Bible English
Identify
the source of the following quotation:
"For many are called, but
few are chosen."
a) Marine Corps recruiting
advertisementb) John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Addressc) Publishers Clearinghouse
Sweepstakesd) The Gospel according to Matthew
If you selected a), b), or
c), then you are probably not a resident of Chajul, in the mountainous Ixil
Triangle region of Guatemala. Chajul is one outpost in the far-flung network
maintained by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an evangelical group whose
aim is to translate the Bible into all the languages in which its words have
yet to be written. The SIL, which is a sister organization of the Huntington
Beach, Calif., based Wycliffe Bible Translators, has Scripture translation
projects under way in some 1,200 languages (at a cost of about $100 million
annually).
Because
many of those languages have never even possessed alphabets, let alone
dictionaries, the SIL translators are doing some of the most important
linguistic work in the world. In Chajul, according to an article in the most
recent issue of Natural History magazine, evangelico missionaries
have made deep inroads at the expense of Roman Catholicism, as they have
elsewhere in Latin America. The language of Chajul into which the Bible is
newly making an appearance is the Indian language known as Ixil.
What will be the impact of a vernacular Bible on the future
development of the Ixil language? One can hardly help but think back to the
early days of English. All told there have been about 250 English translations
of the Bible since the first complete one produced by John Wycliffe and his
colleagues in 1382. From the point of view of the English language, the most
important translations were those of William Tyndale (1530) and of the 54
"learned men" who brought forth the King James Version (1611). In wresting the
Bible from the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, the translators set a high standard
for ordinary spoken and written English. The coinages and cadences of the
Tyndale Bible--"eat, drink, and be merry"; "a fool's paradise"; "fight the good
fight"; "suffer the children"; "the salt of the earth"; "in his right mind";
"the powers that be"--and of the King James Version have for three centuries
served both as psychic libretto and as percussion section for English speakers
everywhere. And, as the printing press gave momentum to these new vernacular
Bibles, so too did the English language itself acquire new cohesion and power.
(An archaeological aside: The entwining of Bible, printing press, and popular
literacy reveals itself in a curious fact from the New World. In
religion-soaked colonial New England, pieces of movable type show up frequently
during excavations of early sites; they don't show up at all at sites of
comparable age in less aggressively pious Virginia.)
Whether
biblical language will continue to serve the same functions in English is
another story. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Second Inaugural Address knowing full
well that his biblical tropes ("woe unto the world because of
offenses!"--Matthew 18:7) would be recognized by everyone. I suspect that most
Americans today cannot even name all 10 of the Ten Commandments. Recently I
sent a team of crack investigators "to and fro in the earth, and walking up and
down in it" (Job 1:7)--that is, I sent my associates Lessie Arnold, Alexandra
Custis, Julia Livshin, Ashley Malcolm, and Katherine Romano out into the
highways and byways of the Boston metropolitan area. Their task: To ask people
on the street if certain well-known phrases from the Bible--not identified as
such, of course--struck them as being in any way familiar; and, if the phrases
were familiar, to ask the respondents to name the provenance. In all, some 300
people were consulted about some 30 biblical quotations.
The most surprising result is the number of
commonplace expressions that seem no longer to be all that common--that did not
register at all or "fell on rocky ground" (Matthew 13:5). As you would expect,
everyone who was stopped for questioning had heard the words "And God said 'Let
there be light' " and knew they were from the Bible. But a distinct majority of
those surveyed failed even to recognize the expressions "New wine into old
bottles" (Mark 2:22); "The price of wisdom is above rubies" (Job 28:18); "Put
not your trust in princes" (Psalms 146:3); "Can the Ethiopian change his skin,
or the leopard his spots?" (Jeremiah 13:23); "What is truth?" (John 18:38); "He
gave up the ghost" (Luke 23:46); and "The poor you will always have with you"
(Deuteronomy 15:11, Matthew 26:11). The writer of Ecclesiastes (1:9) allowed
that "There is no new thing under the sun," but for half of those surveyed, the
remark itself was such a thing.
In many cases, although
an expression may have been generally familiar, its origin remained a matter of
mystery or guesswork. Thus the statement "To everything there is a season"
(Ecclesiastes 3:1) was universally known, but at the same time it was almost
universally ascribed to "a song from the '60s." "The truth shall make you free"
(John 8:32) was likewise known to all respondents, but only one person
identified the Bible as the source. (The guesses of other respondents included:
"Socrates," "something from Disney?" "Kierkegaard," "Emerson," and "Liar,
Liar --the movie with Jim Carrey.") Some other suggested sources of biblical
quotations: Oliver Twist for "A man after his own heart" (Samuel 13:14);
Dorothy Parker for "Don't cast your pearls before swine" (Matthew 7:6);
Catullus or Pink Floyd for "The writing on the wall" (Daniel 5:5); Marine Corps
recruiting advertisement for "Many are called, but few are chosen" (Matthew
22:14).
Note: Of all the Boston-area locations surveyed--and these
included commuter-rail and subway stations, library parking lots, and suburban
shopping malls--Harvard Square yielded the most embarrassing results. "If God
spare my life," Tyndale once vowed to an educated friend, "ere many years I
will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than
thou doest." Tyndale has probably succeeded beyond his imagining: Today, any
Farm Belt inhabitant picked at random surely knows more of Scripture than any
randomly picked inhabitant of an American university town. On behalf of the
Harvard Square respondents, it must be said that ignorance was masked by a
bravura self-confidence. Asked the about the expression "Suffer fools gladly"
(Corinthians 11:19), the first 10 people surveyed ventured a source with
disarming speed: "Wordsworth," "Hamlet ," "Hamlet ,"
"Hamlet ," "Wordsworth," "Beowulf ," "Chaucer," "Macbeth ,"
"Herrick," and "Gerard Manly Hopkins." One might have been tempted to chide
these respondents with the comment that "Pride goes before a fall" (Proverbs
16:19), but doubtless they would just have snapped back brazenly with
"Euripides" or "Racine."
In a recent op-ed article in
the New York Times , the theologian Michael Novak argued that a new
appreciation for, and sensitivity to, religious matters was "stirring
everywhere." This certainly would hold true in Chajul, Guatemala. Exempted from
Novak's observation might be executives at Reebok, who last year professed to
have been unaware of connotations associated with the name they gave to a new
women's running shoe: "Incubus." (An incubus is an evil spirit that has
sex with sleeping women; the term is a product of medieval theological lore,
not of the Bible.) Whatever the fortunes of religion itself, a dwindling
cultural acquaintance with the Bible's English is surely inevitable. To
paraphrase Pink Floyd (or was it Catullus?), the writing is on the wall.
