WI No "Holy" Languages?

[Troyer IV]

We all know one of the issues of the Protestant Reformation was the simple fact that the people of Germany wanted to be able to pray and/read the Holy Scripture in their native tongue. Most were ignorant to Latin beyond your Hail Marys or somesuch.

Meanwhile, Islam required the Koran/Qur'an to be printed in Arabic, as that ws the language of the Prophet and so forth. Very similar in terms to Latin for the Roman Catholic Church.

My wondering is this: What if, from day one - maybe Jesus (and his Aramaic) or Muhammad or both - encourage others who do not speak the languages of their scripture to learn it in their own language so that they may not be left out of the faith.

This is gonna have a whole lot of fun fracturing methinks simply because overtime and across language the meaning of words might alter or shift. This will also undermine the centralized power of the Catholic Church - or one would assume. It might then take on a structure similar to the Orthodox Church. For Islam, the faith may be more easily spread into those areas which never saw Muslim traders.

Just thinking out loud, but I was hoping to construct a useful and intellectual discussion on some potential impacts. What are your thoughts?

 

[twovultures]

This could seriously retard the development of science and technology. Without a common language spread by religious prosletyzing, and ensuing less communication between peoples/regions will mean a slower exchange of ideas across Eurasia. There may be more cultural diversity, but the fact that the educated elites within these cultures can't communicate with each-other means that the diversity will come at the cost of intellectual isolation.

The usefulness of a liturgical language could very well mean that

 

[Marc Pasquin]

We all know one of the issues of the Protestant Reformation was the simple fact that the people of Germany wanted to be able to pray and/read the Holy Scripture in their native tongue. Most were ignorant to Latin beyond your Hail Marys or somesuch.

Meanwhile, Islam required the Koran/Qur'an to be printed in Arabic, as that ws the language of the Prophet and so forth. Very similar in terms to Latin for the Roman Catholic Church.

My wondering is this: What if, from day one - maybe Jesus (and his Aramaic) or Muhammad or both - encourage others who do not speak the languages of their scripture to learn it in their own language so that they may not be left out of the faith.

This is gonna have a whole lot of fun fracturing methinks simply because overtime and across language the meaning of words might alter or shift. This will also undermine the centralized power of the Catholic Church - or one would assume. It might then take on a structure similar to the Orthodox Church. For Islam, the faith may be more easily spread into those areas which never saw Muslim traders.

Just thinking out loud, but I was hoping to construct a useful and intellectual discussion on some potential impacts. What are your thoughts?

As far I know, there is no part in the new testament that say "read this in latin/hebrew/greek/etc..." so its more a matter of what happened afterward. I don't think it would have even occured to someone at the time to say so. What would have been the point ? jews would have read the hebrew texts and later the various groups read translations without seeing any problem with that until the catholic church became a centralised entity and there was a need for a standard version of the text to be used by all.

What you would need then to begin with is an habit of "find your own intepretation" where you don't have "judges of the faith" (or whatever you want to call them) whose job it is to intepret the text in what they perceive is God's intent.

The problem however is that human nature seem to seek guidance. protestants should, following the logic of the reformation, have tried to find each its own interpretation of the bible based on being able to read the text themselves but quickly they assembled into churches with dogmas that must be followed unless you wanted a schism (which happened).

 

[EternalCynic]

This could seriously retard the development of science and technology. Without a common language spread by religious prosletyzing, and ensuing less communication between peoples/regions will mean a slower exchange of ideas across Eurasia. There may be more cultural diversity, but the fact that the educated elites within these cultures can't communicate with each-other means that the diversity will come at the cost of intellectual isolation.

The usefulness of a liturgical language could very well mean that

Even if a lingua franca doesn't emerge out of religious beliefs, they will still emerge through economic and political exchanges. So Western Europe and the Maghreb will still use Latin (or Pig Latin) as its lingua franca merely out of convenience, and Eastern Europe and Egypt will use Greek merely out of the importance of Constantinople. Not sure what language will be the lingua franca of the Levant, though.

 

[MSZ]

Like you said, different language means different interpretation of the script. Central power of the church would erode very quickly, to a point that it propably would not be able to call itself a "one universal church", but rather become many national churches. Bad scenario - this means a lot more religious warfare than OTL. Good scenario - if "national churches" would become a standard practice in Europe early on, then a lot of religous conflicts could be averted, since what was considered 'heresy' or 'blasphemy' would no longer be seen as a casus belli.

 

[Marja]

Most early Christian texts are in Greek, to reach the largest audience in the eastern Mediterranean. Others are in dialects of Aramaic, and then you get translations into Coptic, Latin, Armenian, Gothic, another Latin translation, and so on.

But that does change, I think partly because of increasing centralization, partly because of greater identification with the Roman Empire and its two dominant languages, and partly because of the way language barriers can contribute to misunderstandings and controversies.

 

[mailinutile2]

We all know one of the issues of the Protestant Reformation was the simple fact that the people of Germany wanted to be able to pray and/read the Holy Scripture in their native tongue. Most were ignorant to Latin beyond your Hail Marys or somesuch.

Meanwhile, Islam required the Koran/Qur'an to be printed in Arabic, as that ws the language of the Prophet and so forth. Very similar in terms to Latin for the Roman Catholic Church.

My wondering is this: What if, from day one - maybe Jesus (and his Aramaic) or Muhammad or both - encourage others who do not speak the languages of their scripture to learn it in their own language so that they may not be left out of the faith.

This is gonna have a whole lot of fun fracturing methinks simply because overtime and across language the meaning of words might alter or shift. This will also undermine the centralized power of the Catholic Church - or one would assume. It might then take on a structure similar to the Orthodox Church. For Islam, the faith may be more easily spread into those areas which never saw Muslim traders.

Just thinking out loud, but I was hoping to construct a useful and intellectual discussion on some potential impacts. What are your thoughts?

Latin was not an "holy" language, but simply the common language used by people coming from the opposite sides of europe to speak one with the other.
You could compare it to the using of english on this website, where people coming from Dixie, Dulwich Hill, Krepakistan and Neo-Atzlan use it (sometime with some mistake) to understand each other.
What the heck, greek is more an "holy language" than latin, considering that a good chunk of the bible was written using it.

 

[kasumigenx]

I think many Afro-Asiatic languages could had fared better if Islam did not force it's followers to understand Mohammed's language.