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Dr. Farmer Dr. Bill Farmer There has been a long and on-going discussion throughout Christendom about the kind of language to use in worship services. Some are quite informal, using daily language, even colloquial, language. The overwhelming majority are more formal ranging from structured liturgy with modern language, through antique language and highly structured formal services, to services in Latin or Greek (there are a handful who worship in Aramaic and Coptic, and no doubt some others I am not familiar with - who can know what all of some 2 and 1/2 billion are up to?). In some recent debates over the matter, I had the opportunity to present a few facts on the subject that some might find illuminating. First - the ancient Greek text was written in what is known as "koine" Greek - many may have seen the word "koinonia" and heard it translated as "fellowship", and that's OK but very weak. The word is a contraction for "kai oinos" meaning to "get together with a jug of wine" (a common situation in which "fellowship" takes place). This is to say that the original Greek text is "tavern talk" or the language of the common man as opposed to fancy classical Greek - in other words "it ain't Homer". Similarly, the Latin text which was produced by St. Jerome is known as the "vulgate" (which is related to our word "vulgar), again indicating that the text is written for the common man in the common man's language. Now the English versions used in public worship have been dominated until the last 50 years by the "King James" English which is virtually Shakespearean, elegant, majestic and still the most quoted, and the liturgical churches such as the Roman Catholic and Episcopal have tended to retain these high standards of poetic and archaic language (the 1928 book of Common Prayer and its predecessors is still one of the great monuments of English Literature) using the familiar "thee, though, art, giveth, saith and so on). What has become amusing is that the proponents of Latin are usually under the impression that they are using really lofty and Godly language (Latin dominated Christian worship worldwide for 19 centuries), when in fact, as noted above, it is really "street talk" (just really old "street talk"). While my personal preference is for the nobility of 16th century English, I have to admit that the folks who use modern common man's English are closer to the intent of the original translators whose chief concern was that the language communicate clearly to everyone. So it is that while it takes a bit of language study to understand that where Psalm 119 v. 147 (old KJV) says, "I prevented the dawning of the morning..." only means that he got up before sunrise, the folks that say "he rolled out of bed really early in the morning" are closer to the intent of Mark and Luke and good old crabby St. Jerome (You should read his bio! Talk about hard to live with!).
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