Rod Frederick

Rod Frederick

Biblical Ascendancy Over English: A Linguistic Study of the New Testament

The basis of English is Anglo-Saxon but it is an amalgamation of many languages like Scandinavian, French, Latin etc. At various periods of its history it has absorbed words from most of the European languages. Words like ‘baptism', ‘cardinal', ‘creator', ‘prayer', ‘saint', ‘salvation', ‘theology', ‘trinity', ‘virtue' etc are French loan words and ‘collect', ‘immortal', ‘scripture', ‘infinite' etc are Latin loan words (David, 47- 48). Infact, a number of these loanwords are still considered as foreign, nevertheless they have become an essential part of English vocabulary. Words, related to government and administration like ‘politics', ‘policy', ‘politician' and ‘police' came from the Greek word polis meaning ‘city' (Frederick, 260).

      Language is evolutionary not static and when it comes to English, it is all the more transient. Like the changing fashions and styles in clothes, words in literature also have kept changing and evolving. English has flourished and developed due to many other reasons; among which the contribution of religion is obvious because of the influence that it has on the English society. It goes without saying that religion does not have as strong a grip as it had on people in the past.

       So it would not be out of place to talk about the evolution of English. As a result of the Norman Conquest, the east midland dialect became the standard language (standard English). Gradually, it became the language of schools in 1350, then of the court of law in 1362 and finally the parliament in 1369. Religion was the very center of life at that time, and church was regarded as the highest authority. So in order to spread English throughout the world, the Bible was translated into English. It has been revised several times ever since. The first phase of development in English started during the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century) and went on upto 1650. The first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to this phase.

       In 1382, John Wycliffe came up with a version of the Holy Bible. It was the first English version of the Bible. After that several English versions from several scholars came up. Among them are Tyndale's New Testament (1484), Miles Coverdale's Version (1535), Metthew's Bible (1537), Richard Taverner's Version (1539), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva Bible (1560), Bishop's Bible (1568), the Rhemish Version of New Testament (1582), the Authorized King James Version (1611), the Revised Version (1881), the American Standard Version (1901), the Revised Standard Version (1952), Gideons International Holy Bible (From 1898 up to present).

     Authorized King James Version (1611) forms the main text of the proposed study because it coincides with the age of Shakespeare when the real development in English language started picking pace. The study may seem to be irrelevant in the modern context where changes are taking place so rapidly but I am convinced that unknowingly we make use of a number of words, phrases and structures that have entered our existing vocabulary and usage evidently through the literature that we may have read but its roots lie somewhere in this sacred text.

     All these years biblical words have had great influence on English. The use of the indefinite article ‘an' for example was taken up before many nouns beginning with -h in a stressed syllable such as ‘an hundred', ‘an harlot', etc due to the influence of Bible which came up in 1382 and continued up to the twentieth century. Apart from this, biblical phrases, like ‘prodigal son', ‘sweat of your brow' etc have now passed into general usage. In Early Modern English, there were two second-person personal pronouns: thou, the informal singular pronoun, and ye, which was both the plural pronoun and the formal singular. Both these have been taken from the Bible. It is a different matter though, that these words are no longer in modern usage. Like other personal pronouns, thou and ye had different forms depending on their grammatical case; specifically, objective form of thou was thee, its possessive forms were thy and thine, and its reflexive or emphatic form was thyself, while theobjective form of ye was you, its possessive forms were your and yours, and its reflexive or emphatic forms were yourself and yourselves.

English is an amalgamation of several European languages. The Bible, which was the epicenter of life, was translated into English to popularize English and Christianity throughout the world. There is a significant influence of biblical words, expressions and usages on English. It is a different matter though that the many words that we use today have undergone change in meaning, for example ‘poll (Ezekiel 44:20)', now we use this word for ‘head or register of voters, voting', but in the Bible it means ‘to cut hair from head'. Now we use ‘fat' (Proverbs 12:5) for ‘plumb and thick', but in the Bible, it means ‘rich or prosperous'. Similarly the word ‘alms (Matthew 6:3-4) means ‘acts and deeds of mercy' but now it means ‘chargeable gift or food grains'.

There are also examples of polysemy in words like ‘faith' (Matthew 7:1, 8:10, Romans 12:3, 14:23, James 2:14-17), ‘judgment' (Matthew 7:1, John 3:8, 36, 5:22, Act 4:2). In modern English, we also come across examples of polysemy like ‘bank', ‘board' etc. There are many phrases in the New Testament, which have entered into the general idioms of the language e.g. ‘cast your pearls before swine' (Matthew 7), ‘the straight and the narrow' (Matthew 7), ‘new wine in old bottles' (Matthew 9), ‘rule with a rod of iron' (Rev 2) etc.

The language of the text of the New Testament is distinguished at the phonological level by its rhythmical framework. Most of the sentences are complex having two kinds-

1. Those in which the constituent clauses are grammatically co-ordinate e.g. ‘Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the prophets, I did not come to destroy but to fulfill' (Matthew 5:17)
2. Those in which one of the clause is modified by one or more subordinate clauses with the use of a subordinate conjunction i.e. ‘Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee' (Matthews 3:12) ‘Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehm of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem' (Matthew 2:1)

If we analyze sentences from the phrase structure point of view, most of the sentences of Matthew chapter 1 are based on alternative and recursive rules as discussed by Noam Chomsky while talking about phrase and clause structure rules e.g.          

            ‘Ram begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Nahshon, and Nashon begot Salman' (1:3), ‘Solomon begot Rehoboam, Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa' (1:7), ‘Asa begot Jehoshaphat, Jeshoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah' (1:8), ‘Uzziah begot Jotham, Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah' (1:9), ‘Azor begot Zadok, Zadok begot Achim, and Achim begot Eliud' (1:14) etc.

The grammatical arrangement of the sentences is in verse form and they repeatedly follow the pattern S ® NP + VP + NP. This repetitive use of the same structure can enable an embedding of the same. Subordinate clauses, which pose immense problem for learners can be taken up from the text to acquaint them with their varied use.

Modern English has taken plenty of words from the Bible. In the New Testament, the word ‘devil' for ‘evil' was used for the first time and it continues to be used even today. In modern dictionaries, a large number of words have come from the New Testament. English, which has Anglo-Saxon as its basis has many words like ‘alter', ‘prior', ‘cross', ‘hymn', ‘apostle', ‘demon', ‘paradise', etc which are used very commonly even today without change in their meaning. Elements of Early Modern English can still be found in some dialects. For example, thee and thou can still be heard in Africa and some parts of Yorkshire. The pronunciation of book, cook, look, etc. with a long [u:] can be heard in the remote areas of the North and the West Country.

     In the New Testament many irregular verbs are found in their older forms e.g. digged (dug), gotten (got) bare (bore), spake (spoke), etc. There are several prepositions, which have undergone a change of usage. A very common preposition is  ‘of', it was used with the following noun-phrases earlier but has undergone a change as can be seen below:

Phrase        Preposition (then)            Preposition (now)            Phrase

the zeal          of                                            for                              thine house

tempted         of                                            by                                  Satan

went forth     of                                            from                        

The New Testament contains twenty-seven books and there are several words, which are frequently repeated. Some of them still have the same meaning while the meanings of some other words have changed due to linguistic, historical, social, psychological causes, and foreign influence. For instance ‘Virgin', a proper noun is the name of Christ's mother, but now we use this word for a chaste and pure maiden.

The word ‘flesh (Romans 8:10-12,Genesis 1:27) is an example of polysemy having two meanings. First, it means ‘body' and its second meaning is ‘sinful nature', but now it means ‘muscular part of animal's body' or ‘soft substance'. There are some other words like ‘angel', ‘temptation', ‘grace', ‘circumcision', ‘atonement', ‘gentile', ‘repentance', ‘saint', ‘satan', ‘devil', etc which are used presently without a change in their meaning. These words can also be interpreted through designation, connotation and range of application.

      Designation is concerned with how lexemes or words are related to the different parts of the world. Connotation is the component of lexical meaning, which adds some contrastive value to the basic usually designative meaning. Range of application is concerned with the restrictions on the range or limit of the application or use of two or more words, which have same or similar designation e.g.

(1)   The owner of this state died.

(2)   The owner of this state passed away.

(3)   The owner of this state deceased.

(4)   The owner of this state kicked the bucket.

           In the first sentence the verb died is an informal matter of fact statement, which probably would be used by relatives and friends. In the second sentence the verb passed away could be a formal announcement or a newspaper report. The third sentence with the verb deceased will be a part of legal document. The fourth sentence using the idiomatic phrase kicked the bucket implies that it is has been used by a person who either belongs to lower category in the social strata or has no love for the dead owner. The shared common information, which is related to the reality of ‘some one not being alive' is the basic information and is called designation. Others are the components added to the basic information and known as connotation.

      King James Version of the Bible is, in all likelihood, the most successful of all English translations. Volumes have been written on its distinctive and rhythmic style, and it is still regarded as a triumph of modern English literature. So great was the influence of the King James Version that it played a vital role in the development of the English language for decades. English speakers still use such phrases as `a fly in the ointment', `go the extra mile', and `stick to the straight and narrow', never realizing that they are quoting from King James Version. But most English people are unaware that King James' English is more than a few simple `thees' and `thous in the right places. Archaic words are actually part of grammar, and indicate verb tenses and noun cases and number. For example, `thou' is the second person, singular, personal pronoun, while `ye' is the corresponding plural form. In addition, the second person personal pronoun ‘you' is used differently to its modern counterpart. So in South Africa `ye' and `thou' are used as the subject of a sentence by the less literate users of English, while `you' is used as the object of a sentence. On the other hand, modern English has lost this distinction as `you' for both the singular and plural forms of the word, as well as both noun cases. This distinction is subtle, and is not generally apprehended by the casual modern reader.

    In the course of time, the syntactic, lexical and semantic functions of words have undergone a change. English has now become a world language. Its vocabulary has always been the chief index of change. Technical development, globalization of the society and busy life style are highly responsible for the creation of new symbolic or contracted forms of English. The English of e-mail, e-chatting and s.m.s. are fine examples of this. The symbolic contracted forms are very often used in e-mails e.g.. ‘asl' stands for ‘age, sex and location', ‘y' for ‘yes', ‘n' for  ‘no', ‘lol' for   ‘laugh out loudly', ‘pm' for private message, etc.

         The extracts cited above clearly show that there is a lot of influence of the Bible on English. Even after centuries, we use words and phrases taken from it. A glimpse of the style in which the Bible was translated can be seen in modern English, for example ‘let there be light' was the first use of transformation which is so frequent in modern English. Some of the phrases, taken from the Bible which have come into general usage in modern English e.g. ‘a good old age' (Gen. 15), ‘a man alter his own heart' (1 Sam.13), ‘fight the good fight' (1 Tim. 6), ‘to pure all things are pure' (Tit. 1), ‘to kick against the prick' (Acts 9), etc.

          Apart from this, English literature in these three hundred years has adopted three influential elements from the Bible: style, language, and material e.g. themes in some of Shakespeare's plays, ‘Paradise Lost' the epic of Milton and some of his other poems and T.S. Eliot's works. English literature has found most of its material from the Bible than anything else. It has looked there for its characters, illustrations and subject matter. We shall see, as we consider individual writers, how many of their titles and complete works are suggested by the Bible. In early English, Marlowe was influenced by the theme of the Bible   In each of these it is the same idea that gets repeated. A man sells his soul to the devil for gaining materialistic pleasure and joy. That is one of the many ideas, which the Bible has given to literature. The phrase ‘prodigal son' has been another prolific source of literary writing, ‘guiding star' is another.  Thus, not only in general usage but also in literature the influence of the Bible can be easily seen quite clearly.

 

About the Author

Parmeshwar Gangawat- from India is lecturer in English at Indira Gandhi P.G. College, Dausa, State- Rajasthan and he is teaching English language & literature to undergraduate and postgraduate students from past four years. He did his M.A. (English) from University of Rajasthan in year 2006 and M.Phil (ELT) from Periyar University in 2008. Besides, he did his M.A. (Linguistics) from DDE Anna Malai University and M.A. (Education) from IASE University. Now he is a research scholar at Department of English, University of Rajasthan and pursuing his Ph.D. His area of specialization is Applied Linguistics. (gangawat_pankaj@yahoo.com)

Which USA minister today most Bible based?

Which USA minister today do you feel is most Biblically based and accurate Biblically?

Pastor Rod Parsley?

Pastor John Hagee?

Pastor Frederick K.C. Price?

Pastor Perry Stone?

Pastor Billy Graham?

Other?

On the list you've given, I'd say Billy Graham. Several of the men you've listed are heretics.

Of those not on your list who appear on tv, I highly recommend Dr. Charles Stanley and Dr. Michael Youssef.

P rod @ Frederick Skate Park