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Apocrypha Hiberniae, II: Apocalyptica, 1: In Tenga Bithnua--The Ever-new Tongue. Edited by JOHN CAREY.

2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 63; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jts/fls137

1477-4607

Clare Stancliffe,

Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health

The Ever-new Tongue is an intriguing text, largely in Old Irish of the ninth or tenth centuries, and remaining popular thereafter in Ireland, with a second recension dating from the later Middle Ages. In part, this may be due to its evocative way of putting things. For instance, the depths of hell are conveyed by telling ‘that even though the bird which is swiftest and strongest in flight should set out, it would scarcely reach its bottom at the end of a thousand years’. Its most significant theological section is that relating how Christ’s resurrection brought redemption to the whole of creation, not just to humankind: ‘For every material and every element and every nature which is seen in the world, they were all brought together in the body in which Christ rose again—that is, in the body of every human.’ Thus there is wind and air in people’s breath, while fire is represented by the red heat of blood, and material from the sun and stars make the brightness in people’s eyes, and so on.