week 5, post 1

This is Moses. Sometimes his horns are depicted more ram-like than these cute little bunny-ears, but they are present either way in many early statues and paintings.

It seems exceedingly strange that the great leader who lead his people out of slavery in Egypt is portrayed with horns, of all things. But many people, on literal interpretation of their Bibles, felt that this was the most accurate way to do so. Horns was a mistranslation, in the place of the beams of light that are actually described as emanating from the great man's head.

Augustine discusses a similar phenomenon of mistranslation when he indignantly writes that "calves are not rooted to the earth, but walk over it with their feet!" Like "horns" and "beams of light," "calves" and "plants" are confusingly similar words to those translating the Testaments. As are "quick" and "sharp."

Translation difficulties present a challenge for those trying to make the scriptures legible in many languages. Augustine describes this dilemma as that of "unknown signs or ambiguous signs." In his opinion, "a sign is a thing that makes some other thing come to mind," and words are kind of the ultimate signs. And, since "spoken words cease to exist as soon as they come into contact with the air," the written word has tremendous significance.

When you look at the Psalms, which set the religious guidelines of good, bad, and any repercussions in the form of collective songs, the idea of a word as a sign is very interesting. Despite being clear and permanent(ish) signs, words are easy to mistranslate (like above), and their meaning can change depending on the style of writing they are translated into (see previous blog about Psalm 2). Words more open to interpretation and misinterpretation than animal tracks, though I suppose it depends on how deep you want to go. You can tell from the track, maybe, that it's a cougar, but you don't know who that particular animal was, or what it was doing on the path that day.

And, this has absolutely nothing to do with ANYTHING, but while looking for a picture of Moses with horns I stumbled across this link, and I thought some of you might find it funny: 

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m175/Mbabalon/moses_with_horns.jpg&imgrefurl=http://synkronos23.vox.com/library/post/popeye-the-sailor-man-meets-the-solar-phallic-gods.html&usg=__T-nEcBsdVxkSIbJpqEHZDg7CP04=&h=600&w=407&sz=58&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=9wS61945CGyahM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=92&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmoses%2Bwith%2Bhorns%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG