Latin BIble Verses for Really Smart People

These verses are impossible principally because they are in Latin. I am giving these verses here in Latin because this is how they were known for centuries in the history of the West. They also reveal some interesting stories about the evolution of language. See how you do on identifying these verses.

1. "Haec vocabitur VIRAGO quoniam de viro sumpta est."

The purpose of this paragraph is to tell you a little about the word virago, which is an English word, despite the fact that it is in Latin in the quoted text. If you looked it up in a "normal" dictionary today (e.g., Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed.) you would have: "1. a loud overbearing woman: TERMAGANT; 2. a woman of great stature, strength, and courage." Thus, we have the "virago as bitch" and "virago as Amazon" definitions. The latter of these goes back to the 14th century: "The strong virage (L. virago potentissima] Elfleda...halp moche her brother be kyng.." We can see the word "vir" (male) in the word, and so this definition of virago emphasizes her "man-like" qualities in battle. But we have to blame Chaucer, that great fount of the English-language literary tradition, for introducing "virago as bitch" into English. From the late 14th century: "O Sowdanesse, roote of Iniquitee, Virago, thou Semyrame the secounde.." Semiramis was a legendary evil warrior queen of the Assyrians whom ancient writers mentioned as the daughter of a mortal and of the fish-goddess Derketo of Syria. By the 17th century, the use of "virago as bitch" was secure: "God sets this black brand upon this virago Jezebel."

But, there is another meaning of the word, the original meaning in English in fact, that the dictionaries have dropped. This definition must be introduced in order to understand the quoted Biblical verse. Let's return to the word itself: virago. If we just take it apart we have the following: 1) "vir" means "male"; and 2) "ago" is the Latin word for "I lead" or "I go." Putting them together we have something that is "led from a man" or which "comes from a man." Hence the original definition is a neutral one and simply means "woman." There is an attestation in English far before Chaucer which emphasizes this "womanness" definition of virago. This is the meaning of the term which Wycliff picked up in 1382 in translating the Bible into English for the first time. So, that should give you enough clues as to what the sentence means (and probably where it comes from). Do you know now?

2. "dies diei eructat verbum..."

We see the word "day" twice in this half verse (the rest of the verse is nox nocti indicat scientiam--and thus "night" is covered too. Maybe that already gives the verse away, to you super-Bible-literate people) and we also recognize "verbum" as "word." Well, let me give you a few words on eructat. Instead of translating it, I will point you to a word in English derived from it: eructation. I love the "Victorian-like" definition of eructation in the OED: "The action of voiding wind from the stomach through the mouth; belching." I am sure that if a teenager comes home belching some day, his mother is going to look compassionately at him and say: "My dear, please avoid the more violent action of voiding wind from your stomach..." Thus, an eructation is a belch, a burp, a 'violent emission' from the stomach, etc. Volcanoes can also be said to eructate. But we also have a figurative use of eructation in English. From 1607: "What is it else...but an eructation of the minde?" That God could be said to "eruct" things can be seen by this statement attributed to a heretical Bishop of old: He asserted that "The Son was an Eructation."

Well, I selected this verse for two reasons: first, because of the euphonious connection of "dies diei" and "nox nocti," and second, because of the picture-producing capacity of "eructat." The former are rendered "day to day" and "night to night." But what belches forth a word? What shows forth ('indicat') "science" (i.e., "knowledge")? This line appears in one of the most glorious of the Psalms, where God and God's law is praised. Well, that is enough for now. Where do you find it?

3. "Noli me tangere.."

If I translated this, you would know it, in all likelihood. Something that is "tangent" in English "touches" another thing at one point. That is all that I will give you. However, when you learn what this sentence means, and where it is found, you have a phrase that really is useful in your interaction with people. Who says it and in which context?

4. "Hortus conclusus soror mea sponsa hortus conclusus fons signatus."

I like this verse because it repeats itself. It repeats itself. But I like it more because these two simple words, hortus conclusus, fired the Western literary imagination. Ok, let's see what they mean. We have the word "horticulture" in English, which is the cultivation of ....? Obviously, hortuses. Gardens, really. So, a hortus is a garden. Something that is conclusus is not something that "ends," as in our word "conclusion," but something that is "locked" or "confined." Thus, I gave away the translation of these repeated words. "A locked garden" or, better, "an enclosed garden." The reason these words erupted (eructed?) in the Western literary tradition was the picture created in the mind. On the one hand the "enclosed garden" created the Paradise motif. From Persian literature we know that Paradise is some kind of aromatic cultivated Garden. When those same words came into the Semitic tradition through this passage, the Western imagination picked up also on Paradise as garden. I seem to recall (I am not checking it!) that George Will in his book on baseball (Men at Work) made some kind of reference to the idea of a baseball park sinking so deeply into our imaginations because of its "paradise-like quality" (e.g., neatly manicured lawns, well-kept fences, separated areas, etc.).

But there is another theme suggested by hortus conclusus which entered into the West, and that is the the notion of a virgin or young woman being a hortus conclusus. She was like the garden enclosed or locked, ready in a virginal state for her husband. This then fed into the literature of courtly love in the Middle Ages. I don't have space here to document both of these movements further. Suffice it to say that this two-word biblical phrase packed incredible power in it.

Let's return to English. Agree?

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