Re: CHAT: Lord's Prayer

Quoth Ed Heil:
> Nik Taylor wrote:
> > Our Father in Heaven
> > Hallowed be your name
> > Your kingdom come
> > Your will be done
> > On Earth as in heaven
> > Give us today our daily bread
> > And forgive us our sins
> > As we forgive those who sin against us
> > Save us from the time of trial
> > And deliver us from evil
> > For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever
> > Amen
> Odd that they take out all the "thy's" and so on, but they leave
> "hallowed"
Yeah, and there are some things they get rid of that are strange ("on
earth as it is in heaven" is _perfectly_ good English, and has better
meter).  Likewise, what's this with "sin against us", which means
something *entirely* different from "trespass against us"---laux mi, you
can only sin against God, not other people.  Whereas a trespass against
a person may well be a sin against God, or not, but the point is that
_we_ should forgive people when they trespass against us just as we hope
that God would forgive us.  And they changed "temptation" (another
perfectly good modern English word) to "the time of trial", which brings
to mind some sort of legalistic thing.  Not to mention that "lead us
not into" is *quite* different from "save us from".

Funny how much of a reflection this whole thing is on 20th century
America.  Every change I seriously object to is a reflection of some
undesirable modern trait: hubris, legalism, and moral devolution (let
someone else take the moral responsibility: *save* me, not "lead me
not").  Blee-agh.

And they totally screwed up the rhythm of the thing, too.

> "hallowed" (which hardly exists in 20th century English outside the
> phrase "Hallowed Ground,"
And halloween!  (hallowed evening; it is the eve of All Saints Day)

> and most importantly, they did not change the fact that the whole
> prayer is in a kind of "jussive subjunctive" mood which is not used at
> all in 20th century English...
>
> To make it truly everyday English you'd probably have to say something
> like "May your kingdom come... May your will be done... May your name
> be considered holy"?
Or perhaps "your kingdom shall come...", but that doesn't have the right
prayery sort of ring to it.

--
-=-Don Blaheta-=-=-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law
which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider
than your thumb.