st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

J
34 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
illustrated this subject by a comparison of the texts
cited in two parallel discourses on the same topic,
one by a mediaeval preacher, the other by a modern
divine. But this method of comparison alone would
not give anything like an adequate idea of the dif
ference. The Bible phraseology seems to come so
naturally and spontaneously to the lips of the
preacher in the former case, that his language is
coloured by it in a manner no marginal references
will indicate.
It would indeed be a burden too great
for any editor to have to analyse the expressions in
such homilies as those now before us, and assign
every word or sentence there quoted to its
original
author. To take but a single example from the first
of the sermons on the Nativity of the Virgin (c.
vi.).
Among various metaphors by which the mother of the
Lord is there described, one is taken from the words
of the Psalm : This is the hill which God desireth to
dwell in. As there is not a single marginal reference
provided by the editor throughout this chapter, it
might easily escape a reader even well acquainted
with his English Bible, that the rest of the passage is
a quotation from the same Psalm : The mountain of
God is a rich mountain, a mountain curdled as cheese,
a rich mountain. Nor is it without some considera
tion that we identify this with our own version :
The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan, an high hill,
as the hill of Bashan^ And just as the reader s
Ps. Ixviii. (in the Vulgate, Ixvii.) 15. The Latin Vulgate
1
agrees verbally with the Septuagint, of which the above is a
literal translation. It is another instance of the confusion
arising from words being treated in one version as proper
names, and in another not.