04-04-2004, 08:35 PM
Shlama Akhi Dave,
This has nothing to do with any club mentality or elitism. It has everything to do with the basic fundamentals of linguistics. It is very naive to suggest that every word in Aramaic must have a direct cognate in every other language that has ever existed, including English, Eskimo or Swahili for that matter!
In your estimation, if a direct cognate doesn't exist, then God is guilty of creating a "club" by simply choosing Aramaic to be the language HE spoke while here with us. But that is completely irrational, as it may not always be possible to find an equivalent unit for a source language term in a target language. (especially when the languages are as far apart as Aramaic and English.) It may not always be possible to find an appropriate correspondence between words, or even abstract ideas and concepts.
There is no English cognate for Qnoma, either linguistically or conceptually, no matter how badly we think there should be. The words of the world's leading Aramaic scholar at Oxford University are nonsense to you? Well, I'm afraid to say that if I had quoted a Church of the East scholar, you would probably have charged that he was theologically biased and would have summarily dismissed his testimony outright!
Akhi Dave, with all due respect, I strongly suspect that you are a monolingual person. No one who can effectively communicate in more than one language would ever suggest that there must be direct cognates in two different languages 100% of the time, all the time. That is nonsensical. Think about it.
Does the conceptual absence of "Qnoma" in English linguistics mean that you or anyone else cannot understand that concept unless you speak Aramaic, and that therefore God is playing tricks with you and excluding you from an elitist, gnostic, esoteric, cultic kind of sect?
Of course not! To even suggest it would be very unreasonable. Prof. Brock is as white as you can get. And he isn't a member of my church, either. But he has a perfect understanding of this concept - more so, I dare say, than most of the priests in the Church of the East whose sermons on this topic I have listened to in frustration. And why does he have a perfect understanding of this terminology? Well, first and foremost he treated Aramaic as a language that existed thousands of years before anything remotely resembling his own native English even existed. He took his Western glasses off. He treated Aramaic as it should be treated by someone who doesn't speak it - as a foreign language with its own idiom, concepts, terminology and life. Most importantly, it is his job to understand Aramaic from the standpoint of how the speakers of the language understand it. Remember, Aramaic is not a dead language like Latin, nor did it need to be "resurrected" as a spoken language like Hebrew did last century. It is spoken by almost a million people today as an everyday language. It has been spoken as an everyday language for the last 3,000 years, at least. It is living and breathing. It is Prof. Brock's job to understand Aramaic the way that he does, which again is more than many native speakers understand it.
The fact remains that we have no English cognate to Qnoma - never was one. We can make one, though. But we don't have one right now.
It's too bad God didn't dictate the words of the bible in English, then you would understand what I am talking about.
Because if that were the case, then people who speak Swahili would be complaining to you and calling you elitist when you sincerely tried to explain a concept in English to them that simply had no direct linguistic congate, or conceptual cognate, in the Swahili language.
Or worse yet, after you tried to explain to them that "raining cats and dogs" during Noah's day isn't meant to be taken literally, yet they still argue with you and say "We follow the literal meaning of the text, and the text says "it was raining cats and dogs", so therefore as irrational as it sounds we have no cognate to this idiom in Swahili, and if God had wanted to create an elitist club, etc, etc, etc."
You know where I am going with this. <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->
Finally, yes my understanding of the term is based on the usage of the term in Christological declarations of my church. Everyone's understanding is based on something of their life experience. That having been said, it has been thoroughly and scientifically demonstrated that the CoE understanding of this crucial term is the archaic, original meaning.
So I don't know where you are going with that argument, but rest assured that I wouldn't just take my church's word for it. I would go so far as to admit to bias, if every scholar on the face of the planet didn't agree that my church preserved the original, archaic meanings of these words. And, more importantly, that they preserved the archaic CONCEPTS behind this terminology.
I'm not being elitist. This is the truth - this is historical fact. The Church of the East was isolated, extremely isolated, from Hellenism because of the geographical situation it found itself in.
If you don't want to accept the archaic meaning of Qnoma as preserved by the Church of the East, that is of course your right. But please don't insinuate that I am biased or base my opinion solely on what my church says. I quoted from a British ROMAN CATHOLIC scholar, the world's leading scholar in Aramaic~Syriac, someone who happens to be a professor of this very topic at Oxford.
If that's not good enough for you, then there's nothing further I can add to try and convince you. I'm here to convince those who actually want to take the Aramaic at its face value, its historical context, and not people who are trying to shape it into their own standard based on Western understanding.
No, God is neither Eastern nor Western .... neither Northern nor Southern. He did, however, choose to speak Aramaic while down here with us. That is historical FACT. I do hope you choose to understand His words in his native idiom, rather than in your own 21st-century English idiom.
Also, for your information, Qnoma and Napsha are closely related terms, but not exact synonyms. Neither is directly related to the English "Self." The difference is that one is at a physical level (Napsha) and the other on a non-physical level (Qnoma.)
If it is any consolation, there are plenty of concepts and idioms in English that are untranslatable in Aramaic! <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->
This has nothing to do with any club mentality or elitism. It has everything to do with the basic fundamentals of linguistics. It is very naive to suggest that every word in Aramaic must have a direct cognate in every other language that has ever existed, including English, Eskimo or Swahili for that matter!
In your estimation, if a direct cognate doesn't exist, then God is guilty of creating a "club" by simply choosing Aramaic to be the language HE spoke while here with us. But that is completely irrational, as it may not always be possible to find an equivalent unit for a source language term in a target language. (especially when the languages are as far apart as Aramaic and English.) It may not always be possible to find an appropriate correspondence between words, or even abstract ideas and concepts.
There is no English cognate for Qnoma, either linguistically or conceptually, no matter how badly we think there should be. The words of the world's leading Aramaic scholar at Oxford University are nonsense to you? Well, I'm afraid to say that if I had quoted a Church of the East scholar, you would probably have charged that he was theologically biased and would have summarily dismissed his testimony outright!
Akhi Dave, with all due respect, I strongly suspect that you are a monolingual person. No one who can effectively communicate in more than one language would ever suggest that there must be direct cognates in two different languages 100% of the time, all the time. That is nonsensical. Think about it.
Does the conceptual absence of "Qnoma" in English linguistics mean that you or anyone else cannot understand that concept unless you speak Aramaic, and that therefore God is playing tricks with you and excluding you from an elitist, gnostic, esoteric, cultic kind of sect?
Of course not! To even suggest it would be very unreasonable. Prof. Brock is as white as you can get. And he isn't a member of my church, either. But he has a perfect understanding of this concept - more so, I dare say, than most of the priests in the Church of the East whose sermons on this topic I have listened to in frustration. And why does he have a perfect understanding of this terminology? Well, first and foremost he treated Aramaic as a language that existed thousands of years before anything remotely resembling his own native English even existed. He took his Western glasses off. He treated Aramaic as it should be treated by someone who doesn't speak it - as a foreign language with its own idiom, concepts, terminology and life. Most importantly, it is his job to understand Aramaic from the standpoint of how the speakers of the language understand it. Remember, Aramaic is not a dead language like Latin, nor did it need to be "resurrected" as a spoken language like Hebrew did last century. It is spoken by almost a million people today as an everyday language. It has been spoken as an everyday language for the last 3,000 years, at least. It is living and breathing. It is Prof. Brock's job to understand Aramaic the way that he does, which again is more than many native speakers understand it.
The fact remains that we have no English cognate to Qnoma - never was one. We can make one, though. But we don't have one right now.
It's too bad God didn't dictate the words of the bible in English, then you would understand what I am talking about.
Because if that were the case, then people who speak Swahili would be complaining to you and calling you elitist when you sincerely tried to explain a concept in English to them that simply had no direct linguistic congate, or conceptual cognate, in the Swahili language.
Or worse yet, after you tried to explain to them that "raining cats and dogs" during Noah's day isn't meant to be taken literally, yet they still argue with you and say "We follow the literal meaning of the text, and the text says "it was raining cats and dogs", so therefore as irrational as it sounds we have no cognate to this idiom in Swahili, and if God had wanted to create an elitist club, etc, etc, etc."
You know where I am going with this. <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->Finally, yes my understanding of the term is based on the usage of the term in Christological declarations of my church. Everyone's understanding is based on something of their life experience. That having been said, it has been thoroughly and scientifically demonstrated that the CoE understanding of this crucial term is the archaic, original meaning.
So I don't know where you are going with that argument, but rest assured that I wouldn't just take my church's word for it. I would go so far as to admit to bias, if every scholar on the face of the planet didn't agree that my church preserved the original, archaic meanings of these words. And, more importantly, that they preserved the archaic CONCEPTS behind this terminology.
I'm not being elitist. This is the truth - this is historical fact. The Church of the East was isolated, extremely isolated, from Hellenism because of the geographical situation it found itself in.
If you don't want to accept the archaic meaning of Qnoma as preserved by the Church of the East, that is of course your right. But please don't insinuate that I am biased or base my opinion solely on what my church says. I quoted from a British ROMAN CATHOLIC scholar, the world's leading scholar in Aramaic~Syriac, someone who happens to be a professor of this very topic at Oxford.
If that's not good enough for you, then there's nothing further I can add to try and convince you. I'm here to convince those who actually want to take the Aramaic at its face value, its historical context, and not people who are trying to shape it into their own standard based on Western understanding.
No, God is neither Eastern nor Western .... neither Northern nor Southern. He did, however, choose to speak Aramaic while down here with us. That is historical FACT. I do hope you choose to understand His words in his native idiom, rather than in your own 21st-century English idiom.
Also, for your information, Qnoma and Napsha are closely related terms, but not exact synonyms. Neither is directly related to the English "Self." The difference is that one is at a physical level (Napsha) and the other on a non-physical level (Qnoma.)
If it is any consolation, there are plenty of concepts and idioms in English that are untranslatable in Aramaic! <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->
+Shamasha Paul bar-Shimun de'Beth-Younan
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