SKIN OF MY TEETH

We sometimes forget that the biblical documents have an ancient lineage and it is difficult to find a meaning in them. This is true of the New Testament and of valued parts of it. The word translated ‘daily’ in the Lord’s Prayer, for example, occurs only once in the Greek and nobody knows what it means. It may mean ‘essential for life’ or it may mean ‘for the day’s (for the morrow’s) use’. But precision is not all and the prayer is none the worse for being ambiguous at that point.

If we go further back, we come to a familiar expression in English that comes from one of the oldest documents in the Bible, the poem ‘Job’. The author took up an old folk-tale and inserted speeches into it to give us the poem as we know it today. We find that Job 19.20 is rendered in the KJV: ‘I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.’ No problem about that; it is a saying that has become part of our everyday English language. But it is no better than a guess about what the original means.

A toxic example of outlandish vocabulary comes in Judges 12,6. The Ephraimites had been vanquished and the survivors were scattered. Those who were found were invited to say the word ‘Shibboleth’. It was a word the Ephraimites could not pronounce properly. The record says that 42,000 Ephraimites failed the test and were executed.

The word ‘Shibboleth’ has since made itself at home in English. We may be unaware of its origin but we are familiar with the idea of promoting a trivial item to a place of honour. A day or two ago I saw the word ‘sound’ being used in this way. During the 1930s it was a shibboleth identifying the user as a particular type of Christian; it has since lost that status.

CATHARS

The Cathars are an example of a distinct group active in the 12th and 13th centuries and known by various names – Manicheans, Albigenses etc. They were seen as a threat by main-line Christians. There is a museum in Provence that houses their memorabilia. Immediacy of contact with the divine was their theme. The divine was distinct from the flesh. Wordless prayer, submission and evidence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit were key characteristics.

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