Basileia

Here’s what it all boils down to: The oft-repeated “Peace on earth, good will toward men” is only one of two variant readings of verse 14 from the second chapter of Luke. Favored by the Byzantine tradition, that version of the verse appears not only in the popular Christmas carol, but also notably in the King James Bible: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” The other version, favored by Alexandrian and Western families of texts, offered a rather different picture, to the effect of offering peace on earth for the men to whom God extended his good will (I’m not happy with the more concise but less precise translation offered by the Catholic pew bible I read it from tonight.) For anyone who doesn’t know, the Byzantine, Alexandrian, and Western texts referred to were all copies made by scribes of the original Greek versions of the texts. The repeated hand-copying among other factors led to such variations in the textual readings.

Had this verse not happened to have been in the Gospel read at midnight mass tonight, I might never have found the answer. But, if you’ll refer back one post, you’ll see that I was wondering about the Latin translation of this verse offered by Wheelock’s as an example of some grammatical point or other (without, of course, any citation of the verse number). I remembered the words from the carol “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” which offered the Byzantine reading favored by the (Protestant) King James Bible. But the Catholic pew bible in the apparatus of which I found the derivations of the variant readings favored the Alexandrian reading. Having been raised Catholic, I have not frequently found myself inclined toward the Protestant take on anything other than the King James Bible. Though I am of course aware as a student of the Classics that KJB is not a particularly close translation of the Greek, as a sometimes-English student, I cannot overlook that it is unsurpassed for poetic value in English. And here, again, I side with the King James Bible.

So for Christmas, I choose to retract my earlier offering of “Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis,” to be replaced not with some earlier translation, but with that offered up to seventeenth century England, based on a different reading of the text (which one Luke actually recorded, we will never know):

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

I am very satisfied to support the reading that includes all men, who certainly ought every one to receive the hypothetical good will. My views are only inclusive when the subject is very important, as this. If such a good will should be brought about, it would come to nothing if it were not extended to everyone. Everyone. Not “those in God’s favor” (a phrase easily read to the advantage of whoever seizes the opportunity) but to everyone. It’s a greatly preferable ideal, if only that.

Well, I’m up very late. Santa would be displeased. Oh, but Yuletide textual study makes me cheery! Merry Christmas to all.

I’ve decided to challenge myself to-day. Since I’ve been spending this Christmas vacation brushing up on Latin for the second-semester class that I’m about to jump into in January (my first formal Latin instruction since I was 13), I thought it would be nice to find a recognizable but Christmas-appropriate quotation from the beginning Chapters of Wheelock’s to share along with my progress towards New Years and establishing blog identity. That was a great idea.

There was an adaptation from Livy on the Rape of Lucretia. I was excited to get to that, let me tell you! What a great story. A woman, in keeping with traditional gender roles, upholding her honor and that of her family, brings about the end of tyranny in Rome. Beautiful. Of course, she dies. But what a tragic, beautiful figure in Roman history. Always a favorite. While the overthrow of tyranny is a joyful theme, however, it doesn’t seem to do, since self-sacrifice is more for Easter. Moving on.

Then I found a good one to ruminate on through the season of Advent: “Possumusne, O di, in malis insidiis et magno exitio esse salvi?” (n.b. never, but never will macrons appear on this blog. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.) -Cicero. Problem: “di”. I suppose we should avoid anything that flies in the face of monotheism if we really want to stay in the Christmas spirit.

Aha! Something that truly speaks to my situation sitting at home over break with schoolwork to do! I’m delighted to think that Seneca might have come through for me: “Otium sine litteris mors est.” Maybe I can cite Seneca when explaining to everyone why I insist on doing schoolwork year-round, and always seem to find something of an academic nature that I need to be doing over the breaks. Appropriate to the moment, perhaps, but not festive.

But there, at the bottom of that save page of “Sententiae Antiquae” in Chapter Seven of the 6th edition of Wheelock’s Latin is my saving grace, straight out of Luke:

Gloria in altissimis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

Now I don’t mind that I have been wasting my time, or that I’m perfectly absurd with a mess of a silly mind. I have a Christmas quote. I feel like a real Latin student already. Redemption for having dropped it so callously upon entrance to highschool seems finally at hand. Nevermind that I’m in beginning levels; I have a Christmas quote! I can’t even tell you whether this is the Latin from the Vulgate, another Latin version, or a translation by the editors themselves from Greek or English. But I don’t care. It is my Christmas Quote. Tra-lala! In my exceeding (and increasingly boring) joy, I will share with you the lyrics to Adeste Fideles, just in case you had forgotten some of them, and need to know for your carolling:

adeste fideles laeti triumphantes
venite, venite in bethlehem.
natum videte, regum angelorum.
venite adoremus
venite adoremus
venite adoremus, dominum.

deum et deo, lumen de lumine,
gestant puellae viscera
deum verum, genitum non factum
venite…

cantet nunc io chorus Angelorum
cantet nunc aula caelestium
Gloria in excelsis Deo:
venite…

Ergo qui natus, die hodierna
Jesu, tibi sit gloria
Patris aeterni Verbum caro factum:
venite…

Resolution: Actually memorize the damn forms this time around.

I’m sure that I ought at this point to be building (at very least, mentally) a list of objectives for this blog, confining myself to a subject area, &c. And if you refer to the reference pages of the blog, it is clear that I’m not averse to list making. However, with New Years approaching, I feel that there is only one kind of list to which I should be applying myself, and that is a list of Resolutions. So, for an end-of-year resolution, I resolve to publish at least one new resolution with every post I make before the end of the year. Since there isn’t much time left in the year, this will either keep the post-count down or the resolution-count up, either of which could be seen as a good thing or a bad thing. The prospect of such thorough neutrality spurs me on. I’ll begin right away, making use of the rare but always worry-worthy self-addressed imperative. (No worries, though: articles will be omitted as a safeguard.)

Resolution: Name blog objectives.