Greek/Latin Roots for Theological Terms III

I will conclude these three essays by introducing and commenting on: (1) vaticinal; (2) barathrum; (3) jeremiad; (4) soterial; and (5) glossolalia. I will also introduce many related words to these--almost all of which appeared in the Kids Spelling Bees over the last few years.

Vaticinal

Vaticinal has nothing to do with the Vatican or Vatican City. The most basic word in English relating to this stem is vates, which is a prophet or a divinely inspired poet. Standing behind the word is the Latin vates. From 1625: "The people interjecting their applauses, clapping hands and running in to gratifie their Vates (Poet or Prophet) with a Present." Something vatic, then, is prophetic or inspired. If you want to kill a prophet, something that lots of people are always inclined to do, you will be committing vaticide. The word vaticinal is synonymous with vatic: it means "of the nature of vaticination or prophecy; prophetic." "He was induced..contrary to the vaticinal warnings of Columba, to carry a mixed body of various people, into..Ireland." Economists in our day try to utter all kinds of vaticinal projections about the future. Thus we honor them and pay them big salaries. We do so not because they know much of anything about the future but because we want to pay someone to tell us about the future. And, since we have committed vaticide, or since we ignore, all religious prophets, we turn to the economists. Economists are the vates of our day. Doesn't that bespeak the poverty of our souls?

The first time I ran into a word derived from this root was when I took a New Testament survey class in Spring 1971 at Brown University. We were studying the transfiguration narrative in the Gospels, and I recall reading German scholar Rudolf Bultmann's words about this narrative being a vaticinium ex eventu. I had no idea what he meant, but I remembered the phrase. Bultmann was trying to argue that the Transfiguration narrative was really a "prophesy after the event"--or the resurrection narrative projected backwards into the time of Jesus' life. I suppose today people call it postdiction, in contrast to prediction. Bultmann, as usual, didn't really know what he was saying, though he was the most honored German New Testament scholar of his day (1884-1976).

Barathrum and Jeremiad

Barathrum isn't properly a term from Christian theology, but since it has to do with hell or a pit, I thought it would be good to mention here. Derived from the word barathron (pit or gulf), the barathrum was a deep pit at Athens,into which criminals condemned to death were thrown. Thus, it became associated with the abyss or hell in early English literature. A 17th century author could speak of the "bottomless Barathrum" or someone who "flung away in furie, and leapt into Barathrum." Smith's 19th century classical dictionary, the "Bible" of the day, says that it was also called the Orygma. It was a "deep pit at Athens, with hooks on the sides, into which criminals were cast." It is mentioned as early as the Persian Wars (I think in Herodotus) and was employed as a mode of punishment in the next century (the time of the orators). An executioner was called "ho epi to orugmati"--the one standing over or upon the orygma.

A jeremiad is a message or sermon reminiscent of the prophet Jeremiah. Well, Jeremiah said a whole lot of words (his book is the longest prophetic book in the Bible), and his tone changed from confident, to whining, to accusatory, to brokenhearted, to judgmental. So, what does it mean to speak in the manner of Jeremiah? Well, the word came into English in 1780 to refer not so much to Jeremiah's prophecy in general but to the lamentations that he uttered over Jerusalem. Does that mean in the style of the biblical book of Lamentations rather than Jeremiah? I am a bit confused on this one. "It has been long the fashion to make the most lamentable Jeremiades on the badness of the times." In a broader sense the word suggests not simply a lamentation, but an excoriation or an attack on people for their sinfulness. For example, the Century defines the word as: "lamentation; an utterance of grief or sorrow; a complaining tirade: used with a spice of ridicule or mockery..." Thus, in the final analysis, we have a rather plastic concept here--suggesting lamentation, ridicule, utterance of imminent judgment, complaint, etc.

Sacvan Berkovitch, in 1950, wrote a book called The American Jeremiad, in which he argued that the Puritan literary/sermonic form of jeremiad (exhorting or lambasting the people) has been a recurrent form of address in American literature. Berkovitch was significant in the study of Puritanism in American history because he tried to undercut the emphases of Perry Miller on the glories or the positive intellectual contributions of Puritanism to American life. Miller, himself, was reacting to the early 20th century characterization of Puritans as up-tight, humorless, judgmental prigs.

Well, I could study and write on these terms forever, seemingly, but I must move on.

Soterial

This was the form of the word given in the Kids bee, even though for those in the field the words soteriology and soteriological occurs much more frequently. But soterial is derived from the Greek soteria, which means "salvation," and so something soterial pertains to salvation. An example of the use of soteriological might be helpful: "He [Paul] elaborated the fullest scheme of Christian doctrine which we possess from apostolic pens. It is essentially soteriological, or a sytem of the way of salvation." The word soteriology was, in fact, first used in English (1847) in a secular way, to mean "a discourse on health, or the science of promoting and preserving health," but this was quickly overwhelmed when theology took over the term by the 1860s. There is even a word soterology with one attestation in English. Thankfully it never caught on. How was it used an defined? Well, Schaff, the church historian, said in his Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1880s) that "[Soteriology] is to be carefully distinguished from soterology, or christology, which treats solely of the person of the Redeemer." No one makes that distinction today (if they ever did); so let's just forget that soterology was ever even a word.

Concluding with Glossolalia

This word, meaning "speaking in tongues" was only introduced into English in the mid-19th century. The word never appears in the New Testament, though when Paul speaks of the gift of tongues he uses the words "types of tongues"--gene glosson. Nevertheless, when glossolalia was introduced, about the same time that soteriology came into English, it was certainly associated with the Pauline gift of tongues. From Farrar in 1879: "Those soliloquies of ecstatic spiritual emotion which were known as Glossolalia,or, 'the Gift of Tongues'." There has been some debate over the nature of this tongues-speaking, at least as recorded in Acts. Is it the speaking in an "angelic" tongue or was it the speaking in another language which one had never studied but could be understood by native speakers of those languages? Well, no one really knows, but the term and the phenomenon seemed to multiply in the 20th century. The modern Pentecostal movement is characterized by this type of speaking, and I have been in meetings where people so speak. This web page quickly reviews some of the scholarly study, from the perspective of modern linguistics, relating to whether glossolalia possesses a recognizable linguistic pattern (i.e., whether it could be understood by someone who "spoke the language").

Enough on theological terms. Let's return to other Greek and Latin roots.

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