whatever source he translates.

Any one familiar with languages KNOW that use of language and culture are inter-related.

For example, derogatory words in one culture may have a total different meaning in another culture which use the very same language.

LegionOnomaMoi

It's funny how every time I'm "embarrassing myself" it's because you don't understand something. And of all the things from the last post you want to concentrate on, it's the translation issue? Not the fact that your historical methods involve a double standard? "I'll ignore mythic elements when it's in Josephus, Suetonius, Plutarch, etc., and even though my source for Augustus says he's divine and has magical powers, it's still historical, but the NT is EVIDENCE of MYTH. Ergo Jesus never existed."

The question is where the interpretation part comes in. As I said in my example, the issue with that line from luke which means basically "put a ring on his finger" isn't an issue of translators disagreeing about what the line means, and more than a reader of english would have a problem understanding what "put a ring on his finger means."

The fact that there isn't a one-to-one mapping does not mean that translators each have a personal interpretation of how any given line in greek (or german, or french, or arabic) should be understood, but that there is no perfect way to take that "sense" and put it in another language. THAT'S where the interpretation part comes in: which English rendering does the translator "personally" prefer to translate the "sense" of a greek line that all readers of greek understand.



It is impossible (as Tolkein found) to have a language or understand a language without knowing the culture. Imagine a Aristotle picking up a newspaper written in English today. How could you begin to explain what the word "internet" means? Or "FBI"? Sure, a first year greek student can read a line or two from Plato. But to read Aristophanes, Plato, Euripides, etc., requires an understanding of Attic and Greek culture.



However, none of this has any bearing on what I said. All translations are imperfect not because of the meaning of any given line is a personal opinion but because there is no perfect way to translate the meaning of one construction in X language to another construction in Y language. It's easier when the languages are closer in culture, time, and linguistic structure, but it is still imperfect.

aa5874

You are compounding your embarrassment. You have IMPLODED. You are NOW admitting that "it is IMPOSSIBLE (as Tolkein found) to have a language or understand a language without knowing the culture".

Please, I trying to help you. You need to take a break. You are NOT making much sense. You are horribly contradicting yourself.

You can't explain how some one can properly translate a language they don't fully understand when they did NOT understand the culture in the first place.

LegionOnomaMoi

"Now admitting?" What did I say earlier that you misunderstood to mean that this is not the case? And I thought I already "IMPLODED." If I imploded already, then how can I implode again?


Ahh. I see. You tried to use logic/reasoning again. The statement "Translations are imperfect and this has nothing to do with language or culture" in no way means that one can translate without understanding culture. I can understand a language and culture completely, and another language and culture completely, and still my translation will inevitably be imperfect.

Before you talk about whether or not a proposition contradicts another, you should have some basic understanding of logic. I never said that one can translate without knowing the language or culture of the text in question. What I said was this knowledge had nothing to do with why translations are imperfect. If I'm raised speaking arabic and english, and my upbringing took place half in an English speaking country and half in an arabic speaking country, that still would not enable me to come up with perfect translations.


I never tried to. Again, you're trying to use logic, but as usual logical validity escapes you. I never said that anyone can translate a language when they don't understand the culture. What I said was translations are imperfect regardless of whether one understands the culture or not. Of course you need to understand the culture. The point is that understanding the language and culture perfectly still results in imperfect translations, because all translations are imperfect. Not because translators don't know what the text means, but because there is no perfect equivalent in the lanugage they wish to render the text into.

spin

When you communicate based on presuppositions that other people don't hold, then you don't actually communicate at all.

Unless one stops blabbering without reason one won't hear anything people say to them.

Consider for example Paul's story about Cephas eating with gentiles and not following Jewish law until he was browbeaten by agents from James. Paul's conflict was against those who were more interested in the practice of the requirements of the law, of whom Cephas was a wishy-washy example. Paul asserted his crucified Jesus-centered religion against the torah centered messianists. If Cephas is indeed Peter, we have a very different Peter from the one in Acts.

You seem to interested in apologetics.

sotto voce

Perhaps. Perhaps people do that as attempted brainwashing.

But it isn't a problem here, is it. Everyone understands that Muslims respond within 0.6 seconds to the idea that Jesus died, in contrast to their alleged deity, who took 600 years to react. And then lost the dictation, made carefully over 25 years. There's chronology making a point.

Indeed. As is well known.

We have the very same Simon Bar-Jona, from his youth an impetuous, 'unstable' lad, given to rational enthusiasm as much as to irrational fear, described, apparently tongue-in-cheek, by Jesus as 'rock'. And Simon did indeed become 'rock' in Jerusalem, and agreed with Paul, James and Barnabas about Gentiles; but, just to prove that rockiness is impermanent, like manna, he became like jelly in Antioch. That didn't mean that he suddenly decided that Gentiles were unacceptable, after all. Just that he was not as faithful as he should have been. It's inauspicious, the strange way this event gets interpreted.

Capitulation. There's chronology making a point. Chronology seems to have persuaded of exactly the opposite indication that was imagined here.

spin

This has nothing directly to do with a HJ. It is central to the theology of Paul that Jesus was fully human, Jew, without sin, executed. How else could Paul's Jesus have been a suitable substitute sacrifice for those who were under the law and had failed to do what was necessary? The qualities you note about Jesus that "delimit HJ" need no connection with a real person. Besides, Paul never met his Jesus, so he is not in any sense a witness.

You are pinning a lot of expectation on the veracity of Acts then retrojecting it into Paul. There is no trustworthy methodology in that.

Gal 1:23 says different things from Gal 1:13. My comment was specifically about the notion of the "church of god", not the persecution per se, noting that the only other place it occurred was in another dubious location with a mention of persecution. You're shooting at the wrong thing. The mention of the "church of god" in the singular for the whole world collection of believers is smelly old fish, especially when it is found in another passage that you reject.

Paul might have felt all sorts of things, but you are in fact simply speculating with no hope of ever corroborating your conclusion.

More eisegesis, don't you think?

spin

I'm sorry, your comment seems unrelated to what you were commenting on.

Whoa, you're running away along some tangent, but it has nothing to do with me.

I think there is some sort of post hoc defense of Cephas's activities in Antioch. That is of no interest. It is the inappropriate use of Acts that is interesting.

More like masturbation.

OK, I get the point that you are only here to make noise. :wave:

Solo

The central point to establish for Acts was that the church (for which ithe book was written) existed first in Jerusalem because that is where the apostles were situated. Further, to sustain the apostolic authority, it had to establish the presence of that church outside of Palestine in Paul's time as a way of confronting the Paulinist and later Marcionist versions of Christian history. The story of Saul's conversion (vs. what the real Paul claimed as an intensely personal spiritual awakening, eg in Gal 1:15-16, 2 Cr 5:16, 2 Cr 12:2-9) served that purpose.

Paul never says he 'abandoned' Judaism. He considered his Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the Jewish scriptures. His claim was simply that the Spirit that he and his church possessed was internalized Law on steroids.

Best,
Jiri

Duvduv

I am not sure I follow. If a redactor added the material about "my former life in Judaism," that would seem to indicate that he wanted Paul to have abandoned Judaism.

On the other hand we see in Galatians that in fact Paul does NOT say WHERE he was persecuting Christians at all, and the folks in Jerusalem only heard about it from others but even they didn't know where it happened and didn't ask. However, the author of Acts wants to tell us that it happened in Jerusalem, thus creating an uncorrected discrepancy between Galatians and Acts.

So my question was what redactor would simply add a slight swipe at Judaism in Galatians but not he or anyone else wanted to fix the discrepancy between Galatians and Acts.