Trespass

A few days ago I was prompted to buy the book at reference 1 by the article at reference 2. A book which turned up the next day - leaving me slightly guilty about buying it from Amazon rather than more or less direct from the authors, not caring to give my bank card details to a website I knew nothing about. Not thinking to look for the Paypal option which would have got around that problem.

I shall return to the book properly in due course, but first there is the matter of the Lord's Prayer, prompted by a digression around same starting on page 51.

Now the version I learned at my primary school - having been ticked off in the top class for not knowing it already - is reproduced above. With trespasses being the word of present interest. And with the terminal doxology having gone AWOL. Need to check. But see reference 5 in the meantime.

Powell & Edelstyn tell us that modern, Protestant versions of the Lord's Prayer replace trespass with debt, thus monetising sin. Perhaps the sort of thing that the cold Protestant shopkeepers of northern Europe go in for, rather than the warm Catholic farmers and vignerons of southern Europe. Shopkeepers who want us to feel guilty about debt, presumably to encourage us to clear our slates on a regular basis. They also tell us that the words for debt and guilt in German are the same.

After which the first stop was the Good News Bible, in which the trespasses are replaced with sins and wrongs. Luke 11.2-4. No sign of debts here. But what about the original Greek: are debt and guilt the same there too?

I then thought of the Vikings and suchlike people who set tariffs for murder. Ten gold pieces for a man, five for cow, three for a wife and so on. Then of the words gilt and geld, but the word I was actually after was wirgeld. So these northern Europeans clearly made a connection between sin and debt. And to judge by the sound of the words, to guilt and gold too. And we Brits still talk of paying one's debt to society with a spell at her Majesty's pleasure.

All in all a matter which might well repay serious socio-linguistic study. But study I shall leave for another day.

PS 1: I bet that my prayer book, snapped above, is grander than the one past President Trump was waving about, the day last June he went to church during a riot.

PS 2: 'President Trump's controversial foray to St. John's Church on Monday is generating widespread criticism, after police and National Guard troops physically cleared out demonstrators, using tear gas, to allow a photo opportunity outside the church. The bishop who oversees St. John's is among the critics'. But sadly, not a prayer book at all despite looking reasonably like my book, rather a bible.

Reference 1: Bank Job – Hilary Powell, Daniel Edelstyn – 2020.

Reference 2: Time to blow up problem debt: will we come to see the indebted as victims of the Covid crisis too? – Claer Barret/FT – 2021. January 29th, 2021.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/12/christmas-reading.html. An early notice of the book snapped above.

Reference 4: Good News Bible - The American Bible Society - 1966. My version ten years younger, from 1976.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord's_Prayer.