The Tangled Forest of Hebrew Words

Your Origen allows himself to discuss the transmigration of souls, to bring in belief in an infinite number of worlds, to clothe rational creatures in one body after another, and to say that Christ has suffered often and will often suffer again, since what has once been profitable is always profitable to undertake. You yourself also claim such authority that you turn a heretic into a martyr, and invent the idea that heretics falsified the books of Origen. Why, then, may I not discuss words, and, in doing a commentator’s work, teach the Latins what I learn from the Hebrews? If it were not a long business, and one that smacks of boasting, I would like even now to show you how much is gained by waiting at the doors of great teachers and learning a craft from a true craftsman. If I could do this, you would see what a tangled forest of ambiguous names and words the Hebrew presents. It is this that opens such a field for different renderings; for since the sense is uncertain, each man takes the translation that seems to him most consistent. But why should I take you to foreign writers? Go over Aristotle once more, and Alexander, the commentator on Aristotle. From reading these you will recognize what a plentiful crop of uncertainties there is; and then you may stop finding fault with your friend over things that have never entered your mind even in your dreams. [a]