Jesus' words: formal or conversational
The long comment thread on Mike Sangrey's posting Interpretation versus Translation -- Competition or Teamwork? had already shifted well off the original subject when Michael Marlowe, aka Son of Abraham, introduced a new and significant issue. To avoid this discussion getting lost, I am addressing this issue in a new posting.
At the end of a comment mostly about singular "they", Michael wrote:
How do we decide this question? I assume that Michael is not taking a theological perspective that anything which Jesus said must have been in the most perfect and exalted language, so wonderful that it deserves to be printed in red whoever might have spoken it. If we look at the evidence, we will find that Jesus' words, as they appear in the New Testament (and so mostly not in fact his Hebrew or Aramaic ipsissima verba), are in the ordinary Koiné Greek of their period. But what particular register of Koiné Greek? I must say I don't know. It certainly wasn't the formal Greek of Luke 1:1-4, nor was it the involved argumentation of Paul's letters. To my non-expert eyes it seems to be down-to-earth conversational language, not generally polished at all, although scattered with sometimes cryptic sayings which do show some signs of careful wording. But if Michael or anyone else has any evidence that Jesus' words are in fact in a formal style, I would like to see it.
If Jesus' words are in a conversational style as I believe, there should be no requirement that an English translation of them be in the most formal literary style; in fact such a translation would be inaccurate and misleading. It must therefore be acceptable to use in the Bible, at least in Jesus' words, constructions like singular "they" which are widely used in conversational language but, at least according to some, not acceptable in the most formal language.
Any comments?
At the end of a comment mostly about singular "they", Michael wrote:
I agree that the style of the translation should imitate the style of the original. But I don't think it's true that the words of Christ in the NT are in conversational style. I think they are highly rhetorical, and for the most part they follow conventions of gnomic and prophetic literature. These are not really the same as the conventions of formal prose style in English, but the discourse is definitely formal in character. So when I see Christ's words translated into an informal conversational idiom--as they are in the recent "common language" versions and paraphrases--I think the translation really gives a false impression.Perhaps this is the centre of the problem which has led to such sharp disagreement about singular "they". Are Jesus' words as reported in the Bible conversational, in the same sense as the literary examples discussed earlier in the comment thread concerning singular "they"? Or are they prepared discourses in highly polished formal style? Or somewhere in between? That certainly affects how they should be translated.
How do we decide this question? I assume that Michael is not taking a theological perspective that anything which Jesus said must have been in the most perfect and exalted language, so wonderful that it deserves to be printed in red whoever might have spoken it. If we look at the evidence, we will find that Jesus' words, as they appear in the New Testament (and so mostly not in fact his Hebrew or Aramaic ipsissima verba), are in the ordinary Koiné Greek of their period. But what particular register of Koiné Greek? I must say I don't know. It certainly wasn't the formal Greek of Luke 1:1-4, nor was it the involved argumentation of Paul's letters. To my non-expert eyes it seems to be down-to-earth conversational language, not generally polished at all, although scattered with sometimes cryptic sayings which do show some signs of careful wording. But if Michael or anyone else has any evidence that Jesus' words are in fact in a formal style, I would like to see it.
If Jesus' words are in a conversational style as I believe, there should be no requirement that an English translation of them be in the most formal literary style; in fact such a translation would be inaccurate and misleading. It must therefore be acceptable to use in the Bible, at least in Jesus' words, constructions like singular "they" which are widely used in conversational language but, at least according to some, not acceptable in the most formal language.
Any comments?
posted by Peter Kirk at 3:42 PM
26 Comments:
Michael,
I think there is something else going on. Chiastic arrangements are typical of a style we find in discourse that is to be memorized and is part of an oral tradition.
The analysis of whether is 'they' is appropriate with a singular antecedent only makes sense with reference to written discourse and prose literacy. That is my guess.
In any case I think such a prescriptive approach to language would cause us to reject most of the great literature we have inherited for some reason or other.
I also have to ask - have you read P & G's the TNIV and the GNBC? What do you think of their writing style? Chap.4 H #4 seems to me to be a string of sentence fragments. I think they are trying for an effect but I am not quite sure what effect.
http://www.cbmw.org/resources/books/gnbc/gnbc.html
Very interesting question. I have made an entry on my blog, Martyrologist that links back to yours.
I like this thread. I would just exercise caution about making generalizations about "Jesus' words." The gospels contain a variety of discourse types spoken by Jesus (parable, pronouncement story, conversation, and more) and these are recorded by the four evangelists often with considerable variation in the amount of "formality" recorded. It is impossible to make any blanket claims about the relative register of "Jesus' words." This is a good subject for a thesis but I'm not sure it can be elucidated in a blog format.
I'd also like to add that I was sorry to see Suzanne and son of abraham inserting the "inclusive language" arguments into this thread. Is there nowhere we can be free from their endless wrangling? Better Bibles treats a wide variety of topics and that particular topic is beginning to irritate me.
It is true that Jesus' speech often echoes the cadences and rythmes as well as the imagery of the prophets. This howver, merely pushes the question back a stage, what is the appropriate register for the prophets... As oral rhetoric, from people presented (largely?) as having no official status, this is likely to have been that of a street orator - neither formal nor yet conventionally conversational. As texts recorded (probably) well after the original event they may have taken on more formal overtones...
And the same sort of thing is probably true of Jesus - a street preacher or political orator is nearer the mark than a literary register, but not either conversational...
I realise I've neglected to address the issue of singular "they" (as a goy from outside the USA I can't really comment, it strikes me as natural in either formal or informal contexts). However, recognising that led me to the comment: If one of my colleagues is speaking to a class then they ;) use a register that is neither that of their writing, nor of their conversation, but something different - an oral rhetorical English...
I like to think of the koine Greek of the NT as "edited common style," though I like Tim's oral rhetorical.
By that I mean two things and I don't mean a third.
1. That Jesus original manner of speaking with people was rather common. In other words, koine. I come to this position because of the significant emphasis on the incarnational nature of Jesus' life. I think it safe to assume Jesus' presentation of the Sermon on the Mount would have been more highly polished. I also think Luke 15 is a good example of a highly polished presentation, although I suspect that is more the result of Luke's efforts than Jesus'. However, polished does not mean academic, hightened vocabulary or anything else that would elevate the presentation above the natural grasp of the common individual. I view this the same way as my editing a transcribed sermon for publication--there's a cleaning process that doesn't compromise the original message.
2. The authors of the NT edited Jesus' speech so that the gospel message would be communicated, solidified, and carried for their (and our) indefinite future. So, rhetorical forms were used to "make the message stick. Again, this emphasizes the communicative nature of the text we have while tossing some of the negative effects associated with conversation (making additional statements that massage the previous statement toward greater accuracy since it wasn't said precisely enough to begin with, for example). Obviously, the authors wrote in Greek--surely the purpose was to communicate to a very broad audience, perhaps not only in space, but in time.
3. This editing in no way means that the NT authors manipulated what Jesus said away from accurately conveying what he actually said. I won't get into the theological reasons for saying that; I'm limited by the constraints of a comment.
Lastly, regarding the use of specific rhetorical structures: I would caution being too quick to determine that their use of chiasm (and other structures) in normal communication was just as uncommon as it is with us in English. If they structured their koine texts with these rhetorical devices and we don't, then they were more comfortable with them than we are. In other words, they would have used these devices in normal conversation--the more clever and witty people would have used them more often. It would not have been to the same extent as used in writing; but, it would have been used.
son of abraham,
Can you clarify your point in your last comment: "I want to emphasize the fact that the NT was written for the Church, not for an audience outside the Church." How does the audience for the NT being the church preclude its tone being conversational, and demand a more formal tone?
Tim, I think you put things more clearly than me with "a street preacher or political orator is nearer the mark than a literary register, but not either conversational"; you also mentioned a college lecturer which may be more appropriate for some of Jesus' teaching. "Conversational" was perhaps not the best word, but neither is "formal"; a good street preacher or orator tries to bring in some good rhetoric, but not formal literary characteristics. And then of course Lingamish is right that there is a lot of variety in Jesus' words. As for singular "they", I am sure that it would is common in transcripts of modern political orators, especially those of the more populist bent which would fit with Jesus best.
Michael is right that "We have no reliable transcripts of common speech for the period." But we do have a wealth of informal letters from the period, mostly surviving in Egypt and written by common people who wrote as they spoke rather than in a formal literary way. And, although I am no expert on this, I understand that in general the Greek style of the NT is very similar to that of these informal letters, but less similar to surviving formal documents from the period which tend to "Atticism", a deliberate imitation of the style of classical Athens.
As for Michael's reference to "the fact that the NT was written for the Church, not for an audience outside the Church", how does he reconcile this alleged "fact" with John 20:31?
Mike,
Have you read Kenneth Bailey's books, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes? 1983. He has developed a rhetorical criticism of the parables. Rather than focus on chiasmus, he discusses parallelism in the following terms - synonymous, antithetical, inverted, step and synthetic.
About his method in general, he says,
Briefly the method we have evolved is to make use of four tools. The first is to discuss the cultural aspects of the parable with a wide circle of Middle Eastern friends whose roots are in isolated [essentially illiterate]conservative village communities and try to find how the changeless Middle Eastern peasant sees things. The second is to examine carefully twenty-four translations of the NT in Syriac and Arabic to see how Christians in this part of the world have understood the text from the second to twentieth centuries. The point here is that translation is always interpretation. The translator must decide what the text means before he can translate it. A parable passes through the translator's mind on its way to the new language. Through a careful reading of a series of such translations one is able to learn a great deal about how Middle Easterners themselves have understood a given text. The third is to look for parallels in literature as close to the NT as posssibe. Finally, the literary structure of the parable or parable passage must be examined with care. p. xiv.
Personally I find this work more useful than discussing the Koine Greek written style of the gospels.
Peter,
I listened with special acuity to our minister last Sunday. He is an excellent speaker and we have an extremely formal church. I clearly heard him use the expression, 'someone' ... 'they'. He was even preaching from the RSV.
Now, he is an Aussie, I admit this, but he is well educated in Aristotle and the philosophers (I always check out these things just for fun) and Dr. Packer was sitting nearby. Of course, we know already Dr. Packer finds this 'perfectly standard'. I really can't imagine who wouldn't, except in a certain kind of written discourse, abitrated by Strunk & Wagnell, evidently.
I wrote: "The authors of the NT edited Jesus' speech so that the gospel message would be communicated, solidified, and carried for their (and our) indefinite future. So, rhetorical forms were used to make the message stick."
"Son of Abraham" (Michael Marlowe) replied: "I reject that view of the text. I think it involves not only a false view of inspiration but also a failure to properly weigh the historical probabilities. Surely the words of Jesus were impressive enough without an editor's help."
I suppose I need to deal with this since it interprets what I said in ways I didn't mean.
Either you're misunderstanding me or you're not dealing with the GNT evidence that is right in front of both of us.
The authors of the NT didn't record the exact words of Jesus. I think it is widely recognized that Jesus didn't speak Greek 100% of the time. Also, there are parallel texts in different gospel writer's accounts that utilize different words.
For example, here are two parallel examples that start with the phrase, "Jesus said to them", so these are two authors giving two records of a single speech.
Matthew 9:15:
μὴ δύνανται οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ νυμφῶνος πενθεῖν ἐφ' ὅσον μετ' αὐτῶν ἐστιν ὁ νυμφίος ἐλεύσονται δὲ ἡμέραι ὅταν ἀπαρθῇ ἀπ' αὐτῶν ὁ νυμφίος καὶ τότε νηστεύσουσιν
"Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast." (ESV)
Mark 2:19
μὴ δύνανται οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ νυμφῶνος ἐν ᾧ ὁ νυμφίος μετ' αὐτῶν ἐστιν νηστεύειν ὅσον χρόνον ἔχουσιν τὸν νυμφίον μετ' αὐτῶν οὐ δύνανται νηστεύειν
"Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast." (ESV)
They are very similar; however, they are different. Who made the decision to record the words differently than they were actually spoken? That is, who performed the role of an editor? My answer: Men fully empowered by the Holy Spirit to accurately and authoritatively convey the exact message from God.
Suzanne asked:
Have you read Kenneth Bailey's books, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes? 1983.
No, but I've wanted to get those books. However, I have read some of his writings and I have recommended him to people. I had spent several years analyzing Luke 15 (the prodigal son parable and context) and then read his thoughts and cultural insights of that text. I had struggled with the common interpretation that the younger son had repented at the pig pen. The text just didn't seem to be saying that--too many indicators that he was still proud. When I read Bailey's observations (both textual and cultural) he convinced me the cautions were well founded.
FWIW: The younger son repented when he saw his father run. Older Jewish men never, ever ran in public--it was a shameful thing to do. In other words, the father took the younger son's shame on himself.
Older Jewish men never, ever ran in public Yes, I just reread his analysis of that today.
I was given Bailey's book years ago by my mother-in-law who speaks Arabic and has collected Arab proverbs for years. They were missionaries in North Africa.
Michael said:
I want to emphasize the fact that the NT was written for the Church, not for an audience outside the Church.
Michael, I would agree that most of the NT was written for the Church.
You then said:
The internal evidence for this is compelling.
True, for the majority of the NT. But what kind of evidence would you consider John 20:31? What audience would the author of that verse be addressing? The Gospel of John is fairly large, a good percentage of the totality of the NT.
Also, we do not know if Theophilus, the audience for the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, was a Christian or not. Our Sunday School teacher, a NT scholar, addressed that very issue this last Sunday. It is entirely possible that Theophilus was acquainted with the broad outlines of the history of Jesus life on earth and the early church through the journeys of Paul, but that he had not yet become a committed follower of "The Way."
There is an invalid assumption lying around here. Even if we say that most of the NT was written for the Church, it does not follow that some, maybe all, or it wouldn't have be perfectly clear to outsiders as well.
Being written for the church does not equal being particularly technical or hard to understand.
Much of the NT was written to Gentiles who were recent converts and didn't share the extensive Judaic background that was common in New Testament Palestine. It seems patently false that Paul would send them letters alternately encouraging them, bawling them out, and expressing affection for them in anything but the ordinary language of the day.
I think the Bible was, for the most part, crystal clear to its audience. It hit them where they lived. Our versions should do no less.
The problem to me is that most of the more or less literal versions do not hit the people of the church where they live.
Furthermore, I believe the church is essentially evangelistic. I don't buy the position that we insist that the foundational document be hard to read.
But then maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
This makes more sense to me than the idea that John wrote his Gospel to people outside the Church.
Michael,
I am not sure if I am misreading this, but it seems that you have taken Gordon Fee's position, while Carson is struggling to keep this open. Carson concludes his paper with this comment.
On the other hand, I fear that the objections of Fee and a few others may discourage some from reexamining the issue with fresh eyes, feeling that the possibility that John’s Gospel was written primarily with evangelistic intent has been ruled out of court by their work. This essay is first and foremost an attempt to keep the issue open.
Mike,
Bailey's book is available here. One of your recent posts reminded me of his ideas. I would say that Bailey is esential reading for Bible translation.
Suzanne said:
I would say that Bailey is esential reading for Bible translation.
I affirm what Suzanne has said. Bailey knows what he wrote about. It is critically important to read the gospels from within the cultural and historical contexts in which they were written, as Bailey does. Bailey's book has been around for awhile, but it has stood the test of time and continues to be appreciated by many who want to know the context in which the gospels, especially Luke, were written.
Son of Abraham wrote: My statements regarding the linguistic character of the NT are based upon features of the text itself, and upon a comparison of its language with secular Greek sources.
Hmm, suppose English were 2000 years dead, and I plunked down in front of you a novel by Hemingway and one by Faulkner and asked whether these guys had different varieties of English such that speakers of the Hemingway variety wouldn't completely understand the Faulkner variety.
You can probably see where I'm going. My take is that Josephus and Luke are in the same ballpark the way Faulkner and Hemingway are. If you're a thoroughly competent speaker of Koine the range of registers you command includes the Atticized style of Josephus and the grocery list style of the various business fragments, and Luke sounds fully natural.
The big problem is that the guys who first looked at this stuff and set the grounds of the discussion didn't have particularly good tools to evaluate the myriad of differences they saw. As you yourself have pointed out, they divided language up too simplistically.
Not only was their understanding of speech styles and registers inadequate, no one at that time had any understanding of what happens in language contact situations, what happens in language koineicization/standardization, what diglossia is, and so forth.
You said: If you want to put the Bible in simple English that is easily understood by unchurched people, go ahead. But you can't base that on arguments about the original text.
On the contrary. I see no real difference (other than perhaps register) in the language in the Pauline epistles between sections which draw on Jewish thought (granted the greater part of Paul's writing) and the sections where he gets personal.
Most of my work in understanding what the Greek of the NT means comes from internal comparison within the NT. All I need for my argument to go through is that the text sounded natural to the intended audience. (BTW, natural does NOT mean simple. It covers the whole range of registers that is implicit in the text, from high to colloquial.)
And I still stick to the harder-to-prove position that the language of the New Testament was "heart language" to bilingual Palestinian Jew and monolingual (but possibly diglossic) Anatolian and European Greek alike. The non-Jews may have missed some of the allusions, but they by and large got the point.
Michael Marlowe wrote:
I've seen variations of this argument before. If we unpack it, it runs something like this:
The New Testament was written for evangelistic purposes. But this purpose would not be well-served by writings which required much background knowledge and familiarity with Jewish terminology to be understood. Therefore the New Testament must have been written in the ordinary and simple 'street language' of the gentiles. Otherwise, it would not serve its true purposes.
For the record: I don't agree with this argument. In other words, what I've said before doesn't flow from this unpacking.
Acts 15:21 tells me the Jewish witness was geographically extensive. So, there's an assumption within the text (and the people of the time) that a Jewish witness was required (though likely not in an absolute sense). The same is true today although it is predominantly replaced with a Christian witness (which has a significant Jewish component).
What has always bothered me about the argument that the NT is written for the Church and therefore the language must be in some way constrained to that entity is that the language used by the people in the Church is the language that the rest of the people in that language group use. It's the same language. Why insist on a linguistically strange composite of Greek and English or Hebrew and English? There appears to be an assumption that the strong Whorfian hypothesis is true. That is, that the specific language absolutely determines what can and can not be talked about. That's been shown to not be true. I think a version of the weak Whorfian hypothesis, however, is true and makes translation so confounded hard. Where these two hypotheses meet might be the genesis of our disagreement.
Also, 1 Cor. 14:24 shows that an unbeliever should be able to understand the language even though he or she hasn't mentally and systematically acquired the initiate's information (ἰδιώτης, IDIWTHS). This is especially applicable in our conversation given the fact that the entire chapter is about clarity of communication.
For me, the evangelistic capability of the Bible flows from the fact that it is true and it is clearly written (or the translation needs to be so). These two things are just as applicable to the Church as they are to the non-Church. So, trying to linguistically pit the two groups of people against each other is simply irrelevant.
Michael Marlowe wrote:
It's undeniably true that the New Testament writers used a specialized religious vocabulary.
I'm going to simply ignore much of what you wrote; it takes too much effort to calm your rhetoric so we can work toward an objective understanding. I suspect nearly all the readers of this blog grow weary of it. I know I certainly do.
But in the interest of making sure all readers are aware that your above statement is false, I'll quote something in reply:
So far from the Greek of the New Testament being a language by itself, or even, as one German scholar called it, "a language of the Holy Ghost," its main feature was that it was the ordinary vernacular Greek of the period, not the lanugage of contemporary literature, which was often influenced by an attempt to imitate the great authors of classical times, but the language of everday life, as it was spoken and written by the ordinary men and women of the day, or, as it is often described, the KOINH or Common Greek, of the great Graeco-Roman world.
That was written by G. Milligan in 1930. So, 75 years of scholarship testifies to the KOINH nature of the NT text.
But this can be pushed even further back.
J. B. Lightfoot in 1863 in a lecture at Cambridge:
"...if we could only recover letters that ordinary people wrote to each other without any thought of being literary, we should have the greatest possible help for the understanding of the language of the N(ew) T(estament) generally."
Shall I stop here? What about Professor Mason in 1859 who wrote in the beginning of Winer's Grammar:
"Perfectly natural and unaffected, it [the NT] is free from all tinge of vulgarity on the one hand, and from every trace of studied finery on the other. Apart from the Hebraisms--the number of which have, for the most part, been grossly exaggerated--the New Testament may be considered as exhibiting the only genuine FACSIMILE of the colloquial diction employed by UNSOPHISTICATED Grecian gentlemen of the first centruy, who spoke without pedantry--as IDIWTAI ('private persons'), and not as SPFISTAI ('adepts')." [emphasis his]
These last two quotes indicate that even before the Deismann revolution, Greek scholars were cognizant that the NT was Common Language.
Note: The above quotes are taken from "The General Introduction" to "The vocabulary of the Greek New Testament" by Moulten and Milligan. Milligan also deals with a number of words thought to have been religious. In some cases they were religious and, in fact, used by pagan religions. In other cases the words were, in fact, political and not religious. Milligan discusses PRESBUTEROS in this regard.
In summary, the fact that the NT is written in the Common Language of the people was quite strongly established almost 100 years ago and has stood the test without serious question since then.
Now, it is certainly true that an author takes a word from the common pool of language choices and modifies it by and for their own use. But, the author is constrained by the language itself. Otherwise the text wouldn't communicate. In the interests of objectivity, I must allow all the data to influence my assessment of what a word means within a given context. I can't apriori toss data simply because of an assumption on my part that a sub-culture had a specific vocabulary. That reasoning strikes me as too tightly circular to be useful.
son of abraham said...
Richard wrote: And I still stick to the harder-to-prove position ...
Alright. But at this point it looks to me like you are just clinging to a false idea that serves an ideological or theoretical purpose. You really shouldn't be building theories of Bible translation on it.
The notion that people communicate with one another as naturally and clearly as possible is not ideological. It is the null hypothesis.
The burden of proof is on someone who claims otherwise.
You don't get to simply proclaim that the null hypothesis is false.
I've read your material and find it to be clear, well thought out, and well argued. Head and shoulders above most who oppose dynamic equivalence. But it doesn't convince me in the least. I read it and "it looks to me like you are just clinging to a false idea that serves an ideological or theoretical purpose."
Michael wrote: "The Judeo-Christian subculture had distinctive linguistic habits and peculiarities that set it apart, linguistically, from the wider culture. As in every other social group, socialization into the Church subculture involved learning the talk." Well, I accept that this may have been true of the Jewish subculture in the New Testament period. But can we really talk about a Christian or Church subculture during the period when the New Testament was being written? It takes years for subcultures to develop, and years for newcomers to be fully socialised into those subcultures. The New Testament was mostly written to churches which were relatively newly founded and of which many members were even newer believers. Even if there was a subculture to which these people could have been socialised, there was not time for them to be so socialised. Now maybe the churches which received the Epistles were in some ways starting to use an awkward mixture of distinctively Jewish and distinctively Gentile forms of language. But it is simply impossible that their language, and the language used in letters written to them, would have diverged enough from that of the culture around them for there to be any significant communication barrier. Anyway, comparison with secular literature and letters of the period demonstrates that it had not.
Michael, thank you for your long list of authorities who you claim as support for your statement "It's undeniably true that the New Testament writers used a specialized religious vocabulary." I have not read them all, but I have scanned all of those written since about 1950 and so representing anything like modern scholarship. It seems to me that the only more recent author to give real support to your statement is Nigel Turner, whose scholarship is generally regarded today as questionable and already outdated by the time it was published. The other authors simply caution against taking the extreme opposite position.
Now I would accept that there is occasional use in the NT of specialised religious terminology, and of unusual phraseology taken from LXX. But that does not imply that the whole language and style of the NT is controlled by this kind of specialness. Generally when experts in a particular field discuss their field in an informal setting, they use informal language into which they drop the occasional technical term or phrase. Indeed that is what I tend to do in these comments. And this is the kind of picture I see in the language of the NT, at least to speak in very general terms of a very diverse corpus.
In response to Michael Marlowe:
I've just read the article you've pointed me to. My reaction? You continue to misunderstand what I'm saying. How do I know that to be true? I agree with the vast majority of the article you've written. I've thought the same things for a number of years. I've taught it; I've preached it. I think there are some things that need to be more carefully nuanced, it appears to me you're arguing much too strongly for an incremental position, but, overall, it's well done.
So, let me state again, somewhat differently than I have so far, what I believe: The Bible writings are charaterised by a deep desire to communicate the truth to people who need it (you can understand that as those only within the church if you like, but please understand that I believe the language within the church and outside the church to be essentially the same). I'm still not sure where you are on this--what effort did it take for an uninitiated person to understand the language?
Please understand what I'm asking here. I am not asking what effort it took to understand the concepts. That's a very higly related issue, I'll grant you that. But there's a difference. I know there is a difference because I've taught highly technical information to people spanning a broad intellectual spectrum. The language was the same across the spectrum, the means of getting the concepts across were different.
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