Father Serge,

You might be correct that “now and ever and forever” is hopeless incorrect. My point (which I presented carelessly) was that the research and justification (for correction) needs to be done by more than one scholar so that any argument for a correction is beyond question. I have in my collection a copy of a Greek Orthodox people’s liturgy book that uses “now and ever and forever”. Surely a history of why specific translations were made would be useful in understanding and garnering support for something more accurate?

Regarding the Third Antiphon, I listed that already, together with a few others.

Your idea of several editions is excellent. The “pocket sized Green Book” for the 1960s was an excellent edition that contained the full text of the Liturgy and could serve as sort of a possible model for size and layout.

John

Check Father Paul Harrilchak - no mean scholar himself - on the issue of "ages of ages". Most Greek-Catholic translations used this phrase up until the mid-fifties, whereupon it was suddenly changed with no explanation ever offered.

Fr. Serge

Come to think of it "per omnia saecula saeculorum" in the Latin Rite should literally be translated "through all ages of ages". I remember the old Tridentine missals translating it as "world without end".

Dn. Robert

That is exactly what per omnia saecula saeculorum means. "World without end" strongly implies a highly un-Christian idea; this present world will certainly have an end (and I'm inclined to say "the sooner, the better"!).

The trouble seems to have arisen because in late Latin saecula took on an additional meaning (as in the word "secular"). But it originally means "ages" or perhaps "centuries" (as in the French siecle (sorry; this e-mail program won't do accent marks). The normal word for "world" in Latin is mundus from which we have the English word "mundane" and the Latin Salvator Mundi.

Father Serge