It’s quite a fascinating story I have to tell you: the true tale of how my bumbling along as a writer led to the uncovering of a centuries-old mistake of sorts in the Clementine Vulgate. Does that sound like something from a Dan Brown novel? Well, we have exciting lives — both the real scholars, and those of us who venture into the cavern tunnels of classical antiquity to have a look around and — how shall one say? — borrow the rare antiquities, or their likenesses, anyway, for use in our fiction.
I will state clearly that any errors concerning ancient languages that occur in this post are entirely my fault, the result of my inaccurate reporting, and are not the responsibility of my consulting scholar and friend, introduced hereafter.
In the book I’m working on, I include a few meta-texts — books that exist in the fictional world and are real to the characters. Since these are scholarly works of a former age, I wanted to give them titles in proper Latin. Also, I had the need for several Latin inscriptions on walls. Now, I learned just enough Latin in college to get myself into trouble — though it has helped me in countless ways with English (vocabulary, spelling, and seeing relationships among words). [And it sure helps in correctly answering more Jeopardy questions than you’d think!] Also, I no longer have dear Professor Froehlich close by to ask my Latin and Greek questions to.
Providentially, I have some friends not far away who are the real thing — scholars and professors of the classics, including the languages — Ann and Dwight Castro. Between them, they have the classical world well covered. Ann graciously agreed to help me with the Latin for my book, and Dwight graciously reinforces her with second opinions.
Okay, so I needed the word “pestilence” as part of the title of a book-within-my-book. Now, I clearly remember from college the phrase “Negotium perambulans in tenebris,” or “the pestilence that walks in darkness,” from Psalm 91:6. I knew perambulans meant “that walks” (think of English words such as “ambulatory”); and in tenebris is “in the dark” — some churches have tenebrae services at night. So negotium has to mean “pestilence,” right? I slapped it together with the other word I wanted, and voila!
But when I ran my title past Ann, she asked, “Why did you use negotium?” She thought it was a strange choice indeed. I dutifully recited my Latin Psalm 91:6 and added that there was also a famous story by E. F. Benson called “Negotium Perambulans.” I found quotations of the phrase as I remembered it all over the Internet — so I certainly wasn’t the only person who remembered the words that way.
It still didn’t make sense to Ann, though, who actually knows Latin. Why were so many people in the 20th century using a word for “pestilence” that essentially means “business”?
Well, Ann got to the bottom of it, with some Hebrew help from her colleague, Mr. Rod Whitacre. The unraveling goes like this (and I’m using mostly Ann’s wording here):
1. The Psalm was first written, of course, in Hebrew. The word in question there has three radicals (consonants): dbr. This word, with vowel points added, is deber, which means “pestilence.” So far, so good.
2. However, there is another word (dabar) with the same three radicals but different vowel points which means “word,” but also a lot of other things like “thing,” “matter,” “affair,” etc.
3. It looks like the writers of the Greek Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) mistook deber for dabar and used the Greek word pragma which also means “thing,” “matter,” “deed,” etc.
4. Pragma can also mean such things as “trouble” and also occasionally “business.”
5. Jerome’s Vulgate, dating from the late 4th century, correctly translates the Hebrew deber as pestis (“pestilence”).
6. The Clementine Vulgate, written at the end of the 16th century, apparently went back to the Septuagint and translated pragma with negotium, which, as we have seen, means “business” but also possibly “trouble” (see #4).
7. The Clementine Vulgate was in common use in the Roman Catholic Church until 1979 when the New Vulgate was authorized.
8. However, the King James Version of the Bible went back to earlier manuscripts and found pestis and thus translated the word as “pestilence” — as do all subsequent translations.
9. The result of all that is that people familiar with the Psalm in the King James Bible knew the word “pestilence,” and when they looked at the Clementine Vulgate and saw negotium, they assumed that it meant “pestilence.” Ergo the various sources I (Fred) had found — including one that tried to explain negotium as “a vague, unspecified terror” — you know, that business that walks in the darkness . . . which is actually pretty creepy, like it’s a euphemism for something too terrible to specify.
Anyway, in Dragonfly, that Latin phrase from the Psalm is inscribed in the Tenebrificium, using the word negotium. I was worried about that in light of Ann’s discovery, but she says it’s okay: the phrase there is quoted in context, and it is straight from the Clementine Vulgate, after all . . . which is apparently the translation favored by the denizens of Harvest Moon. And I suppose one might make the case that the meaning of negotium actually serves Hain and his people well. What ambulates in the darkness is their thing, their affair, matter, and business — their ongoing hunt that is their means of survival.
So many thanks to the Castros for all their help! Ann, especially, is pretty much the guest blogger of this post, because I’ve used her explanation almost verbatim — except, again, for any errors you find: blame me for those. I’ve probably misplaced my vowel points somewhere.
I have to give the last word to my good friend John from my college days, who was always designing new schedules for studying the theological languages he packed into nearly every semester. One evening, all stressed out, John was telling all of us who lived on our dorm floor: “I have a test on thirty Hebrew verbs tomorrow! And they’re all dots!”
I never took Hebrew myself, so his talk of dots was Greek to me.
Yes, I should end the post there, but I have one more tidbit I’ve been meaning to write about. This house we live in is heated by hot water that circulates through conduits hidden in the walls and floors. It’s the first time I’ve ever dwelt in such a place. I’ve grown to enjoy the peaceful burbling the system makes. The colder it is outside, the more the hot water has to get around to do its job. So on winter nights, it’s cozy to crawl into bed and hear the house flowing and gurgling all around you — it’s like being inside a living creature! Aqua perambulans in tenebris? Ann, can I say it that way?
Julie says: 
Hagiograph 
i am mr brown snowflake 
jhagman 
fsdthreshold 
Mrs. Spamman