Believe on me: WTF?

[Beverly Flanigan]

<The teacher replied that all Christians (read: "Catholics and, perhaps,
the Orthodox") are assumed
to be personal friends of God and you don't speak formally to your buds.>

What??  Protestants weren't included?!?  The KJV was sponsored by the
Protestant Anglicans, remember!
Be that as it may, James is doubtless right when he says most people today
think of the thou/thee/thy paradigm as formal, not informal--as do most of
my students until we do the Brown & Gilman tu/vos study.

Beverly

At 11:40 PM 8/30/2007, you wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>Subject:      Re: Believe on me: WTF?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>When I was in high school. someone once asked why Latin prayers used
>"Tu" instead of "Vos" or some other more formal term, given that God
>often speaks of Himself as "We" (thus proving His Threeness, His
>Trinity; like, if He was just one in the usual sense, He wouldn't call
>himself "We." Would He? Well, would He?). The teacher replied that all
>Christians (read: "Catholics and, perhaps, the Orthodox") are assumed
>to be personal friends of God and you don't speak formally to your
>buds.
>
>-Wilson
>
>On 8/30/07, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> > Subject:      Re: Believe on me: WTF?
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Wilson is right; "believe on" is King James Version diction. I have
> > on uncommon occasion met people who adhere quite dogmatically to the
> > language of the KJV and who use "believe on Him" -- of course, in
> > secular things, they would say "believe in", but once God is
> > involved, the dialect changes (I was about to say the register
> > changes, but this is a big shift!). These are people who reserve
> > "thou" and "thee" for God and honestly believe (because no one's told
> > them otherwise) that this is a high formal form of address fit only
> > for a deity.
> >
> > I should add that I've never heard anyone saying that atheists believe
> off God.
> >
> >
> > James Harbeck.
> >
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>
>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
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