>As much as I appreciate hyperbole, I don't think that accents are all that
>much of a disouragment. On the other hand, since the accents were not part
>of the original text, I think that it is a good idea to consider what the
>text would look like without accents (or even spacing).
>It may open up some alternate interpretations.
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Bullseye!!
And not so much with regard to accents, per se, so as to the an
"orthodox" interpretation of accents, and of breathing marks, and Yes
spacing, and yet --itself-- WRITING, as a morphologically objectified, and
OBJECTIFYING, canon, accustoming mind to *perceiving*, and so interpreting,
monosemantically, not even one-dimentionally, but "one-point-edly" and
"one-meaningly". That is the stuff that dogma is made of, in "holding-up"
to the one only true one, and there is where began confusion, Babel. Babble.
Without some writing standards, of course, would be chaos, if there
were at all writing, and reading. But what is the "golden mean" and,
especially, for serving what Purpose! For might one not perhaps delimit
one's review of the whole condition in what accents and marks, and "since
the accents were not part of the original text..." but in what, and if,
"letters," GRAMMATA, what is the place of the written. For the importance
of the point further raised by Cindy is: how does one perceive the
relationship of writ--which is objective and static--to language, to the
LOGOS--which is alive, living and creative, crating! And what does one
do about it? What did the encoding do to the living, oral language of
original Christianity? And what does it do for-- and, albeit, do to--us?!
What may be the proper means to currently learn to encode and, most
importantly, to de-code in even approaching--beyond the whatever usage
"stress," "accent" and "aspiration" marks--The Truth, on to the original
Spirit of that time, that was Timelessness, AIWNIOTIS?! Past, or perhaps
one should say through, the however sign-ificant topoi of grammar and
syntax (often, though necessarily, the misplaced objects of attention
now, themselves) there is still believed to be the Christian Joy (ZWH...
AIWNIOS) for any Christian the ultimate SKOPOS.
Isidoros
The Ionic Centre, Athens ioniccentre@hol.gr