When we first settled at
Ashley, we began to collect various sorts of fowl. Quite early, we had
a couple of geese, and they soon had a family. At that time there was a
lot of talk from the feminists against what they supposed to be a
Victorian notion concerning the human family. The behaviour
of our family of geese made us think the feminists
had set themselves rather an uphill battle, for the gander
and his
wife and children looked for all the world like a Victorian
father taking his family on a walk in Hyde Park. They
followed him dutifully and he kept them in order with
little pecks.
Physical or mental cruelty is a serious evil, whether within families or elsewhere. But the behaviour of our geese, and many other animals, makes it difficult to believe that the origin of this terrible violence is in some Victorian (or traditional human) notion of hierarchy. The concept of "peck order" is so familiar that we must regard hierarchy as a general characteristic of animals. If we think human beings ought to be above that, and more "rational", then we are resorting to the idea that human beings are above other animals because of their capacity (or very much greater capacity) for reason. We are using the concept expressed in the Greek liturgical texts which refer to the human race in the Church as the Lord's "rational sheep" "or reason-endowed flock". And this is interesting, since the philosophy of liberal humanists is usually unwilling to admit such a concept. Can it be a sign that the dominant philosophy of our age has a chance of escaping from the secularist mindset? One can only hope so.
Those who drive public opinion have now expanded their attention to address bullying in schools. I can only rejoice at this. I know from personal experience what it is to be attacked, especially in secondary schools, both as a pupil and as a teacher. I will not attempt to improve on Mr C.S. Lewis' account of his experiences, for which account, even though he had by then become an adult writer of considerable repute, he earned further attacks . I will only say that my parents were aware of my problem, and discussed it with one of my teachers for whom I had a very high regard. I learned later that he was aware of it, but did not know how he could intervene without making the situation worse. My parents could only suggest that I "stand up for myself" which I could only interpret as advice to return violence with violence. I can therefore understand the feelings of despair experienced by many pupils in our day, both in secondary and in primary schools, and in the psychological battleground of cyberspace.
The secular humanist remedy for this, as for most problems, is "education". Appeal is to be made to reason, and an attempt is being made to tip the power balance against the bullies. One can only hope that this may have some effect. But, as our reformers are accustomed to say, it is necessary to look into the roots of bad behaviours. Is it not rather obvious that in many cases this bullying is just another example of general animal behaviour? We are accustomed to the idea of a "herd instinct" amongst many animals. The norm of the herd is imposed on any non-conforming individual. Is not bullying in schools an example of this? And is it not, as has been said about other matters, a reflection of a general attitude in society? New Zealand is not alone in having a strongly conformist mentality, but from the early days of the colony the tendency has been reported, to close ranks against the newcomer, even those only 10 years more recent than the first. It would be unjust not to mention those who succeeded by some sort of excellence in standing against the herd; but so often they first had to make space for themselves by leaving the country. If they returned, it was sometimes with sufficient strength of experience to resist the herd and even influence it a little. Nevertheless I suggest that even in its somewhat more enlightened state, our society is still highly conformist, and the very people, who are directing our attention against "bullying", are active in bringing pressure to bear on any who dissent from their ideology; especially if the dissent is based on traditional Christianity. The law change which was recently engineered, in order to make physical correction equivalent to child abuse, is an obvious example of a herd mentality triumphing over sweet reason. We may not wish to defend "smacking"; but we must surely be worried by those who showed themselves so impervious to all reason, and so unwilling to recognize any range of differences, in their commitment to the cause. And there was recently an unedifying debate on "climate change" in which reference to logic and facts was mixed with intimidation even of scientists by scientists, not without smirking faces.
Can we hope to see our society evolve into one where the conclusions, that each reaches by his thinking, are respected by all? For surely that is the true meaning of a liberal society. Not a society in which all submit blindly to a "liberal" code, but one in which the same minority rights are accorded to Christians, as to Hindus and Mahommedans and Buddhists, and even to practitioners of pre-christian Maori religion; where amongst Christians you do not have to be a fundamentalist or a liberal to be accepted; where the christian clergy receive their proper titles just like other professionals; where a TV discussion of topical issues becomes an exploration of reasons instead of a contest in intimidation.
Then we may hope that a general attitude of mutual respect may even filter down into the nation's playgrounds, and even (dare we hope) into the dark streets where the nations's dispossessed congregate.
There is also, of course, individual bullying or intimidation ("one on one", to use our charming contemporary idiom). In this also, I remain unhappy about my parents' advice. If there is anything that marks off the teaching of our Lord from all other, it is that we should not "stand up for ourselves". That is, that we should absolutely refuse to be drawn into "power games". Of course, Our Lord does teach us to stand up for the truth, and to stand up for him. Some of us used to sing a hymn about this: "Stand up, stand up for Jesus". Yes, indeed, for the truth, for Jesus, for righteousness, for others who suffer injustice; - but not for ourselves.
In my youth there was some popular writing on what was called "one-up-man-ship". It was amusingly written, and some of us may have been seduced by the humour into thinking that power games were amusing and therefore acceptable. For myself, I cannot get over the plain drift of our Saviour's teaching, even if I do not always manage to follow it. It is summed up in some words that I was sent recently, and sent on to others, about "Learning Jesus": "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls".
Physical or mental cruelty is a serious evil, whether within families or elsewhere. But the behaviour of our geese, and many other animals, makes it difficult to believe that the origin of this terrible violence is in some Victorian (or traditional human) notion of hierarchy. The concept of "peck order" is so familiar that we must regard hierarchy as a general characteristic of animals. If we think human beings ought to be above that, and more "rational", then we are resorting to the idea that human beings are above other animals because of their capacity (or very much greater capacity) for reason. We are using the concept expressed in the Greek liturgical texts which refer to the human race in the Church as the Lord's "rational sheep" "or reason-endowed flock". And this is interesting, since the philosophy of liberal humanists is usually unwilling to admit such a concept. Can it be a sign that the dominant philosophy of our age has a chance of escaping from the secularist mindset? One can only hope so.
Those who drive public opinion have now expanded their attention to address bullying in schools. I can only rejoice at this. I know from personal experience what it is to be attacked, especially in secondary schools, both as a pupil and as a teacher. I will not attempt to improve on Mr C.S. Lewis' account of his experiences, for which account, even though he had by then become an adult writer of considerable repute, he earned further attacks . I will only say that my parents were aware of my problem, and discussed it with one of my teachers for whom I had a very high regard. I learned later that he was aware of it, but did not know how he could intervene without making the situation worse. My parents could only suggest that I "stand up for myself" which I could only interpret as advice to return violence with violence. I can therefore understand the feelings of despair experienced by many pupils in our day, both in secondary and in primary schools, and in the psychological battleground of cyberspace.
The secular humanist remedy for this, as for most problems, is "education". Appeal is to be made to reason, and an attempt is being made to tip the power balance against the bullies. One can only hope that this may have some effect. But, as our reformers are accustomed to say, it is necessary to look into the roots of bad behaviours. Is it not rather obvious that in many cases this bullying is just another example of general animal behaviour? We are accustomed to the idea of a "herd instinct" amongst many animals. The norm of the herd is imposed on any non-conforming individual. Is not bullying in schools an example of this? And is it not, as has been said about other matters, a reflection of a general attitude in society? New Zealand is not alone in having a strongly conformist mentality, but from the early days of the colony the tendency has been reported, to close ranks against the newcomer, even those only 10 years more recent than the first. It would be unjust not to mention those who succeeded by some sort of excellence in standing against the herd; but so often they first had to make space for themselves by leaving the country. If they returned, it was sometimes with sufficient strength of experience to resist the herd and even influence it a little. Nevertheless I suggest that even in its somewhat more enlightened state, our society is still highly conformist, and the very people, who are directing our attention against "bullying", are active in bringing pressure to bear on any who dissent from their ideology; especially if the dissent is based on traditional Christianity. The law change which was recently engineered, in order to make physical correction equivalent to child abuse, is an obvious example of a herd mentality triumphing over sweet reason. We may not wish to defend "smacking"; but we must surely be worried by those who showed themselves so impervious to all reason, and so unwilling to recognize any range of differences, in their commitment to the cause. And there was recently an unedifying debate on "climate change" in which reference to logic and facts was mixed with intimidation even of scientists by scientists, not without smirking faces.
Can we hope to see our society evolve into one where the conclusions, that each reaches by his thinking, are respected by all? For surely that is the true meaning of a liberal society. Not a society in which all submit blindly to a "liberal" code, but one in which the same minority rights are accorded to Christians, as to Hindus and Mahommedans and Buddhists, and even to practitioners of pre-christian Maori religion; where amongst Christians you do not have to be a fundamentalist or a liberal to be accepted; where the christian clergy receive their proper titles just like other professionals; where a TV discussion of topical issues becomes an exploration of reasons instead of a contest in intimidation.
Then we may hope that a general attitude of mutual respect may even filter down into the nation's playgrounds, and even (dare we hope) into the dark streets where the nations's dispossessed congregate.
There is also, of course, individual bullying or intimidation ("one on one", to use our charming contemporary idiom). In this also, I remain unhappy about my parents' advice. If there is anything that marks off the teaching of our Lord from all other, it is that we should not "stand up for ourselves". That is, that we should absolutely refuse to be drawn into "power games". Of course, Our Lord does teach us to stand up for the truth, and to stand up for him. Some of us used to sing a hymn about this: "Stand up, stand up for Jesus". Yes, indeed, for the truth, for Jesus, for righteousness, for others who suffer injustice; - but not for ourselves.
In my youth there was some popular writing on what was called "one-up-man-ship". It was amusingly written, and some of us may have been seduced by the humour into thinking that power games were amusing and therefore acceptable. For myself, I cannot get over the plain drift of our Saviour's teaching, even if I do not always manage to follow it. It is summed up in some words that I was sent recently, and sent on to others, about "Learning Jesus": "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls".
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on us sinners.
Fr Jack
Andrei Rublev Trinity Icon
In the framework of the O.T. theophanies I would first of all mention especially that of the apparition of the three "Angels” to Abraham because of the place this event has received in Christian tradition.
In Genesis Chap 18.2 “So he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood before him …" 18.3 "O Lord, if I have now found grace in your sight ….”
18.8 "and he stood by them under the tree as they ate." This evokes the text of St Gregory Nazianzen: “No sooner do I place before the mind the One, than I am surrounded by the splendour of the Three. No sooner do I distinguish the three than I am brought back to the One”. (Sermon 40). they talk, or rather one of them talks, while the other two remain silent; then they set out for Sodom, where they will act in the house of Lot. It illustrates a decisive moment in the life of Abraham and Sarah. In this early Christian community it was recognized as a revelation of the Holy Trinity; three Persons within One God.
After the division of the Kievan kingdom in Russia In the 13th Cent, the divided country was unable to withstand the onslaught of the Mongol invaders. It was St Sergius of Rodonezh who rallied the forces against the invaders and who founded the great Monastery of Sergievo Posad, he died in 1392. St Nikon, St Sergius successor built the stone church of the Holy Trinity 1422 over the place where the remains of St Sergius lay. On St Nikon’s orders. Andrei Rublev and his old friend Daniil, monks from the Andronikov monastery in Moscow were to decorate the interior of the Holy Trinity Church, between 1422 and 1427. In the chronicles of the monastery it is remembered how on feast days, when they rested from their work, they would “sit in front of the divine and venerable icons and look at them without distraction …..they constantly elevated their thoughts to the immaterial and divine light.
(1) Before the three figures is an altar on which stands a gold chalice containing, in miniature, a blood-red lamb's body symbolizing the sacrificial death of Christ, the Lamb of God. (Later in life, Abraham was to sacrifice a lamb in place of his son Isaac). The image reminds us that, through the chalice, Christians are brought into communion with the Holy Trinity. There is a sense of silent conversation among the three figures. The biblical text most often linked with their exchange comes from the Gospel of John: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:16-17). If one were to search for a single word to describe the icon, it is the word "love." The Holy Trinity itself is a community of love so perfect that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. All creation is a manifestation of God's love. The Incarnation of Christ is an act of love as is every word and action that follows, even if at times it is what Dostoevsky calls "a harsh and dreadful love." (1)
The Angels are grouped in the order of the Symbol of Faith, from left to right. I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. To the total impossibility of depicting the first Person, who is referred to in a reserved and reticent manner, corresponds the sober and indefinite hue of the upper garment of the Angel on the left (a pale pink cloak with brown and blue green lights.) Testimony concerning the second Person is extensive compared with the others and even precise to the point of historical indication (in the time of Pontius Pilate); to this there corresponds the precision and clarity of colouring in the Central Angel whose garment has the customary colours of the incarnated Son of God (a purple chiton and a blue cloak). Finally the principal colour of the third Angel is green – the colour of his cloak – which according to the interpretation of St Dionysius the Areopagite signifies youth, fullness of powers. This specifically indicates the properties of the third Person of the Holy Trinity, reviewing all the things and giving them life. The subtly conceived harmony and relationship of colours is one of its chief attractions. Each head is submissively inclined toward one of the others; none of the three assumes an imperial attitude. There is an atmosphere of love, freedom, timelessness, rest, and the most intimate communion. The sense of oneness is achieved primarily through the gentle attentive engagement of the three with each other, the joining of eyes. Due to inverted perspective, there is no vanishing point. The three figures are not part of a disappearing plane but rather seem to move ever closer to the person before the icon, showing that God is here and everywhere.
(2) One can say without fear of contradiction," Paul Evdokimov has written, "that nowhere in the world is there anything like it from the point of view of theological synthesis, symbolic richness and artistic beauty." But the light of the icon slowly dimmed. As decades passed the smoke produced by thousands pf candles blackened the image. Twice the image was repainted, but each time in darker colors and with the addition of new details. Finally the whole icon except the faces and hands was covered by a golden oklad - an embossed metallic sheet. What had once been visible in paint was rendered in cluttered relief. It was only in 1904 that a restoration commission freed the icon from its oklad and began the slow and painstaking removal of the overpainting that masked Rublev's work. What their effort finally revealed has ever since amazed those who have been privileged to stand in front of the actual icon. The uncovering of the Holy Trinity icon was a momentous event, doing much to inspire the return to classic iconography. The miraculous grace of its colours and translucence defies even the most exacting efforts at reproduction. (2)
When Churches were being desecrated by the Bolsheviks many icons were destroyed but the Trinity Icon was placed in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Saint Pavel Florensky said: “an icon remembers its prototype.” And again: “What the words of the sermon are for the ear, so the icons are for the eye – both have as their subject the same spirituality.”
“The honour of the image”, says St Basil, "is raised to the archetype. Therefore, we venerate relatively the images of Christ the Saviour and all the saints, and clinging to them, we shall never now be dragged down to impiety.”
St Gregory of Nyssa: “The person who contemplates the beauty of the image also achieves knowledge of the original model.”
Anon: “In the icon the body is simply the support for the face; the face but a setting for the gaze.
(1&2) Quotes from "Praying With Icons" - Jim Forest.
Suggested reading: " The menaing of Icons" - Ouspewnsky & Lossky. "The Art of the Icon" - Paul Evdokimov.
Andrei Rublev Trinity Icon
God cannot be
grasped by the mind. If God could be grasped God would not
be God. – Evagrius of Pontus
Let us love one another,
so that with one mind we may confess Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the
Trinity, one in essence and undivided.
- A prayer recited during the Orthodox Liturgy.
- A prayer recited during the Orthodox Liturgy.
In the framework of the O.T. theophanies I would first of all mention especially that of the apparition of the three "Angels” to Abraham because of the place this event has received in Christian tradition.
In Genesis Chap 18.2 “So he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood before him …" 18.3 "O Lord, if I have now found grace in your sight ….”
18.8 "and he stood by them under the tree as they ate." This evokes the text of St Gregory Nazianzen: “No sooner do I place before the mind the One, than I am surrounded by the splendour of the Three. No sooner do I distinguish the three than I am brought back to the One”. (Sermon 40). they talk, or rather one of them talks, while the other two remain silent; then they set out for Sodom, where they will act in the house of Lot. It illustrates a decisive moment in the life of Abraham and Sarah. In this early Christian community it was recognized as a revelation of the Holy Trinity; three Persons within One God.
After the division of the Kievan kingdom in Russia In the 13th Cent, the divided country was unable to withstand the onslaught of the Mongol invaders. It was St Sergius of Rodonezh who rallied the forces against the invaders and who founded the great Monastery of Sergievo Posad, he died in 1392. St Nikon, St Sergius successor built the stone church of the Holy Trinity 1422 over the place where the remains of St Sergius lay. On St Nikon’s orders. Andrei Rublev and his old friend Daniil, monks from the Andronikov monastery in Moscow were to decorate the interior of the Holy Trinity Church, between 1422 and 1427. In the chronicles of the monastery it is remembered how on feast days, when they rested from their work, they would “sit in front of the divine and venerable icons and look at them without distraction …..they constantly elevated their thoughts to the immaterial and divine light.
(1) Before the three figures is an altar on which stands a gold chalice containing, in miniature, a blood-red lamb's body symbolizing the sacrificial death of Christ, the Lamb of God. (Later in life, Abraham was to sacrifice a lamb in place of his son Isaac). The image reminds us that, through the chalice, Christians are brought into communion with the Holy Trinity. There is a sense of silent conversation among the three figures. The biblical text most often linked with their exchange comes from the Gospel of John: "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:16-17). If one were to search for a single word to describe the icon, it is the word "love." The Holy Trinity itself is a community of love so perfect that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. All creation is a manifestation of God's love. The Incarnation of Christ is an act of love as is every word and action that follows, even if at times it is what Dostoevsky calls "a harsh and dreadful love." (1)
The Angels are grouped in the order of the Symbol of Faith, from left to right. I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. To the total impossibility of depicting the first Person, who is referred to in a reserved and reticent manner, corresponds the sober and indefinite hue of the upper garment of the Angel on the left (a pale pink cloak with brown and blue green lights.) Testimony concerning the second Person is extensive compared with the others and even precise to the point of historical indication (in the time of Pontius Pilate); to this there corresponds the precision and clarity of colouring in the Central Angel whose garment has the customary colours of the incarnated Son of God (a purple chiton and a blue cloak). Finally the principal colour of the third Angel is green – the colour of his cloak – which according to the interpretation of St Dionysius the Areopagite signifies youth, fullness of powers. This specifically indicates the properties of the third Person of the Holy Trinity, reviewing all the things and giving them life. The subtly conceived harmony and relationship of colours is one of its chief attractions. Each head is submissively inclined toward one of the others; none of the three assumes an imperial attitude. There is an atmosphere of love, freedom, timelessness, rest, and the most intimate communion. The sense of oneness is achieved primarily through the gentle attentive engagement of the three with each other, the joining of eyes. Due to inverted perspective, there is no vanishing point. The three figures are not part of a disappearing plane but rather seem to move ever closer to the person before the icon, showing that God is here and everywhere.
(2) One can say without fear of contradiction," Paul Evdokimov has written, "that nowhere in the world is there anything like it from the point of view of theological synthesis, symbolic richness and artistic beauty." But the light of the icon slowly dimmed. As decades passed the smoke produced by thousands pf candles blackened the image. Twice the image was repainted, but each time in darker colors and with the addition of new details. Finally the whole icon except the faces and hands was covered by a golden oklad - an embossed metallic sheet. What had once been visible in paint was rendered in cluttered relief. It was only in 1904 that a restoration commission freed the icon from its oklad and began the slow and painstaking removal of the overpainting that masked Rublev's work. What their effort finally revealed has ever since amazed those who have been privileged to stand in front of the actual icon. The uncovering of the Holy Trinity icon was a momentous event, doing much to inspire the return to classic iconography. The miraculous grace of its colours and translucence defies even the most exacting efforts at reproduction. (2)
When Churches were being desecrated by the Bolsheviks many icons were destroyed but the Trinity Icon was placed in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
Saint Pavel Florensky said: “an icon remembers its prototype.” And again: “What the words of the sermon are for the ear, so the icons are for the eye – both have as their subject the same spirituality.”
“The honour of the image”, says St Basil, "is raised to the archetype. Therefore, we venerate relatively the images of Christ the Saviour and all the saints, and clinging to them, we shall never now be dragged down to impiety.”
St Gregory of Nyssa: “The person who contemplates the beauty of the image also achieves knowledge of the original model.”
Anon: “In the icon the body is simply the support for the face; the face but a setting for the gaze.
(1&2) Quotes from "Praying With Icons" - Jim Forest.
Suggested reading: " The menaing of Icons" - Ouspewnsky & Lossky. "The Art of the Icon" - Paul Evdokimov.
May, 2008
ON THE ORTHODOX
CHRISTIAN USE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGEFr Jack's thoughts as an amateur philologist
After some fifty years during which the christian world has
been energetically updating everything, we are beginning to see the
publication of liturgical texts and biblical versions in the Orthodox
world in what is usually called "modern English." I am becoming aged,
and my reaction could be seen merely as the result of that age ; but on
reflection I believe there is more to the matter.
Of course, it is true that as a child I was immersed in the language of the Book of Common Prayer. On the authority of the choirmaster (" I think perhaps that boy ought to be an alto") I should think I often sang flat; but I remember no time that the language gave me any difficulty, apart from the odd phrase
Of course, it is true that as a child I was immersed in the language of the Book of Common Prayer. On the authority of the choirmaster (" I think perhaps that boy ought to be an alto") I should think I often sang flat; but I remember no time that the language gave me any difficulty, apart from the odd phrase
"Christ the Royal Master
Leans against the phone"
which I apparently misquoted to my parents once. But I remember no time when the meaning of thou, thee, thy, thine, ye, you, your, yours were not quite clear to me; and of course that is what people mean when they talk of modern English: a language in which these words, and the distinct meanings appropriate to them, have become disused.
There is also a more general meaning conveyed by the term "modern English": it refers to the general shift in style and syntax, and in the meanings of a number of words, which are thought to render the English of the 16th century obscure to us of the 21st. In so far as this is actually true, I see no difficulty in updating these expressions. But in so far as these changes merely give the earlier language a certain antique flavour, it seems to me that they do no harm, and some good: they remind us that the words have come to us through a considerable period of time, and in order to understand them properly, we need to tune in to the culture within which they were said and recorded. Of course the evolution of English since Shakespeare's time is not the same as the evolution of Greek from the time of the Septuagint to that of S. John Chrysostom; but it can convey an air of cultural remoteness which Greeks, used to the language of the marketplace or the racing arena, might sense in texts which had been written by Greek-speaking Hebrews conveying a Hebrew original (old or new testament) a few centuries earlier. In this regard I think Mr Lewis did us a disservice in his preface to J.B. Philips' modern English version of the Epistles. He managed to give the impression that the Epistles, being written in koine Greek, would have sounded as "common" as a race commentary. Perhaps he was overcompensating for his own supposed antiquarian bias; yet when discussing C. of E. updates of the Prayer Book, he ridiculed the replacement of "indifferently" by "impartially" in an anecdote in which an uneducated man was asked the meaning of the two words: "impartially" he did not understand at all; but "indifferently" he understood readily in its 16th-century sense, not in its modern educated sense.
The decades after J.B. Philips were full of modernizations of bibles and of prayers; typical was the New English Bible, in which every effort was made to make the language sound "contemporary" (with the 1950s, of course, not with the first century). I was fortunate to attend a lecture to the Otago University Classical Society by one of the translating panel of the New English Bible. He conveyed some discouraging facts about the Septuagint which amounted to the probability that the only "dictionary" that the LXX elders had was a fragment of Homer a few pages long; and possibly excursions into the street to interrogate passing Greeks. I found this rather convincing at the time, but I have since learned to be cautious of western scholars who approach ancient christian sources from the angle of their own classical studies. However, the story I really want to repeat from him is this: in their concern to be contemporary, the New English Bible committee had made lists of possible equivalents of the Greek words, and taken them to those who might be thought to be experts on the particular concept. So they had made a list for "fatted calf", and they took it to a butcher at Smithfield. This gentleman examined the list with care, and declared that the expressions were very suitable (I cannot remember the list now). "But", he said, "there is really only one expression that we use in the trade for exactly this animal, and it is 'fatted calf' ".
Thus the "authorized version", like Luther's bible and others, has left its imprint on everyday language.
When I joined the Orthodox Church in 1971, I was content enough to leave behind me all the pressure to be up-to-the-minute; better to be 2000 years out of date, we were saying, than six months. There seemed to be no prospect that the Orthodox Church would join this rush for modernity. Some jurisdictions were not bothering about English at all; we and the Russians had settled for Miss Hapgood's Prayer Book style; and the American Western Rite was settled on the Prayer Book texts. As we in NZ organized ourselves with materials from the NY Archdiocese, we found ourselves using the same Hapgood language or something very similar. We were encouraged by the thought that the Orthodox Church had respect not only for her own historical culture, but even for that of the English. Until booklets began to be printed in Australia in the 90s using a translation by a heterodox academic, in which the style now called "modern English" was used. We now have quite a body of Arabic-English booklets, in which the English is in the same "contemporary" style, and I understand that many are very happy with it.
I don't want to offend those who are using these translations. But I would like them to understand, not that I am a fuddy-duddy who likes an air of antiquity, but that in at least one matter the contemporary language is unequal to its subject. The air of antiquity is only a matter of taste. But every other language used for Orthodox services has a clear distinction between singular and plural in the second person; and "contemporary" English does not.
One modern translation, the first American Revised Standard Version, thought to compromise by addressing God as "thou" and everyone else as "you". Some of the Antiochian Byzantine Project service materials went down that line, although the WR Vicariate did not. It was possibly due to a short-lived ecumenical agreement to make the RSV into a "Common Bible". In the end only the Orthodox honoured that agreement, and it lapsed. And just as well. For the question is not that of having a holy pronoun for God and a common one for everyone else. It is a matter of knowing whether one person is being addressed, or more than one. One ought not to have to have recourse to the original to find this out.
When I was in university, one of the popular theological works was "I and Thou" (Ich und Du) by the Jewish philosopher Dr Martin Buber. In order to write this article I have borrowed and read it. I am sorry to say that much of it is quite obscure to me and that is probably my fault; I cannot even be sure whether I have read it before. But the general drift appears to be what those who discussed it then believed it to be: there are two relationships we can be involved in, one "I-Thou" and the other "I-It". "I-Thou" is a personal relationship, and "I-It" is a relationship to an object. Relationships to other persons, including God, are appropriately "I-Thou", yet they often degenerate into "I-It".
Before leaving Dr Buber, I should say that I was impressed at how far he, as a Jewish philosopher, was able to view sympathetically not only Buddhism and other religious traditions, but also Jesus and Christianity. I should guess that renewed reading of his famous book would be of considerable benefit to today's academic world. This thought is intensified by the discovery that there is now a second translation in which "I-Thou" has been replaced by "I-You". (thus introducing again the confusion between singular and plural: the relationship "I and thou" is not the same relationship as "I and ye", no matter what "intimacy" the later translator may have thought he found in "You").
Now we must come to the real point: Thou or ye, thee or you, thy or your, etc. Why have all these been reduced in "modern English" to you, your, yours?
Because of snobbery. Because of what the holy Apostle James denounces as "respect of persons". Because people came to believe that some people were more important than others, and that making this distinction was more important than distinguishing between singular and plural. I used to think that this custom was invented by the French, who wrought so much other damage to English (and the English, and their Church) after the Norman Conquest. The difference in spelling systems between Old English and Middle English are due to the imposition by the invaders of the Norman French system, which is responsible for at least half of our present spelling chaos. But recently I have learned that "the style of using a plural to show high respect came into Latin by at least the 6th century" (e-mail from Fr Aidan). So perhaps it made its way into the modern European languages by descent from Latin. In any case, the custom of using the plural for the singular is now in use not only in the romance languages, but also in Russian, German and Dutch, and probably others that I don't know of. It is found in Shakespeare alongside the earlier usage; when it began in popular speech I do not know. The Quakers, to do them credit, resisted the custom on Christian grounds for some time, but eventually they succumbed. But only in English and Dutch, so far as I know, did this silly affectation go so far as to suppress entirely all the original forms of the singular. My knowledge of Dutch is limited, but the grammars I have consulted and the native speakers I have interrogated have yielded no form cognate with thou and (Fr. & Lat.) tu and (Russ.) ty and (Germ.)du and (Gk) sy, etc. Instead Dutch appears to have coined a new plural "jullie" (you people) just as the Texans have coined "y'all" and Mickey Mouse's nemesis Black Pete used to say "youse guys".
It may be thought that having a second person pronoun that may be singular or plural is of little importance. As for the dative/accusative form, it may seem unimportant too, but we all use it (usually correctly) with all the other pronouns, and we understand the meaning. The fact is that, contrary to what is often said, not all changes in language are natural and therefore to be accepted. Some of them obscure the meaning, and one of the few good things I can find to say of the French is that they have an Academy to protect their language from debasement (especially by borrowings from English).
The part of my article that follows is actually the most important, as in it I shall explore the nuances of meaning that are lost because, of all the languages used by the Orthodox, English has no way of showing clearly whether one is being addressed, or many.
On the one occasion that I pointed this out to an Arabic congregation that had the new English form in front of it, they understood me immediately, even though I think I was using the Hebrew forms as I remembered them; but I have obtained what I hope are the correct forms for the Arabic words in question in the following well-known example:
Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo.
Leans against the phone"
which I apparently misquoted to my parents once. But I remember no time when the meaning of thou, thee, thy, thine, ye, you, your, yours were not quite clear to me; and of course that is what people mean when they talk of modern English: a language in which these words, and the distinct meanings appropriate to them, have become disused.
There is also a more general meaning conveyed by the term "modern English": it refers to the general shift in style and syntax, and in the meanings of a number of words, which are thought to render the English of the 16th century obscure to us of the 21st. In so far as this is actually true, I see no difficulty in updating these expressions. But in so far as these changes merely give the earlier language a certain antique flavour, it seems to me that they do no harm, and some good: they remind us that the words have come to us through a considerable period of time, and in order to understand them properly, we need to tune in to the culture within which they were said and recorded. Of course the evolution of English since Shakespeare's time is not the same as the evolution of Greek from the time of the Septuagint to that of S. John Chrysostom; but it can convey an air of cultural remoteness which Greeks, used to the language of the marketplace or the racing arena, might sense in texts which had been written by Greek-speaking Hebrews conveying a Hebrew original (old or new testament) a few centuries earlier. In this regard I think Mr Lewis did us a disservice in his preface to J.B. Philips' modern English version of the Epistles. He managed to give the impression that the Epistles, being written in koine Greek, would have sounded as "common" as a race commentary. Perhaps he was overcompensating for his own supposed antiquarian bias; yet when discussing C. of E. updates of the Prayer Book, he ridiculed the replacement of "indifferently" by "impartially" in an anecdote in which an uneducated man was asked the meaning of the two words: "impartially" he did not understand at all; but "indifferently" he understood readily in its 16th-century sense, not in its modern educated sense.
The decades after J.B. Philips were full of modernizations of bibles and of prayers; typical was the New English Bible, in which every effort was made to make the language sound "contemporary" (with the 1950s, of course, not with the first century). I was fortunate to attend a lecture to the Otago University Classical Society by one of the translating panel of the New English Bible. He conveyed some discouraging facts about the Septuagint which amounted to the probability that the only "dictionary" that the LXX elders had was a fragment of Homer a few pages long; and possibly excursions into the street to interrogate passing Greeks. I found this rather convincing at the time, but I have since learned to be cautious of western scholars who approach ancient christian sources from the angle of their own classical studies. However, the story I really want to repeat from him is this: in their concern to be contemporary, the New English Bible committee had made lists of possible equivalents of the Greek words, and taken them to those who might be thought to be experts on the particular concept. So they had made a list for "fatted calf", and they took it to a butcher at Smithfield. This gentleman examined the list with care, and declared that the expressions were very suitable (I cannot remember the list now). "But", he said, "there is really only one expression that we use in the trade for exactly this animal, and it is 'fatted calf' ".
Thus the "authorized version", like Luther's bible and others, has left its imprint on everyday language.
When I joined the Orthodox Church in 1971, I was content enough to leave behind me all the pressure to be up-to-the-minute; better to be 2000 years out of date, we were saying, than six months. There seemed to be no prospect that the Orthodox Church would join this rush for modernity. Some jurisdictions were not bothering about English at all; we and the Russians had settled for Miss Hapgood's Prayer Book style; and the American Western Rite was settled on the Prayer Book texts. As we in NZ organized ourselves with materials from the NY Archdiocese, we found ourselves using the same Hapgood language or something very similar. We were encouraged by the thought that the Orthodox Church had respect not only for her own historical culture, but even for that of the English. Until booklets began to be printed in Australia in the 90s using a translation by a heterodox academic, in which the style now called "modern English" was used. We now have quite a body of Arabic-English booklets, in which the English is in the same "contemporary" style, and I understand that many are very happy with it.
I don't want to offend those who are using these translations. But I would like them to understand, not that I am a fuddy-duddy who likes an air of antiquity, but that in at least one matter the contemporary language is unequal to its subject. The air of antiquity is only a matter of taste. But every other language used for Orthodox services has a clear distinction between singular and plural in the second person; and "contemporary" English does not.
One modern translation, the first American Revised Standard Version, thought to compromise by addressing God as "thou" and everyone else as "you". Some of the Antiochian Byzantine Project service materials went down that line, although the WR Vicariate did not. It was possibly due to a short-lived ecumenical agreement to make the RSV into a "Common Bible". In the end only the Orthodox honoured that agreement, and it lapsed. And just as well. For the question is not that of having a holy pronoun for God and a common one for everyone else. It is a matter of knowing whether one person is being addressed, or more than one. One ought not to have to have recourse to the original to find this out.
When I was in university, one of the popular theological works was "I and Thou" (Ich und Du) by the Jewish philosopher Dr Martin Buber. In order to write this article I have borrowed and read it. I am sorry to say that much of it is quite obscure to me and that is probably my fault; I cannot even be sure whether I have read it before. But the general drift appears to be what those who discussed it then believed it to be: there are two relationships we can be involved in, one "I-Thou" and the other "I-It". "I-Thou" is a personal relationship, and "I-It" is a relationship to an object. Relationships to other persons, including God, are appropriately "I-Thou", yet they often degenerate into "I-It".
Before leaving Dr Buber, I should say that I was impressed at how far he, as a Jewish philosopher, was able to view sympathetically not only Buddhism and other religious traditions, but also Jesus and Christianity. I should guess that renewed reading of his famous book would be of considerable benefit to today's academic world. This thought is intensified by the discovery that there is now a second translation in which "I-Thou" has been replaced by "I-You". (thus introducing again the confusion between singular and plural: the relationship "I and thou" is not the same relationship as "I and ye", no matter what "intimacy" the later translator may have thought he found in "You").
Now we must come to the real point: Thou or ye, thee or you, thy or your, etc. Why have all these been reduced in "modern English" to you, your, yours?
Because of snobbery. Because of what the holy Apostle James denounces as "respect of persons". Because people came to believe that some people were more important than others, and that making this distinction was more important than distinguishing between singular and plural. I used to think that this custom was invented by the French, who wrought so much other damage to English (and the English, and their Church) after the Norman Conquest. The difference in spelling systems between Old English and Middle English are due to the imposition by the invaders of the Norman French system, which is responsible for at least half of our present spelling chaos. But recently I have learned that "the style of using a plural to show high respect came into Latin by at least the 6th century" (e-mail from Fr Aidan). So perhaps it made its way into the modern European languages by descent from Latin. In any case, the custom of using the plural for the singular is now in use not only in the romance languages, but also in Russian, German and Dutch, and probably others that I don't know of. It is found in Shakespeare alongside the earlier usage; when it began in popular speech I do not know. The Quakers, to do them credit, resisted the custom on Christian grounds for some time, but eventually they succumbed. But only in English and Dutch, so far as I know, did this silly affectation go so far as to suppress entirely all the original forms of the singular. My knowledge of Dutch is limited, but the grammars I have consulted and the native speakers I have interrogated have yielded no form cognate with thou and (Fr. & Lat.) tu and (Russ.) ty and (Germ.)du and (Gk) sy, etc. Instead Dutch appears to have coined a new plural "jullie" (you people) just as the Texans have coined "y'all" and Mickey Mouse's nemesis Black Pete used to say "youse guys".
It may be thought that having a second person pronoun that may be singular or plural is of little importance. As for the dative/accusative form, it may seem unimportant too, but we all use it (usually correctly) with all the other pronouns, and we understand the meaning. The fact is that, contrary to what is often said, not all changes in language are natural and therefore to be accepted. Some of them obscure the meaning, and one of the few good things I can find to say of the French is that they have an Academy to protect their language from debasement (especially by borrowings from English).
The part of my article that follows is actually the most important, as in it I shall explore the nuances of meaning that are lost because, of all the languages used by the Orthodox, English has no way of showing clearly whether one is being addressed, or many.
On the one occasion that I pointed this out to an Arabic congregation that had the new English form in front of it, they understood me immediately, even though I think I was using the Hebrew forms as I remembered them; but I have obtained what I hope are the correct forms for the Arabic words in question in the following well-known example:
Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo.
The Lord (/Peace) be with you
[ma'akom]
And with thy spirit
[ruhika]
Whether in Greek, Latin,
Slavonic, Arabic, or any other language including English up to about
1700, it is quite clear that the first speaker is one, and the second
are many. For the last 40 years the Catholics
and the Anglicans have been saying: And
with you
(also), but now the catholics are
replacing the word spirit because it has a doctrinal significance (the
grace of holy orders), and we may hope they may soon
remember
that singular and plural have a meaning too.
In my copy of the Altar English Missal there is a curious usage in the prayer before the blessing, in which the priest says: "acceptable to thee, O holy Trinity"; but then goes on: "before the eyes of your majesty". There is nothing in the Latin to justify this, and I can only suppose that in that year the editors were trying to be cute about the doctrine of the Trinity. Apparently they thought better of it, as I find it nowhere else. Let us leave that curiosity, and consider some ways in which the wealth of expression in holy Scripture and the liturgies can be lost if everything is reduced to "you"
The Prophets are alternating between singular and plural: he, them, them, him; you, thee; treating the nation of Israel now as many, now as one person, (united in the person of their forefather Jacob/Israel), with whom the Lord is in an I-Thou relationship. The language is all the more poignant because of this choice of words; but it becomes invisible if only you can be said, and not thou. I used the RSV for many years, and so I still have to find a passage in it, and them look up the reference in the AV, to find out whether the singular or the plural is used. This should not be necessary. In Amos the people of Israel are many, but in Micah and the Good Friday reproaches they are addressed as one. The nation of Israel, designated by Isaiah as God's suffering servant, is also understood by Christians as becoming one person in the Messiah, who unites the whole nation in himself, and then expands again into the new Israel, the Church.
The above illustrations may seem a little obscure. The following passage is unmistakeable, and famous; it is the subject of a well-known icon of the holy Trinity,
And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day: 2 And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw [them]*, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground. 3 And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: 4 Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: 5 And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort your hearts: after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. 6 And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead [it], and make cakes upon the hearth. 7 And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave [it] unto a young man: and he hasted to dress it. 8 And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set [it] before them; and he stood by them under the tree. and they did eat.
9 And they said unto him. Where [is] Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. 10 And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard [it] in the tent door, which [was] behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; [and] it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. 12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? 13 And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child which am old? 14 is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. 15 Then Sarah denied. saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh. 16 And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Church Fathers very soon noticed this very curious alternation between one and three, and found in it a prophecy of the holy Trinity. O course, it is also possible to rationalize the alternation by saying that the one Lord appeared through the three angels, his representatives, and that one of them is a spokesman, and the dialogue alternates between him and them. Nevertheless, it still strikes one as very curious, as you can see from the red print with which I have marked the words in question. It would also be possible to explain the alternation as an example of the JPD document editing theory; but I doubt if we should learn anything of value from that, even if true; what we have to learn from is the canonical text, not some hypothetical reconstruction of sources. No, this is a very strange piece indeed, and we can learn much from it, and mainly along the lines of 1) Isaac as the son of promise, 2) Typology of the holy Trinity. But for my present purpose it is enough to observe that translation into any language that cannot distinguish between 2. person singular and 2. person plural will make (excuse my language) a dog's breakfast of the whole thing.
I hope I have said enough to convince you that we have a serious defect here in our much-vaunted "modern English". Never mind about the charming antiquity of the AV, which, as you can see from the examples above, does not present any serious obstacle to understanding. Our language ought to make clear whether one or many are being addressed, and in its contemporary state it does not. Ought we to do something? is there anything we can do?
Well, our self-confident journalists find no difficulty in carrying out experiments on our language. One of the latest is the omission of "the" where it occurs in some place-names. Presumably on the absurd ground that some languages do not have a word for "the"? but we have known that, for as long as Latin and the Slavonic languages have existed, and still we have said "the Ukraine" etc.
Why should we not show the same boldness, but for a more worthy reason? and begin to restore thou, and ye, etc., and the corresponding verb endings, whenever we need to make clear whether we mean singular or plural? If we don't, it will only be a matter of time before we are all saying "youse"; and doubtless some other monstrosity for the singular. And if we simply lack the nerve to do that (the English lost their belief in themselves about a century ago, so I suppose we shall lack the nerve) then AT LEAST let us display the holy Scriptures and the holy Liturgies in a language worthy of their sacred content. A capital Y on You is just not good enough, for the reasons I have given.
I think these remarks apply equally to the holy Scriptures, and to the Eastern and Western liturgical traditions. But I have confined my examples to the tradition that is native to me, and in which I feel confident. Many of you are aware that I have spent some years constructing a version of the Western Office and Mass intended to be Orthodox in doctrine and authentic in its detailed content. I began with the English Missal (Knott's) and the Monastic Diurnal and Matins (Canon Douglas, and the Welsh nuns), because these had been authorized by the North American WR Vicariate. All these were in Prayer Book English and the AV. I had to change many things in editing a non-monastic Breviary; and now I am correcting the monastic one by reference to more ancient sources. But I never had to alter the "Elizabethan" style, and I have come to love it more and more dearly. In my postgraduate year Julia and I lived in Germany, and since then I still feel a greater kinship with my somewhat profligate immigrant grandfather than with my one English and two Welsh grandparents. Two things I can never forget: that many Germans still today learn English in order to read Shakespeare, not in German, but in his original language, which they find easier than modern English; and secondly, that English even today is a Germanic language. A pastor in Hanover who corresponded with me for a few years told me that he was very comfortable with my liturgical English, as it had more in common with German. He went on to say that it was not usually appreciated that, when our S. Winfrid (Latin Boniface) went to Germany as a missionary, he had no need of an interpreter, but spoke in his own Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and was understood by his hearers in Saxony and other parts of Germany, just as the Scandinavian nations still understand one another to this day. That is, our languages, in spite of different histories, have had a parallel development, and preserved much of their family relationship, for 1500 years, so that if we want a word for the diction of the Book of Common Prayer and the "King James" version, we should not call it "Jacobean" (the Stuart Jameses and Charleses define precisely the time when the modern ambiguous "you" was beginning to displace the forms which go back to Old English and Indo-European), nor "Elizabethan", since we also are Elizabethans) but, what it was commonly called in the 1950s: "timeless English". Its style is not that of a particular age of English, but more than anything else, it simply reflects the diction of the original languages, as translations always did until 20th century academia became obsessed with making the ancient authors sound as if they had just stopped watching TV. Fortunately I was trained in translation before that idea had got very far, and so I have little use for versions that are not so much a reflection in comprehensible language of the whole meaning of the original, as a chain of clichés giving an illusion of meaning based mainly on familiarity. Which is another way of saying that our modern translators make their readers captive to their own interpretations, and imprison them in their own purely contemporary minds. In rather the same way as (?Albert Schweitzer?) said: Harnack looked down the well of history for the historical Jesus, and saw his own liberal protestant face reflected in the water.
Please forgive me if I am insufficiently sensitive to the needs of those who know no language but their own. I cannot remember back far enough to understand what that is like. But since we first decided against using "baby-talk" to our children, I have had a fierce dislike of the patronizing custom of "spoon-feeding" people by underestimating their intelligence. And since I do have something in common with other "translators", I dare to think that they often seem to be doing exactly that.
In my copy of the Altar English Missal there is a curious usage in the prayer before the blessing, in which the priest says: "acceptable to thee, O holy Trinity"; but then goes on: "before the eyes of your majesty". There is nothing in the Latin to justify this, and I can only suppose that in that year the editors were trying to be cute about the doctrine of the Trinity. Apparently they thought better of it, as I find it nowhere else. Let us leave that curiosity, and consider some ways in which the wealth of expression in holy Scripture and the liturgies can be lost if everything is reduced to "you"
1.Hosea 11
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
As they called them so they went from them; they sacrificed unto Baalim,
and burned incense unto graven images.
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love:
He shall not return unto the land of Egypt.
2. Amos 3
You only have I loved of all the nations on earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
As they called them so they went from them; they sacrificed unto Baalim,
and burned incense unto graven images.
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love:
He shall not return unto the land of Egypt.
2. Amos 3
You only have I loved of all the nations on earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.
3. Micah 6
O
my people, what have I done unto thee,
or wherein have I wearied thee?
Testify against me.
For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants;
and I sent before thee Moses, and Aaron, and Miriam.
4. Good Friday Liturgy
For thy sake I smote Egypt with her first-born;
and thou hast smitten me and delivered me up.
Agios o Theos, etc.
For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants;
and I sent before thee Moses, and Aaron, and Miriam.
4. Good Friday Liturgy
For thy sake I smote Egypt with her first-born;
and thou hast smitten me and delivered me up.
Agios o Theos, etc.
The Prophets are alternating between singular and plural: he, them, them, him; you, thee; treating the nation of Israel now as many, now as one person, (united in the person of their forefather Jacob/Israel), with whom the Lord is in an I-Thou relationship. The language is all the more poignant because of this choice of words; but it becomes invisible if only you can be said, and not thou. I used the RSV for many years, and so I still have to find a passage in it, and them look up the reference in the AV, to find out whether the singular or the plural is used. This should not be necessary. In Amos the people of Israel are many, but in Micah and the Good Friday reproaches they are addressed as one. The nation of Israel, designated by Isaiah as God's suffering servant, is also understood by Christians as becoming one person in the Messiah, who unites the whole nation in himself, and then expands again into the new Israel, the Church.
The above illustrations may seem a little obscure. The following passage is unmistakeable, and famous; it is the subject of a well-known icon of the holy Trinity,
[see above, at the head of Fr
Michael's address]
because of its curious
alternation, while speaking apparently of the same
person/persons, between singular (1) and plural
(3):
Genesis 18 And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day: 2 And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw [them]*, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground. 3 And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: 4 Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: 5 And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort your hearts: after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. 6 And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead [it], and make cakes upon the hearth. 7 And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf tender and good, and gave [it] unto a young man: and he hasted to dress it. 8 And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set [it] before them; and he stood by them under the tree. and they did eat.
9 And they said unto him. Where [is] Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. 10 And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard [it] in the tent door, which [was] behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; [and] it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. 12 Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? 13 And the LORD said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child which am old? 14 is any thing too hard for the LORD? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son. 15 Then Sarah denied. saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh. 16 And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*
The translators of the AV, wishing
to be
totally transparent to the original, italicized all words that had had
to be inserted to conform to English idiom. This has sometimes been
misunderstood, so I have placed the words in question in square
brackets instead. - FrJ
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Church Fathers very soon noticed this very curious alternation between one and three, and found in it a prophecy of the holy Trinity. O course, it is also possible to rationalize the alternation by saying that the one Lord appeared through the three angels, his representatives, and that one of them is a spokesman, and the dialogue alternates between him and them. Nevertheless, it still strikes one as very curious, as you can see from the red print with which I have marked the words in question. It would also be possible to explain the alternation as an example of the JPD document editing theory; but I doubt if we should learn anything of value from that, even if true; what we have to learn from is the canonical text, not some hypothetical reconstruction of sources. No, this is a very strange piece indeed, and we can learn much from it, and mainly along the lines of 1) Isaac as the son of promise, 2) Typology of the holy Trinity. But for my present purpose it is enough to observe that translation into any language that cannot distinguish between 2. person singular and 2. person plural will make (excuse my language) a dog's breakfast of the whole thing.
I hope I have said enough to convince you that we have a serious defect here in our much-vaunted "modern English". Never mind about the charming antiquity of the AV, which, as you can see from the examples above, does not present any serious obstacle to understanding. Our language ought to make clear whether one or many are being addressed, and in its contemporary state it does not. Ought we to do something? is there anything we can do?
Well, our self-confident journalists find no difficulty in carrying out experiments on our language. One of the latest is the omission of "the" where it occurs in some place-names. Presumably on the absurd ground that some languages do not have a word for "the"? but we have known that, for as long as Latin and the Slavonic languages have existed, and still we have said "the Ukraine" etc.
Why should we not show the same boldness, but for a more worthy reason? and begin to restore thou, and ye, etc., and the corresponding verb endings, whenever we need to make clear whether we mean singular or plural? If we don't, it will only be a matter of time before we are all saying "youse"; and doubtless some other monstrosity for the singular. And if we simply lack the nerve to do that (the English lost their belief in themselves about a century ago, so I suppose we shall lack the nerve) then AT LEAST let us display the holy Scriptures and the holy Liturgies in a language worthy of their sacred content. A capital Y on You is just not good enough, for the reasons I have given.
I think these remarks apply equally to the holy Scriptures, and to the Eastern and Western liturgical traditions. But I have confined my examples to the tradition that is native to me, and in which I feel confident. Many of you are aware that I have spent some years constructing a version of the Western Office and Mass intended to be Orthodox in doctrine and authentic in its detailed content. I began with the English Missal (Knott's) and the Monastic Diurnal and Matins (Canon Douglas, and the Welsh nuns), because these had been authorized by the North American WR Vicariate. All these were in Prayer Book English and the AV. I had to change many things in editing a non-monastic Breviary; and now I am correcting the monastic one by reference to more ancient sources. But I never had to alter the "Elizabethan" style, and I have come to love it more and more dearly. In my postgraduate year Julia and I lived in Germany, and since then I still feel a greater kinship with my somewhat profligate immigrant grandfather than with my one English and two Welsh grandparents. Two things I can never forget: that many Germans still today learn English in order to read Shakespeare, not in German, but in his original language, which they find easier than modern English; and secondly, that English even today is a Germanic language. A pastor in Hanover who corresponded with me for a few years told me that he was very comfortable with my liturgical English, as it had more in common with German. He went on to say that it was not usually appreciated that, when our S. Winfrid (Latin Boniface) went to Germany as a missionary, he had no need of an interpreter, but spoke in his own Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and was understood by his hearers in Saxony and other parts of Germany, just as the Scandinavian nations still understand one another to this day. That is, our languages, in spite of different histories, have had a parallel development, and preserved much of their family relationship, for 1500 years, so that if we want a word for the diction of the Book of Common Prayer and the "King James" version, we should not call it "Jacobean" (the Stuart Jameses and Charleses define precisely the time when the modern ambiguous "you" was beginning to displace the forms which go back to Old English and Indo-European), nor "Elizabethan", since we also are Elizabethans) but, what it was commonly called in the 1950s: "timeless English". Its style is not that of a particular age of English, but more than anything else, it simply reflects the diction of the original languages, as translations always did until 20th century academia became obsessed with making the ancient authors sound as if they had just stopped watching TV. Fortunately I was trained in translation before that idea had got very far, and so I have little use for versions that are not so much a reflection in comprehensible language of the whole meaning of the original, as a chain of clichés giving an illusion of meaning based mainly on familiarity. Which is another way of saying that our modern translators make their readers captive to their own interpretations, and imprison them in their own purely contemporary minds. In rather the same way as (?Albert Schweitzer?) said: Harnack looked down the well of history for the historical Jesus, and saw his own liberal protestant face reflected in the water.
Please forgive me if I am insufficiently sensitive to the needs of those who know no language but their own. I cannot remember back far enough to understand what that is like. But since we first decided against using "baby-talk" to our children, I have had a fierce dislike of the patronizing custom of "spoon-feeding" people by underestimating their intelligence. And since I do have something in common with other "translators", I dare to think that they often seem to be doing exactly that.
Fr Jack