Every poet who cares about craft will in time want to become something of a linguist. After a while, the need for some command of the language simply becomes apparent.
Even though the would-be poet was encouraged “to look to the heart and write,” still the medium of poetry is one of words, and without some command of language all the misty feelings of the heart find a soggy articulation at best.
Ben Johnson chided Shakespeare ever so slightly because he had only “small Latin and even less Greek,” but on the other hand, the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon also invented something on the order of 1,800 English words of his own. What, as a linguist, he may have lacked in a foreign tongue he compensated for in his native.
There are, of course, numerous ways to pursue a command of language. One such way would be through the commerce of our daily labor. As Ralph Waldo Emerson stated:
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town; in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Prose and Poetry , “The American Scholar”, Rinehart & Co., Inc., New York, 1953, p. 57)
Another path to language is, of course, through reading, particularly a reading of the classics. In Walden , Henry David Thoreau:
It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.
Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old . (Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings , Bantam Books, Inc., New York, 1960, p. 180).
Even if the student poet never rises above the level of an amateur linguis, there is nothing of shame in that status. Hugh Nibley pointed out in an essay entitled “The Day of the Amateur” that some of our greatest minds in art and science, including Descartes, Priestly and Mendel, were amateur enthusiasts in their avocation. The poet Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive by profession; the composer Charles Ives from day to day slogged away in the same trade.
Latter-day Saints have an apt foundation in amateur linguistics because of the Church's world-wide missionary program. After a year or two of immersion in a foreign culture, young and old missionaries alike learn the basics of other languages as diverse as Italian, Finnish, Ukrainian and Japanese.
An advantage presented in a second language, if nothing else, would be the additional window it provides into the scriptures. The soul, refined by an understanding of doctrine in more than one language, is less apt to be crabbed by provincial interpretations or misled by incorrect translations.
Toward the end of his life Joseph Smith was reading his Bible in Latin, Hebrew, German and Greek.
To cite just one example, the word “atonement,” as has been pointed out on more than one occasion, only appears in the New Testament once, and that is true so far as the King James translation is concerned. The passage is found in Romans 5:11:
But we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
However, in the original Greek text, the word translated as “atonement” is not quite so rare. The Greek passage of Roman 5:10 reads:
a'lla` kai` kauxw/menoi e'n tw\^ qew\^ dia` tou^ kuri/ou h‘mw^n 'Ihsou^ Xristou^, di” ou‘^ nu^n th`n katallagh`n e'la/bomen.
The Greek word translated as “atonement” in this passage is katallagh`n (pronounced “ katallagen ”), meaning an “exchange” — a “change from enmity to friendship,” as in a “reconciliation.” It is translated here as “atonement,” but the Greek word katallagh and its variants are found elsewhere in the writings of Paul, though translated into English with other words.
For example, in the passage of II Corinthians 5:18-19, all the words translated into English as “reconciled” or “reconciliation” derive from katallagh in the Greek:
18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
19 To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
18 ta` de` pa/nta e'k tou^ qeou^ tou^ katalla/cantoj h‘ma^j e‘autw\^ dia` 'Ihsou ^ Xristou^ kai` do/ntoj h‘mi^n th`n diakoni/an th^j katallagh^j,
19 w‘j o‘/ti qeo`j h'^n e'n Xristw\^ ko/smon katalla/sswn e‘autw\^, mh` logizo/menoj au'toi^j ta` paraptw/mata au'tw^n, kai` qe/menoj e'n h‘mi^n to`n lo/gon th^j katallagh^j.
In verse 18, the phrase “the ministry of reconciliation” could be translated the “ministry of the atonement,” and in verse 19 the phrase “the word of reconciliation” could as easily be translated “the word of the atonement.” We find that the absence of this central doctrine in the New Testament is not entirely an impoverishment in the original, but derives also from its translation from the Greek to English, coinciding with the Book of Mormon warning that “plain and precious parts” have been taken from the Bible — in this instance, perhaps, simply because of translation choices.
The Articles of Faith continually remind us that we believe the Bible insofar as it is translated correctly, and even when a translation may not be necessarily incorrect, it is good to know other options exist. The King James translators could have translated even the one instance of “atonement” in Romans 5:11 as “reconciliation,” and we would have had nothing of the word “atonement” in the New Testament at all.
For the curious student with little or no Greek, small epiphanies such as this are not beyond reach. The Church has produced a CD-Rom, entitled “The Scriptures,” which offers the authorized version of the scriptural canon in English, together with twelve other languages, including the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament.
The Hebrew and Greek testaments are presented together with English transliterations and direct links to lexicons so that the meaning of any given word can be immediately examined. Additional search capabilities allow the student to locate all other uses of that same Hebrew or Greek word throughout the entire Biblical text. With this tool, virtually anyone can become something of a linguist.
So for example, in reading John 6:14 I immediately found 32 other references for the word shmei^on (pronounced “ semeiov” ), meaning “sign or miracle.” This allowed me to examine first hand an issue between the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version, the latter of which downplays the use of the English word “miracle” in its translation.
Before using this CD I had virtually no Hebrew. I cannot overstate how little my Hebrew has progressed, but simply seeing the text in Hebrew has been revelatory. For example, a passage of the creation story from Genesis 1 follows in the original text:
3 וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר ……
4 וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאוֹר כִּי־טוֹב …..
5 וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ …..
6 וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי רָקִיעַ בְּתוֹךְ …..
7 וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָרָקִיעַ וַיַּבְדֵּל …..
8 וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָרָקִיעַ שָׁמָיִם וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב ....
9 וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יִקָּווּ הַמַּיִם מִתַּחַת …..
10 וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לַיַּבָּשָׁה אֶרֶץ וּלְמִקְוֵה …..
11 וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים תַּדְשֵׁא הָאָרֶץ דֶּשֶׁא …..
Even though a reader may know nothing of Hebrew, when discovering that the word for God in this passage is אֱלֹהִים , or Elohim, which is the second word from the right in verse 3 above, an entirely new world opens. Scanning the Hebrew from right to left, the reader will then notice that Elohim is also the second word in the subsequent verses as well, and then perhaps discover that the first word of each verse at the far right is a verb construction.
Besides the obvious parallel structure of the word Elohim in the nine verses, there are parallel structures as well in the verbs, as evident in the framing created by the same verb repeated in verses 3, 6, 9 and 11 and the repeated verb in verses 5, 8 and 10. The passage is obviously highly structured, an apparent mnemonic device arising in an oral tradition to retain the story by heart.
As a result, the narrative appears stunningly poetic in the original. The passage translated roughly in the same word order is as follows:
3 And said Elohim, Let there be light . . . .
4 And saw Elohim that the light (was) good . . . .
5 And called Elohim the light Day . . . .
6 And said Elohim, Let there be expanse . . . .
7 And made Elohim the expanse . . . .
8 And called Elohim the expanse Heaven . . . .
9 And said Elohim, Let be gathered the waters . . . .
10 And called Elohim the dry (land) Earth . . . .
11 And said Elohim, Let bring forth the Earth grass . . .
The original text reveals a startling beauty, undiminished by the passage of more than four thousand years. To learn the pronunciation of a word or two of the Hebrew further narrows this vast span of time and draws us more deeply into the mind of Moses and his vision of God.
Which properly poses the question, why bother learning a new word of a foreign language or an old word of a native language? Because the exercise keeps the mind nimble and the spirit ready, so when Beauty and her attendant Mystery appear — as when a twelve-point buck emerges from a mist or a new star suddenly flares in the sky like signs from the hand of God — the soul, already tutored and prepared, might offer willingly and naturally due admiration and praise.
Like an oak tree spreading its foliage to sunlight, with a greater store of words at our command, we are simply capable of exposing more of our own surfaces to catch the abundance of spiritual light freely offered throughout our day, and our brief existence here, as a consequence, grows richer and more satisfying.
