KURIE ELEHSON ME
Carl Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jul 15 08:50:39 EDT 1999
On 07/15/99, "Jim West <jwest at highland.net>" wrote:
> At 02:40 AM 7/15/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >
> >Sorry, this IS a Greek phrase and Greek alone; no Latin here to be found
> >whatsoever!
> >The Church in Rome uses this Greek phrase even now because for the first 200
> >years,
> >Roman Christians celebrated their liturgy mostly in Greek and NOT in Latin.
> >Dimitri
>
> All those latin speakers who performed the litutgy for 1000 years in that
> language will be amazed that they were not using a latin phrase. I am
> sorry, but you are wrong as can be. This phrase is indeed latin, and it was
> indeed used by the latin speaking church for over a millenium.
>
> It might very well be a greek phrase- but the question originally posed had
> to do with a song. the song's writer was interviewed about it and per his
> own testimony he admitted adopting the phrase from the church liturgy.
As Socrates tells it in the Apology of Plato, the poets whom he
interrogated were the last ones to be able to talk intelligently about the
poems that they composed, the reason being, Socrates claimed, that the
poems were inspired, and the poets were merely intermediaries of a
heaven-sent wisdom. Perhaps we have an analogue to that in the song-writer
interviewed!
Is it Greek? Is it Latin? Perhaps most surprisingly of all: it's ENGLISH!
At least in many English-speaking churches where the liturgy is English,
KURIE ELEHSON hHMAS is part of the English-spoken ritual phraseology, and
who will DARE to claim that it isn't English. I must confess, however, that
in the church I attend, the lector sings out "Lord, have mercy" and the
congregation responds, "Have mercy on us." None of that gobbledygook OLD
English for us!
;-)
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list