In February, the Catholic Heraldpublished a letter from Ft. Raymond Hickey, an 82-year old Augustinian monk on mission in Nigeria. In his letter, Hickey expressed his concern about the controversysurrounding the current interpretation of the Latin word ‘temptation’ and advised against the polarization of this issue even though he prefers the new version.

I am told that some churches in Malta have already delved intoan adventurous re-interpretation of The Lord’s Prayer and have effected changes using the Italian version of the word temptation as matrix.From a linguistic point of view, the way this sentence has ended up being construed in Maltese is one big mess.

But the aim here is not to analyse this new version or how best to represent the concept of temptation in the prayer. I leave that to theologians and experts of the Maltese language.  The reason I am writing is another.

This controversy sparked in me an interest to look into how the word temptation in the Lord’s Prayer was being expressed in Maltese. My research led me to conclude that there are two versionsfor ‘lead us not into temptation’. The first was translated as “iddaħħalnix fit-tiġrib”. The second as “iddaħħalnix fit-tiġrif”. I know individuals who say it according to the first version. Others recite it according to the second version. I have to confess that in my younger days, I was taught the second and not the first version. In my area of Paola/Tarxien, there were Catholic catechists whotaught it to us using the ‘tiġrif’ version. I am here referring to the 1970s. I am sure that the catechist in this case was merely teaching us the versionhe had learned in his younger days!

The prayer is mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. [Matthew 6: 5-14,  and  Luke11: 1-13]. Even if there are slight variations between the two, bothusethe word‘temptation’. In trying to establish which of the two versions is the correct one, I had a look at the authoritative Bible of Saydonas well as that of the GħaqdaBibblika. Both translated ‘temptation’  using ‘tiġrib’ and not ‘tiġrif’. This may explain why the second version was dropped from theprayer and the ‘tiġrif‘ version was amended to follow the standard text.

 I therefore attempted to look into the origins of the semantics of these two words. It is clear thatthe origins of this word is Semitic. Christ said this prayer in Aramaic. The English word ‘temptation’ is a translation of the Latin word ‘temptationem.’

 To establish the correct meaning of these two words, I had a look at Erin Serracino-Inglott’s famous Maltese dictionary, Il-Miklem. Serracino-Inglott studied the Arabic etymology of Maltese Semitic words through the works of the nineteenth-century Dutch Scholar of Arabic, Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy. According to Dozy, the word ‘tiġrib’ exists in Arabic and means ‘temptation’. On the other hand, the word, ‘tiġrif’ is given as meaning a ‘landslide’.  ĠużéAquilina  - in his Maltese-English Dictionary - upholds these two meanings but associates ‘tiġrib’ with the meaning of experience or trying on clothes.

The meaning conveyed by Aquilina is the nearest to Arabic. Literally, 'tiġrib’in Arabic means to test, and is used in the same context as Aquilina’s interpretation. But the word 'ġurf ' from which the Maltese word ‘tiġrif’comeshasin Arabic themeaning of aravine, as well as that to fall down. The  Maltese proverb“min jittarrafjiġġarraf” or ‘he who goes to the edge falls over’ still conveys this meaning. The use of these words to describe the same context comes from the fact that the word ‘tiġrib’ hadthe semantic meaning as the Latin verb ‘temptare’,which in Classical Roman Timesmeantto test or to try something. This meaning is still conveyed in English with the word to ‘attempt’. It was under Christian influence that this Latin verb got its current meaning of falling into temptation.Hence the use of the word ‘tiġrif’ in the Lord’s prayer expresses this Christian meaning.

What is of interest is to see how Christian Arabs recite the Our Father. What I have found is that their prayer is somewhat different from the one we currently use in Maltese. Frans X. Cassar was kind enough to share with me his short study on this prayer.

What results from Cassar’s study is the fact that contemporary Christian Arabs use a different word for ‘temptation’ from the one used in Malta. In the Arabic version, the word used is ‘għiwajati’ which appears to be very similar to another Maltese word ‘gwaj’.(The Arabic ‘għ’ has a very similar sound to the Maltese ‘g’).

For this reason, ‘tiġrif’would also hold in the context of this particular prayer. This is why, rather than relying on translations, as seems to be the case, it would be interesting to discover the exact word used by Christ who spoke Aramaic. Thus, one needs to study the etymology of these two words in historic dictionaries of Aramaic. Moreover, one needs to establish whether this current form in Arabic had the same format before the advent of Islam. This is a work for philologists.

So why did the Maltese end up with two variations for the Latin word ‘temptationem’? The explanation is to be found in the eighteenth century. When the Lord’s Prayer started to be printed in Maltese, both versions are found in use in official publications of the local Church. Theresult was that both versions were taught. These differences seem to imply that the Maltese version of the ‘Our Father’ was somehow being heavily influencedbythe different meanings that this particular Latinword assumed over the decades.

My friend, Vincent Ellul brought to my attention a printed version of the ‘Our Father’in Maltese where ‘tiġrif’ is used and not ‘tiġrib’.The author of this small publicationdivided the prayer into seven sections and gave the meaning for each part. The part that is of interest is number six.Hedescribes as follows:

Fisser is-sitttalba.

Nitolbufis-sitttalba li Allajehlisnamit-tigrif, li hu id-deni li jigifuqna, jeubilli ma ihallixliincunuittantatijeuingarfin, jeujatinail-grazzia u ilghainunatighu li ma ncunuxmirbuhin.

In English, this sentence will read as follows:

Explanation of the sixth prayer:

We pray the Lord to deliver us from temptation(written as tigrif) which is what does us harm,or He does not allow us to be tempted or to fall into temptation (written as ingarfin) or that He grant us the grace and strength not to be overcome.   

Clearly the author was understanding ‘temptation’ as  ‘tiġrif’ and distinguishes between being tempted and fall into in temptation.Moreover, he used it twice in his analysis. This confirms that the use of ‘tiġrif’ was not some sort of a casual error. But such a meaning appears to have been lost in Maltese, even if it is close to the Arabic meaning.For this reason, the ‘tiġrif’ rendered better, at least in the past, the translation into Maltese of the Latin phrase  ‘et ne nos inducas in tentationem’ or ‘lead us not into temptation’.

The lesson to be learned from all this is that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were in Malta, two concurrent versions of the Lord’s Prayer. The interesting fact is that this did not create controversy. Both were considered valid because the official language of the Church was still Latin. The irony is that the use of Latin allowed for a more democratic expression of the Maltese vernacular among the Catholic faithful. Once Latin was replaced by Maltese, such a linguistic freedom was lost and with it, other semantic meanings contained in our rich Maltese language.