Rev. Reed Lee Pedersen's
Have you ever noticed that sometimes in hymns we sing “Hallelujah” and sometimes we sing “Alleluia”? I am not sure whether it was a case of OCD or nerdiness, but it used to bother me that there were two different words being used interchangeably. I figured they meant the same thing and wondered why both were needed.
Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “It’s all Greek to me.” It is a Shakespearean quote commonly used to say, “I don’t understand.” When it comes to the ‘hallelujah vs. alleluia’ question it would be false (and perfectly ironic) to say, “It’s all Greek to me.” The original language of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is actually Hebrew. The original language for the New Testament is Greek. Hallelujah derives from Hebrew (haleluya). It translates out to “Praise the Lord.” As the Israelites were ruled by the Greeks and assimilating to their culture and language they decided to translate the Hebrew Bible to Greek. This translation is called the Septuagint. In doing this, they translated heleluya to allelouia. When the Romans took over they wanted to translate everything to Latin. They used the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than the original Hebrew Scriptures to translate. Thus, they translated allelouia to alleluia. The English language derives from Latin, so it adopted the alleluia. As people like Martin Luther looked back to the original Hebrew there was a reclaiming of the ‘h’. This means that any liturgy or hymn written before the 16th century would use alleluia. Any hymn of liturgy inspired by the pre-16th century Christian music would probably use alleluia. Lastly, and most annoyingly, any hymn written post-16th century used hallelujah and alleluia interchangeably. So which side are you on? Do you prefer to praise God with and an ‘h’ or without an ‘h’? Do you prefer to praise God as the Romans did or in connection with our Hebrew brothers and sisters? Either way, we are praising the Lord!
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AuthorPastor Reed is a first call pastor at Augustana Lutheran Church in Andover, Illinois. Archives
July 2019
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