Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 1:43 pm
mlinssen wrote: ↑Mon Oct 26, 2020 10:50 pmFour entries for ⲥⲓⲣ!
- First milk, butter
- Leaven
- Hair, line
- Jar
Let's see if you can locate to which ⲥⲓⲣ this variant ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ belongs
In the context of breadbaking, my first guess, of course, would be leaven. My second would be butter. In light of the topic of the thread, do you think that this word got corrupted in the process of textual transmission?
[edited 20201028 15:58 UTC as there were a huge number of typos]
You hit the entire topic of textual transmission on the very head of its very nail, Ben.
This, that, and only and exactly this and that, is the issue at hand. There is content, and only content, to a text. And the entire context of the entire text should be only in the text itself - to begin with
Yet people are clumsy fools, always putting content into their own context first, and thence acting upon it.
You say - and rightly so from a human point of view - in the context of... And that is alright.
But then you add the word bread baking, and that comes from your head, and your head alone. No such thing in the text, nothing at all; only the word "make into" suggests a process of any kind.
Baking? Indeed, a regular and most certainly not unusual context for dough being turned into bread. But is there an oven? No.
So you, and everyone else, adds that context that is not there at all, and which is impossible to justify given the content of its context (sic!) that can only be retrieved from the text itself, given the fact that there is no strictly related text that says anything at all in addition to this
So. I'm not giving you a hard time at all I hope, this is just a perfect opportunity to spell it all out. I have the utmost respect for your brilliant thoroughness so I take pleasure (not gloating) in the fact that even you make this perfectly legit assumption
Now, my point of the utmost importance is, as Goodacre would say, the
direction (of dependence).
There is no way that you can translate ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ, that can only mean colostrum, with leaven. But.. . you can use its dialect variant of ⲥⲓⲣ and then write ⲥⲓⲣ. And then anything goes, because ⲥⲓⲣ can indeed mean 4 different things, whereas ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ can only mean one single thing whatsoever: colostrum (or butter)
So. If we take this text, it says colostrum, and given the many references to children as infants (not adolescents, or even middle aged children of say 6-10 years) and their drinking of milk, this again is a funny joke by Thomas, of which he makes many.
Not only wordplay, but sayings play. In stead of water you take milk, not unusual but just more luxurious. And instead of cow milk or goat milk or anything, you take human milk! Now that is rare and weird of course and it immediately rips this logion out of any normalcy and throws it directly into a figurative application, impossible to be mistaken for a literal or regular situation
And that is what this text right here does, no question about it. Was it meant to be like this, or anything? No idea, but in this very text the only translation can be colostrum, turning it into an unmistakably metaphysical message.
So Ben your first guess is completely unjustified, your second is the lesser of two choices and completely out of context with this text, where there is an abundant context of colostrum and entirely no context at all of butter - and certainly not one of leaven
Again, no hard feelings but I get really excited about this verse, and many others. What is the possible translation and then what is the possible interpretation of that translation?
Did it get corrupted? No. Thomas is full of examples like this, and it is evident that it got taken, carelessly read and translated, and that result got copied by the canonicals, Marcion, etc.
The other solution would be that Thomas took those and then fabricated these variants, as a joke, just as people like to take literal words of others and put them into an embarrassing context.
Decades ago I lived in the States and saw the Bush-Dukakis debate on television. "card-carrying member of" some organisation is what Bush accused Dukakis of being. If I remember correctly it was a clearly positive organisation, charity or so, but the message was clear and the damage done because that phrase had only one association and that was with the communist party.
Take words out of context and place them in a quite different one and the damage can be devastating
So yes, Thomas could have done that in order to ridicule the canonicals, the intent to do such is clearly present throughout Thomas, with his comments on fasting etc, the loathing of the prophets, etc
But can you make this error by translating? No. You can't take Greek or Aramaic or gawds know what, where it says leaven, and then write that down as the dialect variant of colostrum. Impossible, not in one go. First you would have to translate that into Coptic ⲥⲓⲣ in one text, and then you would have to use that text as a source, and then you must choose between which of the 4 synonyms you like best - be only then could someone read the ⲥⲓⲣ for leaven, interpret it as being the ⲥⲓⲣ for colostrum, and then take the dialect variant of the latter
Maybe it was the second translator who created the joke?
Also possible, anything is possible. Yet what is plausible, what is beyond reasonable doubt?
One thing is for sure: if we take this text and the canonicals, and if we have to discuss direction of dependence, then there is only one: the first copier misread it, or even knew it was the dialect variant for ⲥⲓⲣ, then put that last word in his own context of the literal content of the text, and came up with the translation of "leaven"