Metalanguage Dualistic Theme
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Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 1 - THE DUALISTIC THEME OF THE METALANGUAGE OF TRANS (PAPUA) NEW GUINEA PHYLUM LANGUAGES..............................................................................................................................1 INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................................1 THE COGNATE WITU AND KEWA ORIGIN OF DEATH MYTHS.....................................................9 THE WITU MYTH OF THE ORIGIN OF AGALE ‘ARTICULATE LANGUAGE’ AND DEATH....................................9 THE KEWA MYTH OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH................................................................................................9 THE YAGU ‘SEED FROM THE SKY’ AND THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE TRANS (PAPUA) NEW GUINEA PHYLUM OF LANGUAGES.........................................................................13 PULU IDENTIFIED AS THE YAGU ‘SEED FROM THE SKY’ AND THE ‘FIRST BORN’ ‘PROXY’ ‘STAND IN’.................................................................................................................................20 THE MOMENTARINESS OF THE BIRTHING/CREATIVE ACT AT THE ZENITH AT NOON DURING AN EQUINOX THE PRODUCTIVE CONJUNCTION OF THE FUTURE AND THE PRESENT......................................................................................................................................................22 The Dualistic Theme of the Metalanguage of Trans (Papua) New Guinea Phylum Languages Introduction The simplest introduction to the dualistic theme of the metalanguage of the Trans (Papua) New Guinea (TPNG) Phylum of languages is the very brief but powerful cognate pair of Witu and Kewa myths that deal with the origin of death. The myths are not fairly tales. They deal with the universal concern of all peoples at all times and places. This can only be dealt with parabolically. This is almost certainly why Christ mostly taught in Parables. As the full extent of this metalanguage comes to light it will become apparent that the Witu, in particular, as representative of the TNG phylum had a most remarkable and systematic understanding of natural phenomena. They knew well before the time of Marconi that messages articulated in the mouth required carrier waves on which they could be superimposed. They knew well before the time of Einstein that space and time are not independent phenomena but simply systematically related aspects of a unified system of relationships, space-time. Their understanding of a Creator who planted all things has not been through contact with the outside world. It is embedded in every level of organization of their language, the lexicon (dictionary), the grammar, and the phonology, and every level of organization of their culture in general. It dates back to a language group among the first to settle in Papua New Guinea. The third of the distinctive features of the TNG phylum of languages, represented by the Witu verb root lati that means both ‘to create’ and ‘to re-pair’ is, according to David Glasgow, Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 2 - a fellow colleague of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a feature of many Australian Aboriginal language groups. This would suggest that this most important of the distinctive features of the TNG phylum dates back to a time when there was still a land bridge between what is now two separate countries, Papua New Guinea and Australia. It will be shown that TNG phylum languages are relationship-focused. As a result they do not suffer from the limitations of what Alister McGrath said of human language in general in the 2007 edition of his book Christian Theology, Chapter 10 pages 243-244, The Doctrine of the Trinity. The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity The apparent illogicality of the doctrine “.... How can we talk about “a triune God” or the “three-in-one” without talking mathematical or metaphysical nonsense? The fundamental problem here is the inability of human language to do justice to the transcendent. Human language finds itself pressed to the limits when trying to depict and describe the doctrine. Words and images are borrowed from everyday life, and put to new uses in an attempt to capture and preserve precious insights into the nature of God.” The problem lies primarily with the limitations of an Indo European language like English. English is a language governed by Aristotelian principles. A century before him Heraclitus proposed relationship as fundamental. The great theoretical linguist of the twentieth century, Hjelmslev, proposed a theory of language that was relationship governed. He postulated only three primes which congruently governed both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships. His was a model that was ideally suited to the study of relationship-focused Trans New Guinea Phylum languages, and in particular Witu. It will become apparent that such a relationship-focused theory of language applied to the Witu language and culture in general made it much simpler to come to terms with a three-in-one Godhead, and the second member of the Godhead as the particular solution to the universal problem of death. Colin Gunton highlighted the importance of relationship in the following extract (on page 107) from his article, Relation and Relativity: The Trinity and the Created World in Trinitarian Theology Today Essays On Divine Being and Act edited by Christoph Schwöbel T&T Clark Edinburgh 1995 “There are no unchanging substances which enter into relations – as on the view of Aristotle and Newton alike - but the whole universe becomes conceivable as a dynamic structure of fields of force in mutually constitutive relations. (the underlining has been added) The following question could well be asked. Why should we be interested in metalinguistic Redemptive Analogies from a small very isolated Stone Age Culture, the Witu speaking people group? Such a small group could hardly be of any major interest to professional linguists or anthropologists or to missiologists. Knowledge of their Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 3 - language and culture would presumably add little more to the sum total of mankind’s knowledge of the world and the universe at large. It should be of no more relevance than the discovery and description of a new small species of plant or animal limited to a very small zone in space. It would be of interest to the specialist who discovered it, but could hardly be of any major interest to mankind in general. The world could get on well enough without it. But what if the small isolated Witu language group had something to tell us about their understanding of the creator and his relationship to mankind that dates back long before the time of Abraham? What if the little Witu group had something that could refute the theory of Darwinian Evolutionary Psychology that language-speaking mankind in its infancy had an extremely primitive cognitive ability that progressively developed into the superior level of cognitive ability mankind has today? What if we discover that this little Witu group reveals that when God chose the people of Israel as his receptacle for his written revelation, he had not left the rest of His world without any revelationary knowledge of Himself other than what mankind by its own devices could fitfully glean by their own untutored observation of the natural world? First let us address the problem of size and isolation. God chose a very small and isolated people to receive the written revelation which we call The Old Testament. This was no accident. Had they not originally been a small nation, and socially very isolated from other nations, even when they settled among them, they would soon have lost their national and social cohesion and their religious identity. They would no longer have been an effective receptacle for the reception and transmission of the revelation of the Book. The Witu are such a small isolated group with a quite remarkable and systematic knowledge of their Akolali God, the consequence of disobedience, death, and His solution to this problem through the coming into the world of His son. This knowledge is subliminally coded into every aspect of their language and culture in general. It is so sophisticated and so thoroughly systematic that it is hard to conceive of it as anything other than revelationary. But this revelation has had to be mediated through Nature which their Akolali God created. However, if this knowledge of the Witu was simply the product of their own search for God, then what they have to tell us about their knowledge of God and his plan of salvation for man can be dismissed as a dangerous substitute for the only true revelation embodied in the Scriptures. Created by Harland B Kerr on 3/2/2015 9:22:00 AM - 4 - This risk is addressed by Alister McGrath in his book Christian Theology. In his section God’s two books: nature and Scripture, under the general chapter heading Knowledge of God (p. 163ff) he notes the following. “… Francis Bacon commended the study of “the book of God’s word” and the “book of God’s work” in his Advancement of Learning (1605). “… Robert Boyle noted that “as the two great books, of nature and of scriptures, have the same author, so the study of the latter does not at all hinder an inquisitive man’s delight in the study of the former.” At times Boyle referred to the world as “God’s epistle written to mankind.” “ McGrath then notes the following under the heading, Approaches to Discerning God in Nature: “The doctrine of creation gives theological foundation to the notion of a natural knowledge of God. If God created the world, it is to be expected that God’s creation should bear the mark of the divine handiwork….But what part of creation? Where in creation is God to be found?” McGrath cites the following as evidence of his signature: Human reason, the ordering of the world, and the beauty of the world. But he then warns of the danger in giving knowledge of God through nature coequality with knowing God through revelation. In his book The Science of God (2004) under the general chapter heading Nature and the section heading Thomas F.