Undusted Texts

I have not had time for much translating recently, but I have time for a short post about an interesting note I found in my research. At its most basic, semiotics--the study of signs and symbols--splits a symbol into two: the signified and the signifier.  If I say "my love is a rose," then rose  becomes a symbol for love : rose  is the signifier (the object that stands for something else, that signifies something else), while love  is the signified (what the symbol stands for, what it signifies).  We could divide further: we could separate the signifier object in itself from the object as symbol .  Thus the simple rose  and the symbol love-rose  would be distinct.  We could also bring in the perspective of the one interpreting a symbol: the uninitiated sees the fish in the catacombs as just an odd drawing, while the initiated can rightly interpret it as the Christ-fish .  Drawing on the original meaning of the Greek symbolon  (...

Holy Prophet Micah "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"--Mic 6:8 A Christian's task is simple: to love God with his entirety, and to love his neighbor as himself.  All other duties and tasks in the Christian life derive from these two.  As the Lord Himself said, "On these two commandments all the law and the prophets are suspended."  We must always return to these two commandments as we navigate our way through the stormy seas of earthly life. God calls each of us to be Christian in a particular way, and He lays out a path for each of us, a particular path.  It is in fulfilling this particular path that each of us can honor God most perfectly.  Even if one way of life is objectively greater than another, it does not mean that it is better for each Christian to follow the greater way if he is not so called.  One of the great...