Re: CHAT Liturgical thou/thee etc. (was: Thorn vs Eth)

On Thursday, July 11, 2002, at 09:36 , Nik Taylor wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
>> AFAIK there's been no further attempt to 'modernize'.
>
> Maybe not in a ecumenical setting, but my church uses:
> Our Father in heaven,
> Hallowed be your name, (/halod/ as opposed to the use in the traditional
> /halow@d/)
> Your kingdom come
> Your will be done
> On Earth as in heaven
> Give us today our daily bread,
> And forgive us our debts,
> As we forgive our debtors
> Umm .. I forget the exact wording of the next two lines
> For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
> Now and forever
> Amen.
Yep - that looks much like the modernized ecumenical model that it was
proposed [Can't remember by which body or other] that Catholics &
Protestants alike adopt (with, of course, the doxology being optional)
about
30 or so years back.

> Personally, I detest this modernization.
So, it seems, do most worshippers in both communities   :)

>  If you're going to modernize,
> it seems to me that you should completely modernize, not just modernize
> the vocabulary (altho, does "hallowed" really count as modern?) but also
> the syntax.
Well the verb "to hallow" is not exactly common.  But then in this
materialist
post-Christian age it's pretty difficult to find any term in common use
that has
the right meaning.

BTW - I've always known it & generally heard it pronounced /'h{loud/ this
side
of the pond.  The trisyllabic is occasionally heard, particularly in sung
versions -
often those that also have 'temptation' as four syllables /tEmp'teiSiQn/ .

>  Things like "Your kingdom come" are NOT contemporary
> English.
>
Yes, but what does one have instead?

I've seen "May your kingdom come" - but that's not what the Greek has.  It
ain't
a wish - it's not the optative mood in Greek, but imperative.

Now the modern English 3rd person imperative is:
"Let your kingdom come"

But that is ambiguous.  The initial "let" could be understood as a 2nd
person
imperative (which was the origin of the construction anyway) addressed to
God,
implying that in some way he is actually hindering the coming of his
kingdom -
which is not exactly the Christian perspective.

Altho the "your kingdom come" construction, i.e. the subjunctive (hence no
final -s
on the verb) used as what traditionalist grammarians term the "jussive
subjunctve"
is not entirely unknown and, indeed, is familiar in Britain, at least, in
certain
set phrases, e.g.
'Long live the queen!'
'Britannia rule the waves!'

Ray.

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