I heard about this woman who is a professor specialising in Buddhism. She doesn’t know Sanskrit, she doesn’t know Pali, she doesn’t know Chinese, she doesn’t know Tibetan. She knew a little Japanese once but has forgotten about it now.
She is considered my country’s foremost scholar on Buddhism and is invited on TV whenever they need a Buddhism expert.
Well, it’s not a matter of just knowing some arbitrarily chosen Asian languages… it’s a matter of knowing:
The languages of the original texts
The languages spoken by the majority of scholars
The languages spoken by the majority of actual practitioners.
Imagine a Christianity scholar who couldn’t tell you the difference between ἀγάπη, ἔρως, or φιλία. That would be pathetic. Imagine an Islam scholar who doesn’t understand the difference between Salah and Dhikr. That’s also pathetic.
I don’t think a scholar necessarily needs complete mastery over these languages… but they should be proficient enough to get information from the source material when they have questions.
I’d be curious to know, though, if the current practitioners believe that knowing their language is a prerequisite to understanding their worldview. I’d guess they’d say “no,” but if you can’t understand the people who practice you will not have your hand on the pulse of their theology.
If you were going to trot out some scholar on the bible and he couldn’t at least stammer a passage from the dead sea scrolls then you’ve got a charlatan
I don’t know about Buddhism, but at least within Islam, learning and knowing (early medieval quranic) Arabic is a prerequisite to becoming a Muslim scholar and moving up the faith leader hierarchy. It is a belief that only the original text has the actual holy significance, and translations can approximate it but fundamentally are a shadow of a shadow and should not be taken at face value.
In fact, it was a point of pride in my religious schooling that the original Quranic verses are preserved and technically accessible for anyone to read (albeit, in a different Arabic script that got changed shortly after (in the Abbasid period, I think?) to be more readable when the Quran had to be standardized and accessible for many). This point of pride was held over both Christians and Jewish people (and other minority Abrahamic faiths, like followers of Prophet David), who were seen to be “people of the book” and so ultimately believers of the same god, but they lost their way because their scripture was lost and translated into nothingness.
Now, do I believe any of this anymore? No not at all lmao. But I say all this to point out that some faiths do place a lot of emphasis on their liturgical languages.
I heard about this woman who is a professor specialising in Buddhism. She doesn’t know Sanskrit, she doesn’t know Pali, she doesn’t know Chinese, she doesn’t know Tibetan. She knew a little Japanese once but has forgotten about it now.
She is considered my country’s foremost scholar on Buddhism and is invited on TV whenever they need a Buddhism expert.
to be fair, i don’t see what knowing Asian languages has to do with knowing a religion.
Well, it’s not a matter of just knowing some arbitrarily chosen Asian languages… it’s a matter of knowing:
Imagine a Christianity scholar who couldn’t tell you the difference between ἀγάπη, ἔρως, or φιλία. That would be pathetic. Imagine an Islam scholar who doesn’t understand the difference between Salah and Dhikr. That’s also pathetic.
I don’t think a scholar necessarily needs complete mastery over these languages… but they should be proficient enough to get information from the source material when they have questions.
If you want to do serious scholarship on a religion you should be able to read the original texts as well as to speak with practitioners.
I’d be curious to know, though, if the current practitioners believe that knowing their language is a prerequisite to understanding their worldview. I’d guess they’d say “no,” but if you can’t understand the people who practice you will not have your hand on the pulse of their theology.
If you were going to trot out some scholar on the bible and he couldn’t at least stammer a passage from the dead sea scrolls then you’ve got a charlatan
I don’t know about Buddhism, but at least within Islam, learning and knowing (early medieval quranic) Arabic is a prerequisite to becoming a Muslim scholar and moving up the faith leader hierarchy. It is a belief that only the original text has the actual holy significance, and translations can approximate it but fundamentally are a shadow of a shadow and should not be taken at face value.
In fact, it was a point of pride in my religious schooling that the original Quranic verses are preserved and technically accessible for anyone to read (albeit, in a different Arabic script that got changed shortly after (in the Abbasid period, I think?) to be more readable when the Quran had to be standardized and accessible for many). This point of pride was held over both Christians and Jewish people (and other minority Abrahamic faiths, like followers of Prophet David), who were seen to be “people of the book” and so ultimately believers of the same god, but they lost their way because their scripture was lost and translated into nothingness.
Now, do I believe any of this anymore? No not at all lmao. But I say all this to point out that some faiths do place a lot of emphasis on their liturgical languages.