Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[E. Albright]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
As for translating from Greek/Hebrew, there are difficulties involved translating. That said, the difficulties are not insurmountable, or no one would translate anything. At least those two Languages had not been popularly spoken for quite some time, so their "meaning creep" should have been very limited, at the least. They had been studied throughout the Middle Ages, though, in the classic literature, so denotation/connotation were determinable.

I need to let this die, but I'm starved for complex conversation, so I'll make one Last (I hope) thrust. I again suggest that you look at Quine's Indeterminacy of Translation argument, even though it may not be easy to lay hands on. Translation is certainly possible, but one can never be certain that it's "right". Translation is certainly possible, but it's impossible for translation to be certain. And the more esotaric and abstract the subject, the more likely one is to have problems. Ostention (sp?) only works with things which one can reasonably point to examples of, and even it has its limits.

Look, my major beef can be described thusly: you're not claiming that you're successfully interpreting the Bible, you're claiming that you're authoratatively interpreting the Bible, that you're literaly interpreting the Bible. You're saying that you can clearly and unabiguously determine exactly what it is meant to communicate. This implies that no one may disagree with said interpretation (even though scads of people necessarily shall). What gives your interpretation privledged status over any other arbitrary interpretation, aside from your assurance that it clearly means such-and-such? You say "I think that lack of 100% certainty [...] is not reason for discounting the probability of successfully interpreting a text", but this has the nasty implication that there is one definate, set meaning to be extracted, and that you'll somehow "know" when ya get it. If you want to claim literal interpretation, you need this claim. Well, given that all y'all literal interpreters don't agree on exactly which literal interpretation is "right", why should we'uns assume that there is a single correct "literal" interpretation?

Brèf, literal interpretation is oxymoronic...

E. Albright