The Name of God in GothicAuthor(s): A. T. HattoSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Jul., 1944), pp. 247-251Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3717861 .

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THE NAME OF GOD IN GOTHIC

The way from the Many to the One, from the Elohim at the beginning of Genesis to El at the Gospels' end,1 was long and arduous. But it was not to be left to the Germanic tribes to make their way from the gods to God unaided. The question which exercised those early missionaries who wished to speed the tribes on their way was which short cuts to take. Of all short cuts, and some were as short as St Boniface's through Thor's Oak, none was shorter than the choice of a word for 'God' in the Bible of the Goths.

The Germanic tribes had a generic neuter word for 'god'. In Gothic it was gup. In a language capable of expressing gender no name for the Christian God can by virtue of His Personality and His Fatherhood long remain anything but masculine. But to take the generic neuter gutp and make it personal and masculine was an act whose consequences are reflected in all the Germanic tongues of which we have record. Just as the concept of God disengages itself from that of the gods, whether Vanir or Aesir, so the word for God dissociates itself from its heathen origins in all the ways known to grammar, having, a priori, started with number.

In the North, where heathen sources flow into Christian, we can see this hap-. pening twice over. Those high gods the Aesir were sprung from the sacred pillars of noble halls. As if to show that they had sloughed off their fetish origins their name in Icelandic arrived at a stage where it was distinct from that for 'pillar': 0ss for a god, dss for a pillar of wood.2 Here again we have gop, a neuter word pre-eminently for 'heathen god', and masculine gup mostly for 'God', a con- dition reflected in Old English.3 So it was with Gothic. The New Testament in Gothic does not speak of a false god in the singular, although I Corinthians x, 19 gave the translator an opportunity of doing so, but the plurals that do occur and the form of guf meaning 'God' are neuter.4

Now owing to a scribal ritual of writing the name of God in Gothic always in contraction there has been no unity among latter-day grammarians as to what the inflected forms would have been if written outright. In only one thing do these schismatics agree: that the solution is to be found in grammar.5 One of them at least does pause to heed the evidence of an authority on the names of God (who really solved the problem), but that is merely because he finds support there for his grammatical argument; he agrees for the wrong reason.6 I cannot find that

1 Gen. i, 26; Mark xv, 34 etc. 2 A. Noreen, Altisldndische Grammatik, ? 395,

where 6ss, 'heathen god', is listed as a u-stem with a note to the effect that the form dss with the same meaning is an a-stem: whereas dss in the meaning of 'beam' is always an a-stem.

3 The issue is clear, in spite of the influence exercised by either form on the other in both languages, producing for example the masc. pl. godas for 'false gods' in Old English. On gop and gup see Noreen, op. cit. ? 361, 'got (less frequently gup) a heathen (less frequently the Christian) god', a neuter a-stem. And ? 387, 'gup (less fre- quently gop) God', a masculine i-stem with relics of neuter declension: Anm. 1 and 2. Cf. also ? 61.1.

4 Masculine form would have been guts in nom. and voc.

5 W. Streitberg, Gotisches Elementarbuch, ? 133, expands as gup, gups, gupa, and claims the in- flected forms as evidence of' grammatical change' between singular and plural. W. Braune, Gotische Grammatik, ? 94, Anm. 3, expands as gup, gudis, guda. S. Feist, Einfihrung in das Gotische, p. 121, reads gup, gups, gupa, and like Streitberg and Braune treats guf and guda respectively as sin- gular and plural of one and the same word!

6 Streitberg, op. cit. ? 18, Anm. 3 on Traube, Nomina Sacra (1907), whose evidence Braune overrides so far as it concerns gup: op. cit. ? 94, Anm. 3. Traube pointed out that sacred names appeared in contraction to preserve them from desecration and that in no language he examined do the contracted forms contain a letter which does not appear in the full form.

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The Name of God in Gothic

it has occurred to anyone to adduce the fact that the name of God breaks clean through the conventions of grammar in Germanic.

In Gothic the word for 'God' appears in all its cases and in some compounds as gfi, gps or gfa. On the other hand, the false gods occur as -guda, -gude or -gudam. There are some compounds in guda-, too, and the isolated form gudhus.l The task that is being attempted here is to explain how the P comes to be in the dative singular gfia (expand gupa) against all that historical grammar leads us to expect, and why we find the gf contractions distributed as they are in Wulfila's Bible. On neither of these points has unanimity been reached.

In some of the earliest High German of which we have record we find the word for 'God' already masculine and indeed so personal that it has in its accusative cotan an adjectival-pronominal ending peculiar to proper names like those of Krist and Petrus in Kristan and Petrusan.2 That was a bold attempt, one more con- sciously bold than the utilization in Icelandic of a bye-form produced by phonetic variation (gufi as against goi): and although cotan failed to become general in the end, it was an attempt which clearly shows what was being attempted.

It is thus not in itself outrageous to suggest that wherever gp, gfs and gfia occur in the Gothic Bible they should be expanded (in the mind's eye) to gut, gups and gutpa. Even those who agree for grammatical reasons seem not to have asked themselves what sort of effect this divergent treatment of the stem gup must have made. In view of what has been said; where even an dss ban shake off an dss, the persistence of the f symblol through the inflexions of guf would seem to have less to do with Verner's than with hieratic law. The troublesome P5 would appear to be the outcome of conceiving a Person whose nominative, vocative and accusa- tive, etc. were guf, in a way that sought so far as possible to set His name beyond the reach of accidence, accidence that linked it with the word for gods whose very existence His servants denied. In writing, the Name was reverenced in a con- traction more devout than time-saving (one has only to think of the ritual XPS in Greek). It is suggested here that the same spirit was at work in Church usage in speech, generalizing the nominative, vocative and accusative ending P into the inflexions and so setting God apart from the gods.

For this suggestion there is a test nearer to the hearts of grammarians either than the incommunicable spoken test of Sievers (who no doubt read Wulfila's as fluently as Luther's Bible) or the palaeographical test of Traube (eminently com- municable and in itself sufficient to end the dispute without further essay). For if, as we suggest, there was a masculine Christian guj with an immutable stem, written g/, gfis, gfa, and a neuter plural guda, we should expect to find this sharp cleavage between them reflected in their respective compounds.

The contracted compounds giblostreis and gpasklaunein occur. Are they part of the new Christian vocabulary? The answer seems to be 'yes'. gpblostreis closely follows 0Eoarefls (John ix, 31), and we may observe that good Christian use is made of the simple heathen blostreis, best suited as an equivalent for those who sacrifice in the Old Testament. Again gfiaskaunein is made in the likeness of 0eov ,uopoi] (Philippians ii, 6). It is vain to suggest, as does one devotee of Verner,3 that the original Greek could not have presented the element ?0o in contraction here for imitation. The Goths were not Greeks, but barbarians, and ready to out-Greek the Greeks where the Holy Written Name of God was at stake. Thus the only

1 The contracted gpa for 'gods' is discussed below. 2 Braune, Althochdeutsche Grammatik, ? 195, Anm. 1. 3 Streitberg, op. cit. ? 133, Anm.

248

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A. T. HATTO 249

two compounds that contain the Name come under the ban against explicitness. Yet in modern texts and grammars they are expanded gudblostreis and gudaskaunein, in our opinion to the great perversion of the sense and loss of atmosphere. The effect of gudaskaunein at Phil. ii, 6 (a passage delicate enough in all conscience for the Arian Goths) is particularly unfortunate, for it suggests an association with false gods.

Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God (in gudaskaunein), thought it not robbery to be like God (Arian reading: galeiko gfa).

Actually the scribe wrote gfaskaunein, and there was no such suggestion.1 What of the forms in which guda does appear, written thus? e1vAaSls, the original

word for gudafaurhts, does not contain the element 0co (Luke ii, 25). Gudalaus translating daeos (Eph. ii, 12) is better off in this respect. But he would be a bold man who would suggest that the Goths had no habitual word for 'god-fearing' or 'godless' before the Gospel came. We need not take leave of gudafaurhts and guda- laus with that, however. There are two other words whose usage borders on theirs: *gaguPs (adverb gagudaba) and *afgufs,' godly' and'ungodly'. Now these and their abstract nominal derivatives gqgudei, afgudei, are such orderly parallels to eVaVejSs, EE/ELa, aaES, e '?fE, a(efsa which they translate, that we may well suspect them of being counterfeits. 'God-fearing' and 'godless' are adequate to express whatever we know of heathen feeling here. But when Christianity came it found not only the want of a word for 'God' but for 'godly' and 'ungodly' too.

There is the odd form gudhus. Our concern here is not with the lost a at the hinge of the word, but with the spelling d in gud-. We shall only remark that the reference is to the Jewish Temple, Greek lEpov (John xviii, 20) served by such as the gudja or priest (John xviii, 22 apXLepet).2

And so there remains the isolated plural gjia (Galatians iv, 8) which we had promised to discuss. gfia (0eoZs =gods) is a contraction of the kind we have sought up till now to bring exclusively into relation with the Christian God. gfia meaning 'gods' ought to provide the most searching test of our theory.

To the grammarians, whom we have consigned to the void below this essay, gpa at Gal. iv, 8 is either a normal3 or abnormal4 way of writing guda. Those who accept this reading, however, lay themselves open to the charge of not having studied the meaning of Gal. iv, 8 in the light of Wulfila's mission:

Ye did service unto ther` which by nature are no gods. This 'service unto them which by nature are no gods' refers (it is in the same verse) to a time when the Galatians 'knew not God'. Now let us read this passage in the Gothic Bible of our own day, offering us guda:

akei ]Jan swe]pauh ni kunnandans gup, jpaim poei wistai ni sind guda skalkinodedup. The Goths were not 'students of comparative religion'. At this time of conversion the issue for them was between the one true God and the many, false, heathen gods they were asked to forswear. Thus we may safely render this proffered verse as:

But when ye knew not God, ye served those who by nature are not (false) gods.

1 Of gpblostreis Streitberg has the temerity to 3 To Braune, Got. Gramm. ? 94, Anm. 3, all say as loudly as it can be said in print that the gpa are guda, everywhere. scribe was wrong (falsch), op. cit. ? 133, Anm., 4 Streitberg, op. cit. ? 133, Anm. includes gpa, but he recants. See below. Gal. iv, 8, in his list of contractions which are

2 Cf. Icel. go&i, 'heathen priest'; gotahus, 'wrong'. 'heathen temple'.

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250 The Name of God in Gothic

But this utterly overthrows Paul's meaning. What Paul wants is more like: But when ye knew not God, ye served those who by nature are not (true) gods.

St Paul's thought is a highly elliptical thought. These 'weak and beggarly ele- ments' about which the Galatians were so badly mistaken were thought by them to be gods (but were not). We understand that, secure in his knowledge that there was only one true God, in his poet's command of ellipsis and above all in his shattering negation 'by nature are not', St Paul may write 'gods'. But the simple Goths for whom this Bible was being made could not be expected to follow Paul's thought if their word for 'heathen gods' were used: nor were the priests (who wrote gfi in contraction even where the Greeks did not) prepared to take a risk at this point of implying that the Galatians had been serving 'gods who are not false', before they knew God.

What could better express the translator's doubts than gfia? To do so involved a contradiction in terms. But that was St Paul's responsibility. In theology the situation was fraught with some peril for them if they found the wrong answer. Far from seeing a mistake in gfia at Gal. iv, 8 the writer is inclined to find con- firmation of his idea that gut with f in all inflexions was a sacred pronunciation: for the 5 makes its appearance even in a plural as soon as there is a feeling that it, too, may be sacred.

Here it may be objected that if 'gods' at Gal. iv, 8 required gfta, then so should 'gods' at John x, 34-5:

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods ? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken.... The Gothic Bible has guda here each time, and the objection has weight. But what we must be on our guard against when discussing such difficulties is finding the text 'wrong', if it can at all be helped. The German scholar repented soon enough of his loud falsch over gfia at Gal. iv, 8: in a later work g/fa is regelrecht and it is guda at John x, 34-5 which is in need of an excuse! We conceive it to be our task not to pit gpa at Gal. iv, 8 against guda at John x, 34-5, but rather to try to understand how it is possible that they are both as they are, despite our own peevish expectation of them.

Common Germanic teaches us to see the normal plural of the generic word for 'god' in Gothic guda, and the situation in which the Goths found themselves, of being evangelized, tells us that the guda-in the main their own native gods- were being reassessed according to the values of incoming monotheism, whose Arian form, we are told, was eminently suited to be a stage on the way from polytheism (whether Hellenic or Germanic) to orthodox and catholic Christianity.2 The gods thus have two aspects: firstly they are many, and secondly, and because of this, they are false. With gia at Gal. iv, 8 the aspect of falsity was uppermost in the writer's mind for reasons connected with the thought 'by nature are not'. With John x, 34-5 this inhibition is not active and we have the neuter plural 'which we expect' from the form galiugaguda and indeed from considerations of Common Germanic accidence in general.3

If these views are accepted, gudblostreis, gudaskaunein and guda (Gal. iv. 8) will have no right to appear in the next printed Gothic Bible. Nor is there much point in expanding what the Goths for religious reasons contracted. It will also

1 Streitberg, in his Glossary to his Gothic Bible, 1928, under Gup. 2 Harnack, The History of Dogma (1898), vol. iv, p. 43. 8 Streitberg wishes to excuse guda, John x, 34-5, as being in a transferred sense, loc. cit.

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A. T. HATTO 251

follow that we can distinguish the Christian compounds from the pagan. In doing so we shall be reassured by a parallel in Old Icelandic, where neuter gof is used by preference for the heathen gods especially in compounds, while again especially in compounds the masculine gufi is preferred for the Christian God.1

Indeed, is there any cause for surprise that a concept which could absorb the polytheistic plural Elohim to the later bewilderment of grammarians, should, when laying hold of the Germanic family of languages, extend its unique influence over number to gender, word-ending and word-stem?

1 Noreen, op. cit. ? 611..

APPENDIX

NOTE. To aid the reader the following survey of forms is appended. All writers consulted agree as to the occurrence of the forms in the MSS., and the list is therefore probably complete.

(i) gp, gps, gpa Oeos etc. Nom. voc. acc.; gen.; dat. sing. For Oeos throughout

in contraction. No exceptions. (Similarly frauja ='Lord', Iesus, Xristus, abbreviated to fa, is, xs. Cf. Streitberg, Elementarbuch, ? 18, Anm. 3: whereas frauja='earthly lord', lesus, the name of a man, galiugaxristjus =' false Christs', are written out in full.)

gpblostreis Oeoaresi John ix, 31 CA gpaskaunein ,iv opQp 8eov Phil. ii, 6 B gpa OeoZs Gal. iv, 8 N. pl. A

(ii) guda O8ol John x, 34 N. pl. CA

8cou John x, 35 A. pl. CA galiugaguda ?e\,Xov I Cor. x, 19 N. pl. A*

- I Cor. x, 20 N. pl. At galiugagude (skalkinassus) elwXoX\arpTrs Eph. v, 5 G. pl. B

~,, Gal. v, 20 G. pl. A and B Col. iii, 5 G. pl. A and B

(du) galiugagudam (gasalii) 7r& ElXW\OVTa I Cor. viii, 10 D. pl. A gudafaurhts Eepefs Luke ii, 25 CA gudalausai aOeos Eph. ii, 12 A (B illegible) gudhusa iep4 John xviii, 20 CA * Here the singular of the original is avoided, the one opportunity offered by that part of the

Bible we have in Gothic for showing the word for 'god' (not 'God') in a full form in the singular. Are we to suppose an inhibition here against the form *galiugagup? (To adduce the form galiuga- xristjus against this supposition loses weight when we remember the secondary importance of Christ before God in the Arian Church.)

t Galiugaguda here is in a piece of padding which has no counterpart in the original.

A. T. HATTO LONDON

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