For Your Accent Betrays You
Tim Smith
digitalbach.com/matthew
When Peter followed Jesus into a dangerous place, he did so secretly. He
assumed that he could blend with the Judeans, but his Galilean accent gave him
away. Soon enough, he was accused of being a follower of Jesus: “It is obvious
you are one of them, for your accent betrays you,” they said. To his regret, Peter
denied this with an oath, and the rooster crowed. Then Matthew tells us that,
“Peter remembered the word of Jesus: ‘Before the cock crows, you will deny me
three times.’”
If language found Peter out, then it was genuine sorrow that redeemed him:
“Have mercy Lord, for the sake of my tears, Look here, heart and eyes weeping
bitterly before you.” If you want to hear the language of repentance, in tones,
then Bach's “Erbarme dich” (“Have mercy my God”) is where to begin.
Language is very important in the St. Matthew Passion. This is just as true
of its musical language as for its text. Like Peter's accent, Bach’s music adds
meaning to the words, for he lived in an era when tones were thought to have
persuasive powers, like speech.
The case in point: consider Peter’s denial of Jesus and the rooster's reply.
In each phrase below, you can see how the notes look the same. Bach
engineered this resemblance for our eyes, but our ears tell us that the two are not
really the same. Because Peter's accent contradicted his words, Bach misled the
eye so as to accentuate Peter's denial. In both, the meaning has something to do
with deception.
As with Peter’s accent, Bach’s manner of speaking betrays him too as being
“one of them.” He is not detached from the passion story, but identifies himself
with it. For example, in the aria “Gerne will ich mich bequemen,” Bach attached
his signature melody to these words: “I will gladly submit myself to carry the
cross and drink of the cup after my Savior.” His music also betrays him as
Lutheran. “This is profoundly obvious,” you say, and I would quite agree – even
to the point of accentuating Luther’s debatable transliteration of Jesus' last
words. I’ll have more to say of this in a moment.
But first, let us appreciate how language is indispensable to the passion
story. The Gospel of Matthew features two of those rare instances where the
Bible translates itself. The first is when Pilate affixed to the cross — in Hebrew,
Latin, and Greek — the charge for Jesus’ crucifixion: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of
the Jews.”
In the second instance, Matthew compares Jesus’ cry from the cross, “Eli,
Eli, lama sabacthani?”, with the Greek Septuagint’s translation of Psalm 22:1
(King David's Hebrew): “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Think
about it! When Jesus uttered these words, English didn’t exist. Neither did
German, nor any of the other languages in this site, save Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew. So today’s English is five languages removed from David’s Hebrew, to
Jesus’ Aramaic, to the early Christian Greek, through Luther’s 1522 German
translation of Matthew’s Gospel, to the English speaking world.
In sum, the passion story has welcomed translation from the beginning.
More than welcoming, the merits of Jesus’ suffering demand it, for the genius of
this work is ultimately founded in narrative. Underlying that narrative is a
framework of beliefs and tacit assumptions about human nature, God, betrayal,
forgiveness, and redemption. Without that framework and narrative, this music
would not exist. But as we'll see, translations too can betray us.
The purpose of language is to convey meaning. But the meaning behind the
words is not always clear. It is easy to hear what the words say, but it is
sometimes difficult to know what they mean. Translators often lock horns over
this problem, with some advocating a meaning-based translation, and others a
literal word-based approach.
Nearly twenty years ago this controversy touched the universe of Bach’s
music when some choral students at Swarthmore College balked at singing the
St. John Passion because they heard its references to “the Jews” as anti-Semitic.
The reason? Ultimately, it was a problem of mistranslation. In place of the firstcentury meaning, they heard a twentieth-century slur. It was conveniently
overlooked that Jesus and his followers were also Jewish, but, of critical
importance, they were not Judean Jews. Like Peter, they were from Galilee, to
the north. Those who conspired to have Jesus crucified were Judeans, and more
than once the Gospels recount the apprehension of the Galileans in going down
to Jerusalem. Jesus’ disciples were afraid of what the Judeans would do to them.
In one instance we hear the resigned Thomas blurting out: “OK gentlemen, let’s
just go down to Jerusalem and die with him!” (John 11:16).
Bottom line? John’s meaning was geographical. He slurred neither the
religion nor the ethnicity of these Judeans. Interestingly, in the Aramaic
translation of the Gospels — the Peshitta, or so-called “Syriac Vulgate” (one of
the oldest translations in Christendom) — the word here is “Judeans” and not
“the Jews” as in Luther’s German. One might say that, in the case of “the Jews”,
the English of our St. John Passion betrays us. While it is the literal English of
Luther’s German, it obscures the meaning of John’s narrative.1
Another “accent” in Luther, and a focal point of the St. Matthew Passion, is
heard in Jesus’ final word from the cross. While there are many theological points
that could be made of this, our goal is to apprehend Bach’s musical setting of the
words. How does it agree or disagree with, amplify upon, or elucidate the
historical meaning? Here is the passage in question.
Notice that Bach has dutifully set Luther's word “asabthani,” though as a
Latin teacher he no doubt knew that the Latin Vulgate records Jesus as having
said “sabacthani.” The same is true of the Greek from which Luther made his
1 None of this is to say that Christian history is innocent of anti-Semitism. None
of this is to deny that passiontide and its music have shamefully been used to promote
the persecution of Jews. The point is, rather, that these interpretations contradict the
self-sacrificial meaning of the passion story. For this reason, and to minimize the
possibility of misinterpretation, I think that Luther’s term, “the Jews,” when used as a
subtitle in Bach’s passion music, should be translated as “the Judeans.” If found in
program notes, it should be accompanied by a footnote explaining the geographical
meaning. translation. Here's the problem: “asabthani” or “sabacthani” — what's the
difference, and does it matter? More importantly, does Bach's music favor one
over the other?
The self-reflexive Hebrew “azavthani” means “forsake” or “abandon” me
(“thani” means “you do this to me”). By contrast, “sabacthani” means “sacrifice
me.” Everything hinges on whether Jesus said the Hebrew word “zabach” (‫ חבז‬ “sacrifice”) or the Chaldean word “shebak” (‫ קבש‬ “leave”). Remember that Matthew
used Greek letters to transliterate what people heard Jesus say from the cross.
If one subscribes to the Chaldean, then Jesus can be heard as quoting
David's words from 600 years before. In Psalm 22:1 David wrote, in Hebrew,
“azav” (‫ בזע‬ “forsake”). This was Luther's view, and translation. It bears note that of
necessity this interpretation maintains Matthew as having heard Jesus
incorrectly. Whereas Matthew transliterated “sabacthani,” Luther changed it to
“asabthani” in order to make Jesus' words agree with David's.
On the other hand, if one maintains that Jesus knew Hebrew in addition to
his native Aramaic, and that he spoke the Hebrew word “zabach” (“sacrifice”)
from the cross, then this would stand in contrast with David's Hebrew “azav” and
the Chaldean “shebak” (both of which mean “forsake”). In this view Jesus didn't
misquote David, and Matthew didn't misquote Jesus. Instead, Jesus alluded to
David's words, with a crucial difference. This is the historic word in both Greek,
and in the Latin Vulgate.2 But the first printed English translation of Matthew (that
of William Tyndale) maintained “asabthani.” Why? The most plausible
explanation is Luther’s influence.3
Obviously, we are not now going to solve this puzzle. But we can ask if
Bach's musical language seems predisposed more toward sacrifice or
abandonment? As you study the example above, note that Bach did not engineer
a notational deception, as in Peter's denial and the rooster's crow. Instead, he
wrote the pitches of Jesus' words “Eli, Eli” as being distinct (different lines and
spaces) from the Evangelist's follow-on quotation of David.
The keys also move in opposite directions. Whereas the rooster (of Peter's
denial) had modulated to the key of the dominant, the Evangelist (of Jesus' last
words) modulates to the sub-dominant. In theoretical terms, the former is a
progression, with the latter being a retrogression. One can hear the difference
2
Heli
Eli,
Deus
God
The Latin Vulgate reads as follows, with English transliteration in red.
Heli
lema sabacthani
hoc
Eli,
why
(Heb. zabach = sacrifice, thani = you do this to me) this
meus Deus meus ut
quid
dereliquisti
me
mine, God
mine for
what
forsaken
me
3
est
is
In 1290 King Edward I had issued an Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from
England. For their absence, Tyndale had to travel to Germany to learn Hebrew for his
English translation, which followed soon after Luther’s. Tyndale’s translation of Matthew
27:46 reads: “And about ye nynth houre Iesus cryed with a loude voyce sayinge: Eli Eli
lama asbathani?” By contrast, Wycliffe’s Middle English of 150 years before had read:
“And aboute the nynthe our Jhesus criede with a greet vois, and seide, Heli, Heli,
lamazabatany?”
plainly, with the rooster modulation being bright and cacophonous, and the
abandonment modulation being sorrowful in the extreme.
Well there, I've betrayed my own view of the matter. In calling it the
“abandonment modulation,” I've taken the view that Bach's musical language
supports Luther's. This should come as no surprise of course! Bach's work is
understandably Lutheran. But in the end, his musical reinforcement of
"abandonment" as opposed to sacrifice need not dissuade anybody on
theological grounds. One meaning of "sacrifice" is to abandon or let go of
something. And here we can all agree, for Bach's purpose in writing the St.
Matthew Passion was that we abandon our sins so as, paraphrasing St. Paul: to
present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our
reasonable service. (Rom. 12:1).