From robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR Sun Jun 18 10:58:21 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 28740 invoked from network); 18 Jun 2000 17:58:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 18 Jun 2000 17:58:19 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr) (139.179.10.13) by mta3 with SMTP; 18 Jun 2000 17:58:18 -0000 Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (IDENT:robin@fast3.fen.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.97.28]) by firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id e5II0rQ21975 for ; Sun, 18 Jun 2000 21:00:53 +0300 (EET DST) Sender: robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR Message-ID: <394D0D0A.EF378A4C@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 20:55:22 +0300 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] lo Jesus References: <200006140550.BAA29230@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Robin Replying to list rather than individually, because it's a semantic more than a theological point... > >> Invent Yourself writes: > >> >If a Christian really believes there is only one True God, it behooves > >> >them to use "lo" to indicate their absolute belief. It is not a relative, > >> questionable point of debate for them. The fact that you don't happen to > >> >agree is irrelevant to them. and so on and so forth. Aren't we forgetting an important feature of {lo} which is that it specifies neither number nor any particular instance? A Christian could by all means use {lo cevni} to mean "God" in the Christian sense, and rely on context to fill in that meaning. But to get that meaning, you would need to know that the the speaker was a Christian, and was referring to the god of his/her own religion and not somebody else's. {lo cevni} could equally mean "some gods". As far as I can see, the only assertion implied by use of {lo cevni} is that there is a set of gods which contains at least one member. To make the assertion that there is only one god AND it is the god described by followers of a particular religion would require something a lot more complex, for which, I think, mere articles would not suffice. I would think that in most cases where we are talking about the god(s) of a particular religion, {le cevni} would be more appropriate, since it implies that the speaker has a certain god or gods in mind. It's not necessary, but it's doing the listener a favour. We can also use other terms to be more specific if we want, e.g. {le jegvo cevni}. I prefer to be more cryptic, e.g. {le selpramrai}, which is a rough translation of "Parameshvari" (I think). co'o mi'e robin.