Αντιγράφω εδώ ένα τετρασέλιδο από το βιβλίο του Ρίτσαρντ Ντόκινς The God Delusion επειδή σκοπεύω να το αξιοποιήσω κατά τρεις τουλάχιστον τρόπους. Ανήκει στο κεφάλαιο Childhood, Abuse and Religion (σελ. 340-344). Κοκκινίζω τα κομμάτια που με ενδιαφέρουν περισσότερο.
Religious Education as a Part of Literary Culture
I must admit that even I am a little taken aback at the biblical ignorance commonly displayed by people educated in more recent decades than I was. Or maybe it isn’t a decade thing. As long ago as 1954, according to Robert Hinde in his thoughtful book Why Gods Persist, a Gallup poll in the United States of America found the following. Three-quarters of Catholics and Protestants could not name a single Old Testament prophet. More than two-thirds didn’t know who preached the Sermon on the Mount. A substantial number thought that Moses was one of Jesus’s twelve apostles. That, to repeat, was in the United States, which is dramatically more religious than other parts of the developed world.
The King James Bible of 1611 —the Authorized Version— includes passages of outstanding literary merit in its own right, for example the Song of Songs, and the sublime Ecclesiastes (which I am told is pretty good in the original Hebrew too). But the main reason the English Bible needs to be part of our education is that it is a major source book for literary culture. The same applies to the legends of the Greek and Roman gods, and we learn about them without being asked to believe in them.
Here is a quick list of biblical, or Bible-inspired, phrases and sentences that occur commonly in literary or conversational English, from great poetry to hackneyed cliche, from proverb to gossip.
Be fruitful and multiply
East of Eden
Adam’s Rib
Am I my brother’s keeper?
The mark of Cain
As old as Methuselah
A mess of potage
Sold his birthright
Jacob’s ladder
Coat of many colours
Amid the alien corn
Eyeless in Gaza
The fat of the land
The fatted calf
Stranger in a strange land
Burning bush
A land flowing with milk and honey
Let my people go
Flesh pots
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
Be sure your sin will find you out
The apple of his eye
The stars in their courses
Butter in a lordly dish
The hosts of Midian
Shibboleth
Out of the strong came forth sweetness
He smote them hip and thigh
Philistine
A man after his own heart
Like David and Jonathan
Passing the love of women
How are the mighty fallen?
Ewe lamb
Man of Belial
Jezebel
Queen of Sheba
Wisdom of Solomon
The half was not told me
Girded up his loins
Drew a bow at a venture
Job’s comforters
The patience of Job
I am escaped with the skin of my teeth
The price of wisdom is above rubies
Leviathan
Go to the ant thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise
Spare the rod and spoil the child
A word in season
Vanity of vanities
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong
Of making many books there is no end
I am the rose of Sharon
A garden inclosed
The little foxes
Many waters cannot quench love
Beat their swords into plowshares
Grind the faces of the poor
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid
Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die
Set thine house in order
A voice crying in the wilderness
No peace for the wicked
See eye to eye
Cut off out of the land of the living
Balm in Gilead
Can the leopard change his spots?
The parting of the ways
A Daniel in the lions’ den
They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
Sodom and Gomorrah
Man shall not live by bread alone
Get thee behind me Satan
The salt of the earth
Hide your light under a bushel
Turn the other cheek
Go the extra mile
Moth and rust doth corrupt
Cast your pearls before swine
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
Weeping and gnashing of teeth
Gadarene swine
New wine in old bottles
Shake off the dust of your feet
He that is not with me is against me
Judgement of Solomon
Fell upon stony ground
A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country
The crumbs from the table
Sign of the times
Den of thieves
Pharisee
Whited sepulchre
Wars and rumours of wars
Good and faithful servant
Separate the sheep from the goats
I wash my hands of it
The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath
Every one of these idioms, phrases or cliches comes directly from the King James Authorized Version of the Bible. Surely ignorance of the Bible is bound to impoverish one’s appreciation of English literature? And not just solemn and serious literature. The following rhyme by Lord Justice Bowen is ingeniously witty:
The rain it raineth on the just,
And also on the unjust fella.
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.
But the enjoyment is muffled if you can’t take the allusion to Matthew 5:45 (‘For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust’). And the fine point of Eliza Dolittle’s fantasy in My Fair Lady would escape anybody ignorant of John the Baptist’s end:
‘Thanks a lot, King,’ says I in a manner well bred, ‘But all I want is ’Enry ’Iggins’ ’ead.’
P. G. Wodehouse is, for my money, the greatest writer of light comedy in English, and I bet fully half my list of biblical phrases will be found as allusions within his pages. (A Google search will not find all of them, however. It will miss the derivation of the short-story title ‘The Aunt and the Sluggard’, from Proverbs 6:6.) The Wodehouse canon is rich in other biblical phrases, not in my list above and not incorporated into the language as idioms or proverbs. Listen to Bertie Wooster’s evocation of what it is like to wake up with a bad hangover: ‘I had been dreaming that some bounder was driving spikes through my head — not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones.’ Bertie himself was immensely proud of his only scholastic achievement, the prize he once earned for scripture knowledge.
What is true of comic writing in English is more obviously true of serious literature. Naseeb Shaheen’s tally of more than thirteen hundred biblical references in Shakespeare’s works is widely cited and very believable. The Bible Literacy Report published in Fairfax, Virginia (admittedly financed by the infamous Templeton Foundation) provides many examples, and cites overwhelming agreement by teachers of English literature that biblical literacy is essential to full appreciation of their subject. Doubtless the equivalent is true of French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and other great European literatures. And, for speakers of Arabic and Indian languages, knowledge of the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita is presumably just as essential for full appreciation of their literary heritage. Finally, to round off the list, you can’t appreciate Wagner (whose music, as has been wittily said, is better than it sounds) without knowing your way around the Norse gods.
Let me not labour the point. I have probably said enough to convince at least my older readers that an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.
Θα συγκεντρώσουμε μεταφράσματα για τη καθεμιά από αυτές; Πώς; Αρχίζουμε μ' όσες ξέρουμε μέχρι να τις εξαντλήσουμε; Οδηγίες, πλιζ! :)
Στο μεταξύ, δύο βιβλικά νήματα που 'τυχε να θυμάμαι: (Βρέχει) επί δικαίους και αδίκους = Rain on the just and on the unjust εν χορδαίς και οργάνοις (γίνεται επίσης αναφορά στα: μετά βαΐων και κλάδων, μετά φανών και λαμπάδων, εν τυμπάνω και χορώ, πού την κεφαλήν κλίναι
