Latin Anyone?

Last updated on: January 30, 2012 at 9:13 am by Joel Willitts

Latin Anyone? 2012-01-30T09:13:10-04:00 Joel Willitts

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I’m not one to use Latin phrases. For one I don’t know Latin. Now I’m not proud of this. As a quasi-academic in the Christian tradition, I wish I knew Latin. Alas, we only live one life and mine does not include Latin.

If your young and academically interested, Latin is a good language to pick up along the way if you have the time and inclination.

Continuing down this rabbit trail (this post was not suppose to be about Latin, but on “Lex Orandi, Lex Credndi” – see my next tomorrow), I want to tell you about the one and only time I met with Martin Hengel. I was studying for a semester in Tuebingen Germany in the winter term of 2003-04. Hengel tracked me down through the Faculty and invited me to visit him for tea at his home. Think of how you would feel if you got a call that said “Prof Martin Hengel would like to meet you”! Yea pretty crazy.

As it turned out, Simon Gathercole (Cambridge) was also in Tuebingen at the time. We were both staying at the Bengel House. He was also invited by Hengel, so Simon and I went together to visit him. It was a surreal experience to say the least. I could say so much about it. One thing that stands out in my memory of Hengel’s modest home was the book shelves full of WUNT volumes in the foyer.

The one thing that stands out most from our conversation during the couple hour visit was Hengel’s complaint that evangelical seminaries were not teaching Latin alongside Hebrew and Greek. It was actually amusing how exercised he was about this point. Hengel sarcastically said evangelicals think that early Christianity stopped with the New Testament. He further loathed the fact that both in Germany and the US early childhood education no longer taught Latin. He was really on a soap box for Latin that day. Well, I respect Hengel’s point and I think if I could live my life over again I would learn Latin. But that’s not going to happen (at least I don’t think!) – I don’t ever see myself learning Latin at this point in my life.

It’s importance notwithstanding, I must admit I find the use of Latin phrases in writing to be excessively pompous since most readers today aren’t familiar with them. If you want to alienate readers slip in a Latin phrase every now and then and this will surely do it. To be completely transparent (and this says a great deal about my pedigree or lack there of), I keep a link open on my computer to look up phrases when I come across them. I forget what they mean.

Can we have a moratorium on Latin phrases in writing of every kind?! If you think concepts with Latin phrases, good for you. But will you go ahead and translate those for us common folk. Thanks!

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