Sometimes the kind of things that delight a mediævalist student are... astonishing.
Especially if it's really small things that shouldn't have such power to excite you as they do.
This is probably interesting only to me, but I must store it somewhere anyway.
So I've been looking up Genesis in Latin because I have to do a presentation on
Pengoloð Ælfric Grammaticus, or rather his Bible translation, or rather the Preface he wrote for his translation of the first half of Genesis. (You'd think you wouldn't find enough material to do a half-hour presentation on a measly preface of four pages, but in fact there's so much in there that it's hard to limit the presentation to half an hour.) At any rate, like any decent mediæval scholar, Ælfric is kind of anxious about doing translation for various reasons, including the sanctity of the syntax of the original, the danger of under- and over-interpretation, and other fun stuff.
In his preface, he quotes an example from Genesis (1:26) in order to demonstrate how important it is to pay close, close attention to the very grammar because how easily could you mess up there, and give the words a meaning they don't have - or take away meaning they
should have.
The sentence in the "original" - i.e. the Vulgate text Ælfric would have used - goes
Et ait: Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram et præsit piscibus maris et uolatilibus coeli et bestiis uniuersæque terræ omnique reptile, quod mouetur in terra.His point is that "God who dictated the text to Moses" - that is, whoever put Genesis to writing, and then Jerome who did the translation into Latin - wrote
ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, not
ad imagines et similitudines nostras - or, in English: it's "to our image and likeness", not "to our images and likenesses". In other words, the subject and personal pronoun are plural -
Faciamus, and
nostram - but the object as such is singular -
ad imaginem et similitudinem. This is proof that there's been a Trinity, a three - plural - in one - singular - all along. Even in the Old Testament. If you know how to read it. Quoth Ælfric.
Which is a fun game, and a nice thing to let the class puzzle over (the professor wants the presenters to include the plenum).
(Does anyone among you know, by any chance, whether Jerome would already have known and used the
pluralis maiestatis? I know the Anglo-Saxons didn't, but I have no idea about that period of Latin.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
juno_magic? *hopeful look*)
At any rate, I looked this up in the Latin, and then I looked it up in Ælfric's translation - and found, in the very same sentence, two more awesome (...) things I can point out. So yes, there's actually three features in one inconspicuous sentence. (Three in one. HAH!) Here's where my excitement and utter delight begin.
This is what Ælfric made of the Latin:
ך cwæð: Vton wyrcan man to anlicnysse ך to ure gelicnysse, ך he sy ofer ða fixas ך ofer ða fugelas ך ofer ða deor ך ofer ealle gesceafta ך ofer ealle creopende, ðe styriað on eorðan.(The strange hook thing is read "and".)
Those of you who are literate in both Latin and Anglo-Saxon may have noticed what I am aiming at:
1. For all Ælfric talks about how painstakingly careful the translator must be in order to be neither too literal nor too liberal, there's a grammatical blooper in the very phrase he has just brought to our attention.
Compare:
ad imaginem et similitudinem nostramto anlicnysse ך to ure gelicnysseWell? Well?
Exactly! In Latin the adjective follows any and all referents.
nostram? Refers to both
imaginem and
similitudinem.
The way Ælfric put it, it refers to
gelicnysse - "likeness" - alone. He
could have followed the Latin literally, going
to anlicnysse ך to gelicnysse ure. Anglo-Saxon grammar allows for that. But
that he didn't do. HE MADE A MISTAKE RIGHT THERE. Well, not a mistake - but a change that
may be stylistic but may also be relevant to the sense.
2. Ælfric also warns about adding stuff or leaving stuff out, because - as he tells us - it was all dictated this very way by God* and He had His reasons even for the things that look superfluous to us.
But if you compare the "original" and the translation again:
præsit piscibus maris et uolatilibus coeli et bestiis uniuersæque terræ omnique reptile, quod mouetur in terrahe sy ofer ða fixas ך ofer ða fugelas ך ofer ða deor ך ofer ealle gesceafta ך ofer ealle creopende, ðe styriað on eorðanAside from the fun fact that obviously "to be" was still a full verb back in those days, you'll probably have noticed that Ælfric left out a lot of elaboration. Understandably, one might say - we all
know that the fish are in the sea and the birds in the sky and the animals all over the place and the reptiles down on the ground, there's really no need to explain that kind of thing. Saying "fish of the sea" rather than just "fish" is just poetry, there's no important content transmitted there². But still it's in what Ælfric thought was the original (actually, it's in the original originals, too), and he just left it out. Perhaps he thought it was in the Latin because perhaps not everybody knew that fish tend to be in the water and flying things tend to be under the sky but surely we Anglo-Saxons are smarter than that and know where to find our co-creatures.
But he left it out.These days, of course, we
could leave it out, because these days we know that the elaboration is just a remainder from the days of oral transmission, a mnemotechnic trick: It is easier to remember context-bound knowledge than random lists, especially when the context includes contrasting components that build up on each other. Besides, the story-teller has more time to plan ahead for the next sentences when reciting empty phrases like "of the seas and of the skies and of the earth", and the audience has more time to process the information they're hearing. There really is not much information as regards content; it's just frills. But still, in Ælfric's belief God Himself would have put the apparently superfluous "of the sea..." in there, so it's quite daring to leave it out. Especially after he's been talking about the dangers of translation as regards bending God's word to Our Feeble Understanding (tm).
Quite the little heretic, our Ælfric!
Anyway. See, see? Is not this awesome? Is not this exciting? Is not this
brilliant?! And how the hell am I supposed to limit my presentation to half an hour when even one small straightforward sentence contains such a wealth of information? The preface as such contains information enough for a master's thesis, and I mean a proper master's thesis, not these
infuriating adorable little dissertations from 1895 they have in our university library where people got a Ph.D. for 20 pages of text and five Works Cited, which would just barely suffice for in-semester credit these days. Oh, for auld lang syne.
... of course it's the rising standard of education and academia that makes it possible for
me (a woman, what's more!) to triumph over Ælfric, who was one of the leading scholars in his day, at least on his island. The past is like Tôkyô, great for a visit but you wouldn't want to live there.
...
Sometimes the kind of things that delight a mediævalist student are... astonishing.
- - -
*
We should not blame poor Ælfric for his naïvety in this instance, of course. He's been dead these past 1000 years, so he had no chance to change his mind. I hear there are still people who believe the same thing to this day - now those are a scary case!²
For anyone tempted to say that "fish of the sea" is, in fact, different from "fish in general" because the latter also includes "fish of the lakes and rivers and breakfast tables": Back in those days any conglomeration of water bigger than a pond could be called a "sea". As man was not actually extant yet at the point we're talking about, the breakfast table option is out anyway.
