It lost a bit in translation

In the early 9th century, Charlemagne's missionaries translated the Gospels into Old Saxon in order to aid the conversion of their conquered enemies. Luke's description of Christ's arrest near Gethsemane is rendered under the title of "Christ the chieftain is captured, Peter the mighty soldier defends him boldly."

Christ’s warrior companions saw warriors coming up the mountain making a great din
Angry armed men. Judas the hate filled man was showing them the way.
The enemy clan, the Jews, were marching behind.
The warriors marched forward, the grim Jewish army, until they had come to the Christ.
There he stood, the famous chieftain.
Christ’s followers, wise men deeply distressed by this hostile action
Held their position in front.
They spoke to their chieftain, ‘My Lord chieftain’, they said, ‘if it should now
Be your will that we be impaled here under spear points
Wounded by their weapons then nothing would be so good to us as to die here
Pale from mortal wounds for our chieftain’.

Then he got really angry
Simon Peter, the mighty, noble swordman flew into a rage.

His mind was in such turmoil he could not speak a single word.
His heart became intensely bitter because they wanted to tie up his Lord there.
So he strode over angrily, that very daring Thane, to stand in front of his commander
Right in front of his Lord.

No doubting in his mind, no fearful hesitation in his chest he drew his blade
And struck straight ahead at the first man of the enemy with all the strength in his hands
So that Malchus was cut and wounded on the right side by the sword.
His ear was chopped off.
He was so badly wounded in the head that his cheek and ear burst open with the mortal wound
Blood gushed out, pouring from the wound.
The men stood back; they were afraid of the slash of the sword.

Which is about how Hollywood would stage it now, I suspect, except that they'd probably put the sword in Mary Magdalene's hand.

7 comments:

Grim said...

A similar set of edits by the hero Fafhrd features in my favorite short story, "Lean Times in Lankhmar" by Fritz Leiber.

bthun said...

"Which is about how Hollywood would stage it now, I suspect, except that they'd probably put the sword in Mary Magdalene's hand."

Nah... Simon Peter would be Simone who was becoming Simon Peter.

Wait one! Didn't Shakespeare already do that one?

*ducks and heads back outside*

Anonymous said...

"Simon Peter, the mighty, noble swordman" and "daring Thane".

Great stuff. I guess when one is the Holy Roman Emperor, one is allowed some license.

Perhaps of interest is the fact that of the 4 gospel accounts, only John names Peter as the swordsman. The other writers undoubtedly didn't want to reveal his identity, but John probably wrote later, after Peter's death.

Jose

karrde said...

Wow.

And I thought that modern "paraphrased" translations of Scripture were excessive with alterations to the original...

Anonymous said...

Fascinating! One of the first Germanic language interpretations of the Bible skimmed over Kings and Chronicles, apparently because the missionary did not want to encourage fighting, and has Jesus triumphing over both death and 'wyrd,' or Fate.

On the other hand, a Christian anthem I heard a few weeks ago could have been right out of the Norse Sagas about Odin sacrificed to himself on the World-Tree, just replace 'Odin' with 'Jesus and G-d' so perhaps the pagans were not entirely converted.

LittleRed1

Grim said...

On the other hand, there is some verisimilitude here. This is how Jesus would have done it if he had happened to choose to be born among the Saxons instead of the Jews.

If you hadn't rendered it this way, you'd have been in some peril of having the Saxons reject the faith out of hand, as Vladimir the Great did the Jewish faith. 'If your god didn't defend your homeland, you plainly have been rejected by him; why would I follow your ways?' (By a similar token, he rejected the Muslim god on account of the ban on alcohol, which he felt his people could not do without.)

Anonymous said...

I guess you'd have to call it a "paraphrase" but I love it. It's not that much of a stretch. Jesus, Paul and Peter all use warrior allusions in the New Testament. If they weren't walking armed Peter wouldn't have had a sword to draw.

If I hadn't taken oaths to the faith I think I'd prefer this telling. Although it's too bad the Chieftain couldn't just win this one outright.