Re: ANE cosmology; was : A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

On Sat, 03 Jun 2006 19:29:17 -0400 <glennmorton@entouch.net> writes:
> in small part:
I guess I am always a bit puzzled by analogies which make God out to be a

linguistic bumbler. Having spent much of the past 14 months learning
Mandarin, I
know a bit about being a linguistic bumbler. But that isn't my view of
God. But I
also know something about ALL languages. They can be used to communicate
any and
all complex ideas and concepts. In the poor analogy you provide, you
have
provided, the thing I note is the false concept that the people had never
seen a
ship. In central Africa they use canoes. The paddles act as rudders.
Everyone can
relate to this, even if they are using dugout canoes. So, first off, I
doubt your
story is true--it doesn't ring true. Secondly, the claim that the
translator had to
use an example of a modern truck is equally silly. If this is during the
20th
century, those people may very well have seen boats on rivers or lakes.
****************************

I know that the claim that everything can be said in any language is
presented as a truism. It's probably true in all languages spoken by
westernized nations. One gets by with the 10,000 words in French, thanks
to the Academie, or the million available in English, where there are no
official restrictions. In tribal languages, the routine matters of life
can be communicated: food or poison, tasty or yucky produce no problems.
But there is no way that a tribe whose total numerical vocabulary
consists of one, two, many can express even elementary arithmetic. I'm
recalling a study of a couple such Amazonian tribes. The children were
learning arithmetic, but in Portuguese. Beyond such restrictions, the
mere availability of terminology is not necessarily enough. Imagine a
person with an undergraduate degree in poly sci and a J.D., or one with a
doctorate in English lit. How will they follow a detailed physical
lecture without being versed in calculus?

I can't vouch for the story, but I'm pretty sure that residents of the
Sahara will have more understanding of trucks than of boats.
Additionally, in an area where streams are small, they will be restricted
to dugout or bark canoes. Paddles are not rudders. If they use rafts,
sweeps are not rudders, either.

How precise would God have to be to avoid the charge of misleading? I
heard John Walton say that the ancient Hebrews and Jews held that
everything that happened in nature was the action of God. This was
clearly the notion of others in antiquity. Thunderbolts were thrown by
Zeus, Jove or Thor, for example. Is this strictly true, or how far should
God have gone in correcting the notion? By way of analogy, telling
children that the stork brought them, or that they were found under a
cabbage plant, or (when doctors made house calls) that the doctor brought
them in his black bag, these are not true. The usual contemporary
responses are better, but not precisely true. I heard of one mother who,
in response to her son's question, showed him. Was this the only
adequately true answer.
Dave
Received on Sun Jun 4 23:22:35 2006