etymology rebuked
Rarely have I learned so much methodology and philosophy of textual criticism in a single reading as in the excellent and damning review of Christoph Luxenberg's Syro-Aramaiic Re-Interpretation of Islam at the hands of Walid Saleh of the University of Toronto.
If you learn nothing else today, learn this: Etymology cannot be the key to understanding a word in its current context, because etymology in its methodology depends on the diachronical (i.e. at various points in time) analysis of a synchronic interpretation of a word's meaning. Thus, etymological research is only possible once the meaning of a word has been determined at the various time points where it has been identified, and not the other way around.