By Yasmeen Faris
The sky is blue. Is the color “sky blue” to you, the same as what someone else would say about a blue sky? This is just one example among many of how the interpretation of language is based on an individual’s understanding and articulation of language.
As language evolves, so does meaning, says Ranj Atur, who is examining the miscommunication between early Christians and Greek polytheists. Atur is currently a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara, focusing on Greek religion and Greek polytheism. She is working closely with Professor Christine Thomas, an archeologist from Harvard who teaches religious studies courses at UCSB.
Atur looks at language in ancient religions by way of archeological artifacts: statues, clay tablets, pottery, and paintings from between the first century BCE and first century CE. In a recent interview, she discussed how ancient religions have influenced the development of language and religion over the centuries.
Ranj Atur is currently a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barbara, focusing on Greek religion and Greek polytheism.
Q. When you first started at UCSB, what did you want to get out of working with Professor Thomas?
A. [Professor Thomas] is obviously an expert so that has helped me understand the historical context of early Christianity from the academic perspective. I think that not many people know how to use archeology for [understanding] religion because we are so textually based in the West and Western religions that we forget that materials aren’t necessarily bad. Materials can tell us a lot about how people think, how people interacted with and constructed their space.
I’ve learned a lot about city planning by mapping religion and power through materials, but also sometimes excavating little grave goods from early Christians to show that they existed. I’ve actually got to look at materials, learn how to interpret them, say something useful about them and the whole society they are representing.
Q. To clarify, ‘materials’ are objects you find. How do the objects you are studying give you an idea of what society was like in that time period?
A. Yes, [materials] can be as mundane as pottery shards, which are most of what we find. Sometimes we find a whole wall painting of some biblical event—more often with Greek and Roman religion, episodes from their mythology and things like that. Learning iconography, looking at something and saying, “this is combining some Roman elements with Christian themes,” which means this person might have been a Roman Christian. If you find a vase and it has some death themes—Greek mythology stories about the underworld, myths and figures about the underworld—you can probably assume that this was a vase that was meant to be buried with someone. People buried themselves with all kinds of goods to take with them to the afterlife or to show wealth or prominence, which says something about that society.
Q. How do you think archeology is going to change, let’s say, 100 years from now? Would our advancement of technology affect the way those discoveries are going to be interpreted?
A. Absolutely. It’s already changing and it’s going to continue to change. Technology is a big part of it. We’ve already gained so much knowledge from ground penetrating radar allowing us to x- ray into the ground, see through layers, see what was there and date them more certainly. I think in 100 years that [technology] is going to be much further along, which means probably a lot of the things we’ve said were wrong and they will be corrected.
Q. Professor Thomas has said you know several languages, a few of them dead. What are those and how do you use the languages you have learned?
A. I grew up speaking two South Indian languages and then I took French in high school. I can’t speak German but I can read German. I can speak a little Italian but I can read a lot more than I can speak. I know Latin, Ancient Greek, Coptic, and Sanskrit. The last three are definitely dead and Latin is technically a dead language too.
A lot of the scholarship I read is in Italian, French and German. But most of the religious texts and the texts of the people I study are in the other languages, the dead ones. I utilize them already and if I get to be a professor, which is the goal, I would continue to use those languages to read the primary source texts to understand what people are saying about themselves.
Q. How do the different vocabulary sets used in the ancient religions you study aid your understanding of what the original religious texts are saying?
A. Any idea can only be expressed through language and religion is no different. Religious ideas are expressed with a certain vocabulary. In an example from my own research, Paul uses the Greek word “daimon” to talk about demons. But in Greek religion, Daimon just means “god,” so [Paul] is telling Greek polytheists, or pagans, “don’t worship demons, because you’re worshipping demons.” What they’re hearing is, “don’t worship gods, because you’re worshipping gods,” and so that already doesn’t translate.
Part of it is that there is a huge language barrier and language is what’s used to convey philosophical ideas. Words can mean so many things, depending on what that word means to you. I think that really influences a lot of things and we have a lot of those debates today… I think language is the key to understanding anything about scripture.
Q. How have discrepancies in translations of language over time influenced the way religion is applied to life and tradition?
A. I think language is something that is constantly evolving and cultures are constantly evolving. The way you use language is dependent on your cultural context, whether it’s a different geographical place, different time or different ethnicity of people understanding this… To say that religion is language is incorrect but to say that scripture is expressed through language and how you understand that is based on your linguistic understanding on the surface...is important.
Yasmeen Faris is a Junior at UC Santa Barbara who studying Communication and working toward the Journalism Certificate.