From Lorenzo.Smerillo@worldnet.att.net Tue Apr 1 01:28:28 2003 Received: from mxu5.u.washington.edu (mxu5.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.164]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW03.03/8.12.1+UW03.02) with ESMTP id h319SRZv035568 for ; Tue, 1 Apr 2003 01:28:27 -0800 Received: from mtiwmhc12.worldnet.att.net (mtiwmhc12.worldnet.att.net [204.127.131.116]) by mxu5.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW03.03/8.12.1+UW03.02) with ESMTP id h319SNLY029839 for ; Tue, 1 Apr 2003 01:28:23 -0800 Received: from lorenzo (118.newark-13-14rs.nj.dial-access.att.net[12.89.133.118]) by mtiwmhc12.worldnet.att.net (mtiwmhc12) with SMTP id <20030401092821112008pl6je>; Tue, 1 Apr 2003 09:28:21 +0000 Message-ID: <3E893F14.1F34@worldnet.att.net> Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 09:26:12 +0200 From: L:Smerillo X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: "Dominus" in Latin References: <200303291346.h2TDkLp4009840@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit James J. O'Donnell wrote: > If that means, 'moderns would find the usage jarring in light of what they > are accustomed to thinking about Christianity', then so be it. One > problem with our translations of biblical and Christian texts is that they > depend on this familiarization, when in antiquity, they were written > precisely to audiences that were not familiar with Xty, or familiar with > it in our milk-and-water forms. There are two issues here then. One that 'our milk-and-water' forms are not what they used to be, with which I would agree, with the caveat that it is our cultural lameness which has created the problem. The second is about ancient target audiences: I seems to me that Christian texts *are* 'written' for audiences who *are* familiar with Christianity. The initial contact may be verbal, the initial teaching verbal, the continued teaching verbal, and the written text is often the imprint of that orality at second-hand. Here I am thinking of all the NT texts, and just about anything except what are apologetical works, which are obviously designed for an external public. The rest is generally addressed to a Christian audience. > > > > and I doubt if the 'slave' connotation of 'Dominus' was felt deeply in > > > > late Antique Christian circles, given that it was common also as a form > > > > of address to the Imperator (along with sacratissime imperator) and to > > > > other ordinary persons. > > "other ordinary persons" isn't quite right. Emperors were anything but > ordinary, the worst of them pretty awful. Point taken: legendum 'other persons of rank and quality (or not).' > My point is to find a way to render these texts that lets the > slaveowner and the imperator be felt, as well as the titled person of > higher social standing. > And I'm not sure the word has even *that* sense > much in American English. Even 'lord and master' of the owner of a dog > seems to have fallen out of common usage. (When I was a "resident faculty > master" in a university residence not long ago, there was occasional > discussion whether the M-word had the right resonance. All that some > people could hear were fragments of gendered [you couldn't very well speak > of someone as the 'resident faculty mistress' after all, without evoking > snickers] slaveowning, but that, to be sure, not very strongly, and the > discussion never went anywhere.) It's the target language difficulty again, and PC (Plasti-flex Content). I would suppose that an American soldier would know precisely what 'dominus' means when he snaps to attention and says smartly "Sir!" And also knows that an officier is not a despot nor a tyrannt. I suppose a British schoolboy knows what "Dominus" means when he addresses the headmaster or a schoolmaster as 'Sir.'[A French boy would have more difficulty!] I suppose any Italian knows what the difference is between 'Il Signore' and 'il Signore' and 'Signore Tizio' and 'Signore Conte' (which as a form of address would only be used by a servant). The last example is interesting in that it parallels in the addition of a specific identity-role in the same way as 'Signore Dio'/ Dominus Deus does. The Queen's Scholars at Westminister School do not think of themselves as slaves to The Master of the Queen's Scholars, but they certainly are subject to the Queen and The Master, and the Head Master-- in varying degree and more varying volition. I am aware that I have fudged over the etymological issue of Sir < senior. That should not prevent us from seeing that the usage and content of 'Sir' is the same as dominus/kurios. Indeed the case can be made that 'senior' comes into usage only after 'Dominus' is reserved for a higher quality. It all depends on context. Surely the Lord and master is familiar to anyone who knows the old RCA record label icon and hears the master's voice. I do not think that the English 'Lord' has lost all its power, and certainly 'Lord God' is as majestic as Dominus Deus. I don't think that 'boss-man' or 'bwana' carry the day either, in all contexts: some passages need these, others don't, and 'owner' proprietor' are better than 'master.' In others 'Lord' is fine, 'master' is also ambiguous. And not all servants, especially Jeeves, are slaves! The Greek text of the NT, as the article in Kittel points out ( coll. 1461-1468), has some variance between kurios and despotês used with doulos, so the ambiguity is magisterial! This keeps exegetes and scholars gainfully employed. feliciter, Lorenzo Smerillo Research Lector Late Antiquity Biblioteca Nazionale Protocenobio Sublacense (ROMA) .