Quoth the Maven by William Safire

Author:William Safire [Safire, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79974-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-18T16:00:00+00:00

You cite Genesis 1:2 (“And the earth was without form, and void …”) as a venerable precedent for [President Bush’s] frequent use of the conjunction “and” at the beginning of sentences (“sixteen times, ten planned and six ad-libbed … 11.1 percent of the speech’s sentences”).

While acknowledging that the 1611 Anglican translation of the Bible (the “Authorized” or “King James” version) has had a profound influence on the English language, it is often forgotten that, although inspired and inspiring, it is, alas, a translation. Its frequent use of the conjunction “and” at the beginning of sentences is based on the Hebrew, not English, construction and syntax, and therefore ought not to serve as a model for proper English usage. While, to our ears, such usage sounds very “Biblical,” it is based on a misunderstanding of the original. It is doubtful that all those conjunctions belong in any translation, and the King James Version ought not to serve as a proof-text for Mr. Bush’s dubious construction.

In Biblical narratives, the letter vav is often used to begin sentences, and was seen as having the strange effect of converting the verbs in the sentence which follows, from past to future and vice versa, hence this vav is often referred to as the vav ha-ipuch, or the “vav conversive.” Example (Genesis 1:3): “And (the vav ha-ipuch) the Lord said (future tense, literally “will say”), ‘let there be light!’ (future form is used), and there was (literally, “will be”) light.” More recent scholarship has traced this usage, not found in post-Biblical Hebrew, to earlier Semitic languages.

The older Biblical translations beautifully preserve the word order and flavor of the Hebrew original—while modern translations are more literal.

I do not know if Mr. Bush (or his speech writer) was inspired by the nuances of the King James version—but English is not an ancient Semitic language, and it is forced and artificial to make it sound like one. Perhaps this is just another Presidential quirk, like Reagan’s “Well …,” Nixon’s “Let me make it perfectly clear …,” or Kennedy’s “Let me say this about that …”

(Rabbi) Kenneth L. Cohen

Beth Shalom

Columbia, Maryland

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