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So I couldn’t help noticing that in today’s Introit for Low (Quasimodo) Sunday we find a rather strange passage:
Quasi modo geniti infantes, alleluia: rationabile, sine dolo lac concupiscite…
It is from 1 Pet 2:2, in the Vulgate:
sicut modo geniti infantes rationale sine dolo lac concupiscite…
rendered in the Douay:
As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile…
Now that seems like a pretty strange thing to say–what the heck is “rational milk”?
Well some quick online sniffing turns up that the full verse in Greek (what Greek text I know not, see link below) is something like:
hos artigennetos brephos epipotheo adolos gala logikos hina auxano en autos
rendered in the KJV as:
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word…
Since I don’t have the Greek, I’m depending entirely on this. Nonetheless, it seems like we can determine that St. Jerome was rendering the “gala logikos” (milk of the word) with “rational milk.” Further, and I’m really not sure about this, but it also seems that the adjectival construction in the Greek (sincere milk) is turned into an adverbial construction in the Latin (desire rational milk without guile). In the Greek, the milk itself is sincere/without guile, while in the Latin the guilelessness seems to concern the way the milk is desired. Or is that an artifact of the translation of “sine dolo” into English (because ’sine’ takes the ablative)?
So what gives; why did he do that? It seems at the very least to obscure the Christological theme in “milk of the Word”? Anybody got any ideas? Did I get the languages right?
(The picture’s a joke; clearly someone who needs some rational milk)
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
“Sine dolo” can be taken as an adjectival prepositional phrase with “lac.” This reproduces the “adolos” adjective in Greek.
I think that you’re right to suggest that “the rational without-guile milk” (to logikon adolon gala), rendered in the Vulgate as “rationale sine dolo lac”, where the “sine dolo” looks potentially adverbially, is actually adjectival - so not connected with the way we desire the milk.
The Latin follows the Greek in word order and, so far as I know, in meaning. The little dictionary in the back of my New Testament offers “spiritual, rational” for “logikos”. My compact Liddell & Scott offers “of or belonging to the reason” or “logical.” (I’m being lazy and not looking at the big Liddell and Scott.)
The Latin is fine. Lacking a word to match “adolos”, the translator seems to have gone with the best thing to imitate most closely the Greek word.
I also see here in my Liddell and Scott that “adolos”, at least in Aeschylus, when of liquids, means “unadulterated, genuine.” That’s an interesting detail, though it doesn’t shed light on the more curious rationabile/logikos. If “unadulterated/genuine” was Paul’s signification, the Latin is a bit clunky, because “dolus” doesn’t connect up with drinks and the like. “Merus” would seem to be the right word, then, rather than “sine dolo”.
I think that the best thing here would be to find some Church Father’s commentary, and see what he has to say about “rationabile.”
Also, something is definitely wrong with the Greek rendering — the genders and cases don’t match. Whatever site you got that from, don’t go back. Perseus (one of the most reliable sites for this stuff) has “hôs artigennêta brephê to logikon adolon gala epipothêsate, hina en autôi auxêthête eis sôtêrian.” St. Jerome’s translation does give a literal translation of the Greek — rationabile for logikon. You are right about the sense “milk of the word” being lost. However, St. Augustine speaks of “rationes seminales,” which is usually translated into English as “rational seeds” (lit. “seminal reasons), so “ratio” and its derivatives probably has a wider range of meanings than does the rather flat English words “intellectual” or “rational.”
Oh, now that I come to think of it, I think that site was just listing the dictionary head word form for each of those words (i.e. abstracting from the inflected forms). That’s why the endings, etc. are messed up. I just copied it down without paying attention to what I was doing.
The KJV rendering, “milk of the word“, would seem to be reflecting a meaning at the root of “logikos”, which even the little Liddell mentions, though I passed over it before: “of or for speaking or speech.” It doesn’t take much classical genius to see that it is related/derived from “logos” - a word which itself can go in the direction of “ratio” or “vox, oratio.”
Doctor Asinorum, I think that the horrific picture that you put with this post has scared off any but the most determined commentators. Otherwise, I would have thought at least someone else would have had a thought about “rational milk.”
Not that I’m trying to kick off another breast feeding discussion . . . .