Re: [asa] philological notes on randomness

Hi Cameron,

Actually, Rich's list of translations does show one thing, viz: it's not quite so odd as you suppose to translate the term in question as "random" or something of that sort.

It needs to be remembered that the persons responsible for such decisions are not entirely bereft of linguistic skills, and the corollary of "I can dance toe-to-toe with the translators" is, of course, "the translators can dance toe-to-toe with you."

I still acknowledge that action in question was the act of an intelligent agent - so it doubtlessly permits of all sorts of caveats and nuances as to what "random" means in this context.

But please let's not pretend that "random" - suitably nuanced - is an overwhelmingly poor choice, nor that a broad consensus by translators - who know the Hebrew AND the LXX - is an entirely irrelevant consideration.

As for 'appeal to authority' - why is your appeal to the translators of the LXX not precisely a logical fallacy of exactly the same sort? Are translations from Hebrew to Greek sacrosanct in a way translations from Hebrew to English are not?

Blessings,
Murray

Cameron Wybrow wrote:
> you give me a list of
> translations which disagree with me, as if that refutes my argument.
> Since you are concerned about logical fallacies, you might notice that
> you have committed one here yourself: appealing to authority.

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Received on Sun Nov 15 14:38:31 2009