Colloquium XIX - June 2009

SACRED, BEAUTIFUL, & UNIVERSAL: Colloquium XIX from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.

Sorry for the hiatus

I've been very sick.  Hope to be energetic again soon.

What did the Angels really say on the first Christmas? Part II

The original Greek text of Luke 2:14 is transliterated into the Roman alphabet as follows:

Doxa en hypsistois Theo, kai epi geis eireinei en anthropois eudokia[s].

The brackets around the final letter s (sigma in Greek) are the key to this mystery.  Why are they there?

Before going into that, let's look at the Greek.  Literally, word by word: "Glory in the highest to God, and peace on earth among men good thought".  OK, I fudged on the last word.  "Eudokia" is a compound word made of "eu", an extremely common word meaning "good" or "well", and "dokia", which means "thought" or "opinion". 

Therefore "eudokia" means either "thinking well of someone else" or "being well thought of", depending on the context.  The bracketed sigma means that some manuscripts have the sigma, and others don't.  How would that affect the meaning?

If the sigma is there, then "eudokias" is a genitive singular form of the noun, which would refer to another noun in the phrase:  "men of good thought toward others".  This is how St. Jerome translated it: "bonae voluntatis" "of good will".

If the sigma is not there, then "eudokia" is the nominative singular, which means it is the subject, and this is where we get the translation "good will toward men".

What about "to those on whom His favor rests"?  I'm guessing here, but I think that depends on the interpretation of "eudokias" as "being well thought of" instead of "thinking well of someone else".  "Peace on earth to men who are well thought of" (by God); hence "peace on earth to men on whom His favor rests".

So, is the sigma there or not?  That will be the subject of the next post.

What did the Angels really say on the first Christmas? Part I

The Gospel for Midnight Mass (Luke 2:1-14) ends thus: "and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and singing".  followed by verse 14.

Here are three translations of that verse.  See if you can spot the differences:

Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.(Douay-Rhiems)

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. (King James)

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.(New International Version)

When I was a wee lad sitting in the pews during the Great Chaos (otherwise known as the 1960's), this was a verse so widely known that it even appeared on network TV (A Charlie Brown Christmas), and I would hear these differences and wonder, "What does it really say?"  This was what impelled me, eventually, to study Greek so that I could find out for myself.

First, of all, let's look at the Latin translation of the original Greek:

Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

Pretty straightforward, although we have 'in altissimis' instead of 'in excelsis' from the Gloria in the Mass (the meaning is basically the same: "in the highest").  Then we have the phrase "pax hominibus bonae voluntatis". "Bonae voluntatis" must be the genitive singular case.  So, according to the Latin, we would come down in favor of "on earth peace to men (dative plural) of good will", which is what Douay-Rhiems has.

This would make a nice parallel in the construction:  A (glory) in B (the highest) to C (God),  and X (peace) in Y (earth) to Z (men). This makes "bonae voluntatis" look like an extraneous addition, though, and where did those other two translations come from?  How could something as simple as "hominibus bonae voluntatis" come out as "good will toward men"?  It would have to be something like "et in terra pax, hominibus bona voluntas".  And where in the world does "on whom his favor rests" come from?

We'll examine that in the next post.

Spelling changes..or doesn't

In the inscription for Ruta, one thing which we have seen before is the tendency to replace "v" with "b":  using "bibet" instead of "vivet" - "she will live".  We see this in Spanish. 

Another curiousity is the fact that we have the adjective "affabilis"  spelled "atfabilis", which means, literally, "can ('abilis') be spoken ('fa') to ('at') ".  We have words derived from the same roots: affable, 'that which can be spoken to', hence, 'easy' to speak to', 'approachable', and ineffable, 'that which cannot be spoken of' .

What is the "at-" prefix, though?  This is a relic, because the "af-" of "fabilis" was originally "ad-", so this word would have been spelled "adfabilis".  "Ad" is familiar as a regular preposition and prefix in Latin meaning 'to' or 'toward', and, as a prefix, frequently changes its spelling to assimilate (ad-similate) to the word it was being attached (ad-tached) to.  So, ad + fxxxx gives us affxxxx.  In this word, however, the 'ad-' prefix, rather than assimiliating to 'af-', merely softened from a 'd' to a 't'.  Its persistence reminds us of its genesis and original spelling.

Ruta

RVTA OMNIBVS SVBDITA ET ATFABI-

LIS BIBET IN NOMINE PETRI

IN PACE

Ruta omnibus subdita et affabilis

vivet in nomine Petri

in pace

Ruta, subject to and easily spoken to by all

will live in the name of Peter

in peace.