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corncrake wrote:
It's not even quite Deuteronomy. The original biblical quotation is about Moses, who isn't mentioned by name in what they're reading --- I forget the term used, it's some generic SF grand-sounding title.
(Just to pedantically set the record straight, Moses is only referred to as he\him. The title you're remembering, "the Compassionating", referred to God.)
I used to think that the differences were just a consequence of what Severian wrote being translated back into English, but in fact there are some big chunks from the original that are just plain missing. It reads more like one of the stories from Wonders of Urth and Sky that has been retold so many times almost all the original sense has gone.
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This brings up the question of language. Severian can understand them, and doesn't speak English, French or Zulu; it seems the language used by the three is the local one, with the added touch that the bible comes out a bit weird.
Yes, I'm leaning more and more towards Explanation Two, that the people in the hut are actually from Severian's time, but "chant-caught". Perhaps Marie reads Deuteronomy the way she does because that's the way her Urthian mind perceives the text, or perhaps she's reading verbatim, and it's the book itself that is at fault.