Liturgical English: Developing an Orthodox Language Study Group

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5Loaves,

Thanks for sharing those articles. They were quite interesting. I’m sure you know, but for the sake of other viewers here, someone over at Byzcath mentioned that neither the original (Koine) Greek Biblical or Liturgical texts, nor the Latin “Vulgate” or Liturgical texts were in the “street” Greek/Latin of the day, but were rather deliberately in a different form of the language(s). As to what form that was, it seems unclear to me. Fr. Taft, S.J. mentions that, as far as the Latin Vulgate and Liturgical texts are concerned, it certainly wasn’t in the “liturgical” Latin of the day. At that time there actually was a “liturgical” Latin used during the pagan rituals. The early Christians deliberately avoided using this form of Latin for their liturgical services. Fr. Taft claims that they used instead the spoken form of Latin. However, I’ve heard from a number of other sources that it wasn’t actually the spoken form, but a different form that was used. Whether this same pertained to the situation of the Greek East I do not know. But it doesn’t seem so much that an “archaic” form of either language was used. It seems to have been more of an adapted literary form. But then again, I could be wrong.

The problem with liturgical English is that we are either going to be translating into an “archaic” form of English that at one time was the spoken (and often “vulgar”) form of the language, or we will be translating into the modern idiom. There doesn’t really seem to be “high” and “low” (or “literary” and “spoken”) forms of English as there are in other languages. If such were the case I would argue that liturgical translations need to be in “high/literary” English as opposed to “low/spoken” English. So it seems we end up having to make up a “high/literary” English to be used in our liturgical services. Since it’s something we’re sort of making up, we end up with the “early modern/Elizabethan/KJV/Douey-Rheims” advocates and the “appropriate modern/literary” advocates. If I were to be quite honest, I vacillate between the two. 😊
 
Phillip_Rolfes said:
5Loaves,

Thanks for sharing those articles. They were quite interesting. I’m sure you know, but for the sake of other viewers here, someone over at Byzcath mentioned that neither the original (Koine) Greek Biblical or Liturgical texts, nor the Latin “Vulgate” or Liturgical texts were in the “street” Greek/Latin of the day, but were rather deliberately in a different form of the language(s).
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Fr. Irenei (Steenberg) addressed this in his on line audio introduction, as well as during the first night we met. Indeed he said that the Hebrew used in the Temple in the time of Christ was also a Temple Hebrew and that the man in the street would not have “understood” it without having been instructed, and that this accounts for some of the places where Matthew, writing in Aramaic, gives translations for some quotes from Sacred Scripture in his Gospel.
 
I just realized while mentioning Saint John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco in this post that I hadn’t mentioned as a point of interest that the Working Group meets in the ROCOR Western American Diocese, downstairs, which is also the Parish of St. Tikhon, the home where St. John lived with his orphans. The iconostasis was brought with them when they came here from the Philippines.
 
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