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The Gospel in Commonplace English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

Edmund Hill O.P.
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The translation of two sections of the Gospel which is given below is an experiment of a sort that seems quite popular nowadays. Its purpose is to make the Gospel strike the English reader with the same kind of impact, the same force and freshness, that it would have had upon the Greek-speakers for whom it was immediately written. It is an attempt to clear the incense-laden air of nineteen centuries, to find the Gospels unembalmed, unritualized; yes, unconsecrated and stripped of the sacred vestments with which every generation has adorned them. Not that this solemnizing process is in any way to be regretted, or that the versions which it has influenced are bad versions. They are signs of a proper reverence for what is holy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 9 , Issue 101 , November 1954 , pp. 217 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © 1954 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 This word, instead of lacking the everyday associations of the Greek, fails rather to convey its special religious allusion. The Greek word is genesis; the first words of the Gospel are ‘Book of genesis of Jesus Christ'. Thus by the mere use of this phrase, which he echoes here as he proceeds from the genealogy to the story of our Lord's birth, St Matthew suggests that in Christ a new creation is being made, a new line of descent is being started to replace descent from Adam. The phrase ‘book of genesis’ occurs at Genesis 2,4. ‘This is the book of genesis of heaven and earth', and at Genesis 5, 1, ‘This is the book of genesis of men, in the day that God made Adam'.

2 If I were to be consistent with my rules, I should translate this as Holy Breath, which would sound not unusual merely, but ridiculous. But it's worth noting that the idea of breath supplies the metaphor on which all our most theological concepts of the Holy Ghost are built up.

3 The Greek just says ‘of Lord's', not ‘of the Lord's'. ‘Lord’ is m fact “being used as a proper name, standing for the ineffable tetragrammaton.