avi

Yes, upon the condition that the "well trained listener" can read a musical score.

avi

Toto

vridar reviews Casey on Nazareth

dimbulb

As Sam Harris says there are gurus in India today who have millions of followers who profess to be living eyewitnesses to miracles being performed today. Yet few here give them a pinch of credence. But I'm supposed to read some book written 2000 years after the fact that supposedly has evidence of similar goings-on gleaned from 20 centuries ago and give that credence?

I'll pass.

Steven Carr

I think spin cannot bring himself to agree that Casey is 'not fully competent' in Greek and Aramaic and likewise cannot bring himself to agree that Casey seems to think he is more competent in Greek and Aramaic of 2000 years ago than the people who spoke it.

Steven Carr

A well trained listener can detect that a piece was originally written for flute when he hears it played on the bagpipes.

Or at least Maurice Casey can.

spin

What makes you think that? If Casey is a monolingual English speaker, he's not fully competent in any other language. As I told you, I had already answered the quibble, Steven.

Theoretically, it's not particularly hard to have a better grasp of a language than a speaker of 2000 years ago. Linguistics is a rather modern discipline, one that supplies the theory unavailable to anyone up until a century ago. A linguist will have the prerequisites to have a better theoretical knowledge of a language than any modern practitioner of that language.

Consider these questions:

1. What practical idea do the past perfect, present perfect and future perfect share?
2. What general difference is there between the simple form of the verb (eg "I watched") and the continuous form of the verb (eg "I was watching")?
3. Why do Romance language speakers have so much difficulty with the difference between the present perfect and the simple past tenses?
4. What exact English language problem does the statement "Time flies like an arrow" embody (and "Fruit flies like a peach")?
5. Why does the subject of the following statements have a different grammatical relationship with the infinitive and how can you tell?
   
   a. He's eager to please.
   b. He's easy to please.

These are examples of things that linguists treat with few difficulties, but which can cause great difficulties to the language practitioner. It's only natural that someone with linguistic training, such as Casey, can know things about an ancient language that an ancient practitioner wouldn't have known, things that reflect on that practitioner's usage.


spin

Steven Carr

Gosh, I had no idea that Casey was such an expert.

His track record in this field must be like, just so impressive.

Could you give me the names of some Greek translations of Aramaic works that Casey has successfully translated back into Aramaic, what with him being the world's leading expert on reconstructing Aramaic sources of Greek works?

To avoid filling up this thread, just list the first 5 or 10 that come to mind. No need to list the others. It would be tedious to see too many documents listed.

spin

That's the thing: you have no idea. Casey could be such an expert, but, to tell, you need to know something about the theory behind the philology. And your comeback here is not illustrative.

There's no point in searching around to find something meaningful to say. All I complained about was the way you were going for Casey's throat in a manner that was neither useful nor very meaningful.

Casey has spent decades working with both Aramaic and Greek. You'll need to appreciate that he has a very good scholarly grasp of both. This in no sense means that he is correct, but that's not an invitation to attempt to repudiate him simply because he was doing his job the way he saw fit.

As to this hissy little attempt to further show you don't have anything tangible to say, you shouldn't have bothered. You haven't read his works on the Aramaic sources to 1) Mark and 2) Matthew and Luke. This is not something out of the blue by some johnny-come-lately. He's building on works of earlier scholars and he's been doing so for a long time at a scholarly level and at a respected level at that.

Further efforts you may make seem destined to have as little effect, so please, Steven, as you have better things to do, do. You'll get more out of doing them.

JoeWallack

JW:
Steven's complaint is the opposite of what is normally seen in Polemics. A modern Skeptic makes a critical language observation and the Apologist says an ancient native would know better. Not familiar with Casey but skimming (love that word) through him he does look God-awful. As usual, his problem is his conclusions, not the evidence. His own evidence does not support his own conclusions.

Coming into my hometown (see my profile) http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php...nds&rcid=41896 , the Quisadt Sadarach on the subject, we get a sneek peek at where Casey took the baby Jesus here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...der_0567645177

A bold and reMarkable statement. No doubt we have many reasons to doubt this assertion:

1) spin's textual criticism doubting the connection of the offending word to a city "Nazareth" (listed first of course).

2) The two potential quality sources, Paul and "Mark", have no infancy narratives.

3) "Mark's" indication that Jesus' home was Capernaum http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_2:1

4) The two priMary sources for Casey's assertion, "Matthew" and "Luke's" infancy narratives, both have large doses of the Impossible. Ironically here, Casey himself confesses this to us:

So Casey himself has exorcised the only potential quality evidence for his assertion as the infancy narratives are the only place that gives some scope to it.

5) The triviality of Nazareth. Not much evidence for not much of anything. If there was a Nazareth at the time, it was small ("how small was it?") and the average god/man is more likely to have come from a more likely (bigger) city. Just saying statistics.

Regarding Casey and Aramaic. Since we all agree there is an Aramaic setting to the story which also has Aramaic transliteration, an Aramaic original must be a possibility. With "Mark" though we've seen that most of the Aramaic is bound to resurrection references which follows Aristotle's Poetics as the use of "strange" language (another country) to distinguish the words. I have faith that Casey does not mention this so instead of honor, shame on him. The obvious evidence for a translation would the example of Greek translations of the Jewish Bible. Besides the original still being extant of course you have numerous examples of variation in the translated language because the process is not copying, it is translating. The famous Psalm 22:17 is a prime example. You get completely different words in the Greek because some translators refused to accept the Hebrew original and resorted to guessing what letter to add/subtract so that the guesses in Greek are based on close words in Hebrew. Obvously "Matthew" and "Luke" were created from a Greek "Mark". For "Mark" not to have this type of evidence would mean that the Greek translation was very early (like before any copies of the Aramaic were made). The related problem is that the textual transmission of "Mark" also does not show the lesser evidence of subtle variation in selecting among alternatives in Greek for the same Aramaic. The textual tradition does show the ability to have tremendous variation but based on theological issues. There's just no quality evidence for an Aramaic original. The only example I've seen from Casey is his "Way" argument for the grain picking on Shabbat but the key to his argument is that "Mark's" Jesus would never have violated the Shabbat. A very strange conclusion from a story with the pun line that Jesus is lord of the Shabbat.

I can accept that Casey is competent in Aramaic but he does need to deal with the usual evidence above for a translated language.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

Steven Carr

I have read such things.

But what is noticeable is that spin cannot give one single Greek document for which Casey has reconstructed the Aramaic original.

Nevertheless, spin continues to claim that Casey is a world expert on recreating Aramaic originals of Greek documents, and resorts to accusations of hissy fits when asked to name a single Aramaic document translated into Greek that Casey has managed to reconstruct the Aramaic original.

This is like saying I am throwing a hissy fit when introduced to the world's leading expert on open-heart surgery, and pointing out that he has never operated on anybody.....

And I see no reason not to resort to Casey style rhetoric when he claims that many bilingual people are 'not fully competent'. What does that make him then? Why is he claiming that native speakers of their own language are 'not fully competent'? Does that not make him also 'not fully competent'?

To make this thread more productive, and less about spin's praise of Casey's psychic powers in reading Aramaic documents nobody has ever seen, weren't bits of Daniel written in Aramaic and translated into Greek? (I could be wrong)

Does Casey ever apply his methodology to that to see how successful it is?