Sanctus, Sanctus Sanctus

[MarkThompson]

It does seem strange that the 1961 Missal seems to have a comma and the 1962 Missal seems not to have a comma. I wonder what the reason for that can be.

The reason is that it does not matter, and all these distinctions are specious.

 

[EphelDuath]

My 1961 Roman Missal has:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus, etc, and
Holy, holy, holy, Lord, etc.

Today I just checked the Benzinger Brothers Inc. publication of the 1961 Missale and there was no comma.

Which publisher did you get yours from?

 

[drforjc]

The reason is that it does not matter, and all these distinctions are specious.

It does matter, though, in how it is to be rendered in English translation. The new English translation removed a comma after the word “Lord.” It hardly seems that that was done without some purpose in mind.

 

[MarkThompson]

It does matter, though, in how it is to be rendered in English translation.

That’s just the thing, though. It really, really, doesn’t matter.

 

[jacksond]

There is no comma after the third Sanctus because the sentence is a statement: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, the God of Hosts”. Neither the earlier nor the new translations, in my opinion have translated correctly.

 

[EphelDuath]

There’s no “est” in the prayer, so I can hardly see how that’s a more literally accurate prayer.

 

[jacksond]

Hebrew, Greek and Latin - like modern Russian - have a NOMINAL SENTENCE construction, where two nouns A B or a noun and and adjective are taken to be statements of identity or description without any expressed verb, so A B means ‘A is B’ . In the Isaiah verse the Douay-Rheims version is excessively literal in saying ‘holy the Lord God of hosts’ where other translations express the link ‘is’

 

[ProVobis]

Hebrew, Greek and Latin - like modern Russian - have a NOMINAL SENTENCE construction, where two nouns A B or a noun and and adjective are taken to be statements of identity or description without any expressed verb, so A B means ‘A is B’ . In the Isaiah verse the Douay-Rheims version is excessively literal in saying ‘holy the Lord God of hosts’ where other translations express the link ‘is’

This seems to be true of inflected languages in general. As long as one can distinguish the nominative from the accusative or ablative, one might be able to get by without the verb. But when this is translated into a non-inflected language (such as English) and a verb needs to be supplied, a translator must make an educated guess as to whether the supplied verb is indicative or subjunctive, such as “is” or “be,” for example. Or in some cases he just lets it go, such as “Glory to God in the highest” but that comes from usage more than what’s really meant.