Deciphering the Hidden Meaning in Archaic Texts
Translating Ancient Texts
One can never take ancient literature at face value because the ancients simply did not have the same modern scientific vocabulary that we have and, too often, take for granted. The ancients expressed their ideas using the language, vocabulary, and syntactic framing available to them. Very often, this was the language of symbols, allegories, metaphors, and myths.
To make sense of ancient texts with some degree of accuracy and context, we are frequently required to make a twofold translation of the texts (at least). Otherwise, in my opinion, we would be committing the error of many cultural chauvinists and religious fundamentalists — to take something literally when the original authors likely intended it to be a figurative, metaphorical expression.
On the one hand, ancient texts invariably require a literal translation from an archaic language to a modern idiom. For instance, one might translate a text originally written in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew (such as a Biblical text) into modern English. Furthermore, a level of symbolic translation may also be required, from the ancient use of allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic language to modern scientific idiom. Or, at least, the comprehension of archaic symbolic language in its proper context, as opposed to the literal acceptance of metaphorical ideas and themes as fact.
Following these paradigms, we might discover that the ancients have deep, profound, highly sophisticated ideas and truths to offer us when we are properly able to comprehend and make sense of their symbolic use of language. In that sense, understanding ancient texts may be more like interpreting Egyptian hieroglyphics than literal words, because the ancients, in all likelihood, thought and expressed themselves in terms of pictograms and pictorial representations rather than modern words as we know them. As such, I would argue, ancient written texts should be read and interpreted as the written expression of pictograms and pictorial metaphors.
Deciphering Figurative Language
This premise is especially true of religious texts, which are often heavily laden with symbolism, iconography, metaphor, allegory, and pictorial imagery. To read and interpret such texts as literal or to take them at face value is invariably to misread them, I would suggest. They are often profound treatises on the human condition, to be interpreted at the psychological or spiritual level rather than as statements of fact.
One notable example of this theme is the description of the archons, the demiurge, and related figures in Gnostic texts. Some modern thinkers tend to interpret these texts as descriptive of a literal reality, be it terrestrial, extraterrestrial, or extradimensional. They might then propose that a covert cabal of demonically possessed elites secretly manipulates the world we inhabit, engaging in horrific cultist practices such as human sacrifice and cannibalism to maintain their positions of power and influence over society.
While I am personally not in a position to comment on whether or not this is literally the case about the world we live in, I think a likely explanation is the metaphorical one — that the ancient Gnostic sectarians, who probably frequently endured ruthless oppresson from cruel, sadistic tyrants — the political and religious elites of their world — extrapolated their experiences into developing the mythology of the archons — secretive entities who feed on human misery and covertly manipulate human society at the highest levels to maximize the generation of human pain and misery for them to feed on.
I personally don’t believe that this religious narrative is literally true, like many other religious narratives. Nevertheless, the idea is a powerful allegory that provides a profound psychological insight into the human condition. If ancient Gnostics had access to modern scientific and psychoanalytical vocabulary, they might have expressed their ideas differently — in a more precise, clinical vein, perhaps.
The same is true, I believe, of many Christian teachings, ideas, and theology. For instance, the saying that “the kingdom of God is within you” (KJV Bible, Luke 17.21) is, I believe, a metaphorical idea expressing the potential for personal change and self-improvement, which can result in societal, global, and even cosmic change.
There is one interesting quote from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, in the Nag Hammadi library, however, that is of significant interest:
Jesus said, ‘When you bring out what is in you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that in you, what you do not have in you will kill you.’
Gathercole, Simon. The Apocryphal Gospels. London, Penguin Books, 2021, Logion 70, p. 63.
This particular quotation is from the supposed “secret teachings” of Jesus dispensed to his select inner circle of disciples. I believe that it alludes to something of particular significance, namely, hidden human trauma — deep-seated, suppressed, even generational human psychological trauma.
Trauma as the Core Human Experience
It would appear, in fact, that deep, suppressed human trauma is the core experience at the heart of the human condition as we understand it. I believe that much of our ancient literary tradition points to human trauma as the root cause of much of the suffering and tragedy inherent in the human experience.
We can use the language of trauma to explain and understand several ancient archetypes and fundamental literary, cultural, and even religious concepts and themes. For instance, the idea of “original sin” may be translated as or understood to mean the experience of ancestral or generational trauma — psychological trauma passed down from ancestors to descendants through the mechanism of epigenetics. This phenomenon could conceivably date back to the beginning of time, burdening people today with the unwelcome weight of untold millennia of emotional and psychological baggage.
The experience of “salvation,” likewise, could represent the release or alleviation of several lifetimes of human trauma — the compounded burden of generations of ancestral trauma passed down to us through epigenetics for no other reason than our existence and our being part of the human species.
Similarly, the concept of “tragedy” might be understood to represent the condition in shared human experience where internal trauma builds up in the individual, pent up without ever finding a release valve, until it reaches a point beyond the human capacity for suppressing it and forcefully expresses itself as a violent, possibly bloody, event. It is through such a process that trauma compounds and perpetuates itself in human experience, even as violent, tragic expressions of trauma inevitably traumatize others, forcing them to carry their own burden of suppressed psychological trauma.
This reading and understanding of deep human trauma as a core human experience dating back to the beginnings of time explains much of ancient symbolism and mythology. For example, we may interpret Christian teachings about the kingdom of God as an internal state of being to refer to the experience of trauma release. Furthermore, we may understand the Gnostic teachings about the archons or energetic parasites feeding on human suffering as referring to the insidiously self-perpetuating nature of human trauma.
The pervasiveness of trauma and traumatic experiences often constitutes the central thematic elements of much of Greek dramatic tragedy. Trauma and scandal of various kinds, often expressed symbolically or metaphorically, appear as central features of numerous dramatic works dating back to classical antiquity. Furthermore, the Homeric epics delve into wartime trauma. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey describe the ravages of PTSD experienced by Mycenean warriors in great detail and depth.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the bard’s dramatic tour de force, can be read as a detailed, in-depth allegorical study of the effects of ancestral or generational trauma on the human mind. It describes the onset of PTSD-like symptoms in Hamlet’s behavior, including melancholy, anti-social solitude, a paranoid suspicion of authority, erratic fits of eccentricity, leading, ultimately, to a climactic outburst of violent tragedy.
Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quixote, addresses the trauma of confronting a reality that is frequently at odds with the glamorized, hyped-up, borderline-fantastical versions that media channels feed us. In the novel, the protagonist, Don Quixote, is portrayed as having his worldview shaped entirely by popular medieval chivalric romances, laden with fantastical elements and melodramatic storylines featuring characters exhibiting exaggerated heroic traits. In 21st-century terms, one may identify this representation with the modern consumer of mass media content, much of which is hyped-up, glamorized, and at odds with reality as we experience it. Cervantes’ magnum opus delves into the trauma at the heart of one’s experiences falling short of one’s glamorized expectations.
Literary Depth Perception
In this manner, the experience of human trauma and the challenges associated with confronting it constitute the core of the human predicament alluded to by much of the symbolic, mythical, and religious literature of archaic times, in the pictorial vocabulary of the ancients as opposed to the clinical, analytical, scientific vocabulary of modern scientific publications. Lacking the precise analytical jargon of modern scientific journals, the ancients expressed their ideas in figurative terms — ideas that were, frequently, highly sophisticated, complex, and meaningful. For instance, in the Bible, it is recounted that Christ conveyed his teachings through parables, which were allegorical tales laden with meaning. In private, on the other hand, as recounted in Gnostic texts such as the Gospel of Thomas, Christ supposedly conveyed his teachings through riddling phrases, strikingly similar to Zen koans.
Thus, we come to understand that ancient texts often require multiple levels of interpretation to make a proper sense of their true meaning. On the one hand, there is a need for literal linguistic translation; on the other hand, such texts invariably require insightful figurative interpretation to reveal their deeper meaning in terms understandable to the modern reader. The latter is invariably the domain of interpretive literary criticism, and it is by no means an easy, unambiguous pursuit. Even here, there is the possibility of multiple dimensions of interpretation and comprehension of archaic symbolic texts expressed in figurative linguistic constructs.
Essentially, therefore, when dealing with the vast treasure trove of archaic literature, we must proceed judiciously and with considerable discernment. We must recognize that there is considerable depth of meaning and the complexity of expression in such literary works. The fundamentalist reads these profound texts and extracts the most shallow, superficial, literal meaning from them, taking the texts at face value and arriving at a dreadfully erroneous and foolishly distorted understanding of them. If we are to enrich our lives with the depth of meaning embedded in these texts, we must do our best to avoid such naive, shallow errors in understanding and instead exercise the due diligence to explore these texts with the depth perception their authors truly intended.
