Ancient history, Language, and Meaning

One of the greatest challenges in teaching or studying ancient history is to develop, even to a small degree, an appreciation for the consciousness of those who lived in ancient times. They simply didn't mean the same things we mean when they used (in their ancient languages) words like the words we use now.

Take any modern abstract word, as my dear friend Owen Barfield pointed out, and you will find an earlier concrete meaning. "Spirit," for example, which means hardly anything anymore (that is, it means lots of different things to lots of different people and is, consequently, difficult to use with meaning), used to refer to "breath." So the ancients had a concrete, literal consciousness where we have an abstract one.

But that's too easy. Take any modern concrete word, and you will find an earlier symbolic or metaphorical meaning. "Heart," for example, refers to a muscular chest organ, and, more strongly in the past, to qualities associated with heart--sympathy or courage, for example. So the ancients had a symbolic consciousness where we have a literal one.

This reversal is also too easy. Because it's not as if they weren't fully aware--even more aware than we are, as herdsmen, warriors and butchers--of the concrete meaning of heart, as well. So, in ancient times, the symbolic and literal meanings of words were more closely related than they are now. "Heart" meant simultaneously the organ and its associated qualities.

Now, we attach somewhat less meaning to each of our many words but speak our meaning more clearly. We are rarely confused, we are rarely required to examine our sense of ambiguity, when we hear the word "heart."

The ancients attached more meanings to far fewer words--the world was simpler, working vocabularies smaller. This simultaneous simplicity of language and concentration of meaning allowed them to tell and to write stories that were accessible on many levels, for example, stories to which a child could listen but that a wise man could ponder.

The facts of the physical evolution of human beings become ever clearer. But it may be erroneous--and it is certainly a logical fallacy--to believe that this physical evolution must necessarily be accompanied by an evolution from a brute lack of intelligence--a la the cavemen in all the cartoons--toward whereever it is we are now.

If we take seriously a movement of language and meaning back through time from more words and less meaning to fewer words each with more meaning, we may imagine an arrow pointing to the prehistoric past. This arrow points in the general direction of a word containing all meaning, if you will. And "In the beginning was the word."