The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the process of deritualisation of the language of contemporary Polish translations of the Bible on the example of a culture-based text, that is Our Father [Mt 6:9–13]. It was initiated by the translators of Biblia Tysiąclecia (the Millennium Bible) [1965], who radically broke with the traditional linguistic form of this fragment of the New Testament.
The analysis assumes the terminological discrimination used in the more recent research on the specificity of linguistic phenomena in religious communication: the language of religion as a semiotic code and religious language as one of the signs within the code. From this perspective, Our Father, the text of the prayer used in church rituals and said as part of private piety, needs to be considered a text-formula falling into the conceptual sphere of the term the language of religion. Contemporary Polish translations of the fragment of the Gospel According to St. Matthew 6:9–13, in turn, which prioritise the most adequate communication of Biblical contents possible with a language that is fully understandable to the contemporary reader, fall into the sphere of the concept religious language.
Selected contemporary translations of Our Father were subject to a linguistic analysis consisting in identifying the distribution of Polish equivalents of the original Greek New Testament. This allowed the following conclusions:
1. Our Father, as a fragment of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, is treated by the contemporary translators of the Holy Scriptures as an integral part of the Biblical text, subject to the principal translation rule, that is faithful rendering of the sense of the Greek original with linguistic devices of contemporary Polish, the consequence of which is a radical departure from the traditional archaic form of the prayer.
2. The traditional form of Our Father, the origin of which dates back to the Bible translations by Jakub Wujek [1593] and Daniel Mikołajewski [1632], which is linguistically archaic today, has become a sign of the language of (Catholic and Protestant) church rituals as a prayer text-formula, which is not subject to modernisation.
3. The process of deritualising Our Father has still been in progress, the effect of which is new Catholic, Protestant, ecumenical translations of the prayer (and the Holy Scriptures) that are independent of the code of religious rituals.
The object of this paper is an analysis of fragments of the Bible which refer to language and its functions either in a metaphorical, indirect, not straightforward manner or in a direct, straightforward manner.
The Bible provides the answer to the questions about the origin of language (glottogony), its functions and principles of use. The multitude of such functions is noticeable: creational and denominative (onymisation), integrative and differentiating, evolutionary and stabilising, performative (causative), axiological, manipulative, magical, symbolic, expressive (emotional), prophetic and eschatological, ecclesial and sacral, theandric, etc. They require further research and analyses. Familiarity with and respect for the principles of Biblical linguistics could be helpful both in private and social life of a human being.
