Life After Exams

Yaay! My exams have finished. I write this the day after my Greek exam, and I have a slight headache. I have had a slight headache for a while now—almost as if my brain is over-stretched by all the facts I have been trying to cram into it. But my languages course is completed and that is such a good feeling. It has been fun, but the exams were scary.

Lots of scribbled notes with silly sentences to help me remember them.

Friday was busy. The house has been ignored for several weeks, so as soon as my last exam was finished, I cleaned up the kitchen a bit, ready for friends coming for dinner. The dog watched in alarm, especially when she saw her bed going into the washing-machine. She sat guard next to it for a while, then came to give me little nudges in case I hadn’t realised her bed was missing, and finally sat, very pointedly, in the space where her bed should have been.

The animals continued to ignore the fact that I was very busy, and on Wednesday old cat died. It’s always very sad when animals are old and unhappy, and when I went to see her Wednesday morning she gave me that look, letting me know that she had had enough. She was over twenty, and was a good friend to my daughter when she lived at home, so although the cat pretty much hated me, it was still sad to let her go.

Son 2 was working in the kitchen on Wednesday, and had angled his computer so there was a lovely view of the garden behind him during Zoom meetings. We all tiptoed around the kitchen so as not to disturb him, and all was going well—we were being good parents—until Husband forgot and walked past the window behind him carrying the cat. Probably not what Son 2 was hoping for, but we tried…

We had a tree down this week too. Did you have a big storm midweek? We didn’t have much wind, but the excessive rain was obviously enough weight to make half a tree snap off and fall across the garden. Dog went to investigate and was very perturbed that her route to the garden had changed. Two fat cats who live in the garden looked particularly innocent, which makes me wonder whether they had been up the tree when it happened and their combined weight helped the branch to snap—but they deny all knowledge.

This is a short blog because I need to continue cleaning the house. I keep finding all my scribbled revision notes in every room, paradigms to learn while I cooked or put washing in the machine. Not sure what to do with them —feels silly to keep them. I don’t suppose I shall ever look at them again, but they represent hours of my life. They are mostly all in the bin now.

So have a good week, and enjoy everything that you complete. I’m going to find the vacuum cleaner…though I do have ice-creams in the freezer and I can hear Husband and son leaving the house, so possibly I shall change the plan…

Bye for now.

Love, Anne x

Anne E. Thompson — Thank you for reading anneethompson.com Why not sign up to follow my blog?

I saw this online, and it made me laugh. I know just how they felt!

Family Chaos

Posted by anneethompson

You can’t control animals (or children…or husbands!)

As you know, I am trying to revise for exams. The Hebrew one is finished (I smashed it!) but the more I revise Greek, the more I realise I have forgotten/never understood in the first place. I have a feeling of rising panic growing inside as the exam date moves relentlessly nearer.

Now, I thought that I had at least sorted all the animals so that I could devote my time fully to my studies. I had timed the hatching of the eggs in the incubator so the ducks would be fully-grown and on the pond, I stocked up on supplies of pet food, incorporated cleaning-out times in my schedule. I was prepared. Except I wasn’t.

Firstly, the local fox decided to produce cubs, which meant it began to visit my garden at odd times of the day to snatch a chicken. The only way to keep them safe is to keep them locked inside for a few weeks until my garden is no longer seen as an easy source of food. This means the chickens now need cleaning-out more often, and they kick dirt into their water, and generally make everything more work.

Then mother duck started to sit on another nest. I calculated the date, and sure enough, they hatched this week. Which means they are now in the pond-cage I was planning to put the fully-grown ‘ducklings’ in. Which means they have to stay confined in the big cage (because if I release them on the pond now, they will sleep on the bank, not return to the pond-cage, and greedy fox will eat them—see above.) Ducks mainly spend their day putting mud into their water, which means I have to keep refreshing it. Which takes time. The new ducklings are cute, but add to the workload as I have to keep checking one isn’t stuck somewhere, plus food and clean-up schedule.

Then grumpy-old-cat-who-hates-me has started to walk further afield. She is over 20, and can hardly walk, but has decided that she will visit the outside cats each morning. They hate each other, so I’m not sure why. But she tends to climb into places that she cannot then get out of, so I have to keep remembering to check where she is in case she needs rescuing. Which takes time.

It reminds me of when my children were young, and they didn’t fit neatly into a schedule either. I’m not quite sure how families manage when they both work. I worked fulltime for one year when my children were aged 4, 6, and 8—and I collapsed in a heap at the end of the year and switched to a part-time contract. Children do not save their crises for convenient times. They will be devastated because someone doesn’t want to be their friend, or lose one shoe (only ever one) or start vomiting on those days when you have a deadline and extra stress and really need everything to be calm.

Husbands can also be a challenge (though mine is lovely of course). Yesterday Husband kindly cooked the dinner, which was incredibly kind. We had fishcakes, and rocket (nicely garnished with a tomato) and chips—all of which were lovely. There was also a dressing to go on the salad. It was a new creation, and had a pleasant taste to start with, followed by bit of a kick and then a slow burn. I don’t believe it was from a recipe book. After much discussion, the ingredients were revealed as: oil, garlic, oregano, seasoning, garlic (lots of this I think) and whiskey (which explains the burn!) I will send the recipe on request.

Hope you have an organised week—or ride the chaos with a smile if not.

Thanks for reading.

Love, Anne x

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Cake Disaster

Posted by anneethompson

It was a disaster. I tried my best, but it still looked like something a twelve-year-old had made out of plasticine. At least it made my siblings laugh (good to bring a bit of laughter to someone’s day—even if that wasn’t the result I was going for).

You see, it was my mother’s 80^th birthday, and I decided that I would make the cake. (Well, to be honest, the lady who I wanted to order a cake from has moved away, and when I looked at cakes in the shops, I thought I could make one that was better. I was wrong.) Birthday cakes in our family are a thing.

When we were young, my mum always made us a birthday cake. Every year, without fail. Previously, Mum had taken some evening courses (City and Guilds) and she was rather good at decorating cakes—good enough to sell them in fact. I remember the tension in the house whenever she was asked to make a wedding cake, because if we even breathed in the kitchen we were glared at!

I also remember the time she made a huge centenary cake for a Covenanter group (like the scouts) and it was left in the larder where it would be safe. Except it wasn’t safe at all because someone (my brother) lent on it to reach something and put his elbow right through the left-hand corner. There was a bit of fuss when it was discovered, minutes before the cake was due to leave the house, and my mother did a bit of nifty icing to hide the damage.

My favourite cake had a fairy on it, closely followed by one with iced pink flowers. My brother’s cakes tended to be football-themed. I don’t remember my sister’s, but they would have been beautiful.

When I had children of my own, I tried to continue the family tradition. My results were less good, but usually passable—mainly because I went for simpler designs.

So now, with Mum about to be 80, I wanted to create something beautiful for her. She is a keen gardener, with painted watering cans in the garden (where she hides sweets for all the local children to find). I decided to make a cake covered in iced flowers, with bright watering cans all around the edge.

I found some tiny flowerpot muffin cases in Lakeland—they could sit on top of the cake.

I found a mould for icing watering-cans on the internet. Perfect.

I was busy revising for exams, but when I could think no more, I used the break to make the cakes. I have made cakes a million times. These were the worst cakes ever.

I tried to make the watering-cans. Even I could see they weren’t exactly beautiful. The red icing seemed to go everywhere. The cake (and my kitchen) looked more like a war zone than a garden. I sent photos to my siblings. My brother suggested I add a hand-grenade to complete the look. My sister said she couldn’t stop laughing.

It was a disaster. I realised that decorating cakes is not one of my gifts.

On the day, I presented Mum with her garden-war-zone-chaos cake. She looked pleased.

Hope you have some success with whatever you attempt this week. But if not, at least it might make someone laugh.

Take care.
Love, Anne x

(The photo below, found on Facebook, seemed strangely apt!)

anneethompson.com

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Can You Bring Some Fish?

Posted by anneethompson

I am scribbling this in the few minutes before I nip downstairs to start to cooking dinner. I am meant to be revising. My Greek and Hebrew exams are imminent, and every spare moment is spent chanting words or skim-reading textbooks and trying to make sense of my notes. If there weren’t exams looming, it would be quite fun. If nothing else it provides me with the perfect excuse to not do housework (don’t even think about how dirty my kitchen floor is…)

Anyway, I am currently translating a passage from John’s Gospel, the very last chapter, when the disciples have gone fishing and Jesus appears on the beach. He asks them if they have caught any fish, and when they say no, he tells them to throw their nets out on the other side of the boat. When they do, they catch so many fish they can barely struggle to shore. Jesus is cooking fish over a fire, and he asks them to bring some of the fish they caught, and eat breakfast with him. He then asks Peter whether he loves him.

Do you remember the story? Here are some of the things that I notice in the Greek version:

Firstly, the story seems to begin when Peter announces that he is going fishing. This is interesting because he used to be a fisherman, before he started to follow Jesus. Since then he has been a disciple for a few years, culminating in a terrible night when he denies knowing Jesus and then Jesus is killed. But after this, Jesus appears again to the disciples (so Peter knows that Jesus is alive) and Jesus tells them to wait in Jerusalem. So, when Peter decides to go fishing, he seems to be ignoring the command to stay in the city.

Why would he do that? Perhaps he was fed up with waiting. Perhaps he was bored. Perhaps—because he had failed Jesus so spectacularly—he didn’t think the command applied to him. You can decide.

When Jesus greets the fishermen, he calls them children. A greeting of: “Hey kids, have you caught anything?” Why would he call them children? It doesn’t seem to fit with fishermen. Was he teasing them? It’s too hard to guess from the Greek, so you can decide.

‘The disciple who Jesus loved’ (probably John) realises that it’s Jesus and tells Peter, who grabs his clothes, and leaps into the water. He would have been naked, because in those days, nudity was more convenient than lots of laundry and most active work would have been undertaken without clothes. (The gymnasts all performed naked, it wasn’t a big deal.)

When the disciples arrive on the beach, they find Jesus with a charcoal fire, cooking bread and fish. Where did the fire come from? Where did the bread and fish come from? We don’t know. But I think the really interesting bit is that Jesus then tells the disciples to bring some of the fish that they have just caught, and to come and have breakfast. Now, why did he want them to bring their own fish? Did Jesus not manage to bring enough? Seems unlikely. Did Jesus not realise how many disciples were going to be at the breakfast? Seems unlikely. Therefore, Jesus must have planned to not have enough. He planned to need what the disciples were able to offer (which he had helped them to catch in the first place).

What then, are the implications for us today? I think God chooses to need what we can offer. And if we don’t do our bit, then there won’t be enough. Whatever it is that we have to offer, however pathetic it might seem to us, that is what God needs. God then accepts our help. This is huge. I don’t think God pretends, I think he genuinely does need our help in whatever area we happen to have something to offer. Yes, he could do it all himself, just like Jesus could have produced enough fish along with the bread and the fire—but he didn’t.

I also think, that if we are meant to be following Jesus’ example, living like he did, then we too should be accepting help from others. We are meant to be a team, everyone with something to offer. If we want to help others, we need to also think about how they can help us, because then the relationship is equal. That seems to be the example we were given to follow. Mostly, we’re pretty bad at copying it.

Thanks for reading. I hope you find something to offer–and accept–this week.
Take care.
Love, Anne x

anneethompson.com

The Buried

Posted by anneethompson

The Buried

by Peter Hessler

I recently read The Buried by Peter Hessler, and I can definitely recommend it. I knew of Peter Hessler because when I started learning Mandarin, and scanned the bookshops for any English books with any link to China, his books popped up. He was sent to China as a young man, and worked in a remote town, teaching English (with an American accent) to Chinese students. His books described his adventures.

I loved his books. He wrote with humour, describing the many things that went wrong as he learnt Mandarin and described life in China. I felt that he wrote with tact, and had a real respect for the people he met. He seemed to genuinely like Chinese people (most foreign travellers seem rather condescending towards different cultures) and so I wasn’t surprised to learn that he is now married to a woman from China, and they have twin girls.

At the time of writing The Buried, Hessler had again left the US, with his wife and young girls, and had gone to live in Egypt. He applied the same amused patience as he tried to learn Arabic, and the culture in Cairo. He moved there at the beginning of the Arab Spring, and the book describes the events unfolding in the city.

Hessler writes in short sections, so this is a book to dip into during odd moments. I like the respect he shows towards the people he writes about. His says he always tries to learn a language using the books written in the country, because they reveal lots about the culture. I would agree with this. When I learnt Mandarin, the textbooks had lots about authority, and the vocab lists were about managers, and directors, and people in authority. Hessler compares this to the textbooks in Egypt, which were full of polite greetings and blessings, and the correct polite response in every situation. There is apparently even a correct way to thank your hairdresser!

Most people in Cairo spoke Arabic, though any quotes in newspapers were always translated into Fusha. Hessler describes one word, Yanni, which can be translated as: ‘yes,’ sort of,’ or ‘let’s pretend.’ That word alone tells you so much about the culture!

One of the charms of Hessler’s books, is that he befriends normal, working-class people. In Cairo, he befriends the man who collects the rubbish from the flats. There is lots to be gleaned from other people’s waste, much of which is recycled, any alcohol is sold (because good Muslim folk don’t drink alcohol). He also befriends a young gay man, who is struggling with the dangers facing a gay person in a strictly Muslim country (though I was interested to read that mostly, everyone knows that there is a certain place where gay people meet, and yet no one in authority is very bothered by it. It tends to be individuals who react strongly and cruelly, not the governing authorities per se.)

The political situation during the Arab Spring was obviously very interesting. Sometimes Hessler was in dangerous situations, though he writes: “What scared me most was the elevator shaft in our apartment.” He interviews people on the street and in the mosque, and attends news conferences. One feature of Egyptian politics seems to be the repeating of ‘facts’ over and over, until eventually people began to believe them. If something is asserted often enough, it becomes true…

While in Egypt, Hessler visits some of the archaeological sites. The book explores the links with ancient Egypt, and how the past continues to shape the future. The places he visited sound fascinating, and I now firmly want to visit.

If you want to read something light and interesting, I recommend The Buried.

Thanks for reading. I hope you have a lovely week.

Take care,
Love, Anne x

anneethompson.com

What is the Point of an Ice Sculpture?

Posted by anneethompson

Would you spend time on an ice-sculpture?

I am often amazed at the skill and time that people spend on ice-sculptures. Some of them are absolute works of art, and yet within a few hours they melt away to nothing. I wonder, is it worth spending all that time on something that melts so quickly? Or is it more beautiful because it’s fleeting?

You might remember that Husband spent time earlier this year emptying a flower bed, filling it with compost, then planting hundreds of tulip bulbs. (He had help. Not from me.) I teased him when he regularly checked the bare earth for signs of shoots. I bought plastic tulips online and crept down one night to put them under his frost-proof cover. But eventually, the tulips blossomed, and they now look rather lovely. However, several gardening-friends have said that they hope the tulips reappear next year, because tulip bulbs don’t always survive as well as daffodil bulbs. Was all that effort for one display? Was it worth it?

The ducklings I hatched are now outside. They’re safely in a cage, and I waste lots of time watching them. Their main aim in life seems to be to fill their water container full of mud, and to spread the water as far as they can. They are happy creatures. But in a couple of weeks I will put them on the pond. Some will fly away, some will get caught by the fox, some will hatch more eggs. But wild ducks don’t tend to last very long—the ducklings I nurtured last year have mostly gone and I am left with just one. Was it worth it?

I sometimes struggle with the “Is it worth it?” question. As I get older, I realise that life itself is very fleeting. If you have studied history, or read about the empires in the Bible, lives seem even more fleeting. Here today, gone tomorrow. Think of your own dreams and ambitions, how many have you realised? Is there still time to make them happen?

I feel that life itself is a little like an ice sculpture. We do the best we can, but we know it won’t last, and as we get older, we realise how quickly it will melt. But is it still worth doing? Is it worth creating something beautiful, even knowing that it won’t last, simply because it is beautiful?

I think that perhaps I must answer yes, it is. The shortest life has value. The melting sculpture is still beautiful.

I hope you create something beautiful with your life this week. Even if it is fleeting.

Take care.

Love, Anne x

anneethompson.com

Sold

Posted by anneethompson

I have been writing for a few years now, and some of my work I am immensely proud of, and some I am happy to never read again. This poem is definitely something I am proud of. I wanted to write something that answers the “How could a mother sell her child?” question, a poem that showed how choices are limited for some mothers, and how their love and longing to do the best thing for their child is just as strong as ours. I wrote it several years ago, but the message remains sadly unchanged.

Sold

I held you,
Your weight light on my hip
As I touched your button nose
With mine,
Peered deep into
Shining eyes,
Because you are my world.

We held hands
As we walked to the station.
And you skipped beside me
Trusting
While my heart
Became still,
Because you were my world.

I sold you
To the man whose words
Promised me,
That you would be schooled
And be fed
And have chances in life,
Beyond my reach.
And I walked away,
With breaking heart
And one hundred pounds
And the prayer you would be safe.
Because you were my world.

Help to stop child trafficking. See http://www.tearfund.org for more details.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I continued to explore child-trafficking, and when I wrote my Clara novel, I sent her to India and set her amidst the women in the slums who have such limited choices. While I was writing the book, I visited India several times, meeting girls who had been sold, talking to mothers who had sold their own children, trying to understand how and why this happens. When I finally wrote the book, although the story is fiction (and I know no one as horrible as Clara!) every house in the slum that is described is a home I have been in, every situation is one that I heard about.

If you want to read a copy, I can send you one for £7.99. Or you can buy a KDP copy directly from Amazon.

anneethompson.com

The Trouble with Textbooks

Posted by anneethompson

As I continue with my language studies, I have bit of an on-going battle with the textbooks. I realise that this is my problem, rather than the authors’ and is mainly due to my rather poor formal-English education. I was educated in an age when English lessons were about expression and creativity, with not much grammar mentioned. This wasn’t necessarily wrong–I now write novels, and the marketplace is overwhelmed by people my age who are putting that creativity into action. But when it comes to learning a language, it is fairly useless.

My latest novel

My problem is understanding what exactly the textbook is trying to say (the English bits). For example, I am faced with a chapter that begins:

Pronominal suffixes attached to nouns function as genitives, much like absolute nouns in construct relationships.
Introducing Biblical Hebrew by Allen Ross

I stare at the words. I can read the words. I can say the words. But understand them? Not at first glance. My brain has to unwind the language and remind myself that a ‘pronominal suffix‘ is simply ‘random-people-related letters added to the word’ and a ‘genitive’ is simply the word that owns/possesses the other word, and so on. I can get there, but by the time I have decoded the English, I am ready for a break.

I have also discovered that when faced with sentences I don’t understand, my mind sort of goes into shock, and I absorb absolutely nothing. People need to be relaxed in order to learn, and lots of poncy language makes me stressed.

There are of course, textbooks that are more friendly, but they have their own problems. For our Greek lectures, we use a book by Macnair, and he writes in a very folksy manner, describing verbs as ‘slimming-club verbs’ because they lose letters, for example. This was lovely when I started learning, as the information was very accessible. However, when I came to revise it was a nightmare, as I wanted to skim the chapter on ‘liquid-verbs’ and I couldn’t extract the information from the storybook style of writing.

I think the only answer is for me to have a selection of textbooks. I do need the very formal one, because the exam is written in formal language, and I am expected to behave like a linguist. But when I am learning new grammar points, when understanding is the main aim, then I need a friendly book. For Hebrew, I have found a book by Dobson, which explains the grammar gradually amidst a jumble of reading and this suits the way I learn. I need to use the language in order to learn it, I find learning grammar in isolation to be almost impossible. The formal textbook by Ross will teach something, and then give lists of words (paradigms) to be learnt, but without saying what the words in the paradigm actually mean. (I have scribbled the meanings next to the lists of symbols–otherwise that is all they are–lists of meaningless symbols.) In contrast, the book by Dobson will give an extract of Hebrew text to read, and then points out a few minor grammar points. The order is jumbled, but the information is easily assimilated.

My other problem at the moment is trying to learn lists of Hebrew words (because unlike the Greek exam, we are not allowed to use a dictionary). My memory is pretty rubbish, so every list of new vocab represents many hours of work: writing, reciting, lists on the fridge, letters on my fingers, chants when we jog. Not sure whether I will get there, but I am determined to give it my best shot.

I hope you have something interesting to work on this week. It seems to me, that the most rewarding things usually require an uncomfortable amount of effort–but it’s worth it.

Thanks for reading. Take care.

Love, Anne x

anneethompson.com

*****

Duck World

Posted by anneethompson

Duckling World

We had a mini crisis. I had managed to safely hatch a couple of ducks and one chick, but the rest of the eggs had died (I suspect this was due to being placed over a rather shaky washing-machine—I will rethink the position next time.) Anyway, the hatchlings were safely in a plastic crate under the red heat-lamp, and we were walking the dog when Husband happened to glance through our hedge. There on the pond was a tiny yellow duckling.

Now, I knew that one of the ducks was sitting on a nest in a hutch, and I had in fact been barricading her in with balanced paving stones and old bricks because there were signs of the fox trying to dig her out at night. But I had decided that if she managed to hatch any, I would leave them to take their chances on the pond. I decide this every year. I never do.

We rushed back into the garden, with the dog trailing behind us looking confused and wondering if we had forgotten we were going on a walk.

On the pond, the mother duck was swimming around, followed by four ducklings. All very cute. But I wasn’t sure whether she would protect them when the crows heard and swooped in for a snack. We stood, watching.

Mother Duck and Four Ducklings Struggling to Stay With Her

Mother duck went up onto the island. The ducklings swam round, wanting to join her but not understanding about the ramp. One found it and struggled up, the others cheeped in alarm, all the while getting more tired and water-logged. A duckling has the oils from the mother’s feathers to waterproof it for a while, but as that wears off they get soaked and cold and sink. We decided to intervene and Husband went inside for his waders while I stood guard. As soon as he entered the pond, mother duck jumped off, and he managed to grab the duckling on the island. He also spotted another one, lying on a ramp, cold and still. We thought it was dead, but it managed to lift its head when it heard the mother, so we grabbed that one too and I rushed it to the incubator, which was luckily still warm.

When I returned, mother duck had found a spot on the bank, and two ducklings were underneath her. I realised that she would probably stay there for the night, making easy-pickings for the fox. The only safe place is the island, and the ducklings couldn’t get up there. Ducks never return to the nest once the last egg has hatched (it usually has at least one dead egg in it and a lot of smelly egg shell). I approached the mother, and she jumped into the pond, leaving the ducklings on the bank. I put them in my pocket, and watched to see how she would react. She went on the island, and started to clean her feathers, apparently unperturbed. I took the ducklings inside.

I checked a few times, but the mother seemed happy without her ducklings, and was busy swimming or resting—she certainly wasn’t looking for them. I decided to keep them (well of course I did!)

The nearly-dead duckling continued to look nearly dead for a couple of hours, but then perked up, so I added him to the plastic crate in the garage. Ducks are lovely birds, when you introduce a new one they come to investigate, but I have never known them to be anything other than accepting.

The mother duck was white. I’m not sure if that is the reason, but the new ducklings adopted the chick as their mother, and tried to sit under her. She was rather bemused—especially as they were bigger than her. After a day, she seemed to accept her role, and continues to sit on top of the ducklings. I suppose that when you were curled up in an egg a few hours ago, the whole world seems strange; having fluffy ducklings climbing under you is probably no more strange than everything else. The chick (am really hoping it’s not a cockerel) mainly looks perturbed when the ducklings splash in the water. I have noticed it always drinks after the others have finished.

Hope your world is not too weird today. Take care.

Thanks for reading.
Love, Anne x

Do Names Matter?

Posted by anneethompson

What’s in a Name?

You might remember that I told you that ancient Hebrew did not have vowels (this seems to have been a thing with ancient languages—not sure why). The vowel signs were written later, a few in the 6^th century BC, and then more in about the 9^th century AD, when Hebrew was not spoken outside of the religious text and people were worried that everyone would forget how words should properly be pronounced. A group of scholars (the Masoretes) added little symbols below the letters, to show where the vowel sounds should be made.

The personal name of God was considered very special. I have no idea why Christians don’t also consider God’s name to be special, but we don’t tend to limit how/when we use it. If the Queen came to visit, we would refer to her as “Ma’am” or “Your Majesty” and only a person with no respect for the monarchy would talk about “Elizabeth coming to visit,” far less, “I’m going to see Liz.” The Jews give this same respect to God’s name, and they avoid saying it.

Now, here’s the interesting bit. When they added the vowels to the personal name of God, they used the vowels that actually corresponded to one of the titles for God, not his actual name. This reminded people not to read the name, but instead say ‘Adonai’ which is a title. The term for this would translate in English to ‘written-read’ because although something is written you read something different.

If we were to do this with the Queen, we would take the vowels from Majesty: a e and add them to the consonants of her personal name: LaZBeTH. LaZBeTH is not an actual name, people reading it would see the oddly-placed vowels, and remember to read: “Majesty.”

As I said, Christians don’t seem to have this same form of respect for God’s name. (Though to be fair, when God’s name appears in the Bible, it has been translated as LORD all in capitals.) Christians today mostly are not aware of this. In fact, they even have songs that combine both the personal name, and the ‘made-up’ name (Jehovah) and they sing them—sometimes I suspect thoughtlessly—without even being aware that the term ‘Jehovah’ is a sort of non-word created by the Jews to avoid saying God’s personal name. The J at the beginning of Jehovah is because that is how a ‘y’ sound was translated in the original German, and the word first appeared during the time of the Protestant Reformation and simply shows that they didn’t understand much Hebrew. ‘Jehovah’ is not a word.

I wonder what a Jew, listening to Christians being so casual with the name of God, would think about that. I wonder what God thinks about that.

What do you think about that? I’m sure that some people would say that God is more concerned with how we show our respect for him through what we say and do, than how we address him, and perhaps that is correct. But I’m not so sure. As I am learning Hebrew, and listening to my lecturer and various scholars online, I am noticing that most of them avoid using the personal name of God, and when they reached the word יְהוָה they tend to read ‘Adonai.’ I don’t know whether this is a sign of respect to the Jews whose language is being spoken, or to God. Perhaps the two reasons are the same.

Thank you for reading.

Anne E Thompson

Author

blog

Life After Exams

Family Chaos

Cake Disaster

Can You Bring Some Fish?

The Buried

What is the Point of an Ice Sculpture?

Sold

The Trouble with Textbooks

Duck World

Do Names Matter?

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