On the Study of Words by Richard Chenevix Trench (great book club books .TXT) 📖

[Footnote: 'Pruzia' and 'Pruzzi' first appear in the Life of S. Adalbert, written by his fellow-labourer Gaudentius, between 997-1006.] of 'Normans'; [Footnote: The Geographer of Ravenna.] the earliest notice by any Greek author of Rome; [Footnote: Probably in Hellanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus.] the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire Hesperian peninsula; [Footnote: In the time of Augustus Caesar; see Niebuhr, History of Rome, Engl. Translation, vol. i. p. 12.] of 'Asia Minor' to designate Asia on this side Taurus. [Footnote: Orosius, i. 2: in the fifth century of our era.] 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard with indifference the first giving to the newly-discovered continent in the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier name of Britain for 'England'; or again, when it resumed 'Great Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our assertion by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the exact moment at which 'tyrant' and 'tyranny,' forming so distinct an epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared; [Footnote: In the writings of Archilochus, about 700 B.C. A 'tyrant' was not for Greeks a bad king, who abused a rightful position to purposes of lust or cruelty or other wrong. It was of the essence of a 'tyrant' that he had attained supreme dominion through a violation of the laws and liberties of the state; having done which, whatever the moderation of his after-rule, he would not escape the name. Thus the mild and bounteous Pisistratus was 'tyrant' of Athens, while a Christian II. of Denmark, 'the Nero of the North,' would not in Greek eyes have been one. It was to their honour that they did not allow the course of the word to be arrested or turned aside by occasional or partial exceptions in the manner of the exercise of this ill-gotten dominion; but in the hateful secondary sense which 'tyrant' with them acquired, and which has passed over to us, the moral conviction, justified by all experience, spake out, that the ill-gotten would be ill-kept; that the 'tyrant' in the earlier sense of the word, dogged by suspicion, fear, and an evil conscience, must, by an almost inevitable law, become a 'tyrant' in our later sense of the word.] or again, when, and from whom, the fabric of the external universe first received the title of 'cosmos,' or beautiful order; [ Footnote: Pythagoras, born B.C. 570, is said to have been the first who made this application of the word. For much of interest on its history see Humboldt, Kosmos, 1846, English edit., vol. i. p. 371.] a name not new in itself, but new in this application of it; with much more of the same kind.

Let us go back to one of the words just named, and inquire what may be learned from acquaintance with the time and place of its first appearance. It is one the coming up of which has found special record in the Book of life: 'The disciples,' as St. Luke expressly tells us, 'were called Christians first in Antioch' (Acts xi. 26). That we have here a notice which we would not willingly have missed all will acknowledge, even as nothing can be otherwise than curious which relates to the infancy of the Church. But there is here much more than an interesting notice. Question it a little closer, and how much it will be found to contain, how much which it is waiting to yield up. What light it throws on the whole story of the apostolic Church to know where and when this name of 'Christians' was first imposed on the faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly was, not devised by themselves, however afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as the name of highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves, but, as is expressly recorded, they 'were called,' Christians first at Antioch; in agreement with which statement, the name occurs nowhere in Scripture, except on the lips of those alien from, or opposed to, the faith (Acts xxvi. 28; I Pet. iv. 16). And as it was a name imposed by adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was not the Christ, but a false pretender to the name. [Footnote: Compare Tacitus (Annal, xv. 24): Quos vulgus … Christianos appellabat. It is curious too that, although a Greek word and coined in a Greek city, the termination is Latin. Christianos is formed on the model of Romanus, Albanus, Pompeianus, and the like.]

Starting then from this point, that 'Christians' was a title given to the disciples by the heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At Antioch they first obtained this name—at the city, that is, which was the head-quarters of the Church's missions to the heathen, in the same sense as Jerusalem had been the head-quarters of the mission to the seed of Abraham. It was there, and among the faithful there, that a conviction of the world-wide destination of the Gospel arose; there it was first plainly seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth. Hitherto the faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries, and indeed often were still called, 'Galileans,' or 'Nazarenes,'—both names which indicated the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been nursed, and that the world saw in the new Society no more than a Jewish sect. But it was plain that the Church had now, even in the world's eyes, chipped its Jewish shell. The name 'Christians,' or those of Christ, while it told that Christ and the confession of Him was felt even by the heathen to be the sum and centre of this new faith, showed also that they comprehended now, not all which the Church would be, but something of this; saw this much, namely, that it was no mere sect and variety of Judaism, but a Society with a mission and a destiny of its own. Nor will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the coming up of this name is by closest juxtaposition connected in the sacred narrative, and still more closely in the Greek than in the English, with the arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of that Apostle, who was God's appointed instrument for bringing the Church to a full sense that the message which it had, was not for some men only, but for all. As so often happens with the rise of new names, the rise of this one marked a new epoch in the Church's life, and that it was entering upon a new stage of its development. [Footnote: Renan (Les Apôtres pp. 233-236) has much instruction on this matter. I quote a few words; though even in them the spirit in which the whole book is conceived does not fail to make itself felt: L'heure où une création nouvelle reçoit son nom est solennelle; car le nom est le signe définitif de l'existence. C'est par le nom qu'un être individuel ou collectif devient lui-même, et sort d'un autre. La formation du mot 'chrétien' marque ainsi la date précise où l'Eglise de Jésus se sépara du judaïsme…. Le christianisme est complètement détaché du sein de sa mère; la vraie pensée de Jésus a triomphé de l'indécision de ses premiers disciples; l'Eglise de Jérusalem est dépassée; l'Araméen, la langue de Jésus, est inconnue à une partie de son école; le christianisme parle grec; il est lancé définitivement dans le grand tourbillon du monde grec et romain; d'où il ne sortira plus.] It is a small matter, yet not without its own significance, that the invention of this name is laid by St. Luke,—for so, I think, we may confidently say,—to the credit of the Antiochenes. Now the idle, frivolous, and witty inhabitants of the Syrian capital were noted in all antiquity for the invention of nicknames; it was a manufacture for which their city was famous. And thus it was exactly the place where beforehand we might have expected that such a title, being a nickname or little better in their mouths who devised it should first come into being.

This one example is sufficient to show that new words will often repay any amount of attention which we may bestow upon them, and upon the conditions under which they were born. I proceed to consider the causes which suggest or necessitate their birth, the periods when a language is most fruitful in them, the sources from which they usually proceed, with some other interesting phenomena about them.

And first of the causes which give them birth. Now of all these causes the noblest is this—namely, that in the appointments of highest Wisdom there are epochs in the world's history, in which, more than at other times, new moral and spiritual forces are at work, stirring to their central depths the hearts of men. When it thus fares with a people, they make claims on their language which were never made on it before. It is required to utter truths, to express ideas, remote from it hitherto; for which therefore the adequate expression will naturally not be forthcoming at once, these new thoughts and feelings being larger and deeper than any wherewith hitherto the speakers of that tongue had been familiar. It fares with a language then, as it would fare with a river bed, suddenly required to deliver a far larger volume of waters than had hitherto been its wont. It would in such a case be nothing strange, if the waters surmounted their banks, broke forth on the right hand and on the left, forced new channels with a certain violence for themselves. Something of the kind they must do. Now it was exactly thus that it fared—for there could be no more illustrious examples—with the languages of Greece and Rome, when it was demanded of them that they should be vehicles of the truths of revelation.

These languages, as they already existed, might have sufficed, and did suffice, for heathenism, sensuous and finite; but they did not suffice for the spiritual and infinite, for the truths at once so new and so mighty which claimed now to find utterance in the language of men. And thus it continually befell, that the new thought must weave a new garment for itself, those which it found ready made being narrower than that it could wrap itself in them; that the new wine must fashion new vessels for itself, if both should be preserved, the old being neither strong enough, nor expansive enough, to hold it. [ Footnote: Renan, speaking on this matter, says of the early Christians: La langue leur faisait défaut. Le Grec et le Sémitique les trahissaient également. De là cette énorme violence que le Christianisme naissant fit au langage (Les Apôtres, p. 71)] Thus, not to speak of mere technical matters, which would claim an utterance, how could the Greek language possess a word for 'idolatry,' so long as the sense of the awful contrast between the worship of the living God and of dead things had not risen up in their minds that spoke it? But when Greek began to be the native language of men, to whom this distinction between the Creator and the creature was the most earnest and deepest conviction of their souls, words such as 'idolatry,' 'idolater,' of necessity appeared. The heathen did not claim for their deities to be 'searchers of hearts,' did not disclaim for them the being 'accepters of persons'; such attributes of power and righteousness entered not into their minds as pertaining to the objects of their worship. The Greek language, therefore, so long as they only employed it, had not the words corresponding. [Footnote: [Greek: Prosopolaeptaes, kardiognostaes.]] It, indeed, could not have had them, as the Jewish Hellenistic Greek could not be without them. How useful a word is 'theocracy'; what good service it has rendered in presenting a certain idea clearly and distinctly to the mind; yet where, except in the bosom of the same Jewish Greek, could it have been born? [Footnote: We preside at its birth in a passage of Josephus, Con. Apion. ii. 16.]

These difficulties, which were felt the most strongly when the thought and feeling that had been at home in the Hebrew, the original language of inspiration, needed to be transferred into Greek, reappeared, though not in quite so aggravated a form, when that which had gradually woven for itself in the Greek an adequate clothing, again demanded to find a suitable garment in