Word Finder - commentators

definition

A person who comments; especially someone who is paid to give his/her opinions in the media about current affairs, sports, etc.

Practically it came to be the theological dicta of the church, explained according to the philosophy of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators.

Before Lightfoot's time commentaries, especially on the epistles, had not infrequently consisted either of short homilies on particular portions of the text, or of endeavours to enforce foregone conclusions, or of attempts to decide with infinite industry and ingenuity between the interpretations of former commentators.

Thus he was able often to recover the meaning of a passage which had long been buried under a heap of contradictory glosses, and he founded a school in which sobriety and common sense were added to the industry and ingenuity of former commentators.

After so many years the commentators had lost the key to this unusual term, and only knew that in common Greek "myrmex" meant an ant.

The mention of a particular water has caused trouble to the commentators.

The narrative presents a number of difficulties, which early commentators sought to solve with more ingenuity than success.

The apocryphal Neoplatonic treatises and the First views of the Arabian commentators obscured for the effects of first students the genuine doctrine of Aristotle, and the the new 13th century opens with quite a crop of mystical knowledge.

Permission was given to lecture on the logical books, both those which had been known all along and those introduced since 1128, but the veto upon the Physics is extended to the Metaphysics and the summaries of the Arabian commentators.

The monotheistic influence of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators shows itself in Albert and Aquinas, at the outset, in the definitive fashion in which the " mysteries " y sof the Trinity and the Incarnation are henceforth detached from the sphere of rational or philosophical theology.

While some works of patristic writers are still of value for text criticism and for the history of early exegetical tradition, the treatment of the Psalms by ancient and medieval Christian writers is as a whole such as to throw light on the ideas of the commentators and their times rather than on the sense of a text which most of them knew only through translations.

The authorship of Dionysius was doubted by many of the early middleage commentators and grammarians, and in modern times its origin has been attributed to the oecumenical college founded by Constantine the Great, which continued in existence till 730.

Even as a boy he had intense pleasure in reading St Thomas Aquinas and the Arab commentators of Aristotle, was skilled in the subtleties of the schools, wrote verses, studied music and design, and, avoiding society, loved solitary rambles on the banks of the Po.

Captain Singleton, the last work of the year, has been unjustly depreciated by most of the commentators.

Somewhat later are the commentators on Terence and Horace, Helenius Acro and Pomponius Porphyrio.

Polemon, Aristotle and Adamantius may also be named as having dealt with the subject; as also have the medical writers of Greece and Rome - Hippocrates, Galen and Paulus Aegineta, and in later times the Arabian commentators on these authors.

It is safer to give it the more reasonable dimensions of Caesar, and to accept the verdict of later commentators that it never extended west of the Scheldt.

The whole of Aristotle's works, presented in the Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, were by him digested, interpreted and systematized in accordance with church doctrine.

At Bagdad, in the reign of Mamun (813-833), the son of Harun al-Rashid, philosophical works were translated by Syrian Christians from Greek into Syriac and from Syriac into Arabic. It was in his reign that Aristotle was first translated into Arabic, and, shortly afterwards, we have Syriac and Arabic renderings of commentators on Aristotle, and of portions of Plato, Hippocrates and Galen; while in the 10th century new translations of Aristotle and his commentators were produced by the Nestorian Christians.

Some of them (Themistius in particular) are known as commentators on the older philosophers, and others as the missionaries of mysticism.

Thus Fichte, Spinoza, Jakob Boehme and the Mystics, and finally, the great Greek thinkers with their Neoplatonic, Gnostic, and Scholastic commentators, give respectively colouring to particular works.

His exegesis, which was dominated by his polemics against the Jews, is characterized by a fidelity to the literal sense, the comparison with the Hebrew text, the direct use of Jewish commentators, a very independent attitude towards traditional interpretations, and a remarkable historical and critical sense.

Perhaps something similar occurred to the Metaphysics, as Alexander imputed its redaction to Eudemus, and the majority of ancient commentators attributed its second opening (Book a) to Pasicles, nephew of Eudemus.

The commentators explain this to mean that an attribute as individual is inherent, as universal is a predicate.

It gives too much weight to Aristotle's logic, and too little to his metaphysics, on account of two prejudices of the commentators which led them to place both logic and physics before metaphysics.

After reading the remains of the Peripatetic school, the Greek commentators should be further studied in this edition.

The Latin commentators, the Arabians and the schoolmen show how Aristotle has been the chief author of modern culture; while the vindication of modern independence comes out in his critics, the greatest of whom were Roger and Francis Bacon.

Dyce for the Shakespeare Society in 1844, and connected by some commentators with Shakespeare, was written about 1590, and therefore gives a nearly contemporary view of More.

Though not a profound scholar, he was surpassed by few biblical commentators of his day in range of learning, and in soundness of judgment.

Two early commentators on the Constitution, St George Tucker in 1803 and William Rawle in 1825, declared that the sovereign states might secede at will.

From the absence of scales it was held by the Jews to be unclean, and some commentators suppose it to be the serpent of Matt.

Many sentences begin with a " when " or " on the day when" which seems to hover in the air, so that the commentators are driven to supply a " think of this " or some such ellipsis.

Neither the influx of new deities nor the diligence of the priestly authors and commentators availed to break down the cast-iron traditions with which the compilers of the Pyramid texts were already familiar.

The religious books were for the most part written in archaic language, which was only imperfectly understood by the priests of later times; and hence great scope was given to them to exercise their ingenuity as commentators.

This last was the collection first known and chiefly used in the West during the middle ages; and of its 134 only 97 have been written on by the glossatores or medieval commentators; these therefore alone have been received as binding in those countries which recognize and obey the Roman law, - according to the maxim Quicquid non agnoscit glossa, nec agnoscit curia.

He has been given a fictitious importance by recent commentators, who have regarded him as the forerunner of the Alexandrian School of philosophy.

For the details of Plato's critique the reader should go not to the summaries of commentators, but to the dialogues themselves.

This prejudice, establishing itself in familiar speech, has descended from antiquity to modern times, colouring, when it does not distort, the narratives of biographers and the criticisms of commentators.

In the history of logic it is of importance because of its production of a whole series of commentators on the Aristotelian logic. Not only the Introduction of Porphyry, which had lasting effects on the Scholastic tradition, but the commentaries of Themistius, and Simplicius.

From the imperial point of view the sky bore the name of Ti, " ruler," or Shang Ti, " supreme ruler " (emperor); and later commentators readily took advantage of this to discriminate between the visible expanse and the indwelling spirit, producing a kind of Theism.

If Dauger was the "mask," it is just as well to remove a misunderstanding which has misled too many commentators.

Under these teachers he became familiar with the Talmud and, what was probably more important for his own development, with the philosophical writings of Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, Levi ben Gerson, Hasdai Crescas, and other representatives of Jewish medieval thought, who aim at combining the traditional theology with ideas got from Aristotle and his Neoplatonic commentators.

His inward break with Jewish orthodoxy dated, no doubt, further back - from his acquaintance with the philosophical theologians and commentators of the middle ages; but these new interests combined to estrange him still further from the traditions of the synagogue.

The Targum on both passages has " book of the law," an explanation which is followed by the chief Jewish commentators, making the incidents the fulfilment of passages in the Pentateuch.

The form is that of question and answer, and the method is rigidly scholastic. Of small intrinsic value, it is interesting partly as the first philosophical contribution of the Franciscans who were afterwards to take a prominent part in medieval thought (see Scholasticism), and partly as the first work based on a knowledge of the whole Aristotelian corpus and the Arabian commentators.

The sage was born, according to the historian Sze-ma Chien, in the year 550 B.C.; according to Kung-yang and Kuh-liang, two earlier commentators on his Annals of Lu, in 551; but all three agree in the month and day assigned to his birth, which took place in winter.

Some commentators have believed that Daniel was not an actual prophet in the proper sense, but only a seer, or else that he had no official standing as a prophet and that therefore the book was not entitled to a place among official prophetical books.

As many commentators have brought out, there can be little doubt that the doctrine of angels in Daniel is an indication of prolonged Persian influence.

In literature an age of poets had long since made way for an age of commentators and grammarians, who thought that the old poems must have been the work of gods.

The collection has had several commentators; we need only mention the commentaries of Photius (883), Zonaras (1120) and Balsamon (1170).

It seems impossible not to connect the latter with the Scottish Atteile or Atteal, to be found in many old records, though this last word (however it be spelt) is generally used in conjunction with teal, as if to mean a different kind of bird; and commentators have shown a marvellous ineptitude in surmising what that bird was.