The Return of the Prophets

Jonah Bossewitch

HUM 205

Professor Michael Sugrue

December 12, 1994

"I want you to remember that words have those meanings which we have given them;

and we give them meanings by explanations."

Ludwig Wittgentstein, The Blue Book

Among the most difficult and crucial tasks in understanding an ancient text is determining the extentions of archaic concepts. While it is generally true that the only way to discover the intention of a word is through an analysis of its extension, this principle is especially relavant with respect to the words in ancient texts since we have virtually no intuition as to what these words meant for the people who used them. This task does not fall solely on the shoulders of translators since there may be words in the target language that correspond to archaic concepts. The challenge posed to the reader is to determine the modern day synonyms for the ancient words. The underlying principle of this exercise is that phenomena change little over time, it is just the labels, or words we use to describe these phenomena that change.