The Bible is a vulgar

The Bible is a vulgar thing—from the Latin vulgus, meaning “common people.” When St Jerome translated the Christian Scriptures into Latin at the end of the fourth century, he did so because few in the West still spoke Greek. Latin was the common tongue of the common people; thus, Jerome’s Bible came to be known as the Vulgate, regular language for regular folks.

The dialect of Greek from which Jerome had worked was koine, which also means “common.” Koine was the language of the Hellenistic world, of all the varied cultures and kingdoms conquered by Alexander the Great. The Gospels were written down in koine, despite Jesus teaching in Aramaic, so that everyone could hear and understand.

And what was Aramaic? Why, it was the common Semitic tongue spoken by the Judeans following their return from the Babylonian Exile. We read in the Book of Ezra that most exiled Israelites could no longer understand Hebrew, the language of the Law, and so when the Law was read aloud, learned Levites had to interpret it for the crowd in words they all could understand. Behold, the birth of the sermon.

What we have, then, is a biblical emphasis on translation even within the pages of the Scriptures themselves: from Hebrew and Aramaic to koine Greek and Latin; and after that to English and Algonquin and Mandarin and Maasai and everything in between.

The Word of God, the Good News of Jesus Christ, continually incarnates in new languages and cultures, just as at Pentecost every nation under heaven heard and grasped the Gospel, each in their own native tongue. It has always been vital to the mission of the Church for regular people, common people, to encounter God through the Spirit, the Sacraments, and the Scriptures. We are a polyglot people. Why not then use art as well?

In Jesus. Amen.

By: Reverend Sir Knight Ryan Stout