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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The modern Lord's Prayer
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Gottschalk
Shipmate
# 13175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
I wonder if using 'sustaining' rather than substantial?
Jengie
Interesting gloss - or perhaps more than a gloss. That bread which sustains us both spiritually and physically. Of course, this is also what made the Fathers take ton arton hemon ton epiousion to refer to the Eucharist.
The epi- in epiousion also indicates a quality that is beyond what sustains, beyond what is substantial. It is thus not mere bread, nor still lembas, but something that comprehends these and transcends them. The bread that preserves us, that preserves our substance by transforming it.
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Gottschalk
Ad bellum exit Ajax
Posts: 157 | From: The Kingdom of Fife | Registered: Nov 2007
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
I am playing with Scrumpmeister’s
quote:
give us this day our substantial bread
Which is a gloss already but seems to me in the English to imply quantity. I sat with it a while and just wondered if 'sustaining' might work better. He is trying to make the connection with the Eucharist that is perceived to be there in Greek.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Gottschalk
Shipmate
# 13175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
I am playing with Scrumpmeister’s
quote:
give us this day our substantial bread
Which is a gloss already but seems to me in the English to imply quantity. I sat with it a while and just wondered if 'sustaining' might work better. He is trying to make the connection with the Eucharist that is perceived to be there in Greek.
Jengie
True any translation is already a gloss.Hence the difficulties of a liturgy to be "understanded of the people" that is ultimately derived from other languages.
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Gottschalk
Ad bellum exit Ajax
Posts: 157 | From: The Kingdom of Fife | Registered: Nov 2007
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The Scrumpmeister
Ship’s Taverner
# 5638
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by keibat:
This, he tells us, was the Scrumpmeister’s penultimate working version of the Lord’s Prayer :
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed by your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us today our substantial bread.
and forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
I’m glad the typo in line 2 has been corrected, or an errant school of doctrine might have grown up around the theology of the Creator being sanctified through the agency of their own Name.
I did have the same thought. I can handle typos where the intention is clear, but where they actually form a real word I begin to kick myself ever so gently.
quote:
I have another quibble with modern versions, which is the replacement of 'IN earth as in heaven' by 'ON earth'. Paradoxically, 'on earth' makes more sense in a preCopernican understanding of the universe, where heaven is firmly located up there along with clouds etc. Surely we should now understand earth to refer here to the entire created universe, not just our little planet Sol III; and to my mind, 'IN earth' expresses that better. So I persist in saying 'in', not 'on'.
I would suggest that our modern understanding of the cosmos necessitates the opposite.
I know that prepositions are funny things, and often do not translate well from one language to the next. We might refer to being in a country while being on an island or on a continent. On the Caribbean island where I grew up, there is the expression "off-island", used to mean "overseas" or "abroad".
Yet certainly, in contemporary English, we do not refer to a phenomenon occurring in a planet unless we're talking about some subterranean event or process. When referring to events on a planet's surface, whether they be geological features or the functioning of societies, surely it's more usual to refer to such things as being on the planet. I have never heard anybody, for instance, have a discussion about whether there might life in other planets. The TV series was definitely entitled Life on Mars, and, as Monty Python exhorted us:
quote:
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
cos there's bugger all down here on earth
While I'm not in the habit of using the works of the good gentlemen of Monty Python as a foundation for liturgical texts, it does provide us with a good example of how modern English is used on this point.
I'm afraid I can't see any justification for rendering "on earth" as "in earth" in a modern English version of the Our Father.
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
I am playing with Scrumpmeister’s
quote:
give us this day our substantial bread
Which is a gloss already but seems to me in the English to imply quantity. I sat with it a while and just wondered if 'sustaining' might work better. He is trying to make the connection with the Eucharist that is perceived to be there in Greek.
Thank you for your suggestion, Jengie, and for this clarification.
It probably speaks volumes that the reading of substantial that you suggest didn't actually occur to me, even though it is the most obvious reading in English. Certainly, that it how it would read to someone walking through the church door and not thinking theologically.
In truth, I don't like it. I used it because it was the clearest word adopted in the French version, which is the liturgical lingua franca of my church, if you'll pardon the expression.
I think that sustaining is a much better effort than substantial. However, the bishop has agreed that the French effort is a poor one and that we stick with supersubstantial. It is unknown in English but then we sing many such words in our hymns and prayers because of their accuracy, and we overcome the difficulty in understanding with catechesis.
[ 18. January 2018, 16:42: Message edited by: The Scrumpmeister ]
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If Christ is not fully human, humankind is not fully saved. - St John of Saint-Denis
Posts: 14741 | From: Greater Manchester, UK | Registered: Mar 2004
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
I've really enjoyed your posts on translating the Lord's Prayer, Scrumpmeister. Really interesting and thought provoking.
Among the thoughts provoked are these two:
First, given the Greek that has been discussed here, does anyone know how we got "daily" bread? (BTW, I know your bishop chose otherwise, but I really like “sustaining bread." Thanks for that Jennie jon. Definitely worth chewing on.)
Second, I was particularly struck by "as in heaven, so on earth," which strongly echoes the Hermetic "As above, so below." Was that something you thought about?
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
Posts: 2833 | From: On heaven-crammed earth | Registered: Sep 2009
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k-mann
Shipmate
# 8490
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gottschalk:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
I wonder if using 'sustaining' rather than substantial?
Jengie
Interesting gloss - or perhaps more than a gloss. That bread which sustains us both spiritually and physically. Of course, this is also what made the Fathers take ton arton hemon ton epiousion to refer to the Eucharist.
The epi- in epiousion also indicates a quality that is beyond what sustains, beyond what is substantial. It is thus not mere bread, nor still lembas, but something that comprehends these and transcends them. The bread that preserves us, that preserves our substance by transforming it.
I don’t think we need to interpret it as something ‘mysterious’ at all. The preposition ἐπί (epi) simply means ‘for, at, over, to.’ So it seems to me at least that when you combine ἐπί and οὐσία (ousía, ‘being, existence’) to create ἐπιούσιος (eoiousios), it simply means that which is at or for the being or existence of the person. It seems to me, then, that it simply means the bread needed for existence; the bread you need to uphold your ‘substance.’ Maybe ‘life-sustaining’ is a good English rendition.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that yiu cannot interpret this also in a more ‘spiritual’ way, referring perhaps to the Eucharist or something else, but it seems to me that this would be something in addition to the more straightforward literal reading.
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"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."
— Paul Tillich
Katolikken
Posts: 1314 | From: Norway | Registered: Sep 2004
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
Could it be that the punctuation is wrong and is in the wrong place?
Could we not read:
And lead us;
not into temptation,
but deliver us
from evil.
Just a thought.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Could it be that the punctuation is wrong and is in the wrong place?
Could we not read:
And lead us;
not into temptation,
but deliver us
from evil.
Just a thought.
Don't think that would work in the Greek.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Could it be that the punctuation is wrong and is in the wrong place?
Could we not read:
And lead us;
not into temptation,
but deliver us
from evil.
Just a thought.
Don't think that would work in the Greek.
Probably not.
What investigation could be made into the word for 'lead'?
Is there an alternative translation that doesn't suggest that God leads us, as in directs us, into temptation?
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
Could a free translation carry the meaning, 'Instead of leading us into temptation, deliver us from evil?'
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
[ETA I think that’s a pretty good stab at the feel/force of that petition]
I think there are two difficulties. One is the word temptation, which doesn’t generally connote the ideas of being tested or tried which are there in the Greek. The second is that the rhetorical ‘trick’ used - something like affirming a positive by denying its negative - is essentially one that we don’t use in our language/ culture. (Another would be the love/hate idiom found in biblical texts). Essentially the parallelism means that we should read the first “lead us not” statement as having the same basic meaning as the “but deliver us” statement.
[ 01. February 2018, 21:35: Message edited by: BroJames ]
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