Tasbeha.org Community

Does anyone have the text and recording of this hymn? It is much better than O Kirios (which is very heretical by the way).

Why is "o kirios" heretical?

It is not. There is a little confusion over the phrase "he who took for of our humility." http://www.suscopts.org/q&a/index.php?qid=1084&catid=200 It also contains many linguistic errors.

The Greek hymn itself, as has been told by some scholars around here, has linguistic and embarrassing errors.  Can you imagine that the "who took our humility" referred to the Father?  No matter how enjoyable the musicality of this hymn is, this is one of the many reasons why deacons when they pray in Coptic, they know not what they say, but simply babble nice music in front of an altar.  One can give them Coptic cuss words and they think they're doing something nice before God.  God gave us an intellect to pray with too, not just vocal cords.

Has anyone checked out Rem's research regarding this hymn? It was published at the back of Deacon Albeir Mikhail's glorification rite book. It may shed some light on the matter.

ReturnOrthodoxy

The Greek hymn itself, as has been told by some scholars around here, has linguistic and embarrassing errors.  Can you imagine that the "who took our humility" referred to the Father?  No matter how enjoyable the musicality of this hymn is, this is one of the many reasons why deacons when they pray in Coptic, they know not what they say, but simply babble nice music in front of an altar.  One can give them Coptic cuss words and they think they're doing something nice before God.  God gave us an intellect to pray with too, not just vocal cords.

Mina, I'm not picking on you. If God really gave us an intellect to pray with, would that not require us to intellectually examine the prayer text instead of assuming heresy?  Just for clarification. The original hymn itself, if understood as Bohairicized Greek/Sahidic bilingualism, makes perfect sense. There are no errors. The only error or heresy is in the Arabic translation who failed to recognize the bilingualism. The Greek says nothing about the Father taking our humility.  The other problem lies in the reluctance of people to accept something different or non-standard. This leads to rumors and false accusations.

Dear Rem,

I agree with you.  That is why I'm basing my judgement on the non-modified version of this hymn.  As I understand it, last time we had a discussion about this in CopticHymns, you proposed some modifications to it.  But churches still chant the original version which is strange and filled with errors.  Unless recent research proves me wrong, then I retract what I said.  At the very least, I believe we as chanters should not be chantin something without understand it.  Otherwise, What we do is ta7reeg, nonsense. 

I think one can agree with me that the behavior that some chanters exhibit shows that if the whole church was ignorant and we were presented with a hymn with cuss words, chanters will still chant it it it's nice and catchy and "in Coptic".

Not exactly Mina. The non-modified Greek/Coptic version of the hymn was at one point not strange. It was never filled with errors. Anthropologically, it was perfectly normal to pray with non-standard Greek. After all, Greek became standardized in the early 19th century. Bilingualism has been used since ancient Egypt. The problem lies in modern interpretation and the social norm to follow standardized linguistic rules even though all linguists will tell you there is no such thing as standardized rules. So what is ta7reeg is the shift from praying and communicating in perfectly acceptable non-standard modern linguistics to standardizing something that is inherently dynamic like bilingualism. What's my point? The non-modified version is legitimate. The Arabic translation was the culprit filled with errors.

What I did was make it easier to conceptualize the author's method and context using modern standardized Greek/Coptic. I can only do this if the original non-modified hymn was actually legitimate. The Arabic translators did not conceptualize the hymn-writer's intention and methodology and ended up with something that ended up being heretical. Later generations, even to this day, simply dismiss the hymn with false accusation without using God's given intellect to examine the original text.

The take home message is that the original non-modified version intellectually and syntactically is valid if you understand the mechanisms of Egyptian lexical bilingualism. If not, I proposed a modified text with a modified translation for modern 21st century readers to conceptualize what the author possibly meant. But this does not mean the modified text should be sung. The original is perfectly fine for liturgical services. 

I will agree that there is a paradigm shift to sing songs (and some are distinctly Protestant) simply because of musical esthetics and not intellect. But this has nothing to do with Coptic or Greek, since nearly everyone does this with modern English and Arabic songs in liturgical services. For example, the massive majority (even English speaking youth) will be reluctant to sing Rejoice O Mary because Ifrahi ya Mariam is more musically appealing. Singing onoof emmo Maria is unoffically forbidden. There is no attempt to use God's given intellect anymore.

As long as Fr. Shenouda Maher is mentioned, I have a question:

Did any of you pray a liturgy or a vesper raising of incense with Fr. Shenouda Maher?

If so, do you guys understand his Coptic "dialect"?

He prayed a liturgy a while back in our local church, all in Coptic, but no one was able to follow anything because of his "accent" or "dialect".