The way i look at it is that written language itself is a translation of an idea onto a page. Something is lost or atleast becomes ambiguous without an interpreter or a teacher or at the least, a detailed commentary.
This is not that much of problem for a casual piece of text but for something that has much more potential impact, it's huge.
Translating laws or perhaps the constitution of a country can all but change it. Religious or spiritual texts too have this problem.
> Religious or spiritual texts too have this problem.
That's not simply a function of translation between languages; some of the ideas in religious texts resist even translation into language. In the Buddhist tradition I used to be involved with, I was told that only texts with a continuous practice lineage reaching back to the author can be relied on, and even then, only if you have a teacher who has practiced in that lineage.
Accordingly, none of the sutras were considered reliable. Interesting, engaging, even beautiful, sure; but if the lineage is lost, then nobody can be sure what they mean. Texts by more recent authors, from whom there is still a living practice lineage, were preferred.
> Something is lost or at least becomes ambiguous without an interpreter or a teacher or at the least, a detailed commentary
The problem with teachers or detailed commentaries, is that they may not agree with each others, or could be too narrow or even wrong: as as student looking for knowledge, you wouldn't be able to distinguish valuable interpretations from limited ones.
I think it might be judicious to look as ambiguity more as a feature than as a bug. Classical Chinese authors seems to have purposefully relied on it for example.
That sounds sensible from the point of view regular scientific enquiry. However, from a religious perspective, I'd think that the student has more chance of being wrong than the combined total of the majority of scholars in the tradition especially when the claim is that the original text was revealed rather than written.
Otoh, even in cases where this is strictly held (eg. Islam), there at strong traditions which explicitly regard this as a feature (eg. Disagreements between scholars is a blessing to the common man) and a system of the strong positions and dispensations for many legal positions have been codified.
> However, from a religious perspective, I'd think that the student has more chance of being wrong than the combined total of the majority of scholars in the tradition
Knowledge is a double edged sword: once you know about something, discovering new viewpoints about that thing becomes difficult. "子" (son, child, small thing, seed) is a respectful suffix in Chinese (e.g. 老子 (Laozi), 孔子 (Confucius), 天子[0]).
> and a system of the strong positions and dispensations for many legal positions have been codified.
Out of curiosity, do you mean that well-known disagreements among scholars have structured the legal system in essentially-Islamic regions?
> Out of curiosity, do you mean that well-known disagreements among scholars have structured the legal system in essentially-Islamic regions?
I'm not sure about legal systems but the religion itself has several positions on many questions. The way this happens is that 2 or more qualified scholars disagree on a ruling based on their reading and analysis of primary texts. This results in two or more rulings. Sometimes, they're equally valid and this more or less created the 4 schools of practice in Sunni Islam. Sometimes, even within a school, there are differences of opinion. The distinctions are usually minor but for someone who is observant, it gives them options when following the stronger position is exceedingly difficult. The technical term for this is a Rukhsa (dispensation)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rukhsa
This is probably why we put so much emphasis on precedent over the actual text of the law. Likewise with the bible, perhaps not as much with the christians at least these days, but the Jews have their talmud that interprets the book ad nauseum through centuries of rabbis spitballing their interpretation of the base text, ending up with things like a string hung from telephone polls to represent the walls of the temple to loophole around sabbath laws.
It's there in Islam too but the interpretive techniques are mostly confined to finding rulings about things that didn't exist back then. eg. Commerce over the internet, Alms calculation on money (as opposed to wealth) etc.
I have heard something about the Jewish history of making these kinds of interpretations to "work around" scriptural laws. I think it was in a book by Israel Shahak where I first came across it.
In any case, yes. Precedent is important and even though it's not fully reliable, we will usually have a lot of stuff that cancels out errors.
This is not that much of problem for a casual piece of text but for something that has much more potential impact, it's huge.
Translating laws or perhaps the constitution of a country can all but change it. Religious or spiritual texts too have this problem.