True Grit
Anthony Esolen on the Untamed Tongue of a Medieval English Monk
"The people were so disgusting," says Aelfric, the English monk and scholar (c. 955–1010), "that they wanted to fulfill their lusts against nature, not with women, so foully that it shames us to say it openly. That was their outcry, that they might act out their filth in the open."
With these words, Aelfric has interrupted his translation of the Latin Hexateuch, Psalms, and Gospels at Genesis 19:3, which he will resume at 19:12, omitting the verses that tell of the Sodomites and their demand for carnal knowledge of the two young men who have arrived at Lot's house, and Lot's vain pleas with the lust-ridden citizens to leave in peace. Lot is a righteous man, sort of, and not terribly courageous. When, in exasperation, he offers to the Sodomites his daughters instead, we are meant to be uneasy, especially when we call to mind what those daughters will do with him in the cave of Zoar.
Shiningly Present
It is charming to read these books of Scripture in Old English. You are witnessing an energetic and winsomely naive creativity, as Aelfric and his fellow scholars try, with great success, to find or to coin Germanic words for Latin words, getting at the essence of the idea behind the word. So the Latin centurio is Old English hundred-mon, and sabbatum is the expressive reste-daeg (rest-day), and discipulus is the extraordinary leornung-cniht (learning-knight, that is, learning-lad). In the Gospels, you will and will not find the name of Jesus, as he is called se Haelend, the Savior, for that in fact is what the name Jesus means: the Lord saves.
Aelfric is a learned and careful man. He prefaces most of the psalms with an introduction that bespeaks both a knowledge of history and a sense that everything that has happened in the story of salvation is still urgently and shiningly present to us. Here is what he says about the beloved Psalm 22 (our 23):
David sang this twenty-second song, foreseeing the freedom of the people of Israel, how they were to be led forth from their captivity in Babylon, and how they would thank God for his mercy as they were on the way homeward; and also his own conversion from his wretchedness; and when he sings of this, he thanks God for setting him free from troubles; and so the Apostles and all the folk of Christ sang of Christ's resurrection; and all Christian men sing this song to thank God of their deliverance from sin after baptism.
We are too historically grounded to care for all that history, or rather for all those works of God's providence as fore-glimpsed in types and shadows by the Psalmist. Thus does historicism end by devouring its tail, and what for Aelfric was a psalm filled with worlds of significance is for us the expression of a single soul, intensely personal, even private, and therefore admitting a personal or private interpretation, to the exclusion of all else.
Playing Fast & Loose with History
Personal and private interpretations, or historicist interpretations that obliterate history, would apply also to the passage regarding Sodom. A common interpretation in our time is that God condemned the Sodomites not for sodomy but for their inhospitality and their unkindness toward the poor. We are told that peoples in the ancient world placed a high premium on hospitality, because travelers were especially vulnerable. That is not news. Beggars and strangers come from Zeus, the pagan Greeks thought. Spurn a beggar at your door, and you may be calling the wrath of the gods down on you. Violate the sanctity of the home, and the Furies come forth from their cellarage to harry you to your destruction.
Fine, but that attempt to finesse the horror of Sodom is utterly at odds with the text and with its position in the whole great saga in Genesis of sexual confusion and family strife and breakdown. It is also at odds with the antipathy we find in Scripture against a host of evils common to cultures surrounding the Hebrews: idol worship, human sacrifice, and, yes, sodomy come to mind. It is self-serving. It plays fast and loose with history. It claims for justification our supposed preeminence in knowledge and moral wisdom. We are too wise to be revolted by what revolted Aelfric.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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