For Schizm and other random 'prophets'

jgnat

I'll make it easy on you. I've picked a relatively modern manuscript, where the original language is English. It is barely six hundred years old, much closer to our modern day and culture. The original manuscripts are available to scholars.

And still he stood under the shot window;
Unto his breast it raught, it was so low;
And soft he coughed with a semisoun'.
"What do ye, honeycomb, sweet Alisoun?
My faire bird, my sweet cinamome,
Awaken, leman mine, and speak to me.
Full little thinke ye upon my woe,
That for your love I sweat there as I go.
No wonder is that I do swelt and sweat.
I mourn as doth a lamb after the teat
Y-wis, leman, I have such love-longing,
That like a turtle true is my mourning.

Can you contribute any thoughts on it's origin, context and meaning?

wombat

Wow. English is my first language and we are talking only 600 years ago.

I reckon that the bloke's pet cockatoo is feeling crook and that he is upset. Happened to me once.

jgnat

Wow. English is my first language and we're only talking a few thousand miles or so.

Bloke?

Crook?

wombat

Exactly...That is the point.

And now we have "experts" pontificating on the meanings of words written thousands of years ago.

I cannot decipher that relatively modern writing you quoted and you don't know that a "bloke" is a member of the male species. (Google C.J. Dennis - The Sentimental Bloke - an early Australian writer and very good) and if you're feeling crook you should have a sickie.

How can the WTS assume that they have the correct translations and meanings of ancient writings when they won't even name their researchers/translators and/or their qualifications?

Avagoodweekend.

We are always hearing of people who are around SEEKING AFTER TRUTH. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he had never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who THOUGHT they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. THAT WAS THE END OF THE SEARCH. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market. In any case, when he found the Truth HE SOUGHT NO FURTHER; but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. - Mark Twain, "What is Man?"

http://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/what-is-man-and-other-essays-of-mark-twain/ebook-page-15.asp