Words Are Holy. So Why Don’t We Talk Like They Are?
By PAUL J. PASTOR, Christianity Today FEBRUARY 13, 2023 -- VIEWS: SPEAKING OUT
"Christianity joyfully affirms that language is worthy of such honor. After all, “In the beginning was the Word,” John 1:1 states, and the theme of word can be traced brilliantly through the entire Bible. Christians, extending the Jewish tradition, have been known for ages as “people of the Book.” What happens when we write and speak is something holy.
"But today, we live in a crisis of language. Not only is the sacred nature of our words largely forgotten, but language is becoming degraded. In a world of significant social, ecological, and spiritual crisis, this may seem like a low priority. But healthy language, like clean air or water, is something we take for granted until it is gone. And if language falls, so do uncountable other things upon which human well-being depends. ...
"We must reject disposable language in all its forms with an energy we may have forgotten. As an editor of books, I have found several tools useful, such as avoiding cliché in preaching, praying, and writing [what about Bible translation?!]; learning to recognize jargon that obscures meaning or pushes others away; and allowing myself to fall in love with the sheer power and beauty of healthy language. ..."
Read the whole article at: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/march/pastor-cherish-holy-words-language-disposable-age.html?utm_source=Today+in+Christian+History+Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=21327&utm_content=12321&utm_campaign=email (also the March 2023 issue of CT pp. 34-35)
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God is holy, but I would never say my words are. I am not sure on what basis Paul Pastor has made the statement that human language is worthy of honor and our language is "something holy." Could it be hyperbole to draw us into the topic of writing better English? If we accept that God is holy and the Scriptures are the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word, sufficient in life and even in translation, should it not impact translation? Even the quality if not the accuracy?
Like (I suspect) most translation personnel, I strongly disagree.
Christians are not ‘people of the book’, but people of the Spirit. And w__ords aren't holy, but just tools, with as much potential for good and bad as any other tool like knives or dynamite.
According to the Bible,
- h__uman words were 'mixed up' by God at Babel
- t__he letter ‘kills’ and contrasts with the Spirit
- the ‘words’ of the old covenant contrast with the ‘image’ of God in Jesus
- words are temporary (1 Cor 13) – only their meaning remains
(Even Mark 13:31 'my words will never pass away' obviously must refer to meaning, since Jesus’s actual Hebrew/Aramaic words are nowhere recorded, but their meaning is transmitted to us in Greek translation.)
The words of the Hebrew Old Testament are, to most readers, much more beautiful than those of the common international Greek New Testament (though to Jesus’s followers, the latter’s meaning is so much more beautiful!). So the argument of this Christianity Today article would be well at home in a Jewish context but not, surely, in a Christian one.
Words are difficult to be believed as holy in the West. This is a Semitic idea. In Jewish and Muslim Kalam, there is a theory that the Torah and Quran existed before the creation or were created later as a creation of God.
Based on this argument, Jews called their language Leshan ha Qodesh לָשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ while Muslims believed Arabic is the language of Allah and it will be spoken in the paradise اللغہ الجنتہ for communication. This is the context of John 1:1. Word of God is holy, but not every word we speak.
It also reminds me of Vulgata. Vulgata Comes from the Latin root where we also got the word vulgar in English. The Gentry of the time was so upset with the language used by saint Jerome that they declared his works vulgar. Some of them were still not happy by calling it only vulgar. So they called it Vulgata Idiato.