Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds — J. Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer famously quoted this from The Bhagavad Geeta in the context of the nuclear bomb. The way this sentence is structured feels weird to me. “Now I am Death” or “Now I have become Death” sound much more natural in English to me.
Was he trying to simulate some formulation in Sanskrit that is not available in the English language?
If “I have become” and “I am” are both valid translations then “I am become” seems like fairly minor literary license.
I think it sounds cooler. Powerful beings are not supposed to sound ordinary.