|
God bless you (''variants include'' God bless or bless you〔) is a common English expression, used to wish a person blessings in various situations,〔 especially as a response to a sneeze, and also, when parting or writing a valediction. The phrase has been used in the Hebrew Bible by Jews (cf. ), and by Christians, since the time of the early Church as a benediction, as well as a means of bidding a person Godspeed. Many clergy, when blessing their congregants individually or corporately, use the phrase "God bless you". ''National Geographic'' reports that during the plague of AD 590, "Pope Gregory I ordered unceasing prayer for divine intercession. Part of his command was that anyone sneezing be blessed immediately ("God bless you"), since sneezing was often the first sign that someone was falling ill with the plague." By AD 750, it became customary to say "God bless you" as a response to one sneezing. ==Origins and legends== The practice of blessing someone who sneezes, dating as far back as at least AD 77, however is far older than most specific explanations can account for.〔 Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed,〔(Snopes Urban Legends ) - Bless You!〕 that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits,〔Ed Zotti, Editor. (''Why Do We Say "God Bless You" After a Sneeze?'' ), Straight Dope, 27 September 2001.〕〔 or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence.〔 In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil. The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation.〔(Gutenberg.org ), Project Gutenberg story by T. Crofton Croker, 1898.〕 Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating.〔〔〔(Madsci.org ), Mad Scientist posting by Tom Wilson, M.D./PhD, Pathology, Div. of Molecular Oncology, Washington University School of Medicine〕 In some cultures, sneezing is seen as a sign of good fortune or God's beneficence.〔〔(Re: Why does plucking my eyebrows make me sneeze? ), MadSci Network posting by Robert West, Post-doc/Fellow, 1997-08-05〕 As such, alternative responses to sneezing are the German word ''Gesundheit'' (meaning "health") sometimes adopted by English speakers, the Irish word ''sláinte'' (meaning "good health"), the Spanish ''salud'' (also meaning "health") and the Hebrew ''laBri'ut'' (colloquial) or ''liVriut'' (classic) (both spelled: "לבריאות") (meaning "to health"). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「God bless you」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|