I am not sure you have heard how John XXIII, often considered as bad by traditionally minded Catholics or indeed as a non-Pope, also had a Catholic side or two.
One of these was the document Veterum Sapientia.
Well, Kent Hovind has just made the point for why Catholics do things in Latin (or Classic Greek, or Church Slavonic or Coptic or the Syriac spoken in Jesus' time). In context, he is arguing against Gap Theory, a long gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, and one of the arguments was KJV in Genesis 1:28 says "replenish" which would seem to mean "fill again". Here is his answer:
The Bible says that God told Adam to “replenish the earth.” (Gen 1:28) And the Gap theory folks always say: “Well see, right there it says replenish and the word replenish means, fill again.” Look it up in the dictionary. And sure enough, you look it up in a dictionary, and it says, replenish: fill again. Well, you better look up the meaning of the word in 1611, when they translated this. The King James translators came across the word ‘male’ which means, fill, and they chose the word ‘replenish’, because back in 1611 the word replenish only meant, fill. In 1650 an author named Bacon added a second definition to the word, called fill again. It never meant, fill again, until 1650. You get some old dictionaries, like an 1828 dictionary. You can see for yourself, the primary meaning of the word ‘replenish’ is, fill. The secondary meaning is, fill again, recover former fullness, added by Francis Bacon, ok. Here's an 1891 dictionary. The first definition of the word is, fill. The second definition is, recover former fullness. In 1892 the dictionaries switched the definitions. The first one in 1891 is, fill; in 1892 the first one is, fill again, and the secondary meaning becomes, to fill. Huh, what happened here? Modern dictionaries changed it again. 1989 only shows, fill again. They left out what used to be the primary definition of the word, fill. There's a 21st Century Dictionary: Replenish: make full again. See, English words change meanings all the time.
When I was a kid, the word ‘cool’ meant, not hot. And ‘gay’ meant, happy. Anybody remember those old-fashioned days? How would you decipher this verse here? James 2 (v. 3): “Ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing.” Would you agree that word has changed meanings in the last 30 years or so? And you probably shouldn't say that to somebody today. “Wow, you have gay clothing on today.” That would not be a good thing to say if you want to keep your teeth, right?, ok. Paul said: “I would have come to you, but I was let hitherto.” (Rom. 1:13) You know the word ‘let’ used to mean, hindered? Now it means, allowed. English words change meanings. You see, God promised to preserve His Word; He did not promise to preserve our English language.
From Seminar 2 The Garden of Eden, part a
Dr Kent Hovind's Creation Seminars, this one from 2005
http://wiseoldgoat.com/papers-creation/hovind-seminar_part2a_2007.html
Too true, too true ... I alluded to a sentiment by Puddleglum about being "gay and frolic" when asked by school mates how I dealt with the life of one oppressed often enough by bullying. I found out the next minutes what a change the word "gay" had underwent since C. S. Lewis wrote that passage. French still uses "gai" in the proper sense. If it means "gay" in the pride sense, it spells it "gay".
Chesterton put this as "the alternatives are not a dead language versus a live language, if you mean one which stays alive, but a dead language versus a dying one" Ah here:
SOME OF OUR ERRORS
in The Thing, (essay collection 1929)
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/The_Thing.html#26
Paragraph antepenultime, or third from end:
It is a question between a dead language and a dying language. Every living language is a dying language, even if it does not die. Parts of it are perpetually perishing or changing their sense; there is only one escape from that flux; and a language must die to be immortal. The style of the English Jacobean translation is as noble and simple a thing as any in the world; but even there the words degenerate. It is not their fault; but ours who misuse them; but they are misused. No language could lift itself into a loftier or simpler strain than that which begins, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people”; but even then, when we pass on to “speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,” we stumble over a word we have vulgarised.
Jerusalem suavely lectured on an interesting topic from an armchair ... that is what the the new English meaning of the word "comfortably" suggests. Chesterton was alluding to KJV Isaias 40:1, 2a. Here is Douay Rheims, quoting verse 2 in full:
[1] Be comforted, be comforted, my people, saith your God. [2] Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and call to her: for her evil is come to an end, her iniquity is forgiven: she hath received of the hand of the Lord double for all her sins.
And Vulgate has:
[1] Consolamini, consolamini, popule meus, dicit Deus vester. [2] Loquimini ad cor Jerusalem, et advocate eam, quoniam completa est malitia ejus, dimissa est iniquitas illius, suscepit de manu Domini duplicia pro omnibus peccatis suis.
Suddenly it is no longer C. S. Lewis giving a lecture from an arm chair, say on writing, which is a subject he mastered in full, and lectured very suavely on, it is a messenger of God giving a vital message to His Bride. Even a sense of the messenger being an "advocate" ...
For some reason, God seems to have preserved the English of Douay Rheims and even the "irrelevant" vernacular associations of Vulgate Latin a bit better than the English of King James.
Either way, the Latin language was also dying.
It was in fact dying in France up to 800. It only rose from the dead when Alcuin declared her dead - and brought her back to life. Incidentally, he needed to invent (or allow close disciples to invent) vernacular as sth other than Latin in the process, that is why we had a decision 813 requiring that Gospel reading on Sundays and Obligatory Feast Days be followed by a sermon in the vernacular. One language was declared dead, two languages rose from the grave.
Now, I gave that story in somewhat more prosy detail on the wall of another Creationist, Robert Carter, that other day. For good measure, I'll copy all of that comment, starting with a quote from the paper by Carter:
"Early on, Venema makes another poor argument when he tries to explain what he means by ‘evolution’ by comparing the random changes that occur in DNA to how languages change. But language development cannot be separated from the mind or from conscious choice, e.g. the widespread borrowing of words and phrases. In fact, had he done any homework at all, he would have known that biblical creationists had a ready answer to his false comparison."
Apart from the facts that:
- you cannot prove a LUCA for all IE languages anymore than for all life;
- the argument is often misstated, like Latin "developing" to French.
In fact, Latin was *written* as vernacular in Gaul from Caesar (and even before in the South, one Sextus Calvinus coming in during the "IV Beast era" of ancient Rome, the Senatorial Republic) all the way to Charlemagne.
During this time *pronunciation* and the popular colloquial *usage on cases* (and other forms) did develop, and in the North to the direction of French. But the *written* French actually does result from a few creative initiatives:
- 1) Latin pronounced in Francia was getting unintelligible to priests from elsewhere, so, one imported Alcuin to start correcting pronunciation in the monastery of St Martin in Tours, 800
- 2) followed by the discovery 813 that this led to people no longer understanding the Gospel and so the sermon was invented as a real staple of even a normal priest's Sunday duties (Patristic sermons are typically by bishops), with the new function of more or less translating the Gospel
- 3) and preparing these sermons made priests aware of how the vernacular differed from the written Latin, a bit like if one were required to spell out "don't" rather than "do not" to a text which doesn't even have the circumlocution with do. A Gospel in which Christ approves the rich man's enumeration of commandments, like "murder not" gets a translation like "don't murder".
In the language concerned, let's go to Vulgate and then reconstruct how the sermon may have sounded:
Gospel reading includes:
"[20] Mandata nosti : non occides; non moechaberis; non furtum facies; non falsum testimonium dices; honora patrem tuum et matrem."
[Luke 18:20]
Sermon includes this retelling:
"Tu seis li mandats : tu ne tueras, tu ne fereis adultère, tu ne voleras, tu ne direis fals tesmein, onore teon pèdre et tea mèdre"
(Actually, this is more like what it would have sounded like in 1200 than in 813 ...)
"Tu sabes li mandates : tu no tuer habes, tu no fair habes adultero, tu no voler habes, tu no dir habes falso tesmeino, onora teon pèdre et tea mèdre"
(This is a bit more adapted to Strassburg Oaths)
AND
- 4) this prepared them to one day compose original texts in vernacular, the first preserved being a pronunciation guide for the "Latin" version of the Strassburg Oaths, soon followed by things sounding even less Latin, like Song of St Eulalia.
This kind of social development I would like to call "language divorce". A bit like very recently in the 1970's, New Greek as in Dhimotiki was "divorced" from Classic Greek or Katharevousa.
So, in other words, the "Veteres" whose "Sapientia" John XXIII was lauding were Carolingians, and especially an Anglo-Saxon invited such. I suspect in heaven Chesterton may by now have met a greeting from Alcuin "was hail, landës-man! thou wert up to something" - or its equivalent in a more eternal tongue. Or, why not, both.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Parmentier
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
(of Child Jesus and of the Holy Face)
3.X.2018
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