06-12-2020, 05:32 PM
Quote:How do people get bogged down in things like this?
I wondered how he came up with this too, soon after learning about it. My pet theory is it is because before learning classical languages and working on a Bible translation he was an art history professor for his first career. A well known art theorist is Henry Schaefer-Simmern (https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS511US511&tbm=bks&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Henry+Schaefer-Simmern%22&ved=2ahUKEwjklqqF2vzpAhUvaDABHTUIDZ8Q9AgwAHoECAEQBQ&biw=969&bih=630&dpr=1.25) who for years operated a drawing lab for children.
Schaefer-Simmern classifies children's artistic development using his system from simple things like circles and lines to more complicated drawing methods like perspective. Then he uses the same method to understand drawing and engravings by modern folk artists, tribes, and historical works of art going back to the ancients. As best as I can tell, he is correct or nearly so. It seems unlikely that Cascione would have studied art and not known of this theory because it is well known. I can't say he agrees with it or not though.
So then if in his early days of learning the Bible if he came across Umberto Cassuto's take on Biblical word or phrase frequency patterns he would have instinctively recognized it as something similar to this psychological art theory. Additionally, the Lutheran revivalist Johann Georg Hamann several centuries ago thought that the inspiration of the Bible was the same sort of inspiration found in art. Cascione may not have been aware of this, but these ideas don't just go away and so you can see why a Lutheran might link the inspiration of art the inspiration of Scripture. So if Schaefer-Simmern's theory proves the inspiration of art, then Umberto Cassuto's theory proves the inspiration of Scripture.
My pet theory about how he got bogged down in things like this is almost certainly wrong, but I would be surprised if it is completely wrong.
Quote:different versions of the texts in various languages
Cascione claims that the Septuagint translators did not see the weird frequency patterns because they made mistakes they would not have made had they known of them.
Quote:lower and higher text criticism.
He has done some work with other patterns that he collectively terms "meter"-- and he thinks it is possible to use these details to better understand the verse used in Psalms and Proverbs. He likes the idea of reproducing the various literary devices in English when it is possible. The problem with this is that if you do it wrong you are very wrong and end up with a considerably worse quality translation that what is found in common translations today.
I think even someone who is completely secular might find some value in studying weird patterns to see if there is some sort of subliminal triggering going on. I wonder if they might be a trigger for scrupulosity (religious OCD)--where people so afflicted may become obsessed with symbolic numbers and doing rituals a certain number of times.