Book 2 of Augustine applied to The Book of Psalms

One thing that St. Augustine mentioned early in his language/interpretation section of book 2, was his suggestion of cross reference. SA seems to have a method for decoding scripture. To him, it is best to know any of the literal translations or to know practically know everything about Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. I know nothing about any of those languages or how to translate them to English; learning them prior to reading the Psalms would take a little bit more time than I have. The next best strategy according to Augie is not relying on a single translation of the text. Not all translators of the text are going to do it the same way. They'll have different levels of literal accuracy as well as varying levels of intelligence (His Saintliness doesn't think very highly of some translators). In hindsight, looking at the translation of the Psalms in my bible could put into perspective what the psalms were trying to say. Alter's translation could be more literal and meant to be more objective translation, whereas my bible could be a little less literal and meant to be read by believers. Cross referencing would be a very useful tool. Another basic ground rule that Gus set down for reading scripture is that you have to be smart... I don't know if I would live up to his expectations, but I'd like to think I'm smarter than the average bear.

When it comes to signs within text, St. Augustine separates them into two types: literal and metaphorical. A literal sign would simply be a word that represents a single specific object (for example: bovem, which is the Latin representation for an ox). Metaphorical signs are words that mean one thing but represent another (ox is used to represent a worker of some kind, in this case a worker for God). Gus highlights two reasons that textual signs go wrong: ambiguity and unknown signs. Ambiguity messes up interpretation of a text when a sign in a certain language has multiple meanings in a different language. Some translators (the dumb ones, according to St. A) will pick the wrong meaning and it can severely alter the text. Unknown signs are words in a language that do not have a direct translation in another language; in this case translators must simply infer what the text means. and can be terribly wrong.These are essentially the reasons that cross referencing translations of a reading can help pull out what the base ideas are for the text.

Earlier in the Psalms unit we did look at a different translation of one of the Psalms from The Bay Psalms Book. SA outlined the fact that interpreting translations relied on the reader's knowledge of the language in which it is written. What made the Bay Psalms translation difficult to cross-reference was that the style of English in which the psalm was written was not as familiar as the modern version that we use now. Because of this the translation was of limited helpfulness. If more translations were presented it would really give a better idea of what the basis for the psalms was meant to be.