Interesting, Wade. I had always thought that the italics indicated only that the particular word wasn't present (was only implied) in the original text, even though it might actually exist, and sometimes be used, in other contexts in the original language -- much as the Russian word for is, though it does exist, is very rarely used (only in expressions like "business is business"). So a Russian would say (using the English alphabet for the moment) On ofitser, literally "he officer", rather than on yest' ofitser, literally "he is officer". I've never studied any of the original biblical languages (except Latin), and I'm glad to have my error corrected.
As for double negatives, the silly idea that they're ungrammatical in English was first posited in the 18th century by self-proclaimed grammarians like Lowth and Murray, who invented many "rules" that didn't exist and had never been followed in English. But I don't want no potatoes, while today it is poor style, has never been ungrammatical; any native or non-native speaker of English would understand it at once, and offer his guest some boiled carrots instead.
Another of their fantastic ideas, invented from whole cloth, was the prohibition against ending sentences with prepositions. The reasoning went something like this. When English grammars were first being written, someone noticed that words like in and of usually came just before the words they referred to, and therefore invented the word "preposition," meaning "positioned in front," as a name for them. Then they reasoned, irrationally, that because they were called prepositions, they had always to be in front and couldn't end a sentence.
Morris Bishop wrote a little poem, The Naughty Preposition, that shows how silly this is:
The Naughty Preposition
I lately lost a preposition;
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair.
And angrily I cried, "Perdition!
Up from out of in under there."
Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor;
And yet I wondered, "What should he come
Up from out of in under for?"
There's nothing wrong with Bishop's grammar, nor with that of a kid whose daddy brings the wrong book to read to him at bedtime, and who asks, "What did you bring that book I don't want to be read to out of up for?"
Languages are fun.
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-- Carl
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