Words are a Window
Words are a window into the minds of our predecessors. I’m not referring to the fact that we can simply read what people long dead wrote down. That’s true, of course, and amazing in its own right. But I’m talking about something deeper. The words people chose in the ancient world, especially when translating from one language to another, can reveal to us sometimes surprising ways in which their way of looking at the world was quite different from ours.
We sometimes just assume that ancient authors meant the same things that we do when they used the same words. After all, human nature hasn’t changed. And so 19th century scholars just assumed that the poet Catullus, for instance, meant pretty much the same thing we do by a word such as “love.” More recent commentators have come to a rather different conclusion. In his book Catullus and his World: A Reappraisal classics scholar T.P. Wiseman says:
Because we find some parts of the late-Republican scene immediately intelligible and accessible (notably Cicero in his letters and Catullus in his love poems), it is easy to treat their world as if it were in general familiar to us, and to assume that their values were essentially similar to our own. I think we shall get closer to understanding the ancient world if we make the opposite assumption . . . (Wiseman 4)
Ways of Looking at the World
I’ve recently run across some very striking reminders that our way of looking at the world isn’t the only one. Or even the most reasonable one. Certainly not the view of people a millennium or two ago.The examples I’m looking at below are from Christian Latin, but the view of the world they reveal was common among pagans and Christians alike. These examples will be of help to anyone interested in the ancient Roman World. I’ll take a closer look at non-Christian writers, including our old friend Catullus, in another article.
Let’s start with the Nicene Creed. This is the statement of belief that the early church first promulgated at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. It will be quite familiar to Catholics and members of many other Christian denominations. In English it begins “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth . . .” In Latin that reads
Credo in unum Deum,
Patrem omnipotentem,
factorem caeli et terrae . . .
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae
We get our word “Creed” from the first Latin word, credo, “I believe.” By the way, the original word is the plural, credimus, “we believe.” Many churches use the singular form in liturgical settings so that the Creed can serve as a personal statement of belief for the congregants.
It’s All Greek to Me
Anyway, here’s where things get interesting. As it happens, the council fathers at Nicaea didn’t compose the Creed in Latin. Its original language is Greek. As in the Latin translation, it begins with the word “We believe”: Πιστεύομεν (Pisteuomen). The Greek name for the creed doesn’t come from Πιστεύομεν, however. Instead, the word is Σύμβολον (Symbolon). If you think that looks like our word “symbol,” you’re correct. Now, a symbol and a creed sound like two totally unrelated things to a speaker of modern English. How does this work?
Of course, it’s no surprise that the meaning of words change over time, and seventeen centuries can bring a lot of change. But how the meaning has changed can tell us a lot. Symbolon, for example, is very different different from our modern word “symbol.” We usually mean no more by it than “a sign representing something else.” Symbolon means so much more. Looking at those differences reveals a lot about how earlier generations of Christians looked at the Creed. Not only that, it helps us understand the overall mindset of their time.
Symbolon vs. Symbol
Let’s take a look. In ancient Greece a symbolon was a sign or mark that served as an identifier. It was the token that a citizen would show to gain admittance to the assembly in a Greek polis, for instance. Also, when two people made a contract they would break a coin in half. The halves were called symbola, and their ability to fit together properly signified the validity of the contract. Ta symbola was also the term they applied to a treaty or covenant between states.
A symbolon, then, was the concrete expression of an abstraction such as an agreement, or citizenship. It was more than just a sign. In a sense, it was the thing it signified. The ancient mind was much less willing to separate the abstract and concrete into different realms.
A Great Mystery
Another example is the Greek word μυστηρίων (mysterion). This is the source of our English word “mystery.” As is the case with symbolon, our understanding of the word has changed. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul refers to the correspondence of marriage with the relationship of Christ to the Church. The original Greek reads “τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστίν.” In English, “This is a great mysterion.” Most translations render the Greek word “mystery.” Here again, the Latin sounds very different at first: Sacramentum hoc magnum est. That is, “This is a great sacrament.” It’s worth noting that outside of the Christian context, the sacramentum was the oath a Roman soldier used to swear upon enlistment. The old Catholic Douay-Rheims and the Wycliffe Bible both translate mysterion “sacrament.”
So again, what is the connection between a mystery and an oath? In Greek mysterion didn’t mean something unknowable. Instead, it was something that we could only know through experience, not intellectually. So-called “mystery religions” such as the Eleusinian Mysteries involved undergoing a secret initiation. The knowledge was inseparable from the experience.
He Needn’t Hope to Find Himself
Likewise, an oath is not simply a promise. It’s the embodiment of a promise. In an oath, we pledge our very selves as the surety of our commitment. In a very real sense, we are the promise. The playwright Robert Bolt gives us a good example of this traditional understanding of what an oath entails. In his play A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More says:
When a man takes an oath, he’s holding his own self in his own hands like water, and if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.
Like symbolon, the words mysterion and sacramentum show us a much more holistic way of viewing reality. Given that, it seems that the translations that render mysterion with the word “secret” are missing the mark. This is clearly not how writers of the Early Church understood the word. On the contrary, it refers to something that we know deeply. More deeply, in fact, than the intellect can penetrate. Where we like to draw sharp lines between abstractions such as thoughts and feelings on the one hand and the visible world on the other, our ancestors looked at all of them as a seamless reality.
Comparing Translations
Once we understand that difference in perspective, the use of the word Symbolon to refer to the Creed makes more sense. Not only that, it helps us understand much more clearly what the Christians of the 4th century AD had in mind when they promulgated the Nicene Creed. It is not simply a statement of belief. When believers recite it, they are actually manifesting its contents in themselves. As in the breaking of an oath, if they depart from it after that, they violate themselves. They separate themselves from a part of themselves.
If we really want to understand a text, whether religious or secular, we need to be aware of what the authors actually intend by their words. That can be hard to do from a distance of fifteen centuries or more. A comparison of different versions of the same passage or word, however, can be illuminating. In the examples above, the difference between the Greek and Latin versions of the same word or title tips us off to the fact that we need to look more closely.
Words are a Window to the Mind
Not everyone knows Latin and Greek, of course. But even those who don’t know one or both ancient languages can learn a lot by looking at different English Translations.
If you notice that the Revised Standard Version says “mystery” where the Douay-Rheims gives us “sacrament” and the Good News Translation prefers “secret,” that tells us that there’s more going on than a simple word-for-word correspondence. It’s worth doing a little research. Words are our windows to the mind of our predecessors, and what we find there might surprise us. And, quite possibly, enlighten us.
Featured image top of page: Icon Depicting Emperor Constantine and the Council Fathers of Nicaea with the Nicene Creed. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
