L Cooper Wrote:
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> Any translation from one language to another will
> have its flaws due to differences in world view
> and such. This, however, does not mean that
> translations lack levels of validity and
> usefulness, nor that by looking at a number of
> translations one can't get even closer to the
> intent of the original. Your view strikes me as
> being similar to that of Calvin, of "Calvin and
> Hobbes", where no one else understands "natural
> law" in the way that he does, except, of course,
> for perhaps his stuffed tiger. (And even he often
> questions Calvin's reasoning.)

Imagine there were a language that was mathematical in nature. Grammar was logic and the words were the operators.

If we stumbled on such a language on another planet we might or might not be able to decipher it dependent on whether or not we had sufficient context to understand. But I am suggesting that this is "exactly" what we have here and it is so difficult to see because when the language collapsed due to its complexity the vocabulary survived. We no longer use the vocabulary with the precision of logic while word meanings have evolved and hundreds of thousands of new words have arisen. The very way in which meaning is imparted has changed. Rather than comparing our meaning to reality we compare it to our beliefs and models. We simply make statements about the nature of reality whether the statements are preceded by "I believe", "evidence suggests", or not..

It is exactly this hiding author intent in the Pyramid Texts. We simply see the same vocabulary and it is apparent to us that they used this vocabulary exactly as we use ours. We don't see the formatting which framed author intent. We read "He is the pyramid, he protects" and we see an obvious abstraction, symbolism, or analogy but math doesn't use such devices so the sentence had ONLY a literal meaning to the author. He was saying that the dead king was actually the pyramid; "that what was wrong with him had been healed" "when they made him a new body". "He was dead" but now he "lived on" in the only way a dead man can live; as a memory. "Khufu lives as G1". Other individuals of the time are forgotten but Khufu lives.

> More "Calvinism" here, though in spades.
As much as I point out the differences between Allen and other translators (Faulkner and earlier), Allen is pretty much translating the same thing. While I've read his work and often am able to check his translations for new solutions it doesn't seem especially important except to the degree he translates more words.

> On
> occasion you do seem to be able to raise some
> interesting questions, but then you invariably go
> off into this sort of nonsense. It's a shame.


The translators are typically correct in a left handed sort of way because they are translating the words (not the formatting or the meaning). We must interpret everything everyone says and usually this interpretation is pretty close when like minded people with similar experience are communicating. But we are nothing like the authors of the PT. We misinterpret so badly we miss the meaning. But, remember, the literal meaning is close to author intent in the PT so of course translators are usually right in a left handed sort of way. My interpretation is based on the literal meaning and I'm extremely familiar with this literal meaning so it follows I must appear right in some way to you. The fact is the PT says that the king is the pyramid and the pyramid is the king dozens upon dozens of times so why shouldn't it sound like something "out of the mouths of babes" when I point this out?

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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2019 08:48AM by cladking.