Re: Fiat Lux

At 8:00 pm -0400 21/6/01, Padraic Brown wrote:
>On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Christian Thalmann wrote:
>
>>Matthew Kehrt wrote:
>>>
>>> Fiat lux = 'Let there be light' in Latin.
>>> I am confused how this statement works.  Lux is obviously light, but
>>> what is fiat?
[sni]
>>A more literal translation would be "That there may be light!".
>>
>
>That would be "Siat lux".
>
ACH!!

The present subjunctive of "esse" (to be) is: sim, si:s, sit etc

Therefore: "Let there be light" = _sit_ lux!

Latin did, in theory, have 3rd pers. imperative forms, but they were
archaic and rare.  However, the 3rd sing. imperative of 'to be' was still
used in Classical Latin and, indeed, continued to be used in post-classical
Latin.

So, "let there be light" is more likelt to be: esto lux!

_esto lux_ can have only that meaning; the subjunctive may be used to
express wishes, as suggested above, but in that usage was more likely to be
preceeded by a particle such as _ut_ ot _utinam_.

Therefore: "that there may be light!" = ut sit lux!

But none of these are "fiat lux".
-------------------------------------------------------------------

At 6:28 pm -0400 21/6/01, Matthew Kehrt wrote:
>Fiat lux = 'Let there be light' in Latin.
>I am confused how this statement works.  Lux is obviously light, but
>what is fiat?  It seems to be a command of some sort.  Does Latin [snip]
>Then again, it could be that the Vulgate translates this phrase utterly
>wrong.
Umm - the Vulgate was first standardized in the 4th cent. and has had some
official revisions since.  I somehow think that something "utterly wrong"
might have been spotted in the last 18 centuries!

>Note that Young's Literal Translation gives this as
>"Let light be"
Well, let's see how literal it actually is.......

..at 8:30 pm -0400 21/6/01, Steg Belsky wrote:
>The Hebrew original has _yehi or_.  _or_ is "light", and _yehi_ is a
>short form of _yihyeh_, meaning "he will be" (_or_ is a masculine noun).
>Future verbs in Hebrew (especially the short forms of "to be") are used
>as jussives, if i remember the term correctly.  So it actually does mean
>"let there be light" or "let light be".
OK.

Now what is the earliest translation of the Hebrew scriptures?  The Greek
translation known as the Septuagint which was made in Alexandria among the
Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora in that city in the 3rd cent BCE (there are
various ancient urban myths about this, but they don't concern us here).

Muke has told us how the phrase appears in the Septuagint:
At 9:08 pm -0400 21/6/01, Muke Tever wrote:
[snip]
>
>I think it's just a limitation of the English language.
A problem with all translations, no matter what the language.  In fact
George Steiner considers the problem of translating this very sentence into
various European languages on pages 306 & 307 of "After Babel" (a book that
I highly recommend if you want fodder for your grey/gray cells).

>The LXX has
>"genhqhtw fws", where 'fws' is light
For those, like me, not immediately familiar with this system of
transliteration, it might be helpful to say that {q} represents Greek
_theta_.  The traditional Latinate transcription is: gene:the:to: pho:s
[where : represents the macron]

>and 'genhqhtw' is a third-person
>imperative form of 'gignomai', which means to be born (from IE *g'en1-).
Yep - 3rd sing. imperative of _gignomai_ = but to say it means "to be born'
is a tad restrictive and, IMO in this context, misleading.   The _primary_
meraning of the verb in Classical Greek is "to come into being", "to
become".  It does, it is true, have secondary meanings of "to be made", "to
be produced", "to be born", but they are decidedlt secondary.

Therefore: "genhqhtw fws" = let light come into being.

Now, Classical & Hellenistic Greek did have 3rd. pers. imperative forms of
"to be", and arguably they would have given a more accurate translation of
the Hebrew which Steg quoted, but it is clear that the Jewish scholars of
3rd cent BCE Alexandria undertstood it mean what they wrote in the
Septuagint.

Now, with this mind, let's return to the Vulgate version of Genesis 1:13
with which Matthew began this thread.

The earliest Latin versions of the Hebrew scriptures were all based on the
Septuagint since this was the only version accessible to pagan converts and
was, indeed, also the usual version used among converts from the Jews of
the diaspora.  These early translation were of variable standard and tended
to be exceedingly literal at the cost of intelligibility.  Jerome was
commissioned to revise all the extant translations and to produce a
complete Latin translation of the all the Jewish & Christian scriptures.
To do this, he learnt Hebrew and carried out his work in Bethlehem so that
he could get access to Hebrew versions and Hebrew scholars.  The revisions
and translations of the Hebrew Scriptures was based on both the Septuagint
and the extant Hebrew versions of the time.

So let's forget the "utter wrong" theory which, as they say, sucks.
--------------------------------------------------

At 7:05 pm -0400 21/6/01, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>
>"Fiat" is 3d sing, pres. subjunctive of a very peculiar verb-- it has active
>conjugation, but passive meaning: 'to be made'.  (Likely the only such verb,
Not quite, _ua:pula:re_ (active) means: 'to be beaten, to be flogged'; and
there may be one or two others.

>I suspect it was irregular in other
>ways, and may only have occured in 3d person, but perhaps Ray Brown will
>give us the details.
OK - it had all the usually personal endings and, indeed, had, for the most
part, the normal 4th conjugations endings for moods & tenses of the
infectum (i.e. parts of the verb formed from the "present stem"), with the
two exceptions of:
(a) present infinitive: fieri: (note the passive ending!)
(b) imperfect subjunctive: fierem, fiere:s, fieret etc.

The other pecularity is that it had no perfect tense of its own but used
the perfect passive forms of _facio_, so:
factus sum, factus es, etc.

[snip]
>
>I look forward to Ray's answer-- I never quite understood why this verb was
>needed.
For exactly the same reason that we feel the need to have our verb "to become".

>What was the matter with the passive of facio, facere?
Nothing - and it existed. Indeed, for the moods and tenses of the
perfectum, it was the only thing that could be used.

The pecularity of Classical Latin and, hence of all post-Classical writers,
is that having used the verb also to supply the 'missing' perfect forms of
_fieri_, they then used _fieri_ instead of the regular passive forms for
the infectum of _facere_.  So _fieri_, like the Greek _gignomai_, developed
secondary meanings besides its primary meaning.
---------------------------------

At 4:48 am +0200 22/6/01, claudio wrote:
[snip]
>
>the translation is not exact.
>fiat is subjunctive,present tense,3. person of fieri=to happen.
>"light should happen"
No, "to happen" is certainly a secondary and, perhaps, a tertiary meaning
of the verb.  With this meaning it is (practically) always used
_impersonally_ in the 3rd. pers. sing. and, usually, with the dative of a
person or things, e.g.
si quid factum sit aliquo... (if anything should happen to one...) [CICERO]

It was also common in the parenthetic phrase _ut fit_ = "as it happens",
"as is usually the case"

It would be unusual to have a noun like _lux_ as the subject and also one
must put things into context.  It is hardly an _almighty_ deity that would
utter: "light should happen".  It rather suggests a certain degree of
randomness & uncertainty about it!
-------------------------

The primary meaning of _fieri_ is "to become", "to come into being".

Like the Greek _gignomai_ it did develop secondary meanings of "to be
made", "to be produced" (but not "to be born"); but because of its
'amalgamation, so to speak, with Latin verb 'facere', these originally
secondary meanings assumed practically the same status as the orginal
primary meanings, and this has clouded the argument here somewhat.

There can be no doubt that "fiat lux" is intended to carry the same meaning
as the Greek: gene:the:to: pho:s - let light come into being.

But such a translation would lose the force of the Hebrew, Greek & Latin
versions, where "light" is the climax of the sentence.  Therefore the
traditional English transaltion - Let there be light! - is probably the
best.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Steiner, in the passage I referred to above, concentrates on another
problem: that French must use the definite article (Que _la_ lumière soit).
He compares the Latin, Italian, German and English versions - as well as
the fgollowing sentence: et facta est lux - and there was light.

Indeed, if one doesn't know Steiner's "After Babel", then you should look
it out if you are at all interested in the problems translation and
inter-linguistic communication.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================

Replies