The many uses of ‘multiple’

I once failed to entertain the former Master of Balliol Sir Anthony Kenny by telling him about the inscription in the lift at the London Library, the gift of the Byzantinist Sir Steven Runciman. I suddenly forgot what it said.

All I could think of was Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae, ‘Between the midst of the hills the waters shall pass’. That wasn’t right. I felt like Alice trying to recite Isaac Watts’s ‘How doth the little busy bee/ Improve each shining hour’, but coming out with ‘How doth the little crocodile/ Improve his shining tail’.

My failed quotation came from a Psalm, number 103 in the Vulgate numbering, number 104 in the Authorised Version. What I’d wanted was Daniel 12:4 Plurimi pertransibunt, et multiplex erit scientia. Perhaps Runciman was quoting not so much from the Book of Daniel as from a book of Francis Bacon, who used the biblical verse in his Advancement of Learning (1605).

The Authorised Version had not then been made, but the Bishops’ Bible translates this sentence as ‘Many shall go about here and there, and knowledge shalbe encreased’. The Authorised Version favoured the rendition ‘many shall run to and fro’, which suggests useless hurry and scurry. Bacon took it to imply ‘proficiency in navigation’; he saw ‘thorough passage of the world and the increase of knowledge’ as going together.

From multiplex comes the word multiple. Jake Berry accused Suella Braverman of ‘multiple breaches of the ministerial code’. How many would that be? More than a few? More than several?

In the past, multiple established itself in multiple phrases: multiple choice, multiple injuries, houses in multiple occupation, multiple pile-up, multiple rocket launcher. But it sounds odd as an alternative to many: ‘Multiple women are set to testify about Weinstein,’ the Guardian reported. Someone in the Daily Mail said: ‘I’ve spoken with them multiple times.’

Runciman’s lift has been replaced. I don’t know how many passed through its doors or whether knowledge has been increased, but certainly the books written since are multiple.