{"id":6612,"date":"2024-07-08T07:37:42","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T11:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mudbloodcatholic\/?p=6612"},"modified":"2024-07-08T07:37:42","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T11:37:42","slug":"a-thorn-in-the-flesh-epistle-for-7-july-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mudbloodcatholic\/2024\/07\/a-thorn-in-the-flesh-epistle-for-7-july-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thorn in the Flesh (Epistle for 7 July, 2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Saint Paul Needs a Prequel Miniseries<\/h4>\n I wound up with about twice as much \u201cfront matter\u201d in this post as I expected! Counting the heading right above this paragraph as the first, the passage proper begins after the fifth heading. Skip to there if you want to jump right in.<\/p>\n We all \u201cknow about\u201d St. Paul, to the point that none of us know about him. I am in no position to offer an adequate primer on him here and now. Even a summary of what we do know would be hard pressed to do that knowledge justice. He easily ranked beside Plato or Cicero in intelligence, passion, erudition, and idiosyncracy, not to mention long-term influence.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I was going to put an ikon of him here,<\/small> \nbut then it struck me that<\/small> \nSt. Paul would probably prefer this.<\/small><\/p>\n That said, the reader doesn\u2019t need to know a lot about him for this passage to make sense. It\u2019s more interesting and resonant if you have some backstory, but it\u2019d perfectly comprehensible even if it were anonymous. However, I would like to highlight one thing that this passage brushes up against, but which I rarely hear spoken of: Paul\u2019s mysticism, which I suspect of being (or being derived from) Merkavah mysticism.<\/p>\n

This Is Not That Prequel Miniseries<\/h4>\n Unluckily, Merkavah (or Merkabah) mysticism is another topic that I can\u2019t do justice to! This is because I simply don\u2019t yet understand it very well; \u201cbut such as I have I give thee.\u201d<\/p>\n Its name comes from the description given by Ezekiel of the divine throne or chariot (\u05de\u05b6\u05e8\u05b0\u05db\u05b8\u05bc\u05d1\u05b8\u05d4 [mer\u2019kavah<\/em>], \u201ccarriage, chariot\u201d), which the angelic beings called Thrones<\/a> accompany. Merkavah mysticism was the \u201cstandard\u201d variety of Judaic mysticism during the Second Temple period (515 BC<\/small>-70 CE<\/small>). It continued producing new mystics and mystical works for centuries after the destruction of the Temple; I gather its most productive period was a little after the failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the early second century, but some early Merkavah materials, and related Hekhalot literature,1<\/sup> date to before the life of Christ. Both overlapped with the apocalyptic genre. The book of Enoch is probably the most famous example of Hekhalot literature, while the New Testament books of Hebrews and Revelation\u2014both of which are concerned with a heavenly temple that is the archetype of which the terrestrial Temple was the ectype<\/a>\u2014both suggest influence from Merkavah mysticism and\/or Hekhalot writings.<\/p>\n One thing a Merkavah adept might hope to do\u2014and one he would know enough about to understand what was going on, if it happened to him or someone else\u2014was to make what they called \u201cthe descent\u201d:2<\/sup> a journey into the heavenly palaces. There, if God favored them, they might receive the most sublime visions yet, or even converse with the Lord as when \u201cthe Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.\u201d<\/p>\n The reason I\u2019m so reticent about whether this was one of St. Paul\u2019s personal ambitions is that, bluntly, I doubt he was such a fool. To phrase it lightly, the descent was not something one made a nice afternoon out of: it was a long, taxing, and indeed a dangerous endeavor; for \u201cit is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.\u201d There is a story preserved in the Talmud known as the Pardes<\/em> legend, about four eminent scholars who accomplished the descent (pardes<\/em>, \u201corchard,\u201d is a term derived from Persian and related to the word \u201cparadise\u201d): Rabbis Akiva ben Joseph, Simeon ben Azzai, Simeon ben Zoma, and a fourth referred to only as Acher<\/em>, \u201cthe Other One.\u201d All four were surpassingly wise and virtuous; in fact, they were the only men of their age to fully grasp the mystical significance of the Torah. And of them, only one<\/em>, R. Akiva, returned safely in body and soul. Ben Azzai died on beholding God; ben Zoma was driven mad; and \u201cthe Other One,\u201d known to history as the apostate Elisha ben Abuyah, fell into idolatry in heaven itself.3<\/sup><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A depiction of one of the Thrones,4<\/sup> dating<\/small> \nto the English Renaissance; note (the top of)<\/small> \na set of scales in the Throne\u2019s hand. Photo<\/small> \nby Martin Harris (CC BY-SA 4.0\u2014source<\/a>).<\/small><\/p>\n Principles: Translation Versus Hermeneutics<\/h4>\n*** ** The handling of this passage is a little odd. English translations regularly make verse 7 the beginning of its own sentence, but in the Greek, it\u2019s the final phrase of the sentence in verse 6, no two ways about it. This is why I\u2019ve included verse 6 in my translation, even though it isn\u2019t part of the Mass reading. (I distinguished it the way I\u2019ve done for skipped verses elsewhere, printing the text that isn\u2019t present in the lectionary reading in grey.) By a coincidence that just seems impossibly<\/em> stupid, this small difference in verse divisions is what moved me to write the next several paragraphs here, detailing parts of how I approach my work. Originally, I put them to a footnote; however, the presuppositions we make about how translation is supposed to work are pretty important\u2014and even I am embarrassed to need to distinguish paragraphs within a footnote\u2014so I moved them up here.<\/p>\n ** What comes up here is the difference between translating a text on the one hand, and interpreting a text on the other. In substance, it\u2019s the difference between telling people what it says<\/em>, and explaining what it means<\/em>. Those two things are closely related, and at times are inextricable, yet not always. It\u2019ll be easiest to illustrate why by starting from the opposite extreme: one in which translation and interpretation are doing totally distinct things.<\/p>\n ** There\u2019s a convention in anime shows that have romantic subplots, where one character will say this stock phrase to another: \u6708\u304c\u7dba\u9e97\u3067\u3059\u306d [tsuki ga kirei, desu ne<\/em>]. The translation of this phrase is \u201cThe moon is beautiful, isn\u2019t it\u201d; which, okay, fine\u2014except that isn\u2019t the significance<\/em> of the stock phrase. It became \u201cstock\u201d in the first place because it represents something else. The social norms of Japanese culture are highly motivated to avoid embarrassment, and therefore often classify direct speech about sensitive topics as distasteful. The upshot of all this is, the effective meaning of the stock phrase \u6708\u304c\u7dba\u9e97\u3067\u3059\u306d is \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n ** Now, if you look up \u6708\u304c\u7dba\u9e97\u3067\u3059\u306d in a dictionary, whether following the vocabulary by sound or the characters by scripts and radicals, none of it translates to \u201cI,\u201d \u201clove,\u201d or \u201cyou.\u201d That\u2019s because meaning never works that simply, in any human culture; it always operates on multiple planes simultaneously. To arrive at the correct, but exceedingly non-literal, interpretation of the Japanese, you have to know what cultural and contextual clues to follow.<\/p>\n ** ***<\/p>\n A copy of a woodcarving from 1475<\/small>*** \ndepicting the \u201cseven heavens\u201d (or nine,<\/small> \nif the sphere of the fixed stars<\/small> ***\nand the Empyrean<\/a> are counted).<\/small><\/p>\n This is obviously not a new problem! But it bothers me, because it\u2019s in tension with the philosophy of translation I prefer. This philosophy is that I, as a translator, should interpose myself between the reader and the text itself as little as possible<\/em>. I\u2019m at liberty to offer commentary on the text as well as<\/em> translate, and I do; but the two activities need to be very clearly distinguished from each other, both to me and to the reader. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest one is, I have no right to arrogate Scriptural authority to my opinions!<\/p>\n This is what leads me, first, to my appetite for literalism; and then immediately to my next-highest desire, to be idiomatic: both are versions of the desire for maximum clarity<\/em>, for the text and not me to speak. (Or rather, for the text to speak and, if I speak at all, for me to speak distinctly from it.) The problem is, while I think these two desires\u2014literal translation and idiomatic translation\u2014are less in conflict than many translators make them out to be, it is<\/em> nearly always true that they can\u2019t both be equally satisfied. Occasionally, one of them has to be sacrificed entirely to get a text in readable English.<\/p>\n Idiom, \u00c6sthetics, and Vocabulary<\/h4>\n***** ** Overall, I\u2019d say that if my translation in this post has a weakness, it\u2019s that it doesn\u2019t sound as pretty<\/em> as alternatives like the RSV\u2019s; that\u2019s a real shame, because I find Paul\u2019s variety of elegance particularly winsome. However, there\u2019s only one book of the Bible in which I believe that \u00e6sthetic considerations ought to enjoy a casting vote; and II Corinthians is not a Psalm, so too bad for me.<\/p>\n ** <\/p>\n ** Lastly, I think I\u2019ve talked about the following stuff before, but I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever given a full explanation. When translating, I try to avoid what are sometimes called \u201cGreeklish\u201d words\u2014apostle<\/em>, canon<\/em>, presbyter<\/em>, etc.\u2014and replace them with more-familiar English equivalents such as \u201cenvoy,\u201d \u201crule,\u201d or \u201celder.\u201d This in itself is not very unusual, but I carry the principle a lot further than most translators of the New Testament, even excising words like angel<\/em> and Christ<\/em> in favor of \u201cmessenger\u201d and \u201cAnointed.\u201d<\/p>\n ** I wish to emphasize, this is not<\/em> because I think they have \u201cbeen mistranslated.\u201d They haven\u2019t; as a matter of fact, I will citizen\u2019s-arrest the first person who so much as thinks<\/em> the phrase \u201ca game of telephone\u201d while reading this post. Moreover, the concepts represented by our \u201cGreeklish\u201d words are plenty distinctive enough to merit our having specialized terms for them. Especially given those ideas came to us from Greek, there\u2019s absolutely no reason we shouldn\u2019t have, keep, and use such words, speaking in general. The reason I steer away from them in this context is that I\u2019m trying to make the text as it then was to its first readers<\/em> maximally accessible; to them, these bits of \u201cGreenglish\u201d were still just ordinary words, so that\u2019s how I want them to hit here. That is the ideal description, of course, from which any execution will fall short, but that is<\/em> the ideal I\u2019m falling short of when I do so.<\/p>\n ** *****<\/p>\n II Corinthians 12.******* ** 6,<\/span> 7-10, RSV-CE<\/h4>\n ** *******Though if I wish to boast, I shall not be a fool,a<\/sup> for I shall be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.<\/span> And to keep me from being too elatedc<\/sup> by the abundance of revelations,b<\/sup> a thornd<\/sup> was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan,e<\/sup> to harassf<\/sup> me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, \u201cMy grace is sufficientg<\/sup> for you, for my power is made perfecth<\/sup> in weakness.\u201d I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest uponi<\/sup> me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults,j<\/sup> hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.k<\/sup><\/p>\n II Corinthians 12.******* ** 6,<\/span> 7-10, my translation<\/h4>\n ** For even if I do want to brag, I will not be senseless,a<\/sup> for I am telling the truth: yet I spare it, lest anyone reckon me above whatever they see or hear from me,<\/span> in superiority from the revelations.b<\/sup> So that I would not be exaltedc<\/sup> on their account, there was given to me a spiked<\/sup> in my flesh, a messenger from Satan,e<\/sup> so that it should beatf<\/sup> me, so that I would not be exalted. About this, three times, I appealed to the Lord that it be sent away from me; yet he told me: \u201cMy grace sufficesg<\/sup> you; for power is finishedh<\/sup> in weakness.\u201d Most gladly, then, I will brag instead about my weaknesses, so that the power of the Anointed may quarter withi<\/sup> me. Because of this, I am pleased with weaknesses, insults,j<\/sup> needs, persecutions, and distresses, over the Anointed; for whenever I am weak, then I am powerful.k<\/sup><\/p>\n ** <\/p>\n ** Russian ikon of St. Paul the Apostle<\/small> \n(love you St. Paul, and I did put the<\/small> \npicture of Jesus first<\/em>, but I didn\u2019t<\/small> *******\npromise not to have one of you in).<\/small><\/p>\n Textual Notes<\/h4>\n a. a fool\/senseless:<\/strong> This word (\u1f04\u03c6\u03c1\u03c9\u03bd [afr\u014dn<\/em>], for those of you scoring at home) is quite interesting from a strictly linguistic point of view. The virtue of temperance or moderation was referred to in Greek by the related name \u03c3\u03c9\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03cd\u03bd\u03b7 [s\u014dfros\u00fcn\u0113<\/em>], literally \u201csound-of-mind-ness\u201d\u2014sanity, or even sobriety, would be reasonably good modernizations. Both terms derive from a word that goes back to the Homeric era, and indeed to proto-Indo-European<\/a>: \u03c6\u03c1\u03ae\u03bd [fr\u0113n<\/em>], which probably meant \u201cmidriff\u201d or \u201cheart, breast\u201d; and yes, the term \u201cphrenology\u201d has just hoved into view, but as it\u2019s entirely too silly, I\u2019m having that one hoven back. (What may look like an e\/o<\/em> discrepancy between derivatives of this root is actually a familiar feature of proto-Indo-European grammar.)<\/p>\n As for its meaning, the word kind of boxed the compass, between the time when Homer was (reputedly) barding his \u03c6\u03c1\u03ae\u03bd out and the time when St. Paul disclosed his to Corinth. At different periods, it could denote the seat of your appetites, your intellect, your emotions, your will\u2014basically, the border of its meaning amounted to \u201cthat which prompts behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Ladder of Divine Ascent<\/em>, a celebrated<\/small>******* \nikon from St. Catherine\u2019s Monastery<\/small> *******\non Mount Sinai, Egypt.<\/small><\/p>\n However! All of this is merely interesting detail that lends a little color to translating \u1f04\u03c6\u03c1\u03c9\u03bd (i.e., being without \u03c6\u03c1\u03ae\u03bd<\/em> or lacking \u03c6\u03c1\u03ae\u03bd<\/em>) as \u201csenseless.\u201d<\/p>\n b. the abundance of revelations\/in superiority by the revelations:<\/strong> As I\u2019ve said, I prefer to keep my role as an interpreter of the text to a minimum; however, occasionally it can\u2019t be avoided, and that seems to apply in this case. The wording, thankfully, is not at stake: \u03c4\u1fc7 \u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u1fc7 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03cd\u03c8\u03b5\u03c9\u03bd [t\u0113 h\u00fcperbol\u0113 t\u014dn apokal\u00fcpse\u014dn<\/em>], translated literally, is \u201cthe excess of the revelations.\u201d (Neither the RSV nor my translation actually use \u201cexcess\u201d to translate \u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u03ae, so, to limit confusion, I\u2019m going to do the pastor-fresh-out-of-seminary thing and use the Greek word in the rest of this note.)<\/p>\n The point of contention is what meaning \u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u03ae bears in this context. It\u2019s in what\u2019s called the dative case, which has a few different functions. The RSV interprets this as a dative of agency<\/em>, expressing the agent of a verb; this kind of dative is normal with verbs in the middle or passive voices\u2014see note c below for more on the middle voice. On this showing, \u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u03ae is the thing-by-which the \u201celation\u201d would be happening (if St. Paul were<\/em> elated).<\/p>\n However, as far as I can tell, the dative-of-agent interpretation is based on the quite separate idea that this phrase goes with the rest of verse 7\u2014which it doesn\u2019t; it\u2019s the last phrase of the sentence in verse 6. Accordingly, I take this to be a dative of circumstance<\/em>, describing conditions that attend some event. In this case, the event is hypothetical: if (counterfactually) St. Paul did not spare us his bragging, then people might easily believe that he is in a state of \u1f51\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b2\u03bf\u03bb\u03ae, compared to the rest of the faithful. This is where I felt the double meaning of \u201csuperiority\u201d served the text fairly well: a word like superior<\/em> can be strictly descriptive in English (as when one \u201creports to one\u2019s superiors\u201d in a business or an army), but it can also be an unflattering claim about how they view themselves (as when a person \u201cacts superior\u201d).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m having flashbacks to College Park now.<\/small>********* \nI wrote a bit there saying that, like its verbs,<\/small> \nGreek pupils have moods: Bad, and Worse.<\/small> *********\nPhoto: Radhika Kshirsagar, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n c. too elated\/exalted:<\/strong> This verb, though a pretty simple one in Greek, defies simple explanation in English. The root of the term is a simple verb meaning \u201cto lift\u201d or \u201craise.\u201d The preposition \u1f51\u03c0\u03ad\u03c1 [h\u00fcper<\/em>] is then stuck on the front, which is related to the Latin super<\/em> and, more distantly, the English word \u201cover,\u201d all three of which have the same meaning (and yes, this is where we get the prefix hyper-<\/em>). The verb is then put into what\u2019s called the middle voice<\/em>, which covers verbs that don\u2019t neatly fit into the categories of active and passive5<\/sup>; to generalize, it covers actions that are done to oneself (or reflexives<\/em>), and also those done to one\u2019s own benefit (or detriment\u2014grammatically, it makes no difference).6<\/sup> All told, then, we have a verb that, hyper-literally and with the adverbs, means something like \u201clest I lift myself up above\u201d or \u201clest I lift myself on high\u201d; the object of \u201cother people\u201d is implied.<\/p>\n d. thorn\/spike:<\/strong> I was prepared to learn that \u201cthorn\u201d wasn\u2019t an accurate rendering, especially since the word here, \u03c3\u03ba\u03cc\u03bb\u03bf\u03c8 [skolops<\/em>], is used in modern Greek for \u201cscalpel,\u201d if memory serves. I was not<\/em> prepared to learn that its real meanings include not only \u201chook\u201d (as in a fishhook\u2014specifically the point, as distinct from the curved bit which hook<\/em> is more associated with in English), but also \u201ca tool for operating on the urethra.\u201d In fact, I don\u2019t know what could<\/em> prepare a person to learn that; and that is why I didn\u2019t prepare you, dear reader!<\/p>\n e. a messenger of Satan:<\/strong> You\u2019ll also see this rendered, a little less literally, as \u201can angel of Satan.\u201d A few people have interpreted this as meaning that St. Paul was demon-possessed; given that, to the best of my knowledge, no<\/em> other sources (either biblical or sub-apostolic) hint at this\u2014I don\u2019t think even Paul\u2019s enemies charge him with such a thing\u2014I find this interpretation extraordinarily unlikely.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Difference Over Augustine<\/em>, by 15th-******* \ncentury Austrian artist Michael Pacher.<\/small> \nIt really, really should<\/em> bother me that this<\/small> *******\nimage is so frequently apt. Right?<\/small><\/p>\n More plausible, in my opinion, is the theory that St. Paul had epilepsy. Epilepsy was widely known as \u201cthe sacred disease\u201d in ancient times, and attributed by most people to evil spirits, though some at least among the educated were asserting that it was properly a disease<\/em>, i.e. of natural origin, as early as Hippocrates. This explanation allows St. Paul\u2019s \u201cmessenger of Satan\u201d to be literal, metaphoric, or both at once, and seems to me to track with his other vague references to his \u201caffliction.\u201d Furthermore, while this isn\u2019t universal, epileptic seizures can be accompanied by visual hallucinations, and are sometimes followed by blindness or blurred vision (which is normally but not always transient), matching the handful of more specific allusion to something being the matter with his eyes.<\/p>\n The big weakness I see in this theory is, if Paul did have anything in the nature of seizures or fits, he would probably have been widely reputed<\/em> to be possessed (which again raises the problem of silence even from his enemies). Doubtless, the testimony of the apostles would have done something for him under such circumstances, but I\u2019m not sure how much\u2014and anyway, it would only have done so among people who were already Christians, not among the vast majority of the people he went to on his missionary journeys. I should also point out, though it does not in itself discredit the theory, that some people who subscribe to it do so to explain away his visions and locutions in general<\/em>, as mere epileptic symptoms that affected the temporal lobe of his brain. (The temporal lobe handles both sensory input and language processing, among other things, so you really don\u2019t want<\/em> things affecting that lobe all willy-nilly.)<\/p>\n Demon possession and epilepsy aside, St. Paul\u2019s \u201cspike\u201d could have been practically anything. And I suppose, considering he didn\u2019t choose to tell us what it was more specifically, it isn\u2019t really our business.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Apostle Paul<\/em>, c. 1657, by Rembrandt.<\/small><\/p>\n f. harass\/beat:<\/strong> \u201cBuffet\u201d (the one that rhymes with \u201cstuff it,\u201d not with \u201cdelay\u201d) is another old favorite for this word. English, perhaps disquietingly, has developed a lot of fine distinctions in its terms for knocking people about; Greek assigns \u201cbeat,\u201d \u201cpunch\u201d or \u201cbox,\u201d \u201csmack\u201d or \u201cslap,\u201d and metaphorical or generalized meanings like \u201ctorment\u201d or \u201cmistreat,\u201d all as gradations of meaning common to the one word \u03ba\u03bf\u03bb\u03b1\u03c6\u03af\u03b6\u03c9 [kolafiz\u014d<\/em>]. Shows what they<\/em> knew.<\/p>\n g. is sufficient for\/suffices:<\/strong> Alternate translations of this verb\u00a0include \u201cto assist\u201d and \u201cto ward off.\u201d However, the latter doesn\u2019t really make sense here, and the former is\u2014forgive me another lapse into subjective evaluation\u2014such a bland message as hardly to seem worthy of Paul or Jesus. That grace helps<\/em>, the apostle doubtless knew already; whether it was enough<\/em> was, apparently, a question of actual moment at the time.<\/p>\n h. is made perfect\/is finished:<\/strong> A little like the verb from note c above, this one isn\u2019t difficult in itself, but it is tricky to render\u2014not in the sense that you\u2019re likely to wind up with a wrong<\/em> translation if you know even the basics of Greek, just that there are nuances you\u2019d be forced to leave out. The verb is \u03c4\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u1fd6\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 [teleitai<\/em>]; it is related to the \u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 [telos<\/em>] or \u201cgoal, purpose\u201d that we know from philosophy, and also to the sixth of the seven sayings from the Cross, \u03c4\u03b5\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03b5\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 [tetelestai<\/em>] or \u201cIt is finished.\u201d The sense of the text could thus be taken as \u201cpower ends in weakness\u201d (i.e. every human power fails eventually) or \u201cpower is made complete in weakness\u201d (i.e. the most complete kind of power is the one that can exert itself even in the midst of weakness) or \u201cthe end of power is weakness\u201d (i.e. Christ\u2019s power exists to serve weakness), and perhaps other meanings besides.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The<\/em> \u201cCanterbury cross\u201d<\/a>: a 9th-cent. bronze<\/small>********* \nSaxon brooch. Its unique shape has come to<\/small> \nsymbolize English Christianity. Photo by<\/small> *********\nStorye Book (CC BY-SA 2.5 license: source<\/a>).<\/small><\/p>\n For lack of a better way to put it, the RSV\u2019s \u201cperfect\u201d here (inherited from the King James) ought<\/em> to be a good translation; it still was as late as the nineteenth century, possibly into the early twentieth.7<\/sup> This is because the root of the English adjective \u201cperfect\u201d is the Latin verb perficere<\/em>: \u201cto complete, carry out, finish.\u201d Unfortunately, due to semantic drift, the perficere<\/em>-sense of the adjective ceased to be its most familiar and least context-conditioned meaning a long time ago, and was replaced by a related, logically close, but different<\/em> sense: \u201cflawless, ideal, best possible.\u201d Accordingly, it does one of the most irritating things a word can possibly do: take the reader\u2019s mind to an idea that\u2019s also true, but the wrong one here. Getting readers even to notice what\u2019s gone wrong is nearly as hard as noticing it yourself as the author. In my experience, this kind of subtle misdirection is reparable only by excising the offending word bodily and starting over afresh, even at the price of recasting the whole sentence.<\/p>\n i. rest upon\/quarter with:<\/strong> It would not be true to say that most, or even many, of the problems I\u2019ve face in my life have been related to the Greek word for \u201ctent\u201d; I can think of maybe two, but what I couldn\u2019t think of was a more compelling way to open this paragraph.<\/p>\n Anyway, \u1f10\u03c0\u03b9\u03c3\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd\u03cc\u03c9 [episk\u0113no\u014d<\/em>] can be translated as \u201crest upon\u201d without doing violence to the language, though, given this is one of the assorted derivates of \u03c3\u03ba\u03b7\u03bd\u03ae [sk\u0113n\u0113<\/em>], \u201ctent,\u201d I wish the RSV\u2019s translators had made at least a token effort to get that idea into the word they chose. It would be natural to render this verb as \u201cset up camp at,\u201d for example; this is doubtless how it came to be applied to armies regularly. And, being so close after the Fourth of July, I couldn\u2019t resist the specific Bill-of-Rights nod in describing divine grace as \u201cquartering with\u201d the apostle.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The remains of an honorable discharge from<\/small>********* \nthe Roman army (in Latin, a diploma<\/em>),<\/small> \nunearthed in modern Austria. Photo by<\/small> *********\nMatthias Kabel (CC BY-SA 3.0 license: source<\/a>).<\/small><\/p>\n j. insults:<\/strong> This word is actually our old literary friend, \u1f55\u03b2\u03c1\u03b9\u03c2 [h\u00fcbris<\/em>]! We\u2019re used to thinking of it as an elevated synonym for \u201cpride,\u201d and that\u2019s not inaccurate. However, a word like \u201cinsolence\u201d suits it better: it conveys overt and unearned disrespect toward others (especially impiety), not merely being conceited in public.<\/p>\n k. strong\/powerful:<\/strong> Here we again have a \u201cnot hard, but frustrating\u201d word\u2014the adjective \u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 [d\u00fcnatos<\/em>]. It is perfectly logical that the verb meaning \u201cto be able to; can\u201d is related to the noun for \u201cpower\u201d and the adjective \u201cpowerful, able.\u201d There\u2019s nothing wrong with occasionally replacing \u201cI am able to\u201d with \u201cI have the power to\u201d in English. But your English is going to look weird if you say \u201chave\/has the power to\u201d every<\/em> time a normal person would say \u201ccan,\u201d while on the other hand, I don\u2019t know if there even is<\/em> an English noun or adjective related to the word \u201ccan\u201d that would serve as synonyms for \u201cpower\u201d or \u201cpowerful,\u201d respectively. Irksome.<\/p>\n In translating \u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2, however, \u201cstrong\u201d strikes me as slightly off, on strictly linguistic grounds. (On \u00e6sthetic grounds, I think it\u2019s much better than my choice; we don\u2019t have a conventional antonym pair in weak vs. powerful<\/em>: it\u2019s weak vs. strong<\/em> that feels like an obvious set, and therefore \u201csounds better\u201d in a sentence.) A more usual word for \u201cstrong\u201d would be \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03cd\u03c2 [krat\u00fcs<\/em>]. Of course St. Paul isn\u2019t talking in a \u201cfeats of strength\u201d sense (though \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03c4\u03cd\u03c2 could be used metaphorically); but I wonder if part of the reason \u03b4\u03c5\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03cc\u03c2 appears here is that the noun \u03b4\u03cd\u03bd\u03b1\u03bc\u03b9\u03c2 [d\u00fcnamis<\/em>] or \u201cpower\u201d is sometimes used to refer to miracles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Conversion of St. Paul<\/em> (1600), Caravaggio.<\/small><\/p>\n \nFootnotes<\/h5>\n**** 1<\/sup>I\u2019m still not sufficiently familiar with either field of literature to say this with any confidence, but I have the impression<\/em> that Hekhalot (\u201cpalaces\u201d) literature tends to stand in relation to Merkavah literature proper in kind of the same relationship the (orthodox) infancy gospels<\/a> have to the canonical four. In other words, they are broadly \u201cabout the same stuff,\u201d and make the same assumptions about that stuff, but that they are not\u2014and are often not attempting to be\u2014accounts set down by visionaries of their experiences; they might aim to offer pious entertainment, rebut skeptics, or even excite religious devotion, but they would not be \u201ctechnical\u201d in the sense of containing real instruction on how to enter a trance, for example.<\/small>*********** \n2<\/sup>We of course would have expected the word ascent<\/em> here, given that the God of Israel is very much a God who resides up in the sky (however poetically we take that). My hunch about this idiom of \u201cdescent\u201d is that it represents something like \u201cgoing in<\/em>,\u201d rather than \u201cgoing down.\u201d However, it\u2019s at least equally possible that \u201cdescent\u201d instead of \u201cascent\u201d was a reverent euphemism, such as we might expect to occur in discourse on what was considered a highly sensitive, indeed a dangerous, subject.<\/small> \n3<\/sup>The exact nature of Elisha ben Abuah\u2019s heresy is a matter on which the Talmud is tight-lipped. In one elaborated version of the story, it is said he saw the Metatron (the traditional name or title for the angel who is the Lord\u2019s mouthpiece), seated<\/em>, in the divine throne room\u2014sitting down is something only the Lord himself is understood to do there\u2014and concluded that \u201cthere are two powers in heaven\u201d: in other words, he became a polytheist. It is not clear whether this means ben Abuyah pursued some kind of heterodox Judaism of his own devising, or converted to Christianity (whose doctrines of the Trinity and the nature of the Torah were abominated by mainstream Judaism), or became something else entirely.<\/small> ***********\n4<\/sup>This humanoid portrait is kind of an unusual way of depicting one of the Thrones. It was commoner in the Middle Ages; this illustration comes from the rood<\/a> screen of a church in Norfolk, England. Modern depictions mostly go for the bizarre, sometimes far in excess of anything that could correctly be called \u201cbiblically accurate angels.\u201d Conversely, the most remote ancient literature believed to give an account of the Thrones is Ezekiel itself, principally in chapter 1<\/a> and, with minor variations, in chapter 10<\/a>. They are widely identified with Ezekiel\u2019s ophanim<\/em> or \u201cwheels.\u201d These ophanim are rather confusingly described, and bear an unclear relationship to the tetramorphs (the four-faced creatures combining elements of men, lions, oxen, and eagles); the wheels and the tetramorphs might be distinct parts of the same being, or two different beings that move together. Physically, the ophanim sound more like gigantic gemstones than anything else; they are explicitly compared to a<\/em> kind of semiprecious stone, although unfortunately we don\u2019t really know what<\/em> kind, as ancient Hebrew mineralogy is rather poorly understood.<\/small>*********** \n5<\/sup>To fellow Classicists, grammarians, etc.: I\u2019m sorry, come at me, but we don\u2019t<\/em> have time. Look at how long some of these footnotes are, it\u2019s obscene. So we\u2019re not doing deponents, and we\u2019re not doing the subjunctive mood, and we\u2019re not doing whatever bespoke version of reflexive pronouns you were about to point out doesn\u2019t align with the strictly practical and abbreviated summary below.<\/small><\/span><\/span> \n6<\/sup>An example of an English verb which Greek might use the middle voice to convey is \u201ccooked\u201d in Mary<\/em> cooked herself some dinner<\/em>. This is an active-voice verb in English; it contains a reflexive pronoun (all7<\/sup> pronouns ending in \u2013self<\/em> or \u2013selves<\/em> are reflexives), but the verb<\/em> is not reflexive. If it were, \u201cherself\u201d would be the direct object, and this is no time to start discussing the Donner Party. Mary is both the subject of the verb and its indirect object (the dinner is for her), a construction that falls quite neatly into the middle voice; if she had instead cooked John some dinner, it would be a straightforward active verb like in English.<\/small><\/span><\/span><\/span> \n7<\/sup>I produce even this vague period with some diffidence. By the time Dorothy Sayers\u2014a person abnormally sensitive to the finest shades of meaning in language, by both temperament and profession\u2014first published Creed or Chaos?<\/em> in 1940, she had observed the semantic drift in question at the popular level; we know this, because she made suggestions in that book about how to meet the challenge that this drift in the meaning of \u201cperfect\u201d cast before the Church. I imagine she was both more exposed than most professional academics to this kind of linguistic change, and also more interested in and attentive to it, given she was a respected novelist working in a contemporary and very popular genre. If a minimum of one novelist had had time to both observe and reflect on this shift in meaning, I assume it can\u2019t have been less than a few years old by that point (most semantic shifts only become clear in retrospect). Let\u2019s say the word\u2019s \u201ccenter of gravity\u201d changed no later than 1920, so that by 1940, we\u2019ve got an entire cohort of just-come-of-age adults who\u2019ve spent their entire lives using \u201cperfect\u201d with the flawless-sense as its default meaning, rather than with the perficere<\/em>-sense. That seems<\/em> to me like it would lead to enough small, but detectable<\/em>, misunderstandings in reading and conversation to prompt an unusually sensitive person, like Miss Sayers, to realize what had happened. This would indeed give us a date not later than the early twentieth century, making the late nineteenth quite possible. ***********\nHaving finished (or, if you will, perfected) this paragraph, it has come strongly into my mind that nobody but me is likely to care about it even a little bit. That said, if you read this paragraph on one of my severely niche interests and liked it, then there are at least two of us who are Like This!<\/small><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saint Paul Needs a Prequel Miniseries I wound up with about twice as much \u201cfront matter\u201d in this post as I expected! Counting the heading right above this paragraph as the first, the passage proper begins after the fifth heading. Skip to there if you want to jump right in. We all \u201cknow about\u201d St. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4203,"featured_media":87,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Thorn in the Flesh (Epistle for 7 July, 2024)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Saint Paul Needs a Prequel Miniseries I wound up with about twice as much "front matter" in this post as I expected! 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He grew up as an evangelical Navy brat and got a degree in Classics from the University of Maryland. He currently lives in Baltimore and is a member of a local parish of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Peter. The everything notwithstanding, he is in fact not a vegan.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/mudbloodcatholic.blogspot.com\/\",\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mudbloodcatholic\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OurLadyofAntifa\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mudbloodcatholic\/author\/gblanchard\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Thorn in the Flesh (Epistle for 7 July, 2024)","description":"Saint Paul Needs a Prequel Miniseries I wound up with about twice as much \"front matter\" in this post as I expected! 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