RIS
Bible Student
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2024
- Messages
- 160
- Location
- New Pangea
- Gender
- Mechanical
- Basic Beliefs
- Theoretical Skeptic
It certainly is possible. I tend to think outside the box which can lead to those sorts of errors in the trial-and-error process. Error being a part of that. I have to kick things around to see how they work. Words are like a tool; definitions are what the tools were intended for and meanings are how people use or misuse them. When a word is misused, it can take on a different use than was intended, though usually there is some similarity in the use. A baseball bat is for hitting a ball in sport, but it also can be useful as a weapon. Same with a knife. To me the most important tool for understanding a thing we call something, a name or word for something, is not the meaning or the definition, but the history - the etymology - of the word.
The word soul is a good example. If you look up the etymology of the word soul you get basically it comes from words meaning large bodies of water. Sea. This is because the soul is thought to have been bound by the sea when it wasn't inhabiting the body. While this is true of the modern etymology the problem is it doesn't add up in a practical sense. No problem, it seems, because when you're dealing with superstition it often doesn't need to make sense. The problem with that is that it does. Superstitions arise from the practical application or else they don't become used. It has to have massive appeal.
If you take your etymological exploration further than can easily be had online (believe it or not Google doesn't know everything) you come up with the soul as coming from a word that means to bind. (i.e. bound by the sea). Superstitious people used to bind the wrists and ankles of the dead to prevent the immortal soul from harming or pestering the living. The dead from harming the undead. So, while you don't easily find binding to be a part of the relatively later etymology directly you do see its meaning incorporated in the sea. Which doesn't really make any sense otherwise. You have something that generally has to do with animation, life being about something to bind. Animation to inanimate life to death.
Transliteration is the translation of a letter of the source to a corresponding letter of the target language. A translation is the translation of a word in the same manner. Jewish scholars got fed up with the translation of the English (target) word soul for the Hebrew word nephesh. Consequently, they began transliterating the word. Translation of the word nephesh had been difficult because the closest use of the word - soul - was not a very good one. Life is a good translation of nephesh to some extent, and depending on the context even modern translation of life from nephesh (or variations of) are used. So, in the case of words like soul, hell, god, spirit the syncretism of religion becomes problematic because the words of the pagan (meaning outside of) religions become commonly used for the contradictory or even similar Biblical. For example, nephesh means life, life experiences of any breathing creature. It comes from a word literally meaning breather. It literally means that. It becomes a word meaning bind or sea. The Biblical Hebrew for life becomes the pagan for immortality through, of all things, death. Everything gets distorted. Then you have to address the distortion.
Propaganda. George Orwell and a host of other prominent thinkers of our time have said all art is propaganda. People think of propaganda as being the bullshit of the powerful, but actually it means and can be defined as "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view." Someone not very good with debate will not pick up on especially in that definition, in effect mistaking it for necessarily. It's most commonly used as such but not necessarily. The common doesn't negate the less common application even if the most common application is actually commonly used. Misuse by limiting the word becomes more powerful than the actual meaning. The purpose of the art of debate isn't to win against your opponent, it's to learn. You do that by exploring and then comparing your errors with theirs. It's all about logical fallacies, but you have to synchronize your use with their uses and misuses as demonstrable through etymology of words. Otherwise, you can't communicate. When you're debating Biblical subject I have a lot of translation, transliteration, interpretation, etymology, definitions, meanings and logic at my command. My opponent has little if any use of any of that. They only have ideology and tradition. They are opposed to my ideology and tradition. The problem for me personally is that I reject the same ideology and tradition they do, only for a different reason. This is apparently manifest in a similarity, my influence by the Jehovah's Witnesses so when all else fails just dismiss me as such, but there is nothing original about anything I or my benefactors the Jehovah's Witnesses say. It all comes from the source and for the most part dispells the pagan (again, outside of) influence on the modern-day tradition.
