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Fleming Rutledge is a preacher and teacher known throughout the mainline Protestant denominations of the US, Canada and parts of the UK. She is the author of seven books and has received a grant from the Louisville Foundation to complete a book about the meaning of the Crucifixion.
One of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, she served for fourteen years on the clergy staff at Grace Church on Lower Broadway at Tenth Street, New York City. Fleming and her husband celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2009 and have two daughters and two grandchildren. She is a native of Franklin, Virginia.
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Ruminations: Let's not lose "Behold!"Monday, November 17, 2008Let's not lose "Behold!"Here in Toronto where I am teaching for a term, a fellow faculty member (Leslie Demson) who teaches Hebrew is in league with me to recover the English word "Behold" when reading Scripture. Most modern translations use "see" or "look" or even "here is" (as in Pilate's "here is the man" instead of the long-hallowed "Behold the man"-- ecce homo).But "see" and "look" don't perform the same linguistic function. Marilyn McCord Adams has explained that there is one form of language for human agency, and another for divine agency. If preachers, readers, and teachers of Scripture don't understand this, we are impoverished. Prof. Demson says that "behold" is a revelatory word indicating a different order of reality. I say it is a word of wonder, a word of awe, a word that opens up another dimension. ("And lo!" serves the same function.) So this Advent, let's say with Isaiah, "Behold your God!" (You don't have to give up your modern translation. Just say "behold" instead of "look.")
Permanent Link for this Post: http://www.generousorthodoxy.org/ruminations/2008/11/lets-not-lose-behold.htm |
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1 Comments:
Mrs. Rutledge:
Thank you for this point. I, too, have lamented the loss of "behold," and "and lo". I have found myself "correcting" the text in this direction (almost unconciously) when I read the Scriptures publicly. Perhaps this says something about how the public reading of Scripture needs to be treatead differently than the private reading of Scripture. They are both "events" but perhaps of a different class.
Fr. Dan Graves+
Holy Trinity Church, Thornhill, ON
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