Mytholinguistics (Linguistics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley hasnt really looked at Oxford.

Ortho is something like Anglo-Saxon settlers arrived around the 8th century designated this exact shallow spot as "Oxenaforda" (the ford for oxen). it was a natural ford connecting cattle trails, so to service this crossing point a small Anglo-Saxon village grew up around it which then later became fortified, and eventually Oxford.

Maybe there was many fording points?

Of course ortho has sought the original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly_Bridge

Of the little I know, there is very little Saxon stuff within Oxford. Ortho is very excited about anything Saxon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg4q0l3e5x6o

The official explanation is as you would expect its all under Oxford Castle.

The great majority of archaeology of Oxford Castle is clearly a Norman, large motte and bailey castle, built post conquest by Robert d'Oilly, its claimed the Saxon bit is underneath.

My best guess is that stone for the castle was brought in from Headington quarry, and they used Oxen pulled carts, you need Oxen rather than horses for heavy loads of stone.

Its pretty much all Norman and later.

[Pete Jones]

Carrying on "SKANDALON = stumbling block = Jesus" conversation here....

(Mick, this looks long, but it's 300 words)

Some facts:

1. SKAND- words mean "leap, jump, or ascend" in many "Indo-European" languages:

Sanskrit's SKANDA (leap)
Latin's SCANDO (climb)
English's ASCEND itself

2. They also mean the thing in your way, the thing you have to leap over:

Greek's SKANDALON (snare or trap)
English's SCANDAL
Yiddish's SHANDA (shame?)

3. STUMBLE (as in Stumbling Block) is related to:

German's STUMM ('keep stumm" (i.e., quiet, mute))
English's STAMMER (to speak haltingly)
Sanskrit's STUMBH and STUBH (to stop, hinder, arrest...also stupefy)
Sanskrit's SKUMBH (to stop, hinder)
Sanskrit's STAMBH (to stop, hinder, arrest....stupefy)

The other thing STAMBH, STUMBH, and STUBH mean is "prop, support". And the STAMBHA is another pronunciation of SKAMBHA, the Cosmic Pillar, the Axis Mundi.

A stumbling block is clearly meant to "stop, hinder, arrest" something. The phrase can't be construed to mean "prop or support" - just the opposite.

Yet in one language (scribal, not-so-ancient, etc?) the same word gives rise to both. Calling Jesus the Axis Mundi is right exactly in line with I'd expect.

Questions:

Did the English translators stumble upon a coinage (i.e., stumbling block) that happened to connect the "God-Man Who Died on the Cosmic Tree/Pillar" with an Indo-European word that literally meant Cosmic Pillar? Is it a coincidence?

Did the Greek writers of the book of Romans coincidentally use SKANDALON (snare or trap) without knowing that SKAND- means "leap" and that the Planet Mars/God of War/"the leaping one" is SKANDA in Sanskrit?

Both the English word and the separate Greek word are etymologically connected with two separate ancient myths, both of which are fundamental (in that they appear all over the world). What gives?

Or is it just pattern recognition run amok?

[Pete Jones]

Block: "log, stump, piece" (per Wiktionary)

Tyndale couldn't say "Stumbling stump" I guess. Lucky that English had a synonym for stump.

Meanwhile, a stump is a CUT tree. The Cosmic Pillar collapsed in the myth, while the Cosmic Tree broke in half. Leaving a stump.

[Mick Harper]

[Pete Jones]

[Pete Jones]

When someone is struck dumb or stupefied they are also "stumped". Why would that be? Is this a metaphor about the stump of a tree? Or is there a semantic connection back to stumbling over your words, keeping stumm, etc?

The stub of a tree would be its stump. The M in English seems like it can perhaps come and go, too, like in Sanskrit.

[Mick Harper]

I accept all this -- reluctantly, provisionally or enthusiastically -- but we are still no nearer to what interests me.

[Pete Jones]

I know of only one thing in use today that seems like it might be related to the "stumbling block". But for it to make sense, we'd need to assume "block" meant "log," which the dictionaries claim it once did.*

A "cattle guard" is a familiar thing in the American west (and maybe elsewhere). Nowadays, it's a series of parallel bars that cross a road, which cows won't walk on. The bars are spaced out by about 4-6 inches. Cars can drive over them, but cows don't. If these existed earlier, they'd probably be logs. (A tiny strip of corduroy road, but with gaps, meant to prevent passage rather than help it along).

They'd make a cow stumble if they walked on them. But the point of them is that cows won't walk on them.

But if the word "stumbling" was used at some point to mean "stop, hinder, obstruct," then this would be fine.

________________
* a very short log is still called a block. "Great blocks of oak it was I split / as large around as the chopping block"

[Mick Harper]

By Jove, you've got it. You might have got it.

Before 1611 cattle grids could not economically be made out of iron and, as it were, plonked on roads, yet undoubtedly there was a need for a passive means of preventing domestic animals straying on to them. A wooden grid would be required. But there are three points -- not objections -- to be made:

1. Although they are designed to make animals 'stumble', I don't think anyone's ever seen this so it seems a bit strange they would be named 'stumbling blocks'. We don't refer to cattle grids like that and surely if you've got the same thing doing the same thing, you would refer to it by the same word.

2. A 'block' has another meaning in English. To mean a length of something built, as in 'a block of flats'. A section of corduroy road would hence be termed a 'log block'. If it wasn't necessarily logs that were used, generically a 'stumbling block'.

3. Comparing the Lord Jesus Christ specifically to a cattle grid might have resulted in some sharp exchanges at the Bishops' Conference.

[Mick Harper]

Something else has occurred to me. At the time, all road traffic was horse-drawn (or ox-drawn or a mule-train), what did they do when they encountered a stumbling block or whatever they were called?

[Pete Jones]

I must plead guilty that SKANDALON was not used to refer to Jesus as a stumbling block. The word LITHOS PROSKOMMAS was, meaning obstacle. This word was translated "stone of stumbling".

SKANDALON was used to refer to the doctrine of "Christ crucified".

This doesn't change too much of this, other than the idea that the Bishops are now allowing Jesus to be compared to an obstacle, which feels acceptable.

[Mick Harper]

He's always been an obstacle to me becoming a Christian. I have examined all his reputed sayings and haven't found any of them to be other than meretriciously false or a crackerbarrel homily.

I often, i.e. on the few occasions I get the opportunity, ask Christians to name a saying of Jesus that they consider merits my consideration. They usually say 'Blessed are the Peacemakers' or one of the other Beatitudes, which allows me to sound off something awful.

But any of Jesus's utterings can be ripped apart within seconds by a child of six. Who, let us never forget, was made in God's image. Unlike Jesus who was merely His son.

[Pete Jones]

What interests me about this topic is the strange situation that the 1534 English translator saw SKANDALON and chose not to just write "snare." Sin being a snare for Christians is perfectly clear.

But if SCANDAL is a related word, then it's current meaning is a metaphor built off the concrete object. This seems fair enough to me. Now in 20th century politics, we refer to trouble a politician has got himself with a word that used to mean snare. Maybe. And if so, fine. I can accept that.

But what about the verb SCANDALIZE? This is surely even more abstract, in that the concrete snare is now being used as the abstraction of giving offense.

The Greeks no doubt took SKANDALON in very different metaphorical directions. After all, the drifting of meanings over time is surely more a creative and poetic act of living speakers rather than a phenomenon that obeys scientific laws.

But alas. SKANDALIZO in ancient Greek meant to give offense.

This seems downright impossible to me.