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MVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU>Tan and Gibson are among many who singled out for comment the particular passage they quote from my earlier message on the difference between Christianity and Islam with respect to greetings. I particularly appreciate Tan's comments, whose fuller meaning had not occurred to me when I wrote the last message, but then I had to think more when Stavros Macrakis also made some comments to me about that point. Here's an excerpt from what occurred to me, and which I wrote first for Stavros: Arabic's privileged position in the Islamic world has been mainly religious and cultural stuff connected with Islam and Arabic civilisation. True, Arabic rep laced earlier languages in part of the Muslim empire, but so did Latin replace other languages in the Roman (later RC) empire. The strength of specifically Qur'anic Arabic in formulaic sayings, among non-Arabic speakers as well as Arabic speakers, has outlived the strength of "Vulgate Latin" equivalents in the West, assuming (reasonably, I think) that the latter survived vernacularisation of Romance for a while. To me it is different that addio in Greek comes transpar ently from Italian, while Quranic Arabic greetings are preserved among Muslims regardless of a different possible immediate source. .... Roman cohesion, absolutely. However, the common everyday use of Arabic greeti ngs goes well beyond that degree of cohesion. My speculation still stands that the original lack of linguistic cohesion in the officially Christian world cre ated precedent for further lack of cohesion. I should also mention that Christ ianity had spread to many areas before the Empires officially adopted them. At first, the ceremonies were vernacularised. For example, when Chistianity spre ad to the Copts through the Greek Christians of Lower Egypt, the ceremonies wer e adopted to Coptic rather than being associated with Greek. I hasten to add t hat a great many Greek words came into Coptic by that means, e.g., "body" and " soul". Although Coptic already had words for "soul" and certainly "body", the Christian concepts embodied in the Greek loans contrasted with the implications of the older Coptic words associated with the older Egyptian religion, repudia ted by the Christian Copts. Similar things can be said for Ethiopian Christian ity. In sum, Greek was not pushed or perceived as THE holy language, but for M uslims Arabic was, and no schism within Islam ever challenged this. Roman Catholicism and its rituali sation of Latin is a different matter, more similar to the Muslim view, but sti ll not as extreme -- but Protestant vernacularisation seems to have been a "red iscovery" of the Eastern Orthodox principle that people should have access to w hat they are reciting, cf. Wulfila's third century translation of the NT into G othic, an idea which would have been anathema to the Western church, as it gath ered strength. (Could the Orthodox attitude be a vestige of the pre-Imperial Greek tradition of "democracy" transformed into linguistic laissez-faire? among other differences between the ways the Romans and Greeks handled or were able to handle their empires. In any case, the difference between Roman and Greek C atholic attitudes toward language reflect more general difference in Roman and Greek policies, or at least outcomes, in their empires.) In the final analysis, the intimate association between Islam and Arabic rests on the belief that Islam was revealed to Muhammad in ARABIC. In contrast, the Christian leaders realised that Christ's words were in Aramaic, even though the gospels were first widely spread in Greek. Greek, then, could NOT be THE holy language. Latin, for all the ritualisation and attempt at centralisation of C hristian doctrine, could not be claimed as THE holy language on such high autho rity either. Of course, the Latin NT was TRANSLATED from the Greek, but the Western Church said translation stops HERE: we'll control access from now on. (Contrast the religious duty of every Muslim to learn Arabic and every Jew to learn Hebrew in order to receive the word, while, as far as I know, Latin remained the language of those privileged to convey the word of God to Roman Catholics, and Catholics were not required to know it for their salvation. I think I am right about this. I also don't know if Sanskrit is more like Arabic/ Hebrew or Latin. I suspect it is like Latin, not a necessary language for Hindus if you can recite your prayers and in other religious ways do what you're told by those who know. Modern Roman Catholicism has changed. I'm talking about the old days.) There's the heart of the linguistic difference between Christianity and Islam. Makes sense, right? AFTERTHOUGHT: For that matter, Christianity seems to have long assumed that HEBREW was THE holy language, reflected in the long-held Christian belief that Hebrew was the "original" language, i.e., of Adam and Eve, and thus God-given before the "curse" of the Tower of Babel. Even Christ didn't speak to the multitudes in it, of course, but also of course he knew it. In fact, I don't think that the OT ever claims that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew, or that Hebrew was any less a product of the Tower of Babel than any other language. The Tower story does not say what language was previously spoken. That in itself seems significant, since a chauvinist could have been tempted to insert "Hebrew" instead of "ONE language" (that everybody spoke before the Tower). I don't think the Jews claimed that Hebrew was the original language. According to the OT, they became a nati on much later, and Hebrew was THEIR language. Christian belief in Hebrew as the original language seems to be a distortion of the Jewish belief that Hebrew is THE holy language. I don't know if this Christian assumption was canonised in any particular Church, or whether it was only a widespread deduction by Christian scholars. The Jewish belief that Hebrew is the holy language has nothing to do with it being the "original" language, but, similar to Islam, that it was the language in which God revealed himself to the founders of the religion. .... I'm glad I didn't try to respond before reading your message more carefully, be cause it stimulated my thinking, esp. about the issue of whether or not there is a "THE holy language" for Christians (or Buddhists, despite Gautama) as there is for Muslims (and Jews and Hindus). Incidentally, I never really thought ab out these things before. My main interest with respect to the topic is in th e effect of the adoption of Arabic rhetorical styles on the discourse and ultim ately the syntax of African and Asian languages in the Muslim sphere of influen ce. .... This is the current me again now. So among the questions which occurred to me in the above line of thought is: 1. What is the origin of the "Christian" belief in Hebrew as the original language? 2. How did the Roman Church justify Latin as the language of scripture? 3. What have been the various Jewish position on the original language, and/or why it is not named in the Bible (logic says one of the post- Babel languages could have been the pre-Babel language, since nobody else would understand it anyway)? 4. Probably some other stuff embedded rightly or wrongly in the above message, but I can't think of what they are at the moment? Maybe I should add that the schisms I mentioned in Islam in the previous message were predominantly caused by Arabic speakers, and did not challenge the belief that Arabic was THE holy language. I can only think of Bahai as a possible exception, though it is my impression that Bahai is not construed of as a form of Islam by most Muslims, but may be analogous to what Unitarianism is among "Christians". BenjiMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue