A teacher of mine once joked that in Hebrew, any word can have one of four meanings:
1. The plain meaning;
2. The exact opposite of the plain meaning;
3. Something to do with sex;
4. A type of camel.
She wasn’t far off. The amount of words in the Bible that can also imply their opposite, have a dirty nuance, and relate (in some contexts) to something phenomenally specific is astounding. It is therefore some consolation to me, now that I am trying to write a translation of the Coptic “The Martyrdom of Isidoros” that the Coptic word for “up” also happens to mean “down”. Maybe that has something to do with the geographical placement of “Upper Egypt”, relative to “Lower Egypt”? Either way, it’s bloody fantastic.
Echoes from the Ether: