Author: Douglas Galbi
amen from Hebrew into Greek in early Christian inscriptions
In the major Greek commercial city of Corinth about 55 GC, Paul of Tarsus warned Christians about languages that others could not understand. He wrote to the Corinthians in Greek. In English translation, Paul wrote:
if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know what you are saying? [1]
Amen was a common response to prayers in Jewish practice. For amen, Paul transliterated the Hebrew word אָמֵן into Greek letters to form that word in Greek, ἀμήν. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul connected more than Hebrew and Greek. In closing his letter to the Corinthians, Paul proclaimed, “Our Lord, come!”[2] In Paul’s letter, that phrase consists of Aramaic words transliterated into Greek as μαρανα θα.
Early Christianity developed in multilingual circumstances. Some ancient manuscripts of Luke’s Gospel declare:
there was also a superscription written over him {Jesus on the cross}, in letters of Greek, and Roman, and Hebrew, “This is the King of the Jews.” [3]
Letters of Roman meant the language Latin. Letters of Hebrew meant the language Aramaic.[4] Aramaic was then a commonly spoken language of ordinary persons about Jerusalem. Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, as well as more localized languages, surely were spoken in Corinth. Corinth contained a synagogue. Educated Jews would have been able to read biblical Hebrew. Early Christians came from both Jewish and non-Jewish cultures. Early Christians included uneducated person who probably didn’t understand Greek. Despite pervasive Greek culture about the Mediterranean and the Roman imperial rule of Latin, early Christians lacked a universal language.[5]
Two inscribed Christian stones from about Athens in the fifth or sixth century suggest liturgical support for multilingualism. Both stones are inscribed in Greek. One, a gravestone, has an inscription that concludes, “γένοιτο αμήν” (“so be it, amen”). The other stone, a fragment of a stone of uncertain use, has an inscription that concludes, “αμήν γένοιτο” (“amen, so be it”).[5] In these Greek texts, the words for amen and so be it are a transliteration and a translation, respectively, of Hebrew into Greek. That linguistic combination aids understanding what amen means.
Hebrew scripture translated into Greek contained amen both translated and transliterated. Some translators first translated the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) into Greek. Other translators translated other books over time. A complete Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was completed by the late second century BGC. It came to be known as the Septuagint. Of the thirty instances of the Hebrew word אָמֵן (amen), the Septuagint translators translated twenty-three instances as γένοιτο (so be it). In the relatively late books Nehemiah and 1 Chronicles, they transliterated those books’ three instances of amen as αμήν (amen).[6] Translation and transliteration of amen from Hebrew into Greek was practiced before Christianity.
The written double amen also existed before Christianity. The Hebrew Bible contains five instances of double amen’s. In the Septuagint, one of the doubles was dropped (from the end of Psalm 72) and three were translated as γένοιτο γένοιτο (so be it, so be it). A double amen translated in that way occurs in Numbers. Numbers, as a book of the Pentateuch, was among the books of the Hebrew Bible first translated into Greek. A double amen also occurs in the Hebrew of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was probably translated from Hebrew into Greek relatively late. The double amen in Nehemiah was transliterated into a single amen (αμήν). The Nehemiah translation could have been a multilingual double amen, but that’s not what the translators chose.
The multilingual double amen on the early Christian gravestone is associated with elaborate Christian symbolism. The gravestone’s epitaph begins with the three-letter sigla ΧΜΓ. That plausibly represents “Christ born of Mary.” Then the inscription has an alpha, a cross, and an omega. Both the cross and the alpha-omega were well-known early Christian symbols. Following those symbols is an inscription that uses Isaiah’s phrase “sorrow and sighing.” Other text on the surviving gravestone fragments are “my Lord, lay to rest” and “servant of God.” The inscription ends with the multilingual double amen.[7]
The multilingual double amen on the other early Christian stone is also associated with elaborate Christian symbolism. This stone fragment has an elaborate figural design:
A thick molded aetoma, possibly part of a grave stele, cut off below, either for this use or later. … The top of the aetoma features decorative moldings, with two dolphins at the peak, whereas the inner part of the framed aetoma depicts in relief a cross in a circle flanked by two peacocks.
Dolphins, associated with fish, were common early Christian symbols. The peacock was an early Christian symbol of immortality. The surviving inscribed text is short:
The Christ has won. Amen, so be it.[8]
Even if no other inscribed text existed, the figural design alone makes the stone culturally elaborate.
The multilingual double amen probably wasn’t ad hoc aid to the unlearned. Although a multilingual double amen (or even just a translated amen) isn’t used in the New Testament, the multilingual double amen seems to have been for early Christian like the sigla ΧΜΓ, the dolphin, and the peacock: a culturally established Christian form. It represents a small sign of institutionalized linguistic inclusiveness in the early Christian church.
* * * * *
Read more:
- Hebrew into Greek: Jews share Greek with Christians
- Islamic Aquila translates Hebrew scripture into Greek and Arabic
- Greek intellectuals Galen and Longinus consider Hebrew scripture
Data: instances of amen in Hebrew scripture and their translations (Excel version)
Notes:
[1] 1 Corinthians 14:16.
[2] 1 Corinthians 16:22.
[3] Luke 23:38. John 19:20 states that the sign was written in Hebrew, Roman (Latin), and Greek. John is commonly thought to have been written somewhat later than Luke.
[4] John 19:13 refers to “a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha.” Gabbatha is an Aramaic word. So too is Golgotha, referred to in John 19:17, “The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.” “In Hebrew” thus apparently meant Aramaic written in Hebrew characters. The Greek New Testaments contains a variety of transliterated Aramaic words. In some instances, a translation into Greek is explicitly given, e.g. Mark 7:34:
and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, “Eph’phatha,” that is {translated from Aramaic into Greek}, “Be opened.”
For some interesting comments about multilingualism in early Christianity, see Darrell Sutton’s notes.
[5] Sironen (1997), nos. 271 & 330, respectively. Other early Christian inscriptions from about Athens include just ἀμήν (amen). See id. nos. 183, 214, and 366quarter. Id. no. 345 is ἀμήν written in isopsephy. The Didache, written in Greek probably late in the first Christian century or early in the second, has at Ch. 10, v. 6, “μαρὰν ἀθά ἀμήν.” That phrase (maranatha amen) combines Aramaic and Hebrew transliterated into Greek.
[6] For instances of amen in the Hebrew Bible and their translation into Greek, Latin, and English, see the amen workbook. I compiled it using the excellent Blue Letter Bible website. The Greek New Testament uses amen more frequently (140 times in 114 verses, counting based on the Vulgate Latin text) than does the Hebrew Bible (30 times in 25 verses). Moreover, New Testament manuscripts use amen with some inconsistency. The Erasmus-Stephanus Greek New Testament text from about 1550 (Textus Receptus) includes more amen’s than the more recent Nestle-Aland 27th edition text (mGNT). The latter is based on additional ancient Greek manuscripts and additional critical analysis. For differences in use of amen in Greek New Testament texts, see, e.g. Luke 24:53, John 21:25, 1 Corinthians 16:24, 1 Colossians 4:18. Double amen phrases occur 25 times in the Gospel of John. In the New Testament, γένοιτο isn’t used in the sense of amen. Amen in the New Testament is consistently represented in Greek as αμήν. Some amen instances in the New Testament are commonly translated as “verily” or “truly.” William Harris insightfully argues that in the Gospels, Jesus may have used “amen” as a verbal gesture to quiet down a crowd before he taught further.
[7] Sironen (1997) no. 271, pp. 294-5. The stone is Pentelic marble. It’s held in the Byzantine Museum (Athens), inventory no. BM116+1584A.
[8] Id. no. 330, pp. 335-6 (including previous quote). This stone is held in the Epigraphical Museum (Athens), inventory no. EM 9948. An image of the stone apparently isn’t available.
[image] Sixth-century transenna from the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. Image thanks to Sailko and Wikipedia. Sarcophagi of Ravenna include similar designs of doves symmetrically facing a cross.
Reference:
Sironen, Erkki. 1997. The late Roman and early Byzantine inscriptions of Athens and Attica: an edition with appendices on scripts, sepulchral formulae and occupations. Helsinki: Hakapaino Oy.
two lazy suitors compete in laziness to marry a lady
Libro de buen amor, a fourteenth-century Spanish work, is a masterpiece in the literature of men’s sexed protests. Central problems for that literature are women inciting men to violence against men and men’s propensity for self-abasement. In the thirteenth-century Old French work, Des trois Chevaliers et del Chainse, a knight gladly accepts a woman’s challenge to fight other knights while wearing no body armor. In the twenty-first century’s World Values Survey, elite men and women compete to measure most tendentiously anti-women sexism while ignoring anti-men sexism. Libro de buen amor mocks such crazy worldly woman-service with its story of two lazy suitors competing in laziness to marry a lady.
Two lazy suitors sought to marry a lady. One of the suitors was blind in one eye. The other had a hoarse voice and was lame in one leg. They both wooed the lady:
The lady told them, when they asked, that she’d prefer to wed
The lazier of the two: that was the man she’d like to take.
She had no such idea — she wished to goad them instead. [1]
To win the lady, each suitor proclaimed his superior laziness. The suitor with the lame leg and hoarse voice explained that, because he was too lazy to lift his feet up the steps, he fell off a ladder and permanently lamed his leg.[2] He ruined his voice through laziness in a river:
I once went swimming in a river — one of my chief joys —
Upon a scorching afternoon, the hottest ever seen,
And I was dead with thirst, but I was such a lazy boy
I wouldn’t open my mouth, so I lost my gentle voice.[3]
The one-eyed suitor disparaged as paltry the lame, hoarse suitor’s laziness. Beginning with a courtly image of male subservience quickly overturned with low bodily realism, he proclaimed his own laziness as being without equal:
I fell in love last April with a lady like a dove.
Once as I stood before her, peaceful, meek and ripe for love,
I noticed oozing from my nose a nasty stream of snot.
Through laziness to wipe that nose, this girl I never got.But let me tell you more. One night as I lay wide awake
In bed, it rained a torrent. In the roof there was a break
Through which a steady stream of water dropped right on my eye
And dripped and dropped and plopped a lot — it really made me ache!But I was much too lazy to move my head toward the wall.
The drip-drop, as I say, kept coming down till I did mind.
In fact, at last it burst the eye in which I now am blind.
My lady, you must marry me, the laziest one of all! [4]
To appreciate fully this competition in laziness, you have to see clearly Suero de Quinones breaking three hundred lances and many men’s bodies in service to his love for a lady. In Libro de buen amor, Don Amor (Sir Love) told the story of the two lazy suitors to spur the Archpriest of Hita to arduous woman-service. That makes no sense. Woman-service serves neither love nor men.
The lady didn’t marry either man. She declared that they both were equal to her. She told them:
Look somewhere else for brides to wed. No lady wants a mate
Who’s ugly, lazy, lame and bent, whose manners are so coarse.[5]
The lady created the competition in laziness with a false promise of love. In truth, men desperately seeking a woman’s love can only lose. That is a central theme of Libro de buen amor.
* * * * *
Read more:
- women’s tahrīd incites violence against men
- women media go-betweens construct violence in Pamphilus
- Archpriest of Talavera provides men needed instruction in guile
Notes:
[1] Libro de buen amor, s. 459a-c, from Old Spanish trans. Daly (1978) p. 135. In 495c, I’ve replace “badger” with “goad.” The latter word seems to me more contextually appropriate. In the Salamanca manuscript, the story of the two lazy suitors is entitled “Ensienplo de los dos perezosos que querían cassar con una dueña” (The Tale of the Two Lazy Dolts Who Wished to Marry One Lady). That tale, the tale of the young miller (ss. 457-473), and the tale about what happened to Pitas Payas are similar to fabliaux. All subsequent quotes above are from the tale of the two lazy suitors, ss. 461-467.
[2] Climbing a ladder is associated with ascent to God in Christian spirituality. Cf. Genesis 28:10-19.
[3] Jesus summoned those who were thirsty and declared that he would give them water such that they would never thirst again. John 4:13-14, 7:37-38.
[4] On the annoyance of a dripping roof, Proverbs 27:15. A leading scholar has perceived in the image of the nose dripping snot a phallic figure. Vasvari (1989) p. 196. It could equally well be understood as a vagina figure. Alternately, one could understand being blinded by a torrent of rain as extending the first suitor’s scriptural parody of thirsting. Rain in medieval Jewish and Christian understanding was associated with cleansing and purification. See Noah and the Great Flood, Genesis 7-9. The second suitor failed to respond to a flood that might have cleansed him of his chivalric misunderstanding of love. Further parody runs through Matthew 13:14-17.
In Gesta Romanorum, Tale 91, the Emperor Pliny told his three sons that the laziest of them would be his successor as emperor. One son said that he was so lazy that he burnt his legs because he was too lazy to withdrawn them from a fire. Another son declared that if he had a rope around his neck and a sword in his hands, he would be too lazy to cut the rope with the sword. The third son declared:
While I lay upon my bed, water dropped from above upon my eyes. From the nature of the water I was in danger of becoming blind. Nonetheless, I neither could nor would turn my head ever so little to the right or to the left.
From Latin trans. Swan & Hooper (1876) pp. 163-4, adapted non-substantially for readability. The Emperor bequeathed his kingdom to the third son as laziest of all.
[5] Haywood (2008), pp. 51-70, analyzes the tale of the two lazy suitors with cultic psychoanalytic references, preoccupation with castration, and triangles. Vasvari (1989), p. 199-200, declares of the tale:
it belongs to a mixed or hybrid mode/genre, with a number of genre-signals clustered around a single dominant principle. Like the Fr. sotte chanson, it blends the popular fantasy of Cockaigne, the love debates and related forms, tall stories, the epic, including the sub-genre of gab, and the lyric, all framed in a burlesque art of love {scholarly reference omitted}. The imitation subversion is all held together by its extravagant grotesque humor which pairs the ridiculous and the repulsive.
This learned scholarly analysis lacks any appreciation for the central place of themes from the literature of men’s sexed protests in Libro de buen amor.
[image] Sloth (Acedia), from The Seven Vices by Hieronymus (Jerome) Wierix (Netherlandish, ca. 1553–1619 Antwerp), engraving, dated before 1612, thanks to Wikipedia and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
References:
Daly, Saralyn R., trans. and Anthony N. Zahareas, ed. 1978. Juan Ruiz. The book of true love {Libro de buen amor}. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Haywood, Louise M. 2008. Sex, scandal and sermon in fourteenth-century Spain: Juan Ruiz’s Libro de Buen Amor. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Swan, Charles, and Wynnard Hooper, trans. 1876. Gesta romanorum: entertaining moral stories. New York: Dover Publications Inc. (reprint edition of 1969).
Vasvari, Louise O. 1989. “The Two Lazy Suitors in the Libro de buen amor: Popular Tradition and Literary Game of Love.” Anuario medieval vol. 1, pp. 181 -205.
no women-are-wonderful effect: women leaders equally fail men
In a path-breaking 1994 scholarly article entitled “Are People Prejudiced Against Women? Some Answers From Research on Attitudes, Gender Stereotypes, and Judgments of Competence,” a leading female scholar and her male coauthor examined prejudice against women. Men served merely as a background control:
the issue we examine in this chapter is people’s attitudes toward women in the sense of their general evaluation of this social group. To provide a standard for interpreting people’s evaluations of women, we compare them with people’s evaluations of men (and sometimes with their evaluations of other social groups). [1]
The scholars’ findings strongly challenged prevailing wisdom:
Recent research thus suggests that both women and men evaluate women more positively than men — a finding that we dub the women-are-wonderful effect. These findings are provocative in the light of claims concerning negative attitudes and stereotypes about women. … There is no contemporary support in North American social psychological research for claims of pervasive negativity toward women at the level of overall stereotypes or attitudes. [2]
For the leading female scholar, these findings spurred decades of scholarly research to rationalize how the women-are-wonderful effect is consistent with gender inequality. That earnest scholarly research generated in 2007 a book coauthored with a female scholar. The Harvard Business School Press published this book in its prestigious Leadership for the Common Good series. The book, entitled Through the Labyrinth: the truth about how women become leaders, observed that “women in powerful roles are still rare” and examined “what needs to be done to give women better access to authority in the workplace.”[3] Highlighting hardships among persons aspiring to be in the top 0.1%, a laudatory review in the New York Beta Times noted:
Despite the gains of the late 20th century, today only 23 percent of all American chief executives are women, and only 6 percent of the top executive positions in Fortune 500 companies are occupied by women.
In a highly developed understanding of trickle-down economics, the sex composition of the CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies has huge implications for the homeless and the unemployed. The sex composition of Fortune 500 CEO’s is a key issue of social justice for the millions of persons seeking to build law-abiding lives, or at least find food and shelter, after being released onto the street after months or years of incarceration. Moreover, women attending Harvard Business School feel unloved.
An unappreciated perspective on the women-are-wonderful effect recognizes it as the men-are-creepy effect. The contents of Through the Labyrinth might have been much different if the women-are-wonderful effect had been recognized as the men-are-creepy effect. But the leading female scholar would have had to step up to serve as a desperately needed woman leader. Here’s a sketch of the missing leadership book, with the chapters organized under question headings.
1. Is There Still a Men’s Death Pit?
Yes. Violence against men is socially accepted. About four times as many men die from violence as do women. Twice as many men die from unintentional injuries as do women. Men’s deaths attract relatively little social concern. International authorities have ignored and naturalized men’s lifespan disadvantage relative to women, while lifespans have increased greatly over the past two centuries.
2. Where Are Leaders Who Care About Men?
There aren’t any. The political spectrum is divided between those who seek to eradicate and incarcerate men, and those who seek to ensure that men’s lives are limited to dying for their country and providing money (“child support”) to women and children.
3. Are Men Natural Criminals?
No. Crime is socially constructed. As pre-Islamic women’s tahrīd illustrates and the conjectures of Biosocial Interactionist Theory support, women share responsibility for men’s criminal acts. [4]
4. Do Child-Custody, Child-Support, and Alimony Practices Hold Men Back?
Yes. Discrimination against men in family life is much greater than discrimination against women in the workplace. Men don’t live life to the fullest because they lack equal opportunities within families to drop out of the labor force temporarily or permanently. Men lack sufficient opportunities within families to have women both financially support them while personally (including sexually) respecting them.
5. Is Discrimination Still a Problem?
Yes. Discrimination against men is so totalitarian that anyone pointing it out is disparaged as deranged or even anti-feminist. Shaming and silencing men’s voices of protest has been common historically.
6. What Is the Psychology of Prejudice Toward Low-Status Men?
One man can create many more offspring than one woman can. The early thirteenth-century Mongol leader Ghengis Khan conquered Asia from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea and transmitted his genetic material to about 8% of the population currently living in that region.[5] A man’s ability to create many offspring is a biological basis for lower social value of men than women. While the social valuation of men and women is much more complex than just reproductive biology, even leading scientific journals today are unable to recognize that “women and children first” policies on sinking ships socially devalue men. Elite men compete among men for sexually access to beautiful women. Elite women compete among women to transfer resources from men to women. Those elite social dynamics have long supported social prejudice toward low-status men.
7. Do people Resist Concern for Low-Status Men?
Yes. Expressing concern about women is much more profitable and popular.
8. Do Women Lead Differently from Men?
Women leaders and men leaders show little difference in concern for low-status men. See, e.g. Through the Labyrinth: the truth about how women become leaders.
9. Do Organizations Compromise the Lives of Low-Status Men?
Yes. About twelve times as many men die from workplace fatalities as do women.[6]
10. How Do Some Men Find Their Way Through the Labyrinth?
Some men read widely, think critically, and look at life realistically. They figure out ways to lead fulfilling lives and to avoid being treated like money machines or disposable sub-humans.
11. How Good Are Ordinary Men and What Does Their Future Hold?
Ordinary men are wonderful. Everyone should love and cherish them. Unfortunately, without good leadership, their future and the future of civilization is grim.[7]
Conclusion: When you see the above book written, the teachings of Buddha have prevailed, a new era of leadership has finally arrived, and the world has moved beyond the cycle of women and men being reborn as each other.
* * * * *
Read more:
- social context of the heroism of Bill Evans and Torpedo Squadron 8
- crude peasant challenges King Solomon on ordinary men’s position
- contempt for men’s welfare and biological paternity in legal action
Notes:
[1] Eagly & Mladinic (1994) p. 2.
[2] Id. pp. 13, 21. The introduction to this paper ends with a warning against deviant interpretation of the scholarly facts:
To forewarn readers about these implications, we note that the especially positive evaluation of women that we discovered in our and others’ research findings does not mean that the millennium has arrived for women.
In further psychological research, Hosado & Stone (2000) p. 1293 concluded, “the present study showed that men and women are still believed to be different from each other on a number of attributes.” That suggests a need for more gender education. But id. also found evidence that gender education is having an effect:
Although the content of gender stereotypes seems to have remained unchanged over the years, the value attached to stereotypic gender traits seems to be changing. More specifically, a greater number of unfavorable attributes were used to describe men than women, thereby creating a more negative masculine stereotype.
Subsequent research has pointed to the value of exploring how women are affected by “the perils of ‘positive’ prejudice toward women.” Glick & Fiske (2011).
[3] Quotes from bookjacket of Eagly & Carli (2007).
[4] On moving forward with Biosocial Interactionist Theory, see Eagly & Wood (2013) pp. 553-5.
[5] Zerjal et al. (2003). Worldwide, 0.5% of persons are lineal descendants of Genghis Khan. Id. Razib Khan provides a good review of this work. While the study directly concerns male descendants, the share of female descendants probably is close to the share of male descendants. Subsequent genetic research has found genetic signatures of over 100 events of population-level genetic admixtures. Hellenthal et al. (2014).
[6] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), All-worker profile, 2003-2012.
[7] The above eleven chapters are based on the eleven chapters in Eagly & Carli (2007):
- Is There Still a Glass Ceiling?
- Where Are the Women Leaders?
- Are Men Natural Leaders?
- Do Family Responsibilities Hold Women Back?
- Is Discrimination Still a Problem?
- What Is the Psychology of Prejudice Toward Female Leaders?
- Do People Resist Women’s Leadership?
- Do Women Lead Differently from Men?
- Do Organizations Compromise Women’s Leadership?
- How Do Some Women Find Their Way Through the Labyrinth?
- How Good Are Women Leaders and What Does Their Future Hold?
References:
Eagly, Alice H., and Linda Lorene Carli. 2007. Through the labyrinth: the truth about how women become leaders. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.
Eagly, Alice H., and Antonio Mladinic. 1994. “Are People Prejudiced Against Women? Some Answers From Research on Attitudes, Gender Stereotypes, and Judgments of Competence.” European Review of Social Psychology. 5 (1): 1-35.
Eagly, Alice H., and Wendy Wood. 2013. “Feminism and Evolutionary Psychology: Moving Forward.” Sex Roles. 69 (9-10): 549-556.
Glick, Peter, and Susan T. Fiske. 2011. “Ambivalent Sexism Revisited.” Psychology of Women Quarterly. 35 (3): 530-535.
Hellenthal, Garrett, George B. J. Busby, Gavin Band, James F. Wilson, Cristian Capelli, Daniel Falush, and Simon Myers. 2014, “A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History.” Science 343 (6172), 747-751. DOI:10.1126/science.1243518
Hosoda Megumi, and Dianna L Stone. 2000. “Current gender stereotypes and their evaluative content.” Perceptual and Motor Skills. 90 (3): 1283-94.
Zerjal, Tatiana, Xue, Yali, Bertorelle, Giorgio, Wells, R. Spencer, Bao, Weidong, Zhu, Suling, Qamar, Raheel, et al. 2003. “The Genetic Legacy of the Mongols.” American Journal of Human Genetics. 72 (3): 717-21.
Wednesday's flowers
