Passwords to paradise : how languages have re-invented world religions /
Nicholas Ostler.
- xxxi, 351 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-334) and index.
Foreword -- Introduction. The great bonds of humanity : languages and faiths -- Scattered jades : a Mexican Virgin Mary -- On ass's lip, and a great conveyance : the Buddha taken north -- "Fine words are not trusty" : Aryan vehicle on road into Chinese -- "To deep of lip and heavy of tongue" : from Galilee to Gentile -- "In this sign you will conquer" : chosen by emperors -- "Every man heard ... his own language" : one Christ, many tongues? -- "Proclaiming the good news" : with Christ into northern Europe -- "Adze-headed across the sea" : white martyrdom -- The Savior as our chieftain : the Gospel of the war band -- "Listen, all ye Slavs" : orthodoxy rejects trilingualism -- Conversion by the book : the faith enforced in Latin America -- Gloria tlatoani : Christian literature among the Indios -- Extirpación de idiomas? : asserting monolingualism -- "Back to the sources" : God's word and translation -- God and language beyond imitation : one enough -- Conclusion. The enduring marks of language conversions.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So opens the Gospel of John, an ancient text translated into almost every language, at once a compelling and beguiling metaphor for the Christian story of the Beginning. To further complicate matters, the words we read now are in any number of languages that would have been unknown or unrecognizable at the time of their composition. The gospel may have been originally dictated or written in Aramaic, but our only written source for the story is in Greek. Today, as your average American reader of the New Testament picks up his or her Bible off the shelf, the phrase as it appears has been translated from various linguistic intermediaries before its current manifestation in modern English. How to understand these words then, when so many other translators, languages, and cultures have exercised some level of influence on them? Christian tradition is not unique in facing this problem. All religions--if they have global aspirations--have to change in order to spread their influence, and often language has been the most powerful agent thereof. Passwords to Paradise explores the effects that language difference and language conversion have wrought on the world's great faiths, spanning more than two thousand years. It is an original and intriguing perspective on the history of religion by a master linguistic historian. --
9781620405154 1620405156
2016302470
Language and languages--Religious aspects. Historical linguistics. LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES--Linguistics. RELIGION--History. Historical linguistics. Language and languages--Religious aspects.