Week 5

I thought that Augustine's comments about language were interesting in terms of thinking about the psalms. One thing that intrigued me about our reading of the psalms was how different the translation was from the others I have seen. I think when looking at any religious text that has been translated from its original language, it is important to realize that parts of the meaning can be lost. Augustine points out that in many languages, some words do not directly translate to other languages. While main ideas can be translated, slight implications or connotations can be lost. Unfortunately, sometimes these underlying meanings are important to gaining understanding of the scripture. If the wording in the original language is ambiguous, it becomes even more difficult to get an accurate translation. The psalms are very poetic so it seems that they would be prone to ambiguous language and translation. I think it is important to keep this in mind when reading the psalms. The meaning we are getting from them might be quite different from the meaning the readers would get when reading it in the original Hebrew.