Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (41 page)

There is a famous statue:
Fant and Reddish,
Lost Treasures of the Bible
; Keel and Uehlinger,
Gods, Goddesses and Images of God
, 210–82, for numerous images of goats feeding on trees, associated with Asherah and other goddesses.

In the Sermon on the Mount:
For more on Matthew 5:33, see Jo-Ann A. Brant, “Infelicitous Oaths in the Gospel of Matthew,”
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
63 (1996): 3–20; R. T. France,
The Gospel of Matthew
, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2007); Akio Ito, “The Question of the Authenticity of the Ban on Swearing (Matthew 5:33–37),”
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
43 (1991): 5–13; Jerome,
Commentary on Matthew
, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, The Fathers of the Church 117 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008); Ulrich Luz,
Matthew 1–7: A Commentary
, trans. James E. Crouch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); Barclay M. Newman and Philip C. Stine,
A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew
, UBS Helps for Translators (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988); John Nolland,
The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005); Manlio Simonetti, ed.,
Matthew 1–13
, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament 1a (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Ben Witherington,
Matthew
, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2006); Augustine,
On the Sermon on the Mount, Book One
, trans. William Findlay, New Advent (online), accessed August 10, 2010; Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica
, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New Advent (online), accessed August 10, 2010; Philipp Melanchthon,
Verlegung etlicher unchristlicher Artikel. … Werke
, ed. Robert Stupperich (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951), quoted in Luz,
Matthew 1–7
, 267.

Christ also seems to single out fighting words as worthy of divine condemnation. In the Sermon on the Mount, he explains that in the past, murder was outlawed, but that he would forbid anger itself, as well as insulting words that express anger: “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult [say
raca
to] a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:21–22). This passage is notoriously difficult to interpret, however.
Raca
is an Aramaic word that apparently means “empty-headed” or “fool,” and scholars are not sure how that term compares with the Greek for “fool” used in the final phrase. Is Christ making the point that
raca
and
fool
are terrible insults and should not be said in anger, or that Christians should not utter even such mild insults as
fool
? Scholars also do not know what to make of the scale of punishments Christ sets out. Are “judgment,” “the council,” and “the hell of fire” supposed to be equivalent, different ways for describing the same punishment, or increasingly awful?

The Quakers, in contrast:
For an introduction to the Quakers, see Margery Post Abbott, Mary Ellen Chijioke, Pink Dandelion, and John William Oliver,
Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers)
(Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003) and Pink Dandelion,
An Introduction to Quakerism
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007).

“
plainer words than these”:
George Fox,
The Works of George Fox: Gospel Truth Demonstrated
(Philadelphia: Marcus T. C. Gould, 1831), vol. 5, part 2, 165.

More than a thousand years later:
Idolatry is still a pressing concern in the New Testament, but more in terms of how to begin spreading Christ’s message to the gentiles (non-Jews) after his death. There are still many other gods to choose from—Jesus lived in the Roman Empire, after all—but the near-hysterical fear that pervades the Hebrew Bible, that Israelites will go off and worship strange gods, is gone.

To the ancient Israelites, excrement
: For the concept of defilement, see Mary Douglas,
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002).

NRSV, NIV, ESV:
NRSV = New Revised Standard Version; NIV = New International Version; ESV = English Standard Version; NASB = New American Standard Bible; ERV = Easy-to-Read Version.

As these various translations show:
For more about biblical obscenity, including an argument that the compilers of the Talmud were ashamed of several words they found in the Hebrew Bible, you could have a look at Jeremy F. Hultin,
The Ethics of Obscene Speech in Early Christianity and Its Environment
, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 128 (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

Hebrew is like Latin:
Joel M. Hoffman,
In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language
(New York: New York University Press, 2004); Angel Sáenz-Badillos,
A History of the Hebrew Language
, trans. John Elwolde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Biblical Hebrew is extremely euphemistic:
S. H. Smith, “‘Heel’ and ‘Thigh:’ The Concept of Sexuality in the Jacob-Esau Narratives,”
Vetus Testamentum
XL, no. 4 (1990): 464–73.

“
In this chapter we have”:
Matthew Henry, “Commentary,” Biblegateway.com, accessed August 10, 2010.

Scholar Ziony Zevit takes this euphemism:
Scott F. Gilbert and Ziony Zevit, “Congenital Human Baculum Deficiency: The Generative Bone of Genesis 2:21–23,”
American Journal of Medical Genetics
101, no. 3 (2001): 284–85; John Kaltner, Steven L. McKenzie, and Joel Kilpatrick,
The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book
(New York: Harper One, 2008), 1–11.

One biblical law is a case in point:
Jerome T. Walsh, “You Shall Cut Off Her … Palm? A Reexamination of Deuteronomy 25:11–12,”
Journal of Semitic Studies
49 (2004): 47–48; Kaltner, McKenzie, and Kilpatrick,
The Uncensored Bible
, 99–106.

in the immortal words of sixteenth-century Scottish poet: The Poetical Works of Sir David Lyndsay
(London: Longman, 1806), 161.

“
An idle word is one”:
Jerome 146.

Chapter 3

Two books on medieval obscenity were very helpful to my thinking about this chapter: Nicola McDonald, ed.,
Medieval Obscenities
(York: York Medieval Press, 2006), and Jan Ziolkowski, ed.,
Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages
, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions 4 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998). I have modernized the spelling and punctuation of quotations when necessary for clarity.

the Lindisfarne Gospels:
British Library, “Online Gallery Sacred Texts: Lindisfarne Gospels” (online), accessed May 12, 2010; Michelle P. Brown,
The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe
(London: British Library, 2003), 16–83.

the oldest surviving English version:
Walter W. Skeat, ed.,
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887).

“
don’t sard another man’s wife”:
“Sard,”
Middle English Dictionary
, 2001 ed. (online), accessed May 25, 2010. Thanks also to George Brown and Dorothy Bray for their help on
sard
.

In a 1530 English-French dictionary:
John Palsgrave,
Lesclarissement de la langue francoyse
, ed. R. C. Alston, English Linguistics 1500–1800 190 (Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1969).

And what these ordinary people learned:
Quotes from the Wycliffite Bible come from Studylight.org,
The Wycliffite Bible
(online), accessed May 25, 2010; see also Mary Dove,
The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

In a 2000 ranking:
Advertising Standards Authority, BBC, Broadcasting Standards Commission, and the Independent Television Commission, “Delete Expletives?” Ofcom.org, December 2000, accessed May 25, 2010.

as we’ve seen Steven Pinker define a swearword:
Pinker,
Stuff of Thought
, 339.

what the linguistic situation in England was:
Geoffrey Hughes,
A History of English Words
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 109–45; Seth Lerer,
Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 25–70; Richard M. Hogg, ed.,
The Cambridge History of the English Language
, vol. 1:
The Beginnings to 1066
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Norman Blake, ed.,
The Cambridge History of the English Language
, vol. 2:
1066–1476
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Hans Sauer, “Glosses, Glossaries, and Dictionaries in the Medieval Period,” in
The Oxford History of English Lexicography
, ed. Anthony Paul Cowie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), 1:17–40.

King Richard the Lionheart:
Jean Flori,
Richard the Lionheart: King and Knight
, trans. Jean Birrell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 7.

Aldred belongs to the end:
This classification of the Middle Ages is fairly standard among historians. Mine comes most directly from Sauer, “Glosses, Glossaries and Dictionaries,” 17.

the “civilizing process”:
Norbert Elias,
The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations
, ed. Eric Dunning et al., trans. Edmund Jephcott, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

The
Nominale sive Verbale
: “Nominale sive Verbale,” ed. Walter Skeat, in
Transactions of the Philological Society, 1903–1906
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1906), 1–50.

Schetewellwey… Randulfus:
These names can be found in the
Middle English Dictionary
.

Blame Alexander Pope:
Alexander Pope, trans.
The Odyssey of Homer
, ed. George Musgrave, 2 vols. (London: Bell and Daldy, 1865).

“
Bastard, thine Epigrams to sport”:
John Davies, “The Scourge of Folly,” in
The Complete Works of John Davies of Hereford
, ed. Alexander Grosart, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1878).

Dictionaries and
vulgaria:
Ortus Vocabulorum
, ed. R. C. Alston, English Linguistics 1500–1800 123 (Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1968). The
Pictorial Vocabulary
(747–814), the
Nominale
(675–744), Abbot Ælfric’s vocabulary (104–67), and “a ners” (678) are found in Thomas Wright,
Anglo-Saxon and English Vocabularies
, ed. Richard Paul Wülcker, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (London: Trübner, 1884);
Catholicon Anglicum
, ed. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, EETS 75 (Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint, 1973);
Promptorium Parvulorum
, ed. A. L. Mayhew, EETS Extra Series 52 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1908).

“
dum paro menpirium”:
Wright,
Anglo-Saxon and English Vocabularies
, 627.

Led, by a creative but false:
Jack Anderson, review of
Watch this Space
and
Anitergium II Hohodowndownho
, by Phoebe Neville,
New York Times
, March 17, 1988.