Thursday 3 June 2010

Mysteries and Sacraments

These excerpts are presented as suggestions for meditation, no more. Hopefully at least some of my readers will recognise the main allusion.
mystery n. (pl. –ies) 1. a secret, hidden or inexplicable matter. 2. secrecy or obscurity. 3 (attrib.) secret, undisclosed. 4 the practice of making a secret of (esp. unimportant things). 5 (in full mystery story) a fictional work dealing with a puzzling event, esp. a crime. 6 a a religious truth divinely revealed, esp. one beyond human reason. b RC Ch. a decade of the rosary. 7 (in pl.) a the secret religious rites of the ancient Greeks, Romans, etc. b archaic the Eucharist. [Middle English via Old French mistere or Latin mysterium from Greek mustērion.]
—The Concise Oxford Dictionary of current English (9th edition).
μυστηριον, το [mustērion] a mystery or secret doctrine; in pl., the mysteries of the Cabiri in Samothrace, of Demeter at Eleusis, etc. 2. any mystery or secret. 3. mystic implements. 4. in N.T., a mystery, a divine secret, something above human intelligence.
Liddell & Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon.
In the Greek New Testament the word μυστηριον or its plural appears once in each of the first three gospels, in the same context, four times in the Apocalypse of John and 20 times in the epistles attributed to Paul of Tarsus (who either was, or brazenly insinuated himself to be, an initiate of one or another of the various systems of Mystery-Religion existing in the Græco-Roman world). In respect of the archaic use of the word in English for the sacrament of the Eucharist, it is appropriate to note that in the Vulgate Latin version of the New Testament, eight of the occurances of μυστηριον were translated as sacramentum (one of them being the sacramentum of the woman and the beast which carries her in chap. 17 of the Apocalypse), in the rest the word was simply Latinised as mysterium.
sacrāmentum –i, n. (sacro), that which binds or obliges a person. (1) legal technical term: the money deposited . . . by the parties in a suit, which the defeated party lost. Hence any civil suit, legal process. (2) military tech. term, the engagement entered into by newly enlisted soldiers, the military oath of allegiance. Hence any oath or solemn promise.
Cassell’s Latin-English / English-Latin dictionary.
(Later use seems to have taken the idea of a “sacred oath” and extended it to “that which makes sacred” generally; see, again, Concise Oxford Dictionary, s.v. “sacrament.”)
sacro –are (sacer). (1) To dedicate to a god, consecrate. (2) to make holy, make inviolable.
sacer –cra –crum, sacred, holy, consecrated.
ibid.
Whence, via Old French as usual, English “sacred” (for example, Concise Oxford Dictionary, s.v.).
sēcerno –cernere, to separate, part sunder; TRANSF. (1) to distinguish in thought. (2) to set aside, to reject. Hence participle sēcrētus –a –um, set apart. … neut. substantive sēcrētum –i. (1) retirement, solitude, a solitary place. (2) a secret, mystery.
ibid.
Whence, obviously, English “secret.” The origin of both perhaps can be traced to …
seco secare secui sectum, to cut.
. . . either literally, or figuratively; whence English “section,” etc. Mystery-religions in one sense do just that, in the figurative sense; they divide people into an in-group, the in-itiates, and an out-group, “the profane” (from Latin, pro fana, lit. “outside the temple”) defined simply as “everybody else.”

The point of all this rambling being to suggest that to hold 'mysteries' (sacramenta) 'sacred and secret' is simply to acknowledge that A = A.

Lege -- iudica -- atque ride.