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Edited on Mon Jun-19-06 09:08 PM by igil
The second, I won't. Sorry. He's just wrong on the facts.
Here's how it goes. "Lord" had a lot of meanings. Primary one until the time "Lord" became standard in the English Bible and had started to acquire a meaning independent from English legal language was the guy in charge of the bread, and whatever else that required or entailed. The guy in charge of feeding the laborers, or the family. The guy with the land that the grain grew on. The local prince or the ultimate ruler, because he had control over the bread, and was the guy who fed you. Unless you were a freeholder, but those diminished with time.
With being hlaf-waerd or 'lord' was the implied obligation "feeding" in exchange for "obedience". You could ask your lord for food; and while not all were good and would honor the obligation, the right to ask was there. When the French occupied England, they didn't like the language, and their equivalent was 'maister' (< Lat. magister), later reduced to mister. The houseserfs dragged a few French words from the manor into English. ('Master' comes from 'magister' independently of French.) The word in the Anglo-Saxon Bible for what Jesus was called was "dryhten", which was more like 'commander, the guy in charge of people', strictly a one-way power relation, and much more accurate.
By KJV times, however, "lord" had long since ousted 'dryhten' from use. It had already acquired another, purely theological use, while it still had some older uses predating 'England land baron'. As a term of address, 'lord' was becoming more specialized, while 'mester' being bleached to a term of respect that you gave to gentlemen, never to rabble: 'mister'. But only to low-placed gentlemen, those without titles. Mister could be reciprocal, of course; 'lord' couldn't be. I'll point out that while 'lord' went from a common term to having, in additional, a more exalted meaning, 'sire' was also reduced 'sir'.
So much for the narrow interpretation improperly foisted on the word 'lord'; it has a rather rich heritage, and a range of uses and meanings quite at odds with just 'English land baron'. It rather presents it in at most a two-dimension way, flat and insipid.
Unlike 'lord', even in later times implying a mutual relationship between the higher lord and people under him, the wonderful, softer word 'kurios' comes from "kuros" meaning 'supremacy'. A person with kuros, who is described as kurios, can be an utter jackass, with no implicit obligation being ignored; a person who is kurios, bluntly, owes you nothing. Slave-owner, tyrant, dictator; it was strictly a one-way street. He's got more authority and power, you've got less. That's the entirety of the warm and cuddly relationship. Over the next century or two it bleached in meaning, and could perhaps be the same as 18th century English 'sir' as increasingly insignificant people demanded that those even more insignificant than they were show respect; more like 'sir' than 'mister', since I don't think 'kurios' was readily reciprocal; my impression is that few Englishmen called each other 'sir', it was a power thing. To say 'kurios' was to say anything from 'sir' to 'sire', and was to say that you had lesser power and authority. How much lesser was derived from context. "Lord" was the best equivalent we had at the time, even though it did wrongly imply a duty from lord to subject lacking in the Greek. "Jesus kurios" was not "Jesus, lord" when 'lord'. Perhaps if it *had* only meant "English land baron" it would have been more apt.
The person with the most right--not much of one--to ask a kurios person for anything was his property, his slave. Perhaps a bondsman, perhaps chattel. Otherwise, the petitioner was in the position of a beggar: Please, sir, I'm hungry, would you please give me a farthing? You'd hardly ever say, "Sir, I'm hungry, you have a duty to give me a farthing." Kyrie eleison ... no obligation to show mercy in that "kurios".
Oddly enough, most fundamentalist Christians have reinterpreted the word 'lord' in a way that wouldn't have been necessarily quite right in the Middle Ages, especially the early Middle Ages, at least not in common law. It had the meaning, as one possibility, to be sure. But that was a legal meaning, not the usual one in common use for a couple hundred years. And the fundies have moved it almost precisely to where 'kurios' would be, with one exception: they leave out the more bleached use more or less parallel to 'sir'.
Then again, the author has at least part of a point. He just shows he doesn't know how to make it, and that insulting others is one of his goals, even if he sacrifices truth for truthiness. Well, we all have our priorities. But, IMHO, he also wants to present Jesus as two-dimensional. For Jesus is surely humble and gentle, not insisting on exercising his power and authority, but he is also kurios. That is quite significant. But, by the same measure, nowhere does he ever address his sheep as kurios; Rigby apparently believes that Jesus should address him as kurios. This is also quite significant.
In fact, by the way he uses the word, he says that Jesus isn't really kurios. Or, at least, that we're all equally "kurios". Word games can be such fun.
As for the comments on FR ... blech. (I *knew* there was a reason I hadn't looked at it for a couple of years. But at least they knew they were being insulted.)
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