Two things:
1. The use of herding type analogies is not ( or should not ) be a surprise. The steppes gave rise to herding cultures and the Iranians were one of them. Even in the OT story of Cain and Abel we see the early conflict between herders and farmers reflected when 'god' graciously accepts Abel's animal sacrifice and tells Cain to go fuck himself. The murderous Cain whacks his holy brother and is sent to live in (gasp) a city!
The imagery of the story is pretty clear to any except die hard fundie morons who think this shit is real.
2- You raise a good point about the possible use of idiomatic expressions. Without a real context of the language how would we know how to interpret the words? In English when we read the term "beating around the bush" we know that it means to equivocate but try to put yourself in the position of a translator who has never seen the phrase before and comes across it. It might be a tad confusing!
1. The use of herding type analogies is not ( or should not ) be a surprise. The steppes gave rise to herding cultures and the Iranians were one of them. Even in the OT story of Cain and Abel we see the early conflict between herders and farmers reflected when 'god' graciously accepts Abel's animal sacrifice and tells Cain to go fuck himself. The murderous Cain whacks his holy brother and is sent to live in (gasp) a city!
The imagery of the story is pretty clear to any except die hard fundie morons who think this shit is real.
2- You raise a good point about the possible use of idiomatic expressions. Without a real context of the language how would we know how to interpret the words? In English when we read the term "beating around the bush" we know that it means to equivocate but try to put yourself in the position of a translator who has never seen the phrase before and comes across it. It might be a tad confusing!
