The Murderous History of Bible Translations
Page 23
Predictably, the Jerusalem Bible was not universally acclaimed. Not everyone agreed with the editor’s assessment that the Jerusalem Bible preserved ‘an entirely faithful version of the ancient texts’.26 A review in the Westminster Theological Journal accused the translators of a ‘careless, inconsistent, capricious handling of the text of the original’. Although ‘attractive in format, vigorous in expression, often felicitous and vital in its wording’, its ‘cavalier treatment of the Received Text’ rendered it ‘unsafe for doctrinal study or biblical exposition’.27
The public liked it though, even if the original edition with its detailed notes was too scholarly for many tastes. A couple of years after publication the editors brought out a new edition, ‘which would bring the modern clarity of the text before the ordinary reader, and open to him the results of modern researches without either justifying them at length in literary and historical notes or linking them with doctrinal studies’.28 A further revision, incorporating more inclusive language, appeared in 1985 under the title New Jerusalem Bible. Edited by Henry Wansbrough it was approved for devotional study but has never received approbation for liturgical use. It nevertheless remains one of the most popular Catholic Bibles.
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Reworking The Bible
Sexist Language and Gender Politics
The French Jerusalem Bible was revised in 1973 and a dozen years later its English equivalent followed suit. The most noticeable difference between the old and updated versions was the introduction of attempts to deal, to some degree, with the problem of male-orientated language. The ancient Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, was written and compiled in male-centred, patriarchal societies. Both Testaments tend to use the masculine form when speaking of men and women collectively, and both assume the existence of a male deity. For nearly the whole of the Bible’s existence nobody gave this much thought, it was just the way things were. But by the latter part of the twentieth century people began to regard this masculine bias as anomalous; society was rapidly tending towards egalitarianism, discrimination on the grounds of gender was recognized as unpalatable and many women were assuming roles that for centuries had been the exclusive domain of men. Yet the Bible, in common with all other ancient, and not so ancient, literature still promoted a male-centric view of the world. The 1985 New Jerusalem Bible was one of the first to try to respond to this dilemma.
Had the problem simply been one of translation, if the original Hebrew and Greek had been written in gender-neutral language, matters would have been easily resolved. But the source of the problem was not in the translation, it lay in the original languages, and the issue was wider than just the default use of masculine nouns and pronouns when referring to groups of mixed gender. The vast majority of Bible stories, in both Testaments, are about men; the number of prominent biblical women is small compared to the hordes of men. And since nothing, short of rewriting the Bible, could be done about the dominance of male protagonists, it became all the more urgent for those pressing for a more egalitarian religious environment to argue for something to be done about the unnecessary use of masculine-orientated language, when gender-neutral options were available.
The New Jerusalem Bible takes the credit for being the first Bible to try to tackle the issue. In the foreword, the editor stated that considerable effort had been made ‘to soften or avoid the inbuilt preference of the English language, a preference now found so offensive by some people, for the masculine’.1 But despite the considerable efforts, the New Jerusalem Bible appears a bit haphazard in the way it deals with masculine language. It does indeed sometimes replace generic references to men with neutral words like ‘anyone’ but it is just as likely to miss an opportunity. For instance, it treats the false prophet in Deuteronomy 13 as a man, even though it could just as easily have used neutral language; after all, the Old Testament explicitly refers to women who were prophets.2 Nor is it consistent. In Leviticus it replaces ‘a man’ with ‘anyone’ but, inexplicably, in the same verse it introduces the word ‘he’ as a substitute for the Hebrew’s gender-neutral pronoun ‘you’.3
The New Jerusalem Bible pioneered the use of gender-inclusive language, but the 1990 New Revised Standard Version, the latest incarnation of the Bible, a page of which had been burned in North Carolina, was far more thorough and systematic in its use of neutral speech. Bruce Metzger, the driving force behind both the Revised and New Revised Standard Versions, wrote in the preface that one of his committee’s considerations was to eliminate masculine language in references to men and women, provided this could be done without altering passages that reflected the historical reality of patriarchal societies.
Metzger, who stands head and shoulders above all others as the bible historian par excellence as well as a translator, summed up for those who were perplexed by the proliferation of Revised, Standard and Authorized versions, that ‘the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the Revised Standard Version, published in 1952, which was a revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which, in turn, embodied earlier revisions of the King James Version, published in 1611. In the course of time, the King James Version came to be regarded as “the Authorized Version”.’ It is as succinct a summary as one is likely to get of the evolution of the English Bible, and its names, in North America.4
But even a Bible which set out to eliminate unnecessary, male-orientated language could not hope to free itself of all charges of political incorrectness or sexism. Over the last few decades new, even more politically correct versions have appeared. But of course, as Bible versions depart from the direct and literal meaning of the original text, different techniques of translation are needed to determine the most appropriate renderings. Modern, politically sensitive versions tend to use the technique of ‘dynamic equivalence’, a theory developed by the linguist and bible translator Eugene Nida.
Traditional, formal translations look for the closest grammatical and literal match for any particular phrase or word. Dynamic equivalence concentrates more on conveying its sense, style and meaning. The result is a looser translation but one which, the translator hopes, better conveys in a modern world the original intentions of the ancient author.
But while dynamic equivalence is a valid and acceptable contemporary technique, it is susceptible to misinterpretation, by those who don’t fully understand it, as ‘loose’ or free translation. It can be misunderstood as opening the door to polemical or agenda-driven translations, in which the translator is more concerned to make a particular point than to convey the meaning accurately. And if this all sounds as if it is getting a little too technical, it should start to make more sense when we look at one of the most outspoken of all polemical Bible versions, the Queen James Bible.
The Queen James Bible
Much of the Bible’s male-centred language can be eliminated by substituting neutral words. The word ‘he’ when referring to either a man or woman can be replaced by ‘one’ or, at a pinch, ‘they’. The same can be done for more complex phrases, for example Psalm 8.4, which in the King James Version reads: ‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him and the son of man, that thou visitest him?’ In Today’s New International Version, it became: ‘What are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?’5
But some things cannot be dealt with through translation techniques alone. The Old Testament contains regulations to control slavery. But it doesn’t forbid slavery and modern translations which substitute the word ‘servant’ for ‘slave’ don’t really solve the problem; all that has changed is that the person who has to sell themselves to pay off their debts, or who is captured in war, is called a servant, not a slave.6 There are limits to what one can do with translation.
An even more intractable problem looms over homosexuality. The book of Leviticus7 prohibits homosexuality between men (but is silent about women). Paul’s letter to the Romans8 also seems to condemn gay sex. This offends many gays who feel that,
in the twenty-first century, faith should not discriminate against sexuality. But explicit statements such as these cannot simply be translated away. They can however be excised, if one is not too particular about the integrity of the text or formal translation techniques.
In November 2012 an anonymous group in America published the Queen James Bible. Their stated aim was ‘to resolve interpretive ambiguity in the Bible as it pertains to homosexuality’.9 They identified eight biblical verses which suggest that homosexuality is a sin and set out to rephrase them, to correct what they considered to be the erroneous view of previous translations.
The anonymous editors of the Queen James Bible based their edition on the King James version because they believed it to be the most popular, and because they approved of its poetic and ceremonial style. But crucially, it seems that they made their choice because James I was, in their words, ‘a well known bisexual’, who was known in his court as ‘Queen James’. It’s true that rumours of James’s sexuality have floated around ever since his reign; he was condemned for his preferences by the eighteenth-century reformer Jeremy Bentham,10 and more recently David M. Bergeron has published what he calls James’s homoerotic correspondence with three of his courtiers.11 But whether he was actually known, four hundred years ago, as ‘Queen James’ is another matter.
The editors of the Queen James Bible have worked hard at trying to eliminate the censorious view of homosexuality from the Bible. Their efforts transcend the principles of translation and even of biblical interpretation. In many ways they seem to have tried too hard. Genesis 19.5 has the men of Sodom demanding that Lot bring out his angelic visitors into the street, ‘that we may know them’. There is a tradition in both Christian and Jewish interpretation that the word ‘know’ in this sentence is to be understood sexually, in the same sense as in Genesis 4.1 ‘and Adam knew his wife Eve’. But this is an interpretation, it is not explicit in the text; and if the verse does refer to homosexual sex, it could just as easily mean it to be consensual as forced. There seems little justification for the Queen James Bible’s rendition ‘Bring them out unto us, that we may rape and humiliate them’. Rather than achieving their stated aim of editing the Bible to prevent homophobic interpretations, they seem to have exacerbated it.
The editors of the Queen James Bible believed that the biblical references to homosexuality were ambiguous. They set out to resolve these ambiguities. They didn’t translate the offending sections of text, they amended them to fit in with their sense of how they should be interpreted. Maybe they should have paid more attention to the work of John J. McNeill. In his seminal work, The Church and the Homosexual, he suggests that, when the Bible is read in its original historical and cultural context, its apparent opposition to homosexuality disappears. In the Old Testament, he suggests, homosexuality was condemned because of its use in idolatrous rites; it was proscribed in order to eliminate idolatry. In the New Testament too, McNeill argues, the terminology used suggests an aversion to male prostitution rather than homosexuality itself. McNeill’s scholarship is rigorous; his conclusions are as controversial as the subject he tackles.
For all their obvious shortcomings the compilers of the Queen James Bible were sincere in their motives. Their readers can understand them, even if not necessarily agreeing with them. unlike another Bible, which, in places, took such liberties with the text that it is almost impossible to fathom what was going through its editor’s mind. His name is David Stern, he is a well-respected academic theologian. His Bible, which appended his own translation of the New Testament to a reworked version of the 1917 translation issued by the Jewish Publication Society of America, is known as the Complete Jewish Bible.
Eccentric Messianic Translations
David Stern is a messianic Jew, one who observes some Jewish practices while believing in the divinity of Jesus. His intention in compiling his Complete Jewish Bible was to demonstrate the Jewish provenance and character of the New Testament. One of the ways he did this was to transliterate names into their Hebrew pronunciation, another was to throw in Hebrew words when, presumably, he felt it would sound more authentic. It makes for heavy reading, but there is a logic in his method.
Where his Bible seems to completely lose its way is when Stern interjects Yiddish slang. Yiddish is an amalgam of several languages, mainly Hebrew and German. Its earliest roots are most probably in the tenth century. It wasn’t even a twinkle in the eye of a first-century Jewish-Christian. Yet several Yiddishisms crop up in his translation of Luke. In 10.4 the disciples are warned not to shmoose on the road; in verse 8 of the next chapter ‘importunity’ becomes chutzpah while the widow in 18.5 is described as a nudnik. In John 10.19–20 the Judeans say ‘He’s meshugga! why do you listen to him?’12 One gets the impression that, if he could, David Stern would have dressed Jesus and his disciples in bekishes and shtreimels, the traditional eighteenth-century Polish coats and fur hats worn by many Hassidic Jews.
Far from imparting a Jewish flavour to his translation of the New Testament, Stern seems to have turned it into a comedy routine. When Bruce Metzger, the acclaimed Bible historian, asked Stern why he had included Yiddish words he was told that he wanted to add ‘ethnic spice’.13
But even Stern’s eccentric translation appears conventional when compared to another, which appeared in 2002. Philip Goble’s Orthodox Jewish Bible is a strange amalgam of transliterated Hebrew words, usually the nouns, and English verbs. When Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden the rigours of scratching a living from the soil are described to them, in the King James Version, as ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field’.14 Goble, who can’t resist a transliterated Hebrew noun, prefers ‘Kotz also and dardar shall it bring forth to thee and thou shalt eat the esev of the sadeh’. The archaic English is about the only intelligible part of the sentence.
The translator, in his foreword, suggests that ‘those who read the Bible through Gentile spectacles need to take another look’. Unfortunately, unless the reader is fluent in Hebrew and English, or is prepared to spend hours wading through the profusion of notes and references which continually interrupt the text, taking a look is more likely to result in befuddlement than in inspiration.
The Bible Business is Big Business
Wycliffe Bible Translators, named after the fourteenth-century pioneer of the English Bible, are an American missionary and evangelist organization. They specialize in producing bible translations for missionaries, mainly those working in the third world. According to Forbes magazine, in 2012 Wycliffe ranked at number seventy in the hierarchy of largest American charities, with a revenue of 167 million dollars.15 Bible translation is big business. As Wycliffe translators have found out, it can also be an extremely troubling enterprise.
Since they were founded in 1942, Wycliffe have taken part in over 700 Bible translation projects. They have produced translations in languages spoken in more than ninety countries. They claim that, in addition to their underlying evangelical agenda, their work can lead to ‘better health as a result of access to medical information, economic growth due to the acquisition of marketable skills, and the preservation of culture thanks to a written history’.16
For years Wycliffe quietly got on with their work. Despite Forbes rating them as one of America’s largest charities, very few people beyond the missionary and evangelical world had ever heard of them. That all started to change in 2011.
Their troubles began when they decided to produce a translation of the New Testament for Muslim readers. Acutely aware of Islamic sensitivities, they feared that certain key phrases in the New Testament, such as ‘Son of God’, might both offend and be misinterpreted; some people may assume that Jesus’s birth was the product of a sexual relationship between God and Mary. So for this particular translation they decided to bend their long-established translation rules.
Wherever they felt an ambiguity might be perceived in the text, they resorted to synonyms. They replac
ed ‘Son of God’ with phrases like ‘beloved son who comes from God’. They found alternatives for ‘God the Father’ and other potentially misleading attributions.
But this apparently harmless solution quickly had repercussions. As soon as news of their new translation reached the evangelical community, a storm broke out. Wycliffe, and their partner organizations in the field, found themselves accused of falsifying scripture.
Of course, this could be seen as not so much a case of bending the rules of Bible translation, as of producing effective marketing material. The job of the missionary is, after all, to persuade non-believers to accept the principles of a new religion, of which they probably have little or no knowledge. On the face of it, all the Wycliffe translators were trying to do was to smooth the path of those they were addressing, to bring them to their new faith without putting too many theological obstacles in their way. They weren’t the first to take account of the sensibilities of those they were trying to convert; previous translations of the New Testament for Muslims had used the name Allah and, as long ago as 1809, William Carey, a missionary pioneer in India, had substituted the Hindu name Ishwar for that of God in his Bengali translation. There were precedents for culturally sensitive compromise. What Wycliffe did, so it seemed, was little different.