Comments on: By the way

By: Mad H

Mad H — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:43:18 +0000

By the way wasn’t directly a taking of the lord’s name in vain. I thought it was said directly in the book the explanation? The Way is, yes, a word to encompass Jesus’ teachings. The BY part doesn’t mean what you think though, I remember the book explaining the “by” to mean “not on” basically, (as though you were walking next to a road — her mistake in understanding really, as older english “by the way” would directly mean “take that road”) thus having the whole phrase to mean “I am leaving Jesus’ teachings” or “I will not follow Jesus’ teachings”. It wasn’t blasphemy of Jesus but rather a rejection of him. Both terrible in the grandmother’s book I am sure.

By: shades

shades — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:58:16 +0000

I was always told that the term “bloody” is derived from G-d’s blood, in reference to the spear wound that terminated Yeshua’s life.

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:21:42 +0000

She might have meant Good Bye–which started out as God Be With You.

By: craig

craig — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:49:30 +0000

I think the “Cliff Notes” interpretation of that episode is that it is meant to demonstrate how careful Angelou’s family were with words, or how careless “white folks” could be with them. Frankly I think it just demonstrates the tyrannical ignorance that religion fosters. Bailey gets a clout around the head for using a phrase with absolutely no inherent blasphemy whatsoever. Religion 1 : Rationality 0

By: words1

words1 — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:05:55 +0000

re “bloody”:

http://www.word-detective.com/111097.html#bloody

By: JDaryl

JDaryl — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:55:28 +0000

As a young girl, my mother had her mouth washed out with soap during a school softball game for yelling out, “Cheese and crackers! Son of a biscuit!” Ah well, that was in the late forties in public school when such blasphemisms were taken quite seriously…dang!

By: wordsmith

wordsmith — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:23:48 +0000

I don’t know how much history of the first century Maya Angelou’s grandmother may have known, but early on Jesus’s followers referred to themselves as “The Way”, and it was a sect in Judaism, then as now, a heterogeneous religion. It was called “The Way” because Jesus is alleged in one of the gospels to have said, “I am the way, none shall come to the Father except through me.” Even if Grandma did not know history, it is almost certain that she did know the gospels very well.

By: sarngate

sarngate — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 07:03:51 +0000

Could Maya Angelou’s grandmother have considered this a corruption of “by Yahweh” and therefore equivalent to “by God”??

By: evershed

evershed — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:32:25 +0000

I suspect that this is a misguided reference to T H White’s “The Once and Future King” in which Merlin explains that “Bloody” is a corruption of “By Our Lady” – a statement that I am very dubious about. Perhaps you will be able to expound on this?

James