LETTERS
Letters to the Editor The language of Our Lord In his letter, ‘The Silver Screen’ (spring 2021 Mass of Ages) Matt Showering raises the interesting question of the language in which the conversation between Our Lord and Pontius Pilate recorded in John 18:33-38 took place. Personally, I am convinced that it was in Greek. Greek was the universal language of government, law and commerce throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Moreover, every educated Roman was taught to read, write and speak it. As procurator of a province in the eastern Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate would certainly have spoken it fluently. It was a basic necessity of the job. There is no direct evidence that Our Lord could speak Greek. However, there is certainly evidence, from the New Testament itself, that some working class Judaeans at least could do so. The Gospels of Mark, Luke and John were all written in Greek, as were the letters of Peter, James and John. Luke may have been a doctor but Peter, James and John certainly began life as fishermen. St Paul was a humble tentmaker by profession, but he was able to bring the gospel to cities in the Greek world in their own language, as well as to write letters in fluent Greek to the new Christian communities which he founded. I can well believe therefore that, even taking into account only His purely human nature, Our Lord learned to speak Greek as part of his basic education. If I am right then the text of John 18:33-38 may well preserve not only the language in which the conversation took place, but the very words of the conversation itself. Philip Goddard Via email ..... I was delighted to read Matt Showering’s letter where he considers whether Jesus did, in fact, speak in Latin at His interrogation by Pilate, as portrayed in the film ‘The Passion of the Christ’. For a start, Jesus is ‘The Word’, and, being God, would have had all languages as His to command, if He had had need of them. In the Koran it states that Jesus spoke from birth. (As an aside, Jesus is mentioned more than 187 times in the Koran). He spoke Greek, so why not Latin? We know He spoke Greek, because, for example, in the dialogue with Peter, where He questions him three times, ‘Do you love Me?’, St John’s Greek uses two words for ‘love’. The first, which Jesus uses, is ‘agape’ - unconditional, selfless love: ‘Agapas me?’ When Peter replies, in each of the three replies, he uses the word ‘philia’, friendship love. So, Jesus, the third time, uses Peter’s choice of word, and says, ‘Phileis me?’
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Clearly, He and His apostles, moving in a cosmopolitan society, would have, on occasion, conversed in any of the three most popular languages of the day. (Galilee, their home district, was particularly full of foreign influences.) And Pilate would obviously have been more at ease with his own language than with Aramaic or Hebrew. Sister Susan Asher Via email .....
Why rush the Mass? When I first started to attend the TLM after Summorum Pontificum, I thought it a blessing that we had priests who also celebrated the NO in the vernacular, since it meant they took as much care over the words as the actions of the Mass. However, as the years have gone by, it seems that familiarity with the Latin seems to lead inevitably to gabbling through the prayers at a rate few priests would do in the vernacular. I can remember the pre-Vatican II days when people joked about priests who could ‘get through’ Mass in under 15 minutes – we joked, but were not edified. The prayers of the Traditional Mass are commended for their richness, so why rush them? Perhaps that is one reason so many Catholics welcomed the introduction in the 1950s of the ‘dialogue mass’ (Missa recitativa) – if the congregation is joining in the Gloria and the Creed, they have to be taken at a slower, more reflective, pace. When hearing the Last Gospel being read, there is a world of difference between a familiarity with Latin that sounds as though a speed record is being sought, and a familiarity that sounds as though the reader is thinking about what he is reading. I make these observations not in an attitude of criticism or complaint – but of bewilderment. Given the richness of the traditional prayers, why have haste and speed become the hallmarks of praying in Latin? Clare Underwood Via email
Letters should be addressed to: The Editor, Mass of Ages, 11-13 Macklin Street, London WC2B 5NH email editor@lms.org.uk Letters may be edited for reasons of space
SUMMER 2021
