Sunday, February 18, 2007
From AscensionNYC
Editor's Preface to Printed Edition
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.1 Corinthians 13:1
I've been thinking a lot about Paul. For many years, I thought of him as a bit of a prig and a misogynist, but lately I've been enjoying his almost legalistic wrangling, the echoes of logical and rhetorical devices being applied to matters of faith.
And then about a year ago, I started studying Greek. Very very slowly. I read about one sentence a week of the New Testament in the original and learn the vocabulary that is found there. It's a completely unscientific way to proceed: I can't actually conjugate the simplest verb, but it's got me engaging with the language of the Bible in a whole new way, and I'm loving it.
A couple of weeks ago, Ron Young read the 1 Corinthians 13 passage at the
At the rate of one sentence a week, it's going to take a while to read the whole passage, but the first sentence alone has so many pleasures that I don't mind a bit!
First off, Paul uses the word laleo for speak, instead of the more common lego. Laleo does primarily mean to speak, but it also means to make sounds with the tongue, or even to babble, whereas lego is more directed and contains the ideas of exhorting or affirming or teaching, not just uttering.
And the word for clanging, that clanging cymbal? It's alalazon, which means shouting out (like when entering battle) or wailing, along with clanging. I can't tell for sure if the two words are etymologically related, but I love the babbling echo of lalo and alalazon.
And speaking of echoes, the word eechon, is used to describe the gong. It means ringing, reverberating, resounding, and it happens to be echoed sonically by the Greek word for I have, which is pronounced echo, (well, sort of, I won't try to go into the whole pronunciation thing here…).
So Paul has set up a secret humble message between what he's exhorting us to avoid and the language he's using to tell us. After all, he's babbling and echoing at precisely the moment that he's telling us not to, which shows us how tricky it is to avoid. And the echoes multiply, because he will repeat the phrase "but if I do not have love" as a refrain in each of the first three sentences of the passage, with a rising intensity of meaning each time. The guy is an incredible poet on a really high level, and the irony that he's saying that none of it matters without love is perfect, because he couldn't possibly write so beautifully without love, or without the Holy Spirit, or both, if there is actually a difference between them.
So here are this year's devotionals to read with love, as they were written with love, and compiled and made into books with love. Lots of laleo, some lego, but no alalazo around here!
And many thanks to Liz Hill for editorial help, and to Matthew Snow for the artwork, design, and construction of the book you're holding in your hands.
Eve Beglarian
