Eschew Obfuscation.

[In the continuing saga of Sisera and Jael, the Pilgrim has further discovered instances citing Jael as one of the Judges, Sisera as slaying Jael with a tent-peg, and Jael's wife being the one to so rudely assault Sisera.]

The Pilgrim had a very enjoyable time at last week's Elaine Pagels/Karen King talk about the Gospel of Judas. While neither the raw data nor their "take" on the materials was particularly novel -- and really, folks, the Pilgrim would be in greater trouble than she already is, had that been the case -- their engaging way of "teaching" the subject and the audience's interaction with it were both instructive. (Of course, the eminently enjoyable company of Dr. King's successor-once-removed at Occidental -- "once removed" by way of yet another impressive scholar -- only enhanced the experience!)

Coming, as it were, in the aftermath of another round of paper-grading, however, the Pilgrim was particularly impressed by what the lecturing ladies didn't say -- or rather, the linguistic restraint they exercised in their presentation: Less than five words of Latin made an appearance during the 90 minutes of lecture and Q&A, termini technici remained blissfully absent, biblical and theological slang-terms never reared their ugly heads -- a refreshing change of pace from the inevitable handful of student papers that equate obfuscation with erudition.

The Pilgrim is nevertheless rather sympathetic to the exhibitionists, the circumlocutors and the buzzword bingo players: Raised in a context where teachers instructed elementary school students that the "elegant" sentence had "a main sentence and at least two side-sentences," the Pilgrim made it to her senior year in college before a merciful faculty member took a red pen to her baroque creations. After the requisite shock, the inevitable huffing and puffing at the barbaric nature of American academia, and the dawning realization that anything worth saying is worth saying simply, the Pilgrim began the long process of stripping her prose of Germanic stucco.

Six words of guidance to the similarly inclined writer, courtesy of George Orwell from his well-known essay, Politics and the English Language:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

Or, in the words of the bumper sticker -- Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation! ;)