Greek Changing Paul

The title of my post is ambiguous. You can read it as "Paul was changing the Greek language" and as "The Greek language of Paul was changing." I'm talking about the Paul (or someone using his name) who used Greek to write much of the New Testament.

His language changes through the various letters he wrote. And Paul's Greek changes the way other writers after him use the language. Tracking the influences on Paul and Paul's on others could be a dissertation, or a lifetime of study. I think Paul was as much influenced by Aristotle and his Greek as anybody. Paul clearly was engaged in (if he didn't explicitly recognize) the sort of gripes that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had with the language and language flux of the old poets and playwrights and sophists (such as Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Heraclitus, Sophocles, Euripides, Protagoras, Epicurus, Zeno, Gorgias, Dissoi Logoi). When Paul was in Athens listening in on and then chiming in on the conversations of his contemporaries in that City and culture, he used the Greek language rhetorically in a very Aristotelian way, starting syllogistically with the givens of certain men of old. He treats theo-logy in his speech in many ways as Aristotle does, an acknowledging of truths but of errors to get at the Nature of God objectively.

Paul, unlike Aristotle, did acknowledge much of his personal change, his "growth" perhaps, and certainly his dramatic adult human conversion. In his short life, the rippling effects of that conversion can be seen in his letter writing. Bill Heroman does some wonderful reflecting on and some reconstructing of the possibilities of some of this change in Paul. T.C. Robinson challenges whether there's a theological construct in the traditional ordering of Paul's New Testament letters. Bill Mounce has looked at Paul's rare Greek such as δί·λογος / dí-logos /. And Joel Hoffman, with a number of others, has wondered whether Paul has new meanings for σάρξ / sarks /.

Language, Greek language, and translation scholar Willis Barnstone reflects on Paul. Barnstone sees the stability of the Greek language, its fluidity, and where Paul fits into that. On pages 114 and 115 of his new Restored New Testament, Barnstone gets us thinking:

The letters to the Romans (probably his last letter) and the Corinthians show Paul at the peak of thought and rhetorical magic. He achieves language magic in demotic Greek (Koine), with a flare of the classical period while keeping to the simplified syntax and virtues of the vernacular. He has the high flow of Plato, who wrote in Attic Greek, in his own less inflected tongue. To repeat my argument [i.e., Barnstone's argument] about the glory of Mark's Greek, Paul's work is not less effective for being composed in vernacular development of Attic Greek any more than Michel de Montaigne is less for writing in French, the regional vernacular of Cicero's Latin. Indeed, in terms of change, Paul's Greek is closer to Plato than E. M. Forster's English is to Shakespeare. Greek, in spelling, grammar, and usage, was very early established, while in English the dictionary thoroughness of Samuel Johnson, who established norms for English spelling and usage did not enter the scene until midway between Forster and Shakespeare.

If this volume [i.e., Barnstone's Restored New Testament] were predominantly a study Bible, then it would begin with Paul’s I Thessalonians, which, if not supreme, carries the authority and beauty of all his authentic letters. And despite the above encomia [i.e. Barnstone's own praise] for the apostle’s key letters, there are advantages at least for study purposes to keep in mind the probable order of Paul’s work. He grows as his movement grows, and his work moves to the climactic pivotal letters. A chronological order, even the thought of one, would provide an unbiased historical frame for secular and sectarian events and reveal the material culture scene of the Jews, Christian Jews, Greeks, and Romans who participate in the drama of each book.

While I separate the authentic Pauline letters from the pseudonymous, from a stylistic point of view, the would-be Paul letters do not jar. Being pseudepigraphic they imitate Paul's style, in not his depth and breadth.

While Barnstone may be making a few sweeping statements, he's absolutely correct to try to see Paul's writings and his Greek in light of developments in and of the language.  Barnstone goes on to instruct his own readers in what Aristotle taught as if to help us read Paul better.  That point shouldn't get lost on any of us.  Why would it hurt any of us to get at not only exactly what Paul meant by certain Greek words but also at exactly how and why (sometimes without self reflection at all) we read Paul?

John's Greek Rhetorical Prologue: My Rhetorical English

In light of discussions about the pronoun gender of the Prologue of the gospel of John, I thought I'd translate it. And I've left it "it." But I want us to notice how rhetorical John's word choice is in Greek.

Socrates says the following when talking with his disciple Polus. The passage is from the "Gorgias" by Plato, who coins the word "rhetoric" in the dramatic dialogue. Here's some of what Socrates says, and do note the Greek in this English translation by Benjamin Jowett. It's the rhetorical, case-building Greek of John's Prologue:

O Polus, I am not a public man, and only last year, when my tribe were serving as Prytanes, and it became my duty as their president to take the votes, there was a laugh at me, because I was unable to take them. And as I failed then, you must not ask me to count the suffrages of the company now; but if, as I was saying, you have no better argument than numbers, let me have a turn, and do you make trial of the sort of proof which, as I think, is required; for I shall produce one witness [μάρτυρα, martura, testifier] only of the truth of my words, and he is the person with whom I am arguing [ὁ λόγος, ho logos, i.e., making "the statement"]; his suffrage I know how to take; but with the many I have nothing to do, and do not even address myself to them. May I ask then whether you will answer in turn and have your words put to the proof? For I certainly think that I and you and every man [ἀνθρώπους, anthropous, human] do really believe [ἐπίσταμαι, epistamai, believe], that to do is a greater evil than to suffer injustice: and not to be punished than to be punished.

John uses many of the words of Greek rhetoric, and of Plato's sophistic caricature, in combination with the Jewish notion of The Beginning. He's also following the LXX translators' rhetorical choice of naming the Beginning Book as "Genesis" or "Birthings." (Birthings is a greeky pun on the word for "woman," a word which can also mean "wife.") John's identification of the male parent (i.e., father) is often typically only associated in English translation with "The Father, God." Certainly John disambiguates plenty at later points in his gospel just which Father he and Jesus are talking about; however, John's Greek word for father in the prologue can also apply to any parent who is the male in the birthing process, to any "father." (I'm sure there's a case to be made to translate that Greek word, likewise, as "parent" or even as "a mother and a father" - but in translating today, I'm not stretching the word possibility so far.)

Now, here's my English translation of John's Greek:

Of Paul and Pooh, Language and Logic

Yesterday's post left this suggestion that Paul borrowed his nasty word skubala (σκύβαλα) from Jesus. What do you think? Did Paul write using language that was not entirely politically correct? A few things should be clarified and carefully noticed about skubala before looking at an even more startling word that Paul borrowed.

First, the Jesus (or Joshua) whose writings Paul may be reading is the ostensible son of Sirach ( בן סירא). And the son of Jesus, the grandson of Sirach, is the self-identified translator of the writings of Sirach. All of the synoptic gospel translators (Mark, Matthew, and Luke - writing about that other Jesus) quote from this translated LXX Book of Sirach even if none quotes the word Paul appropriates. So we'd do well to see what the first translated Jesus supposedly says in Hebrew (even if the texts are lost) and how his son translates (and purports to translate) that into Greek while living in Egypt more than 100 years before Paul was born.

Second, it's not just the Greek word skubala (σκύβαλα) but how and why that particular word renders the Hebrew in a place like post-slavery Egypt that is fascinating. The word occurs nowhere prior to this use by the son of Jesus. Sylvie Honigman at the University of Tel Aviv in reading one history of the LXX suggests the Jewish translators didn't follow either the Exodus paradigm or the Alexandrian (a neo-aristotelian) paradigm but rather the Homeric paradigm when translating. Maybe Jesus's son, in translating, is coining the word from some of Homer's works. Paradigms aside, there seems enough extant lexical material to suggest this. For example, in the Odyssey, Agamemnon recounts his betrayal and murder by his wife Clytemnestra: "I threw (ballon, βάλλον) my hands around the sword as I died, but the dog-eyed (kunopis, κυνῶπις) one turned away, and, though I was on my way to the house of Hades, she didn't dare close my eyes or shut my mouth with her hands. So nothing else is more dreadful or more dog-like [kunteron, κύντερον] than a woman...." And in the Iliad, Zeus says to his wife "Nothing's more disgustingly doglike than you." [Ou seokunteron allo, οὐ σέοκύντερον ἄλλο]). And Helen has already mourned, "Slutty bitch that I am!" [eskekunopidos, ἔσκεκυνώπιδος]). If the Greek word is a translator's neologism, an awakening of dogged sexism, then a hint to its meaning as "pooh" comes from a counterpart word in the proverb of Jesus. The entire proverb (27:4) reads: Ἑν σείσματι κοσκίνου διαμένει κοπρία, οὕτως σκύβαλα ἀνθρώπου ἐν λογισμῷ αὐτοῦ. This has been translated into English by the Revised Standard Version committee as follows: "When a sieve is shaken, the refuse remains; so a man's filth remains in his thoughts." The word σκύβαλα is translated "filth," and the word kopia (κοπρία) "refuse." The two words work parabolically or appositively in comparison, in interlation, to define and refine one another analogically. It's sort of like what the Miller Analogies Test measures, except the proverbial parallels are to be extended, personally, to the reader's own life. The language is to be profound. What is lost in the RSV translation is the bitch-female-dog connotations of the former word (when just looking at Homeric cognates); alas, as mentioned, the Hebrew original is completely gone. We can, however, measure whether the RSV "refuse" gains much in English translation by comparing how other LXX translators have rendered Hebrew with the Greek kopia (κοπρία). The Hebrew words so translated into Greek are domen (דמן ) and 'ashpoth (אשפת) with meanings of "dung" and "piles of poo." I think Benjamin G. Wright's English (NETS) translation of the Greek of the son of Jesus is not bad: "With the shaking of a sieve, refuse remains--so a person' offal in his reasoning." But the Greek sounds more like this to me (in English): "In a shaken sifter remains a pile of crap--so does that scooped puppy poop, you mortal humans, in your own statements."

Third, then, when Paul uses skubala (σκύβαλα) in his letter to readers in Philippoi, he's already called out "the dogs" or perhaps "the bitches" (touS KUnas, τοὺς κύνας) to distinguish himself from his fellow Jews who were insisting on male (penis) circumcision as a necessary mark on the body. So he plays on this derogatory term by downplaying his own personal, physical heritage as "dog throw-up" if not "bitch shit" (SKUbala, σκύβαλα). To see the gendered issues here is not too much of a stretch. (It's not, I'm saying, much at all like Sigmund Freud, as the-rapist, discussing penis envy that isn't really there.) The language Paul chooses is dirty on purpose.

Fourth, Paul seems extremely interested as Jesus was in adult human conversion, in personal transformation. I'm talking now about the Jesus to whom Paul was committed, the one whose opening word for Mark, his first translator, was metanoeite (μετανοεῖτε). It means something like "change your mind, re-think everything!" This brings us to a second, perhaps more startling word that Paul borrowed. He borrowed a word that Aristotle coined when human language and when a human statement (i.e. logos, λόγος) was, for Aristotle, not enough. The word is "logic" (or logike, λογικὴ).

(I've gone on elsewhere about how the -ic (-ικὴ) suffix is dirty and sexist. It was so dirty that LXX translators seemed to avoid it as politically incorrect. And so when tiptoeing around words like "log-ic," "rhetor-ic," and "erot-ic" and therefore even "eros," they only slipped twice.)

So what do you think? Why does Paul slip in "logic" (or logike, λογικὴ) in his letter to Roma? It's in Romans 12:1-2, where Paul is talking about the mind, change, and re-thinking everything. Here's the text:

Παρακαλῶ οὖν ὑμᾶς ἀδελφοί διὰ τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆσαι τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν θυσίαν ζῶσαν ἁγίαν εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ τὴν λογικὴν (i.e. "logical") λατρείαν ὑμῶν. Καὶ μὴ συσχηματίζεσθαι [OR συσχηματίζεσθε] τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθαι [OR μεταμορφοῦσθε] τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοὸς [ὑμῶν] εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τί τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εὐάρεστον καὶ τέλειον.

Here's the RSV English for comparison:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [λογικὴν] worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Do you think "spiritual" renders "logic" well? Is it really a politically incorrect word? Or does the RSV (or your favorite translation) make it otherwise? What's Paul doing with language and logic?

New Testament Translation Question

(Let's not use the word "feminist" today.) Let's (instead) focus precisely on the Greek text of the New Testament. Let me make a suggestion that I've made before, and then ask a question. Here's that suggestion:

that Mark is translating Jesus to give a pluralistic hermeneutic when he has him saying and asking:

Καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην; Καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς γνώσεσθε;

And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?

The entire parable and this whole pericopic episode seem to get at interpretive difficulties and ways of being and repentance and subjectivities against pretended objectivity and the like. Yes, I know I'm exegeting isogetically - but isn't that some the point here in Mark 4? To keep outsiders out and insiders in and to multiply statements and so forth?

So the question:

How differently would you read this story of this parable if it started, really and textually, in Mark 3:31? With Jesus being challenged about his ostensible inattention to his mother and his brothers. Yes, I know the manuscripts and therefore the text critics go bananas here in verse 33. But Mark has Jesus turning the whole question of precise definition back to those challenging him:

Καὶ ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς λέγων [ἀποκριθεὶς αὐτοῖς λέγει], Τίς ἐστιν ἡ μήτηρ μου [ἢ οἱ] [καὶ οἱ] [ἀδελφοί μου] ἀδελφοί [μου].

And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?

Then he goes even further, and Mark does as well with his Greek:

34 Καὶ περιβλεψάμενος κύκλῳ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν [τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν κύκλῳ] καθημένους, λέγει, Ἴδε, ἡ μήτηρ μου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί μου

Ὃς γὰρ ἂν ποιήσῃ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, οὗτος ἀδελφός μου καὶ ἀδελφή [μου] καὶ μήτηρ ἐστίν.

34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!

35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

Do you see how bold this interpretation? How additional to the text this marked detail? Is this a set up for the story of a sower sowing? Does gender matter? Embodiment in interpretationS? Wordplay in Texts?

In the words of Jesus: What does the text say? How do you read it?

"Parable" of Translation: Bible puzzler

"Almost all Bibles are a translation of a translation, or a revision of a translation," Suzanne begins her post A translation of a translation.

What if we could acknowledge that all Bible translations are parables?

Parable, of course, in English has come to mean fable or story or comparison. Which is not too far from what it came to mean in Greek. It is what Aesop tells (and so does the "Libyan"), Aristotle notes in his Rhetoric. It is an ineffective or faulty way of knowing, he notes in his Metaphysics and his Politics and his Ethics. Even the parable of the Cave in the Republic of Plato is not logical, Aristotle helps his own students infer. (Aristotle doesn't want his own students to get mixed up by the parable of illogical teachers, even the parable of his own teacher).

Why, then, does Mark translate using the word parable? Why does he put that into the mouth of Jesus as some effective method of teaching?

Why in chapter 4, for example, does he say this:

ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς ἐν παραβολαῖς πολλά

"he taught them in many parables"?

and

λέγει αὐτοῖς,
"Οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην;
Καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς γνώσεσθε;"

"he spoke to them:
'Not getting this parable,
then how are you going to know each of the parables?'"?

Are parables unwise, as Aristotle teaches? Or are they otherwise, as Mark translates Jesus as teaching?

Well, if that's not a puzzler enough, let's get a little closer to Aristotle with the Bible. Let's go to the great city founded by his careful student Alexander the Great. And let's listen in on how the Jews there commissioned by an Egyptian king chose to translate some wise statements from their Hebrew into Greek.

Solomon's קֹהֶלֶת‎, Kohelet, they called Εκκλησιαστής, Ecclesiastes. (Never mind how much this translated title might have reminded listeners and readers of the comic play by Aristophanes called Ἐκκλησιάζουσαι, Ecclesiazusae, or The Assemblywomen. Or maybe we should mind because this is exactly the slippery slope Aristotle warned his students about - and the barbaric Hebrews with their women are sliding down it almost unnoticed).

So readers can't get out of chapter 1 of Ecclesiastes without encountering parable. Solomon originally writes this (verse 17). But these translators tell it originally in Greek like this. So compare:

וָאֶתְּנָה לִבִּי לָדַעַת חָכְמָה וְדַעַת הֹולֵלֹות וְשִׂכְלוּת יָדַעְתִּי שֶׁגַּם־זֶה הוּא רַעְיֹון רוּחַ׃

καὶ ἔδωκα καρδίαν μου τοῦ γνῶναι σοφίαν καὶ γνῶσιν,
παραβολὰς καὶ ἐπιστήμην ἔγνων,
ὅτι καί γε τοῦτ' ἔστιν προαίρεσις πνεύματος·

So a bible translating team, such as the ESV team, will make the Hebrew into English something like this:

"And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind."

And bible translating individuals, such as Lancelot Brenton and Peter Gentry respectively, will render the Hebrew-Greek into English just like this:

"And my heart knew much -
wisdom, and knowledge, parables and understanding:
I perceived that this also is waywardness of spirit."
(Brenton)

"And I applied my heart to know wisdom and knowledge; derangements and understanding I understood, that, indeed, this is preference of spirit."
(Gentry)

Now then, we fast forward to the end of Solomon's book (12:9). And we hear him saying this:

וְיֹתֵר שֶׁהָיָה קֹהֶלֶת חָכָם עֹוד לִמַּד־דַּעַת אֶת־הָעָם וְאִזֵּן וְחִקֵּר תִּקֵּן מְשָׁלִים הַרְבֵּה׃

And this is how the Jews hearing Solomon in Egypt render that into Greek:

Καὶ περισσὸν ὅτι ἐγένετο Ἑκκλησιαστὴς σοφός, ἔτι ἐδίδαξεν γνῶσιν σὺν τὸν λαόν, καὶ οὖς ἐξιχνιάσεται κόσμιον παραβολῶν.

And now the ESV team (from Solomon to American English):

"Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care."

And then Brenton and Gentry (from Hebrew-Greek to Englishes):

"And because the Preacher was wise above [others, so it was] that he taught man excellent knowledge, and the ear will trace out the parables."

"Beyond the fact that the Ecclesiast was wise, he also taught the people knowledge, and an ear will track out an arrangement of parables."

Aren't we left with some questions?

Are the Jews in Alexandria translating Solomon's משל (mashal) as παραβολῶν (parable)? but his הוללה (howlelah) and / or his סכלות (cikluwth) [madness and / or folly] also as παραβολὰς καὶ ἐπιστήμην [parable and / or knowledge]? Aren't they making Solomon like one of those comic Assemblywomen? Like a Greek sophist? Or does parable do something else for its listeners, for those with ears to hear?

Are Mark and Simon [aka Peter, Rock] in Jerusalem putting much unwise and / or otherwise rhetorical Greek rhetoric into the mouth of Joshua [aka Jesus] and his closest pupils? Isn't the Greek-speaking Joshua in Jerusalem saying and showing that parable is important for understanding and knowledge? Isn't parable a kind of slippery translation of the original?

Aristotle: "Avoid Ambiguities"

I. Aristotle’s Most Straightforward Word

Aristotle is sounding a lot like my linguist friend Richard Rhodes again. In Book III, Chapter 5, of the Rhetoric, Aristotle starts in on “correctness of language,” or “grammatical correctness,” or “purity” depending on who’s doing the translating into English. Then Aristotle (quite objectively mind you) gives five rules to make a speech or a written composition “easy to read and therefore easy to deliver.” (Aristotle also disparages five other people as examples of poor communicators who break the five rules). If I can make this post easy to read, then let me focus on just a single rule, Rule #3: “Avoid Ambiguities.” The questions we might ask are these: (a) whether we can meet Aristotle’s standards for “correctness of language,” (b) specifically whether we can even keep Rule #3 and “avoid ambiguities,” and (c) whether Aristotle really was better at communicating by his own standards than the people he names as bad communicators.

II. the outline

And let me spell out the intended outline for this blog post: I. (above) is my introduction with thesis statement at the end. II. (here then) I give this blog outline. III. (below) I’ll give all my blogger friend Lingamish needs to read (in English) first. IV. (then below that) I’ll give the clearest we’ve got from Aristotle in his Greek. V. (next) We’ll look at the word Aristotle uses for “ambiguities” so as to have his students avoid them. VI. (following that) We’ll look at how Homer and Hesiod used that word, and how the earliest Bible translators used that term. VII. We’ll foolishly conjecture about the difference an afrafeminist translation might make. VIII. Finally, we’ll offer some conclusions, hoping allthewhile we’ve avoided ambiguities and have been otherwise correct and have written something (again) that is easy to read, for that is the goal of all good writing and good translation of the Greek isn’t it?

III. the English translation (from Rhys Roberts)

Such, then, are the ingredients of which speech is composed. The foundation of good style is correctness of language, which falls under five heads…

The third is to avoid ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something. Such people are apt to put that sort of thing into verse. Empedocles, for instance, by his long circumlocutions imposes on his hearers; these are affected in the same way as most people are when they listen to diviners, whose ambiguous utterances are received with nods of acquiescence –

“Croesus by crossing the Halys will ruin a mighty realm.”

[1407b] Diviners use these vague generalities about the matter in hand because their predictions are thus, as a rule, less likely to be falsified. We are more likely to be right, in the game of "odd and even," if we simply guess "even" or "odd" than if we guess at the actual number; and the oracle-monger is more likely to be right if he simply says that a thing will happen than if he says when it will happen, and therefore he refuses to add a definite date. All these ambiguities have the same sort of effect, and are to be avoided unless we have some such object as that mentioned.

…It is a general rule that a written composition should be easy to read and therefore easy to deliver.

IV. Aristotle’s Clear Greek (which you’d think should be τὸ ἑλληνίζειν )

ὁ μὲν οὐ̂ν λόγος συντίθεται ἐκ τούτων, ἔστι δ’ ἀρχὴ τη̂ς λέξεως τὸ ἑλληνίζειν : του̂το δ’ ἐστὶν ἐν πέντε,…

τρίτον μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις . του̂το δ’ ἂν μὴ τἀναντία προαιρη̂ται, ὅπερ ποιου̂σιν ὅταν μηδὲν μὲν ἔχωσι λέγειν, προσποιω̂νται δέ τι λέγειν: οἱ γὰρ τοιου̂τοι ἐν ποιήσει λέγουσιν ταυ̂τα, οἱ̂ον ̓Εμπεδοκλη̂ς: φενακίζει γὰρ τὸ κύκλῳ πολὺ ὄν, καὶ πάσχουσιν οἱ ἀκροαταὶ ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ παρὰ τοι̂ς μάντεσιν: ὅταν γὰρ λέγωσιν ἀμφίβολα, συμπαρανεύουσιν—

Κροι̂σος ̔́Αλυν διαβὰς μεγάλην ἀρχὴν καταλύσει

[1407b] --καὶ διὰ τὸ ὅλως ἔλαττον εἰ̂ναι ἁμάρτημα διὰ τω̂ν γενω̂ν του̂ πράγματος λέγουσιν οἱ μάντεις: τύχοι γὰρ ἄν τις μα̂λλον ἐν τοι̂ς ἀρτιασμοι̂ς ἄρτια ἢ περισσὰ εἰπὼν μα̂λλον ἢ πόσα ἔχει, καὶ τὸ ὅτι ἔσται ἢ τὸ πότε, διὸ οἱ χρησμολόγοι οὐ προσορίζονται τὸ πότε . ἅπαντα δὴ ταυ̂τα ὅμοια, ὥστ’ ἂν μὴ τοιούτου τινὸς ἕνεκα, φευκτέον.

…ὅλως δὲ δει̂ εὐανάγνωστον εἰ̂ναι τὸ γεγραμμένον καὶ εὔφραστον

V. Aristotle’s Word for “Ambiguities”

As we all can see, Aristotle’s word for “ambiguities” is clearly ἀμφιβόλοις (which we can transliterate amphibolois) or its variant ἀμφίβολα (which we can transliterate amphibola). And, indeed, George A. Kennedy translates Aristotle’s Rule #3 this way: “Third is not to use amphibolies.” Lest that’s not clear enough, Kennedy provides his English readers here his footnote 61: “An amphiboly (lit. ‘what shoots both ways’) is an equivocation based on a word or phrase with an ambiguous meaning, often creating a fallacious argument; see 3.18.5.” (So, for the sake of clarity, let’s pretend we don’t see the circularity in Kennedy’s footnote’s argument). Clear enough? Good.

VI.A. Ancient Poets’ Uses of His Word for “Ambiguities”

Don’t we wish the ancient poet Sappho had used the word, as ambiguous as the fragments of her writings to us seem today? I’ll have to admit to blogger friend Suzanne that the closest I’ve found is this fragment as quoted by Hermogenes and then by Demetrius long after she was gone: αμφὶ δ᾽ ὔδωρ. (And this doesn’t even explain why the variant text Anne Carson translates is instead this: ἐν δ᾽ ὔδωρ).

Not to worry, the writings of the ancient men are much better preserved! Here’s Homer first and then Hesiod.

The Illiad (17, line 742; and 23, line 97):

οἳ δ' ὥς θ' ἡμίονοι κρατερὸν μένος ἀμφιβαλόντες

ἀλλά μοι ἆσσον στῆθι: μίνυνθά περ ἀμφιβαλόντε

The Odyssey (6, line 178; 17, line 344; 22, line 103; and 23, line 192):

ἄστυ δέ μοι δεῖξον, δὸς δὲ ῥάκος ἀμφιβαλέσθαι,

καὶ κρέας, ὥς οἱ χεῖρες ἐχάνδανον ἀμφιβαλόντι

αὐτός τ' ἀμφιβαλεῦμαι ἰών, δώσω δὲ συβώτῃ

τῷ δ' ἐγὼ ἀμφιβαλὼν θάλαμον δέμον, ὄφρ' ἐτέλεσσα,

Work and Days (of Hesiod, lines 545 and 787):

ὑετοῦ ἀμφιβάλῃ ἀλέην: κεφαλῆφι δ' ὕπερθεν

σηκόν τ' ἀμφιβαλεῖν ποιμνήϊον ἤπιον ἦμαρ

So how to translate these (and still avoid ambiguities)? Well, Sappho is talking about the coolness “wrapped around” the waters, we infer. And that’s just not good enough. So here’s what the men of literature are saying.

The Illiad (17, line 742; and 23, line 97):

driving strength “thrown around” the mules;

an “embrace around” a brother by another brother.

The Odyssey (6, line 178; 17, line 344; 22, line 103; and 23, line 192):

clothing to be thrown around our hero by the queen;

hands thrown around a whole loaf and pork to eat;

hands thrown around helmet, a shield, and two spears;

a chamber compartment put around a make-shift shelter.

Work and Days (lines 545 and 787):

a raincoat thrown over one’s back to keep one dry;

a fence built around a sheep pen.

VI.B. 1st Bible Translators Uses of His Word for “Ambiguities”

Well, without further adu, let’s leave the silly poets with all their throwing around and over and all their putting around these “ambiguities.” They don’t have Aristotle to critique or to correct them yet.

Let’s get to the first Bible translators, who were commissioned in the great city that Aristotle’s great student established: Alexandria. Here’s how these Jews translated the old Hebrew (albeit some poetry) into newer Greek:

Psalms 141:10 (aka 140:10 for the LXX)

πεσοῦνται ἐν ἀμφιβλήστρῳ αὐτοῦ ἁμαρτωλοί κατὰ μόνας εἰμὶ ἐγὼ ἕως οὗ ἂν παρέλθω

Ecclesiastes (aka Qoheleth for the LXX) 9:12

ὅτι καί γε οὐκ ἔγνω ὁ ἄνθρωπος τὸν καιρὸν αὐτοῦ ὡς οἱ ἰχθύες οἱ θηρευόμενοι ἐν ἀμφιβλήστρῳ κακῷ καὶ ὡς ὄρνεα τὰ θηρευόμενα ἐν παγίδι ὡς αὐτὰ παγιδεύονται οἱ υἱοὶ το ῦἀνθρώπου εἰς καιρὸν πονηρόν ὅταν ἐπιπέσῃ ἐπ αὐτοὺς ἄφνω

Isaiah 19:8

καὶ στενάξουσιν οἱ ἁλεεῖς καὶ στενάξουσιν πάντες οἱ βάλλοντες ἄγκιστρον εἰς τὸν ποταμόν καὶ οἱ βάλλοντες σαγήνας καὶ οἱ ἀμφιβολεῖς πενθήσουσιν

Habakkuk 1:15, 16, 17

συντέλειαν ἐν ἀγκίστρῳ ἀνέσπασεν καὶ εἵλκυσεν αὐτὸν ἐν ἀμφιβλήστρῳ καὶ συνήγαγεν αὐτὸν ἐν ταῖς σαγήναις αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν τούτου εὐφρανθήσεται καὶ χαρήσεται ἡ καρδία αὐτοῦ

ἕνεκεν τούτου θύσει τῇ σαγήνῃ αὐτοῦ καὶ θυμιάσει τῷ ἀμφιβλήστρῳ αὐτοῦ ὅτι ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐλίπανεν μερίδα αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ βρώματα αὐτοῦ ἐκλεκτά

διὰ τοῦτο ἀμφιβαλεῖ τὸ ἀμφίβληστρον αὐτοῦ καὶ διὰ παντὸς ἀποκτέννειν ἔθνη οὐ φείσεται

And here’s how a couple of followers of Joshua (aka Jesus) used even newer Greek including Aristotle’s old word:

Matthew 4:18

περιπατῶν δὲ παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας εἶδεν δύο ἀδελφούς Σίμωνα τὸν λεγόμενον Πέτρον καὶ Ἀνδρέαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ βάλλοντας ἀμφίβληστρον εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν ἦσαν γὰρ ἁλιεῖς

Mark 1:16

καὶ παράγων παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας εἶδεν Σίμωνα καὶ Ἀνδρέαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν Σίμωνος ἀμφιβάλλοντας ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ ἦσαν γὰρ ἁλιεῖς

By now, it should be clear that the word Aristotle seems to use for “ambiguities” the straightforward term that beginning Bible translators use for “fish nets.”

VII. Foolish Ambiguous (Feminist) Conjecture

Now, let’s imagine. Let’s imagine that Pythias and Pythias (Aristotle’s first wife and their daughter) pick up a copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric one day while he is off at the academy teaching the boys. Let’s imagine they read what we’ve read in our section IV above. Let’s imagine that Pythias says to her mother Pythias (in the Hellene mother tongue, of course): “Mom, why does Dad say ‘No Throw-Wraps’ when speaking or writing”? Would the girl be so foolish to imagine her mother might agree that Aristotle is using a word that poets have used to throw a wrap around a body? Isn’t there ambiguity here that they and the poets are creating? One single word is thrown around so many different bodies: 1) coolness wrapped around a body of water; 2) driving strength thrown around the body of beasts; 3) siblings’ arms thrown around one another in a hug; 4) the queen’s clothing granted around our hero’s tired physique; 5) hungry grateful hands on satisfying bread and sweet pig meat; 6) an entire warring wardrobe fit well on one mighty-fit warrior; 7) a room of one’s own (with furniture perhaps); 8) a London-Fog style overcoat; 9) a secure place to keep the sheep; and (with a great stretch of the imagination for the future) 10) a bunch of fish nets (and this is well before anyone imagined fish-net stockings).

VII. Conclusion

I wish I could conclude here the way Kenneth L Pike does: with a poem. But there’s too much ambiguity in that, and besides it was the poets who started all the confusion in the first place. I’m really afraid we’re going to have to end by saying Aristotle finds himself in a pickle here. No wonder the objectivist never showed his Rhetoric to the girls at home. No wonder he silences those females. No wonder he teaches the educated boys τὸ ἑλληνίζειν (or “pure correct Greek”) by μὴ ἀμφιβόλοις.

Obama's Teachers?

Motherpie has an interesting post trying to figure out why Barack Obama may be the slight frontrunner ahead of Hillary Clinton (this Monday before super Tuesday):

Is it Aristotle's rhetoric (as vetted by George Lakoff)? Is this man who would be above women (and that slighter of some feminists) really Obama's teacher(s)?

Obama does speak to the heart. Maybe Aspasia or someone else taught him. And look, Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, Maria Shriver and other contemporary women orators are backing him. And Motherpie does get us wondering whether Barack's a Mac and Hillary's a PC.

Know Your Abortion Histories

Yesterday, my daughter spoke up freely. She made her choice to speak out on abortion in her school in America in an essay turned in on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR FEMALES

But long ago, daughters as they were schooled in the democratic Athens and in the republican Rome didn’t have such free speech. (They didn’t have free choice for abortions either; but more on that in a moment).

Now, the Greek men did allow more women more opportunities to write and to speak publicly. Today, for example, we can read Sappho (and even Aristotle on Sappho as he has to fawn some over her) and, through Plato, we can read of Diotima and we can read Aspasia (who may have taught Pericles how to speak and Socrates how to dialog).

But the Roman males shut all that down, making outlaws of females who chose to write or to speak. (One of the best histories on this to date is Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold).

The legal code in the empire of Rome simply reflected the common practices of Roman men. Glenn puts it this way: “A particular point of Roman male pride seems to have been the deliberate exclusion of women from civil and public duties; and in the first centuries of its history, Roman law reflected rigid legal inequalities between males and females” (page 61).

(One Roman male was also a Jewish male who was also a Christian male. Parenthetically, here, I’m mentioning Paul/Saul of Tarsus to highlight the male Roman influence on the silencing of women. The multilingual, multicultural, multi-citizened, multi-monotheist Paul in his famous letter to the Roman church gave many instructions; but Paul didn’t have to instruct the women in Rome to be silent; by practice and by law, females were not allowed freedom of speech. Paul did, nonetheless, feel compelled to have to teach women in Corinth to be silent in the churches, as if they didn’t get the Roman practice. Paul also had his multilingual, multicultural, multi-monotheistic disciple Timothy instruct women to be quiet. Timothy had trouble giving up his Greek roots, so Paul got him to identify more with his Jewish side, and his new Jesus-following side, by getting his penis circumcised. Just to be clear, however, Paul frees slaves. Curiously, however, Paul writes to the Jewish Christians in Rome in the Greek language, saying there there are two kinds of humans, Jews first and then Greeks [but in his Jesus, there are neither the necessary distinctions between slave and free nor the must-have inequalities between male and female]; both kinds of humans [Jews and Greeks] have [for the Roman Paul] a more liberal practice and legal code than do the Roman males with respect to females writing or speaking in public; but in Rome to Romans, there’s no need to state the obvious: women don’t and shouldn’t have free speech. So when in Rome, . . .; and when elsewhere in the Roman empire, . . . )

NO CHOICE TO ABORT FOR FEMALES

What does all this have to do with abortion? Plenty. Just as Greek and Roman males prohibited the practice of free speech for females, so they prohibited their abortion practice too. Neither Greek nor Roman males allowed mothers to choose abortion. No, it was the men who chose abortion for the women.

In Section VI of his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, Mr. Justice Harry Blackmun makes this very clear: “Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn. If abortion was prosecuted in some places, it seems to have been based on a concept of a violation of the father's right to his offspring. Ancient religion did not bar abortion.” Women must be silent, for the gods and goddesses are silent, on “the father’s right” to choose “his offspring” or to abort it prematurely when the law allows it. Mr. Justice Blackmun also has made very explicit that “abortion was practiced in Greek times as well as in the Roman Era, and that ‘it was resorted to without scruple.’”

MINORITY VOICES OF PROTEST SILENCED

The men with “scruple” were few, according to Mr. Justice Blackmun’s history in Section VI of his Roe v. Wade decision. And yet he does praise two Greek males with “scruple”:

First, there is the “Ephesian, Soranos, often described as the greatest of the ancient gynecologists,” who “appears to have been generally opposed to Rome's prevailing free-abortion practices. He found it necessary to think first of the life of the mother, and he resorted to abortion when, upon this standard, he felt the procedure advisable.”

And, second, there is Dr. Hippocrates who wrote “the famous Oath that has stood so long as the ethical guide of the medical profession.” Hippocrates is “the great Greek (460(?)-377(?) B. C.), who has been described as the Father of Medicine, the ‘wisest and the greatest practitioner of his art,’ and the ‘most important and most complete medical personality of antiquity,’ who dominated the medical schools of his time, and who typified the sum of the medical knowledge of the past.”

Although Mr. Justice Blackmun gives praise to Dr. Soranos and Dr. Hippocrates in his Roe v. Wade decision, the American Supreme Court Justice effectively silences both Greek physicians in their teaching against the Roman and the Greek male practice of abortion. “Ancient attitudes” such as Dr. Soranos’s, “are not capable of precise determination,” asserts Mr. Justice Blackmun. And of the protests of Dr. Hippocrates, he complains: “The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation.” Let’s come back to the question of translation in a moment.

Let’s now get to the burning question Mr. Justice Blackmun rushes to: “Why did not the authority of Hippocrates dissuade abortion practice in his time and that of Rome?”

How would you answer that question in light of the male Greek and Roman practices and laws against free speech for females? Or in light of the fact that it was Greek and Roman males, not females, who had the choice to abort?

My guess is you would not have answered it how Mr. Justice Blackmun answers it. You probably would not have turned to Mr. Ludwig Edelstein, Ph.D., but that’s what Mr. Justice Blackmun does. The Justice reads from the classics scholar’s book: The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943). And the male Justice quotes the male scholar, putting his opinion into Roe v. Wade this way:

The late Dr. Edelstein provides us with a theory: The Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates' day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability. See Plato, Republic, V, 461; Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1335b 25. For the Pythagoreans, however, it was a matter of dogma. For them the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being. The abortion clause of the Oath, therefore, “echoes Pythagorean doctrines,” (p132) and “[i]n no other stratum of Greek opinion were such views held or proposed in the same spirit of uncompromising austerity.”

Dr. Edelstein then concludes that the Oath originated in a group representing only a small segment of Greek opinion and that it certainly was not accepted by all ancient physicians. He points out that medical writings down to Galen (A. D. 130-200) “give evidence of the violation of almost every one of its injunctions.” But with the end of antiquity a decided change took place. Resistance against suicide and against abortion became common. The Oath came to be popular. The emerging teachings of Christianity were in agreement with the Pythagorean ethic. The Oath “became the nucleus of all medical ethics” and “was applauded as the embodiment of truth.” Thus, suggests Dr. Edelstein, it is “a Pythagorean manifesto and not the expression of an absolute standard of medical conduct.”

Now, I wonder what would have happened if a woman had spoken up at this point? Yes, I know: 1943 is much earler than 1997. 1943 is when Mr. Edelstein, Ph.D. offers his theory of how minor the voice of Dr. Hippocrates must be. 1972 is when Mr. Justice Blackmun reads us Mr. Edelstein’s classic-scholar theory. But it’s not until 1997 that Ms. Cheryl Glenn, Ph.D. is finally able to speak out for Greek and Roman minor voices, namely the rhetorical voices of females. Rhetorician Glenn writes Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, beginning to give females an equal voice in their history, which is our history, the histories of men and women.

NOW TRANSLATION

Remember how Mr. Justice Blackmun suggests that “The Oath [of Hippocrates] varies somewhat according to the particular translation”? Well, translation, like history writing, seems to be skewed towards Greek male and Roman male ways of understanding. I’m suggesting, like Glenn does, that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero and Quintilian have created “the Tradition” and that our translations (following the epistemologies of these men) have helped to perpetuate “the Tradition.” If we must rewrite our histories more inclusively, more equally, then it takes lots of reworking, and sometimes much regendering. How then if we must retranslate some of the texts of “the Tradition”? Fortunately, some are doing that with the Jewish and Christian male-dominant scriptures already. What now of some of the classical Greek and Roman documents on which we base so much of our practice and so much of our law?

Mr. Justice Blackmun makes this simple assertion:

“The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation, but in any translation the content is clear: ‘I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion,’ or ‘I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.’”

And the Justice's conclusion about the Oath is rigid: “This, it seems to us, is a satisfactory and acceptable explanation of the Hippocratic Oath's apparent rigidity. It enables us to understand. in historical context, a long-accepted and revered statement of medical ethics.”

Now the male Justice for the male court majority has justified his views by the voice of the male classicist again. The rigid translations that we’re given are are those of Mr. Edelstein, Ph.D. But what we don’t get is even the excerpt of Dr. Hippocrates’s Oath alongside the translations. So here it is: οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι ξυμβουλίην τοιήνδε. Ὁμοίως δὲ οὐδὲ γυναικὶ πεσσὸν φθόριον δώσω.

And completely missing from Roe v. Wade is this very important question: Is the Oath only made to other men? Surely Hippocrates wouldn’t make a pledge to women, right? Surely he must only be writing to other males, to only men gynecologists, to midhusbands alone (and not to females or to midwives), right? No. Wrong. And wrong again. The physician’s vow is to men and to women, and most equally also to gods and to goddesses. (If Mr. Justice Blackmun is rightly observing the American constitutional separation of church and state by keeping out the theology here, then he’s perhaps right on other grounds—silent indeed—to reject the Oath of Dr. Hippocrates. But ignoring the silenced women, in voice and abortion choice, in Greece and in Rome, Mr. Justice Blackmun turns away from the inclusive and egalitarian Dr. Hippocrates and turns to the very sexist Greek and Roman males, who silence women and who abort babies by the father’s choice).

NOW A FEMINIST CHOICE TO TRANSLATE

Let’s pause here now to read the Oath, to consider its equality, and to reconsider how it might be retranslated to recognize its gendering against the male-only Greek and Roman choices. On the day after the 35th year, here’s the text silenced through the translation of Mr. Edelstein Ph.D. and through the majority opinion of Mr. Justice Blackmun:

Ὄμνυμι Ἀπόλλωνα ἰητρὸν, καὶ Ἀσκληπιὸν, καὶ Ὑγείαν, καὶ Πανάκειαν, καὶ θεοὺς πάντας τε καὶ πάσας, ἵστορας ποιεύμενος, ἐπιτελέα ποιήσειν κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμὴν ὅρκον τόνδε καὶ ξυγγραφὴν τήνδε.
Ἡγήσασθαι μὲν τὸν διδάξαντά με τὴν τέχνην ταύτην ἴσα γενέτῃσιν ἐμοῖσι, καὶ βίου κοινώσασθαι, καὶ χρεῶν χρηίζοντι μετάδοσιν ποιήσασθαι, καὶ γένος τὸ ἐξ ωὐτέου ἀδελφοῖς ἴσον ἐπικρινέειν ἄῤῥεσι, καὶ διδάξειν τὴν τέχνην ταύτην, ἢν χρηίζωσι μανθάνειν, ἄνευ μισθοῦ καὶ ξυγγραφῆς, παραγγελίης τε καὶ ἀκροήσιος καὶ τῆς λοιπῆς ἁπάσης μαθήσιος μετάδοσιν ποιήσασθαι υἱοῖσί τε ἐμοῖσι, καὶ τοῖσι τοῦ ἐμὲ διδάξαντος, καὶ μαθηταῖσι συγγεγραμμένοισί τε καὶ ὡρκισμένοις νόμῳ ἰητρικῷ, ἄλλῳ δὲ οὐδενί.
Διαιτήμασί τε χρήσομαι ἐπ' ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμὴν, ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν.
Οὐ δώσω δὲ οὐδὲ φάρμακον οὐδενὶ αἰτηθεὶς θανάσιμον, οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι ξυμβουλίην τοιήνδε. Ὁμοίως δὲ οὐδὲ γυναικὶ πεσσὸν φθόριον δώσω. Ἁγνῶς δὲ καὶ ὁσίως διατηρήσω βίον τὸν ἐμὸν καὶ τέχνην τὴν ἐμήν.
Οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιθιῶντας, ἐκχωρήσω δὲ ἐργάτῃσιν ἀνδράσι πρήξιος τῆσδε.
Ἐς οἰκίας δὲ ὁκόσας ἂν ἐσίω, ἐσελεύσομαι ἐπ' ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων, ἐκτὸς ἐὼν πάσης ἀδικίης ἑκουσίης καὶ φθορίης, τῆς τε ἄλλης καὶ ἀφροδισίων ἔργων ἐπί τε γυναικείων σωμάτων καὶ ἀνδρῴων, ἐλευθέρων τε καὶ δούλων.
Ἃ δ' ἂν ἐν θεραπείῃ ἢ ἴδω, ἢ ἀκούσω, ἢ καὶ ἄνευ θεραπηίης κατὰ βίον ἀνθρώπων, ἃ μὴ χρή ποτε ἐκλαλέεσθαι ἔξω, σιγήσομαι, ἄῤῥητα ἡγεύμενος εἶναι τὰ τοιαῦτα.
Ὅρκον μὲν οὖν μοι τόνδε ἐπιτελέα ποιέοντι, καὶ μὴ ξυγχέοντι, εἴη ἐπαύρασθαι καὶ βίου καὶ τέχνης δοξαζομένῳ παρὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐς τὸν αἰεὶ χρόνον. παραβαίνοντι δὲ καὶ ἐπιορκοῦντι, τἀναντία τουτέων.

(PS: Now lest anyone accuse me, with the post, of some sort of titular play on David Letterman’s game “Know Your . . .,” let me respond by saying, “I’d never thought of that, until now.” My daughters and I are still hoping that the professional women and men on strike from their writing will get the raises they deserve before the Oscars. And we're pulling for Diablo Cody, Ellen Page, Jason Reitman, and Juno.)

ABCs of DE

This post is to look at 1) Assumptions, 2) a Berth, and 3) a Consequence of what some are calling Dynamic Equivalence (and Formal Equivalence). Hence, the ABCs of DE(&F). I almost entitled it “All Work and No Word Play” but didn’t really want to play Aristotle’s game. And I would, rather, like to have fun talking with and listening to Rich Rhodes, David Ker, John Hobbins, Suzanne McCarthy, Elshaddai Edwards, Wayne Leman, Bob MacDonald, Peter Kirk, Mike Sangrey, Stephen (aka Q), Glennsp, and Mike Aubrey.

A. ARISTOTLE’S ARTICULATED ASSUMPTIONS

Aristotle acts as if he were Eugene Nida. That is, he is rightly concerned about corruptions and misappropriations of the original Greek language, except he neither knew Nida nor lived long enough to read the wild Hellene translations and texts we call the New Testament. So to straighten out the untamed poets of his day, and their old mothers and ancient fathers, Aristotle writes the Poetics, which he references a few times in the Rhetoric.

For instance, in what we call “Book III,” Aristotle writes:

ἤρξαντο μὲν οὐ̂ν κινη̂σαι τὸ πρω̂τον, ὥσπερ πέφυκεν, οἱ ποιηταί: τὰ γὰρ ὀνόματα μιμήματα ἐστίν, ὑπη̂ρξεν δὲ καὶ ἡ φωνὴ πάντων μιμητικώτατον τω̂ν μορίων ἡμι̂ν: διὸ καὶ αἱ τέχναι συνέστησαν ἥ τε ῥαψῳδία καὶ ἡ ὑποκριτικὴ καὶ ἄλλαι γε. ἐπεὶ δ' οἱ ποιηταί, λέγοντες εὐήθη , διὰ τὴν λέξιν ἐδόκουν πορίσασθαι τὴν δόξαν, διὰ του̂το ποιητικὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο λέξις, οἱ̂ον ἡ Γοργίου, καὶ νυ̂ν ἔτι οἱ πολλοὶ τω̂ν ἀπαιδεύτων τοὺς τοιούτους οἴονται διαλέγεσθαι κάλλιστα. του̂το δ' οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ' ἑτέρα λόγου καὶ ποιήσεως λέξις ἐστίν.

And John H. Freese translates:

The poets, as was natural, were the first to give an impulse to style; for words are imitations, and the voice also, which of all our parts is best adapted for imitation, was ready to hand; thus the arts of the rhapsodists, actors, and others, were fashioned. And as the poets, although their utterances were devoid of sense, appeared to have gained their reputation through their style, it was a poetical style that first came into being, as that of Gorgias. Even now the majority of the uneducated think that such persons express themselves most beautifully, whereas this is not the case, for the style of prose is not the same as that of poetry.

Note Aristotle’s assumptions: that poets may have and may mimic “style” but they are “devoid of sense.” If we apply binary features to some of this, we can “translate” the articulations this way:

Poetry = + imitation; + art; + popular; but - sense; - originality; - beauty
Prose = - imitation; - art; - popular; but + sense; + originality; + beauty
THEREFORE (syllogistically): Poetry (bad)  Prose (good)

Then Aristotle continues by assuming his “divide-and-conquer” binary method:

καὶ ἔτι τέταρτον τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐν ται̂ς μεταφοραι̂ς γίνεται: εἰσὶν γὰρ καὶ μεταφοραὶ ἀπρεπει̂ς, αἱ μὲν διὰ τὸ γελοι̂ον ̔χρω̂νται γὰρ καὶ οἱ κωμῳδοποιοὶ μεταφοραι̂σ̓, αἱ δὲ διὰ τὸ σεμνὸν ἄγαν καὶ τραγικόν: ἀσαφει̂ς δέ, ἂν πόρρωθεν, οἱ̂ον Γοργίας “χλωρὰ καὶ ἄναιμα τὰ πράγματα”, “σὺ δὲ ταυ̂τα αἰσχρω̂ς μὲν ἔσπειρας κακω̂ς δὲ ἐθέρισας”: ποιητικω̂ς γὰρ ἄγαν. καὶ ὡς ̓Αλκιδάμας τὴν φιλοσοφίαν “ἐπιτείχισμα τῳ̂ νόμῳ”, καὶ τὴν ̓Οδύσσειαν “καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον”, καὶ “οὐδὲν τοιου̂τον ἄθυρμα τῃ̂ ποιήσει προσφέρων”: ἅπαντα γὰρ ταυ̂τα ἀπίθανα διὰ τὰ εἰρημένα. τὸ δὲ Γοργίου εἰς τὴν χελιδόνα, ἐπεὶ κατ' αὐτου̂ πετομένη ἀφη̂κε τὸ περίττωμα , ἄριστα τω̂ν τραγικω̂ν: εἰ̂πε γὰρ “αἰσχρόν γε, ὠ̂ Φιλομήλα”. ὄρνιθι μὲν γάρ, εἰ ἐποίησεν, οὐκ αἰσχρόν, παρθένῳ δὲ αἰσχρόν. εὐ̂ οὐ̂ν ἐλοιδόρησεν εἰπὼν ὃ ἠ̂ν, ἀλλ' οὐχ ὃ ἔστιν.

And Freese says Aristotle says that (in English) this way:

The fourth cause of frigidity of style is to be found in metaphors; for metaphors also are inappropriate, some because they are ridiculous--for the comic poets also employ them--others because they are too dignified and somewhat tragic; and if they are farfetched, they are obscure, as when Gorgias says: “Affairs pale and bloodless”; “you have sown shame and reaped misfortune”; for this is too much like poetry. And as Alcidamas calls philosophy “a bulwark of the laws,” and the Odyssey “a beautiful mirror of human life,” and “introducing no such plaything in poetry.” All these expressions fail to produce persuasion, for the reasons stated. As for what Gorgias said to the swallow which, flying over his head, let fall her droppings upon him, it was in the best tragic style. He exclaimed, “Fie, for shame, Philomela!”; for there would have been nothing in this act disgraceful for a bird, whereas it would have been for a young lady. The reproach therefore was appropriate, addressing her as she was, not as she is.

Now see how Aristotle attacks Gorgias, that sophist poet first disparaged by Plato (Aristotle’s teacher). And remember how Plato coins the word “rhetoric” first to call Gorgias a teacher and user of that “so called rhetoric.” And recall how Gorgias, indeed, does string his readers along with his four-point multi-modal Praise of Helen, acquitting her as would Barry Scheck, Robert Shapiro, Peter Neufield, F. Lee Bailey, and Johnnie Cochran, Jr. all wrapped up in one person, until he much more like Marsha Clark casts doubt on the whole case with his very last word (play): παίγνιον. So notice how Plato hated poetic whip-lash, and how he got his student Aristotle, likewise, to teach against it in his own Rhetoric.

But does Aristotle follow through with his own assumptions? Can he practice what he preaches? Oh no. Actually, he might say in English, “Fie,” for he useth the “inappropriate” high metaphor of bird droppings to attack the use of metaphors and its users. What’s that stuff, now, on his assumptions? (“Fie” really is better than “It hurts me” or even “ouch”).

What’s the application to Dynamic Equivalence and its Formal equivalent? Well, were getting a letter or two ahead of ourselves.

B. THE BERTH OF BETTER BIBLES

Certain Big sailing vessels we call “English translations” make up an armada that’s called “The Bible,” which must dock in a single port, or berth, we call (in English) “the Word of God.” (Pardon me; I just committed the sin of using way too many Ss in that last Sentence. Look ahead:) The navy, logically, will speak a single language, because it is the Word. And the sailor can, reasonably, assume general universal linguistic absolutes regardless the specific deck or ship.

Now, to be sure, those sailing from the berths around Alexandria may be suspect. For they drift more toward Athens than Jerusalem. So get the drift (the epic “drift away”) from just a couple of couplets of well-grounded Hebrew:

ב בִּנְאוֹת דֶּשֶׁא, יַרְבִּיצֵנִי; עַל-מֵי מְנֻחוֹת יְנַהֲלֵנִי.

ג נַפְשִׁי יְשׁוֹבֵב; יַנְחֵנִי בְמַעְגְּלֵי-צֶדֶק, לְמַעַן שְׁמוֹ.

2 εἰς τόπον χλόης ἐκεῖ με κατεσκήνωσεν ἐπὶ ὕδατος ἀναπαύσεως ἐξέθρεψέν με

3 τὴν ψυχήν μου ἐπέστρεψεν ὡδήγησέν με ἐπὶ τρίβους δικαιοσύνης ἕνεκεν τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ

Why do the translators slide the parallelism of the poem upon the middle ἐπὶ? How it turns upon (i.e., ἐπέστρεψεν) the Soul (i.e., τὴν ψυχήν); how Greek its Justice (i.e., δικαιοσύνης); how epic and wandering its Odyssey (i.e., ὡδήγησέν). Surely the English is more accurate: “He leadeth me beside . . . He leadeth me in . . . (No?! Where’d we get that parallelism then?!) We hear the poets (not King David and not those of King James) paddling, playing, passing to another place, to other people, whose names we hear in perverted unberthed nonAngloSaxon dreams.

What’s the application to Dynamic Equivalence and its Formal equivalent? Well, were still getting a letter or two ahead of ourselves. As the sheep are bleeting, which one-eyed shepherd is calling now?

C. THE CONSEQUENCE OF CYCLOPS

It’s Cyclops calling after Odysseus on the poetic (word playful) Odyssey. The giant (not Goliath) wants an answer and needs a Dynamically Equivalent translation. If only he had two eyes to match the two ears:

Κύκλωψ, εἰρωτᾷς μ' [ὄνομα κλυτόν, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ τοι
You ask me my famous name, Cyclops? Then I’ll tell you,

ἐξερέω: σὺ δέ μοι δὸς ξείνιον, ὥς περ ὑπέστης.
but give me a guest gift, just as you promised.

Οὖτις ἔμοιγ' ὄνομα: Οὖτιν δέ με κικλήσκουσι
My name is Nobody. And they call me Nobody,

μήτηρ ἠδὲ πατὴρ ἠδ' ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι.
my mother and father and all my comrades as well.

But “Nobody”?!

No: Οὖτις is Ὀδυσῆι. And that’s both a pun and a metaphor. When the Cyclops hears it, with a single lens, he dies. That’s some consequence.

D. DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE AND ITS FORMAL EQUIVALENCE

Wikipedia writers write it this way (click here). Which is equal, dynamically if informally, to how Willis Barnstone puts it. Barnstone’s own The Poetics of Translation (which is not equivalent to Aristotle’s own The Poetics) goes like this:

EQUIVALENCE DEFINING TRANSLATION THEORY

The question of equivalence is central to all translation theory. It is our word for describing the victory of translation. . . . (233).

So by eliminating very literal and very free translation from his premise of equivalence, [the theorist] renders [the] vision of equivalence disturbingly prescriptive.

More acceptable is the notion that although some translation, perhaps even the greater part of literary translation, desires correctness, justice, and the presumed equality of equivalence, other kinds of translation do not share those virtuous aims, and their aims are also legitimate. In a word, translation writing is no more a one-eyed traveler than is other writing. . . . (235)

Now parables should not be explained. The parable is the explanation, as the poem is the poem, not its paraphrase. When, as in religious hermeneutics, a solution or guide is imposed on a text, when “The Lord is my shepherd” takes us to dwell in eternal reward rather than to live the rest of our lives loyally in the temple around the block, this is exactly what we of faith desire and gain from the text. . . . (256)

The Italian maxim traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor) is in the end correct. It is on target, to use the discipline’s favorite metaphor. I had promised myself I would not utter this formula of betrayal in the course of this book. Now I betray that vow with the perverse and pleasant notion that I am translating the evil maxim into a prescription for imaginative translation.

If one aims at absolute reproduction, one lies absolutely; if one betrays the absolute, however, one approaches the truth of literary translation. How can faithful reproduction be false and betrayal truth? When a translation passes as original, it is profound betrayal. It is making a Briton pass as French, and, as we know, weather, food, and kisses belie the notion of English and French sameness. Translation offers neither identity nor total synonym across languages. Its art lies in the betrayal of the absolute, in necessary difference. (259)

TRANSLATION: A SCIENCE, A CRAFT, OR AN ART?

At the risk of seeming dogmatic and jaded with terminological quibbling, I wish to offer a few prescriptive comments on whether translation is a science or an art, or worse, whether it is a craft.

Art contains craft, but craft does not necessarily contain art. If literary translation is to be classified at all, it must be as an art in its activity and its product. To translate a lyric poem is an art, and a lyric poem, an art object, must result. The art of translation also participates in all the other arts.

As for being a science too, why not? Yet, more interestingly, why yes? (232)

The recent conversations about DE(&F) are here and here. And Hobbins, so far, has been the only brave (betrayer) of just talk.