Philippians, 3, 8 in Romanian language: a case of primacy of norm

In the present paper, the study of the variants given by the translators of the bible text into the Romanian language during the old age and contemporary to the verse under Philippians, 3, 8, which contains in the Greek version a rare word in the Bible (σκῠ́βᾰλον), highlights the fact that the act of translation places the text on the path of a language, subjecting it to the state of the language at a given moment and to its evolution. At any moment, there is a formal adjustment, which follows what is considered to be correct or at least linguistically possible: first, it is that of the foreign text to the new language—Romanian; then, it is that of the Romanian text to the renewals of the Romanian language—adjustment that may ignore the original requirements, from a given moment in the history of producing and receiving that text in the Romanian language and culture; thus, the correctness of the text is controlled by the norm of the language and by the appearance of its semantic accuracy.
 In the last sequence of Phil, 3. 8, the history of rendering the element of comparison in the Romanian language constitutes a very good case of primacy of the norm of the language over the originary content (in relation to the direct source text)—recoverable, but exclusively by metalinguistic means.

As a taboo term in its synonymic series, from a lower register, the word σκῠβᾰλον seems to be perceived as inadequate to the cult use and consequently strongly connotated when used (see Trudgill, 1981). Nevertheless, the observation is general in nature, and the question: To what extent is this vision justified on the term itself in a given text, such as the Pauline one, taking into account the historical and temporal context of its use? is completely relevant.

Pragmatic motivation
Undoubtedly, in some ancient texts around the time when the apostolic activity is recorded, σκῠβᾰλον is used with its scatological meaning, in a way that follows the recipient's disgust; still, in the same period, the use with a less aggressive meaning 4 is recorded; therefore, on lexicological and lexicographic bases, it is unclear which of the groups of meanings assigned to the term should be activated when reading some text, be it in re-creation of the social, behavioural and linguistic behavioural realities of the 1 st century.
In this case, the assignment of the accurate reading of a word needs to be substantiated on the reading assigned to the text that includes that word, hermeneutics having to resort to rhetorical and doctrinal arguments.
The verse we are referring to is part of a polemic that has been repeatedly argued by Paul 5 . In Romans (2, 25-29), for example, as in Philippians (3, 1-9), the superiority of the new covenant (by faith in Jesus Christ) is argued, over the old covenant (by observing all rules), to acquire "peace with God" (Rom, 5, 1). But while the persuasion in Romans is based on logos (resort to rational arguments), in Philippians the persuasion through ethos (Paul-a fully justified Jew by law-invokes his personal experience as testimony) and persuasion through pathos (through emotional appeals) are dominant.
Among the linguistic means used in the discursive construction of emotions, Plantin (2004) also mentions "emotional statements" or, more accurately, as the author's explanations indicate, "statements with emotional value" (emotional sentences, p. 268)-which take the place, in speech, of the emotional lexicon itself and which, from a linguistic point of view, make the connection between an individual and an emotional term. In other words, there are situations where the emotional discourse is defined by a linguistic material whose emotional component is triggered by analogy (Plantin, 2004, p. 269). In the passage from Phil, 3, 1-9, this aspect of the persuasive approach is represented by three discursive sequences: two in v. 2: Βλέπετε τοὺς κύνας (bnt) ["Păziți-vă de c â i n i !", Anania 2001], βλέπετε τὴν κατατομήν (bnt) ["Păziți-vă d e 'm p r e j u r u l t ă i e r i i !", Anania 2001] and one in v. 8: δι᾽ ὃν τὰ πάντα ἐζημιώθην, καὶ ἡγοῦμαι σκύβαλα (bnt) ["de dragul Căruia m'am lăsat păgubit de toate și le socotesc drept g u n o a i e", Anania 2001].
The (metaphorical) depreciating value of the first two terms mentioned, κύων, κυνός, ὁ and κατατομή, ῆς, ἡ, in the context of Phil, 3, 2, is usually highlighted (in Greek dictionaries, in the lexicographic papers dedicated to the New Testament language, in the comments to modern translations-for example, regarding us, in the notes of the Anania 2001 version of the Bible): κύων: a particularly bad person, perhaps specifically one who ridicules what is holy -'bad person, dog' (...) 'pervert' (louw-nida s.v.); a term of reproach for persons regarded as unholy and impure (friberg s.v.); of male sacred prostitutes (liddell-scott s.v.) etc.; κατατομή: to mutilate by severe cutting" (louw-nida s.v.); strictly cutting into, as hacking or chopping up (sacrificial) meat (friberg s.v.); "Between this term (katatomé) and that of the next verse (peritomé) there is a sarcastic word game by which Paul associates the Jewish circumcision (more precisely, that of the Judaizers) with the bodily self-mutilation of the pagan orgiastic rituals" (Anania 2001, Phil, 3, 2, note b) etc.
The joining of the two terms and choosing them for the designation of some persons who, practicing circumcision as part of a millenary sanctification ritual, had, until recently, been in the absolute right and proper canon, had to shock, to arouse a definitive reaction of rejection. After Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, the practice of circumcision had become not only superfluous, but also offensive, proving the inability of the "Judaizers" to understand the absolute sacrifice of Christ for the redemption of the soul.
The content of the third term, σκύβαλον, ου, τό, from v. 8, must be referred to the content of the first two discussed. The image at the end of v. 8 represents the climax of Paul's diatribe against the claim of justification by deeds (performing rituals, observing the complex Old Testament law, etc.), as opposed to justification by faith 6 . In the context of the controversy with the Judaizing adversaries, the persuasive speech addressed to the unstable church in Philippi ensures its efficiency by using a shocking term, all the more expressive as it is taken from the colloquial, harsh and repulsive speech, which renders not only the idea of worthlessness, but especially that of disgust. In the context of Phil, 3, 8, the discussed word thus accepts the scatological meaning and the vulgar hue. This idea is also supported by what is not yet the text that contains it: that is, sacred writing, with an assigned sober and formal nature-which are nothing but cultural engravings, eminently subsequent to the production of the text.

From Sl. qìgòû to Rom. gunoi
In the face of this textual reality, the translation starts and develops in various ways, depending on the weight of some factors that relate to a) the translator's comprehension abilities and thus his need to express the content understood, b) the possibilities of the target language, c) the cultural accumulations (along with the natural prejudices!) regarding the reception and transmission of the text and last but not least, d) the distance-in terms of interlinguistic linking-between the primordial source and, in fact, the direct source-text of a translation (successive translations produce semantic changes, and the quality of a translation is judged by the reference to its direct source).
At the beginning of the 16 th century, the translator of the text that gets to be printed by Coresi in Brașov, in 1567, as Lucrul apostolesc is not put in the situation, not even theoretical, to refer to a Romanian formal-textual tradition, its reflection of honour of the sacredness of the text through the preservation of the form not being in this point of the translation other than the one which usually requires in this time, the translation "in letter". Thus, he is based on what he understands and on the liberty to operate with the elements of the Romanian language, insofar as he allowed by the debt felt towards his source text. In the place concerned (Phil, 3, 8), the product is this: "Că aceaea toată o țin pagubă cătră pre cinstita cunoscuta lu Hristos Isus Domnului mieu. Derept aceaea acealea toate le-am socotit pagubă și mie o țin ca u‹n› gunoi să fie" (ca, s.n., A.C.), in relation to an original whose identity-Slavonic or German-is (no longer) sure.
The topic of the models of the Coresian Apostle was reopened by Costinescu (1980), after a period of consensus that admitted exclusively the existence of some Slavonic versions at the base of the Romanian sources of printing. The researcher brought into question a German source-text (i.e. Luther's Bible-l45), which would justify the translator's language choices and numerous passages, "unexplainable by the Slavonic versions reflected by the rest of the text (ms. sl. barsr 21 and 435)" (Costinescu, 1980, p. 129). The fragment we are studying in this paper (i.e. Phil, 3, 8) does not appear among those discussed by Mariana Costinescu and which, subjected to the comparative linguistic analysis, shows greater closeness of the Coresian printed text to the German version especially in the part corresponding to the letters (idem, p.
[135] and [136]); it is possible that the researcher omitted it by chance (she did not envisage, in fact, an exhaustive approach, and "[e]xamples [...] that illustrate the dependence of the Coresian version of the Apostle on Luther's German text can multiply", idem, p. [134]), as well as it is possible to have considered that the linguistic peculiarities could function as evidence of the "deviations" from the Slavonic archetype, respectively of the "closeness" to the German one, are not as eloquent as in other cases (see p. 129-[135]). Applying the analytical model of the researcher from Bucharest, observing the three variants in parallel, Că aceaea toată o țin pagubă cătră pre cinstita cunoscuta lu Hristos Isus Domnului mieu. Derept aceaea acealea toate le-am socotit pagubă și mie o țin ca u‹n› gunoi să fie (ca), í@ qáo è búìhíh# búc# òúmgò@ áûòè za ïphcïh@mgg pazuìaiv xa ãa ìogã gãoae paä búcgão wòúmgòèxc# è ìí# qìgòû áûòè äa xa ïpèoáp#m@ (ms. sl. barsr 21) 7 , Denn ich achte es alles für Schaden gegen die überschwengliche Erkenntnis Christi Jesu, meines Herrn, um welches willen ich alles habe für Schaden gerechnet und achte es für Dreck, auf daß ich Christum gewinne (l45), it is found that, strictly at the lexical-semantic level, the translator's linguistic options (or of the reviser of the text, before printing) are at equal distance from both possible archetypes, the text requesting no other material than the one that could be customarily Romanian in the middle of the 16 th century. An element that however seems to have some weight in supporting Mariana Costinescu's idea, at least in the sense of collating the Romanian version on the basis of a German version as well. It is a matter of composition of the Romanian text, which makes use of the equivalent of a ține, for Sl. búìhíèòè (búìhíòè), Lat. 'putare' (miklosich s.v.) and/or Germ. achten, according to the explicit structure of the Lutheran version: thus, the repetition of the verb a ține in "...toată o țin pagubă […] și o țin ca u‹n› gunoi să fie..." corresponds to the repetition present in Germ. "...ich achte es alles für Schaden […] und achte es für Dreck...", versus to the situation in the Slavonic text 8 , where the verb of the 'assumed knowledge' is noted only once, in the first sequence of the quote: "...búìhíh# búc# òúmgò@ áûòè […] è ìí# qìgòû áûòè..."; on the other hand, the dative regime of this verb "added" in the Romanian text-"...mie (o țin) ca u‹n› gunoi..."-clearly indicates the influence of the Slavonic construction: "ìí# qìgòû" 9 .

From the Gr. σκύβαλα to Rom. gunoaie
As language provides a complete paradigm, the translator can formally "emend" the Romanian versions of the previous era, all the more morphologically justified that the source text he works upon is Greek 11 , and he makes use of a plural in that particular place: σκύβαλα, in καὶ ἡγοῦμαι σκύβαλα, in congruence with πάντα..., used twice in the previous fragments of the verse: see b 1688: Ce pentru aceaea și gîndesc toate pagubă a fi, pentru cea ce covîrșaște a științii lui Hristos Isus, Domnului mieu, pentru care de toate m-am păgubit și le gîndesc gunoaie a fi, ca pre Hristos să dobîndesc b 1795: Iară mai vîrtos le socotesc să-și fie toate pagubă, pentru înălțimea cunoștinții lui Hristos Iisus, Domnului mieu, pentru Carele de toate m-am păgubit și le socotesc gunoaie, ca să dobîndesc pre Hristos Regardless of the understanding that the translator, judging the context in Phil, 3, has towards that word, the rendering in the Romanian language is more inclined to take the form of pl. gunoaie in the targeted place 12 , thus establishing a discursive-formal tradition whose hermeneutic force remains dependent on the life of the language (see Darmesteter, 2015), i.e. on the semantic modulations of the word.

The impossible emendation
In the common use, the denotative evolution of the noun gunoi, pl. gunoaie is sufficiently restrained so that it does not necessary to require a review of the biblical text in terms of form: the general message is preserved, the receiver is satisfied. Nevertheless, the modern translator or reviewer of the writing may feel a loss in terms of symbolizing force, which he may want to minimize by some approach. However, its diversity and efficiency prove to be rigorously controlled from several directions, which mutually reinforce themselves and which are essentially language-related. By the culturally acquired quality, the sacralised text rejects linguistic innovations coming from a powerfully vulgarized register, which means that, despite the fact that the language itself could offer multiple solutions for rendering the concerned notion ab initio 13 , the translator-aiming at reaching a canonical text-does not have access to them. On the other hand, the involvement of the singular form, as it is proceeded to, for example, in Cornilescu 1921: Ba încă, și acum privesc toate aceste lucruri ca o pierdere, față de prețul nespus de mare al cunoașterii lui Hristos Isus, Domnul meu. Pentru el am perdut toate și le socotesc ca un gunoi, ca să cîștig pe Hristos, 11 According to the situation regarding nt 1648, which guides the translator towards selecting a Latin-origin term in Phil, 3, 8: "Ce iată le socotiiu a fi pagubă. Pentru înălțimea cunoștinției a lui Hristos Iisus Domnului mieu, pentru carele de toate mă păgubiiu și le socotiiu toate a fi ștercure, ca să dobîndescu pre Hristos", according to vul: "verumtamen existimo omnia detrimentum esse propter eminentem scientiam Iesu Christi Domini mei propter quem omnia detrimentum feci et arbitror ut stercora ut Christum lucri faciam" (s.n., A.C.). 12 See loc. cit. in, e.g., b 1914: "Iar mai vîrtos le și socotesc toate pagubă a fi pentru covîrșirea cunoștinței lui Hristos Iisus Domnul meu, pentru carele de toate m'am păgubit și le socotesc gunoaie a fi, ca pre Hristos să dobîndesc"; Cornilescu 1931: "Ci într'adevăr și socotesc că toate sînt pagubă pentru înălțimea cunoștinței lui Hristos Isus, Domnul meu, pentru care m'am păgubit de toate și le socotesc ca gunoaie ca să cîștig pe Hristos"; Anania 2001: "Mai mult însă, eu pe toate le socotesc pagubă față de neprețuitul preț al cunoașterii lui Hristos Iisus, Domnul meu, de dragul Căruia m'am lăsat păgubit de toate și le socotesc drept gunoaie pentru ca să-L cîștig pe Hristos"; b 2008: "Ba mai mult: eu pe toate le socotesc că sunt pagubă față de înălțimea cunoașterii lui Hristos Iisus, Domnul meu, pentru Care m-am lipsit de toate, și le privesc drept gunoaie, ca pe Hristos să dobândesc"; everywhere, s.n., A.C. 13 Perhaps stimulated by the example of some versions that accept a term/construction with a more powerful conotation: Engl. dongue, dung (gnv, eth, kjv, net, kj21, dra etc.), dog dung (msg), crap (ayb); Germ. Kot (luo). Cf. Fr. boue (lsg, neg), ordure (tob), bon à être mis au rebut (bds); Engl. rubbish (nkjv, niv etc.), useless rubbish (pillips), garbage (tev, njb etc.), dirt (we), worthless trash (ncv), refuse (ylt, asv); all consulted at bibleworks.com. nt cat: ba, mai mult, de acum consider că toate sunt o pierdere în comparație cu superioritatea cunoașterii lui Cristos Isus Domnul meu. De dragul lui am pierdut toate și le consider gunoi ca să-l câștig pe Cristos and fidela: Da, în adevăr, și socotesc toate lucrurile pierdere, din cauza măreției cunoașterii lui Cristos Isus, Domnul meu, pentru care am suferit pierderea a toate și le socotesc a fi gunoi, ca să câștig pe Cristos seems to have been considered an alternative solution of textual emendation (probably even to a greater extent in the case of the Catholic one and of the second Protestant version mentioned 14 ), but the effort appears to be free: in the case of gunoi, neither of the numerical forms of the noun has developed over time any peculiar semantics from the other one 15 , therefore the singular does not escape the semantics acquired by the word by the common use become prototypical; and the possible opening 16 towards the old semantics, which kept its prototypical nature at the regional level 17 , 'manure' does not occur automatically, in the absence of other elements of the same nature (i.e. regional) or of some co-textual, and guiding ones. And relying, eventually, on the euphemistic reading of gunoi-this time, in the perspective of a contemporary urbanized perception-would turn things to the point which would have been wanted to be overcome, for such a linguistic approach mitigates the effect.
The fulfilment of the pragmatics of the text-should it be seen as a necessity-remains to be realized at a metalinguistic level, within some type of paratext 18 .

Conclusions
The act of translation (understanding by this inclusively the mere intention of its translation) places the text on the path of a language, subjecting it to the state of the language at a given moment and to its evolution (obtained in various ways, thanks to its natural plasticity as means of communication of some individuals driven by various needs). At any moment, there is a formal adjustment, which follows what is considered to be correct or at least linguistically possible: first, it is that of the foreign text to the new language-Romanian (itself, possibly open to adjustment, by loan, to the requirements of the content of the text); then, it is that of the Romanian text to the renewals of the Romanian language-adjustment that may ignore the original requirements, from a given moment in the history of producing and receiving that text in the Romanian language and culture; thus, the correctness of the text is controlled by the norm of the language and by the appearance of its semantic accuracy.
In the last sequence of Phil, 3, 8, the history of rendering the element of comparison in the Romanian language constitutes a very good case of primacy of the norm of the language over the original content (in relation to the direct source text) -recoverable, but exclusively by metalinguistic means.