Minding Scripture, Part 4: The Translation of Scripture

Episode Topic: The Translation of Scripture (https://go.nd.edu/a61109)

In Jewish tradition, Adam is the archetypal human being; in Christianity he is the forerunner to Christ, and in Islam he is the precursor of the Prophet Muhammad.

Featured Speakers:

• Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor, University of Notre Dame
• Francesca Murphy, professor, University of Notre Dam
• Tzvi Novick, professor, University of Notre Dame
• Mun’im Sirry, professor, University of Notre Dame

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/1f6e52.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Minding Scripture. (https://go.nd.edu/dee1b4)

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Transcript

Introduction to Minding Scripture

0:13

Scripture shapes the lives of billions of people around the world, yet scriptures, both the Bible and the Quran only gain meaning when they're interpreted by the human mind. Minding scripture, a podcast from the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame explores the meeting of reason with the Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Today we have a special episode, friends to discuss the translation of scripture and we are joined by two distinguished guests. I'm delighted to introduce first in coming to us from the studios at the University of Berkeley, professor Robert Alter, who was the class of 1937, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Be. His translation of the Hebrew Bible has won the Penn Center literary Award for translation. He has also been awarded the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times, and he's a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the American Philosophical Society. Hello, professor Alter. Thank you for being here. Glad to be here. And I'm also introducing here with us in the studio, professor David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher, writer and cultural commentator. He's the author of a translation of the New Testament, published with Yale University Press in 2017 and the forthcoming book also with Yale University Press that all shall be saved, heaven, hell, and Universal salvation. Hello, professor Hart. Hello, animating the conversation with Professors Alter and Hart are my two colleagues at Notre Dame Svi Novik and Francesca Murphy. Hello friends. Hello. Hi. And Francesca, I believe you are. You're up first. So I'm beginning with a question, which is for both of you, and I wonder if Professor Al Alter could answer first and David second. And my question is, which was your favorite book of the Bible to translate, which was your greatest literary achievement? That may be two different ones. I'm not expecting the answer Chronicles, but Okay. No, I'm not gonna answer Chronicles. And, and you know, in, in, in the order of the Jewish Canon, which I, I followed, that was the very last thing I did. And last was not best, let me tell you for listeners who have never read Chronicles, which may be many, the first nine chapters are Chronicles are nothing but lists of names. Anyway, I suppose the translation, the book that was most fun for me. Was, the Song of Songs because it's such beautiful luscious, love poetry, very sensual, but, uh, and an unusual balance sensual in, in a kind of refined way, in an elegant way. So that was really a, a pleasure to translate. And, um, I suppose I kind of hope my translation is a little better than the existing ones. But, there are some pretty good translations of the Song of Songs Now. The book that I, i maybe felt most proud about translating was job, because the poetry of job is stupendous. I think it's the very peak of Hebrew poetry in the ancient period. And, um, obviously no translation is perfect, but I, I think I did a pretty good job in getting at the power of the poetry. Is it fair to say then that you, uh, you enjoyed translating poetry more than prose? No. Uh, I just, uh, singled those out, as, uh, high points. I love translating the, the, the prose, uh, the, the, uh, the prose narrative of the Hebrew Bible is really quite splendid. And, um, I paid attention to certain things in translating the narrative style, uh, that I think predecessors have not done. One was rhythm. I think all really good literary prose is rhythmic and without the rhythm, the beating heart of the prose is not beating anymore. So I tried to get at that. I tried to honor the, the, eloquent simplicity of diction. In the Hebrew narratives and, uh, the very pointed use of repetition, and that was really satisfying too. Thank you. The task of translation for me didn't come with as many, uh, intrinsic pleasures because, or Professor Alter was doing a genuinely literary rendering of many books that are in fact literary masterpieces. I was doing a sort of piously literalist gloss of books that whatever their virtues is, theological documents, don't exactly sing on the page. Um, for me, the one that was, that was, uh, probably the most enjoyable to translate was Third John, because it was over quickly. Uh, A good criterion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it went by in an afternoon, you know, and then I, then I still had time for coffee and, and a long walk. But I mean, I, I think where I'm, where I'm happiest with the translation, just as, as, um, a literary performance is where I think, are those places where I think I did the best job of capturing the particular voice of the author. Uh, so for instance, I'm very pleased with the Book of Acts just because I think I captured Luke's prose style, uh, especially the bits dealing with his fin, with Paul's final voyage leading up to the shipwreck at Malta and the book of Hebrews. I'm pleased at least with my rendering in English of the Asiatic, Greek style of, of Hebrews. but I, uh, if it had merely been a matter of, of the pleasure of translation, I, uh, I can't, I can't say that these were the texts I would've chosen. It's interesting though, right? 'cause we, there's so much, uh, in the reception of these translations about them being, uh, translations of individuals rather. Uh, committees. And yet ironically, uh, the fact that you're doing it as an individual allows you to capture the multi vocality of the different voices, uh, of the, uh, of the New Testament itself. It's a, well, I'm actually, uh, deeply opposed to translation by committee, and I think it's a, it's a graver danger for Christian translation, for the simple reason that there's so many, theological prejudices and schools and philosophies, uh, uh, that have developed around each of the books. Every term, every word point, that if you get a committee, you're always going to end up with a translation that's the least offensive to everyone. do you think that's true of the King James? Yeah. I wanted to ask that too. Well, no, I mean, a modern committee, I mean, we're talking about 350 guys with completely different, uh, takes on everything. Uh, king James is different. I mean, first of all, the King James was building on Tyle. They already had a, a literary model that was exquisite. And, uh, they improved it with, you know, they had a degree of scholarly. And it's, let's be honest, it's the high point of English as a language. It's, it's the, it's the most beautiful moment in the natural cadences, uh, of, of the English language, the 16th and 17th century. It's been constant decline since then. Yes, I, I, I fully endorse that. Well, you, you mentioned scholarship and so maybe I can, I can ask the nest question also directed to both of you though. Maybe. we'll keep the same order.

The Role of Philology in Translation

8:12

neither of you works primarily, in what goes today by the name Philology. I think it's, uh, fair to say, um, ascertaining, uh, the meaning of text through textual criticism, grammatical analysis, comparison with relevant languages. if that's true, and feel free to, to correct that, uh, characterization if, uh, if you think that's incorrect. how did you perceive that to be an advantage, if to some extent there was a disadvantage there? how did you, compensate for that? Uh, so maybe we could start with you, professor Alter. Okay. I would like to correct that in part for myself. That is the aspect of philology that I didn't much engage with, the evolution of the, the sundry biblical texts, which is very complicated and most of the texts are highly layered or many of the texts are, and I didn't much get into that because I didn't think it was all that relevant for a translation. On the other hand, determining what words mean in an ancient language, uh, that is, you know, removed from us by anywhere from. Two and a half to three millennia is a fascinating challenge. and, uh, it deeply engaged me. That is what I felt, was that the biblical scholars, as admirable as their commitment to philology, is have not done it, uh, correctly. For example, I will, maybe give two examples, not, not to, go on too long. the, um, there's a kind of, uh, craze for finding, uh, lone words from other Semitic languages, and maybe the extreme expression of that w was, uh, that, anchor Bible, Psalms w which, which reads, yeah, right, which reads? He, he read tic into everything. Now. Now the problem with I, I think that, a lone word has to be the last resort, not the first resort in philology for a simple reason. Languages that belong to the same group and are in contact don't necessarily share meanings. The French have a neat term. They call, call it a ami, a false French. False. Yes. and, uh, for example, um, in, if you were translating French, knowing English, and you came across this verb aste, you would say it means to assist, to help, but it doesn't at all. it means to attend as to attend a ceremony. So you can go very wrong with cognates. That's my first objection to the way. Philology is practice among biblical scholars. The the second thing is, and uh, maybe I, I shouldn't take time for examples, but, but very often it seems to me that the literary context in which an obscure word appears, the narrative context of the poetic context gives you a clue to what it probably means. A and biblical scholars tend not to pay attention to, uh, literary context. So I find philology fascinating is kind of detective work and trying to figure out what words in an ancient language mean, and also what their connotation is, what kind of associations they carry with 'em, what linguistic register they reflect, and all that ha has rather excited me, my work. Professor Hud, what do you have to say on that question? Well, again, let me, uh, correct the premise. Actually, I, I've been a classicist in my training since childhood. So the languages and the texts of, of, uh, Greek and Latin antiquity are, are pretty well known to me and, uh, of some fairly good degree of philological training. My great complaint actually in, in, uh, new Testament scholarship is, that much of it is done by persons who are not classicists. Uh, many of them get their Greek, for instance, in seminary, and therefore what they get is a training in how to read Keeny in the New Testament, translated according to doctrinal tradition. uh, most of them, for instance, don't know the text, uh, other literature of the same period of the, say the first, second century, or, or, or leading up to it. The result is, that quite often they're not, prepared necessarily to see where the traditional renderings are more a matter of dogma and inertia than an actual awareness of the, the language and the time and the place. so actually I, I had arrogantly enough, I thought I was better prepared than a lot of, uh, theologians and even many people who teach New Testament, to understand certain things. Certainly this is why I've, I, I think I've earned the wrath of the whole reformed world from my translation of Romans, because there's a, you know, good tradition going all the way back to the 16th century of reading, reading certain terms or certain phrases within the context of 16th century theology, and then assuming that that's what Paul was getting at. Just, you know, give you an example. Just, uh, you know, how much of, uh, Protestant tradition emphasizes the distinction between faith and works and Paul, but a problematic way of approaching even as simple a word, words even as simple as piste and er, especially when ergo in the first century, especially in the plural, like that often meant specifically ritual observances say. And I mean for Paul, of course, the issue is whether or not, uh, he can remain faithful to the God of Israel while not insisting upon the ritual observances of the law. And so for him, whereas PTI always has a fiduciary content as well as, uh, meaning, you know, intellectual, a sense say to a proposition. So for him, Paul quite plausibly is talking about is it possible to remain, is faithful in the fullest sense, faithfulness to the. While not insisting upon ritual, observances obviously has nothing to do with the, uh, the immense, uh, edifice of theological, or I should say doctrinal, as well as, theological, uh, speculation that, that swirls around the supposed division between faith and works in Paul, which I think is entirely a phantom. C could I follow up on that for a minute? Sure. Please. I found myself very much in, in agreement with David Hart. I also resisted doctrinal translations, both the Jewish and Christian, by the way, that, that is, I did not have a theological agenda at all, but what I wanted to do was get back to what I thought a, as David has done with, with the New Testament, get back to what I thought was the plain meaning and the original meaning of the Hebrew terms. Two examples. One, uh, I think I've become a little bit notorious for never using the word soul in my translation. Mm-hmm. it's not because I, I'm against souls, but, uh, the, the fact is that, that the, uh, the Hebrew writers had no notion of soul or of a split between soul and body. The, the word that's rendered is soul. And it goes back to the vulgate and anima and the vulgate. I is, uh, the, really life breath. And then by extension, uh, it, it can mean, uh, life in general, but a person's life. but it can also mean throat or neck because that's by autonomy. 'cause that's the passageway for, for the breath. another, example is, um. The 23rd Psalm, which many speakers of English know more or less by heart. In the King James version, we have, the anoint us, my head with oil and, and all the modern translations follow that. But in fact, the, the word, the verb that's used in the Hebrew does not mean to anoint. That is the, the famously, the, the word for anoint is cognate with Messiah. The word for, well, we, we know first for the anointed king, and then it gets a theological meaning. Uh, and by the way, that that verb is reserved for the consecration of priests and for, uh, the, the, consecration of a king. So it has a rather fraught religious meaning, religious slash political meaning. In the Bible, whereas the, the, uh, uh, that, that is the, the verb would be m where whereas, uh, the verb used here, Chen, it has some association with luxurious. It makes you feel good as in Homer. You know, you remember in the Odyssey, when a, a guest comes, uh, they bathe him and then they, they rub him all over wi with olive oil, I assume virgin olive oil, uh, uh, and, uh, that's what this is all about. So, uh, I, I settled for you moist in my head with oil. Okay. So both of you, right, felt, uh, felt you were kind of, uh, uh, making this positive philological contribution might, we might say, vis-a-vis, uh, some perhaps frozen or, tendentious, uh, theological translations. Exactly. Yeah.

Commentary and Footnotes in Translation

18:10

Yeah. One aspect of the, of, of both translations that, uh, I thought it would be great to, to, to hear you reflect on. Is, the commentary, right. And then, and especially, uh, professor Alter in your case. Uh, some half of the page, is taken up with commentary, um, but commentary figures also, uh, professor Harden your, or notes anyhow, footnotes, in, uh, in your translation of the New Testament. So I, I wondered if you might reflect on, on the role of commentary vis-a-vis, uh, the translations. did the fact that you were simultaneously writing a commentary in Professor Alter's case or the availability of Footnoting, as, uh, as was say, not available to, uh, the King James Bible? Um. Non committee translation. how did that influence, how, if at all, did that influence your translation? and I, I'll, I may maybe, I thought I'd give a, an example, that occurred or a context in which that occurred to me. The question occurred to me from, professor Alter from Your translation, and it's from the Song of Songs. You mentioned the Song of Songs as, uh, as the book that you most enjoyed translating. And there's a, a famous verse in chapter one, in which the, the woman declares herself black, yet beautiful. Though the, the very translations obviously vary, uh, vary greatly. And the, the word for dark occurs twice in the short statement by the woman, but in somewhat different forms. In the Hebrew, uh, you render both as dark in the translation and then in the commentary, you note the fact that the first one is dark, the second one might better be rendered darkish. But that's the difference that you render in the commentary, and then in the translation, you render both as dark. So I wonder then either you could kind of address that example or the, or the question more generally. did the availability of a commentary enable you to do different things in translation, knowing that you could clarify in commentary or, uh, in the case of Professor Hart two, uh, the availability of Footnoting, how did that impact your translation choices? Okay. First, I must, I must say that I didn't originally intend to write a commentary. I figured, well, I'll throw in an occasional translator's note. You know, uh, this term is obscure in the original, or, uh, there is an untranslatable pun here. But I got halfway through the first chapter of Genesis, right? And there were so many interesting things going on that I wanted to talk about, that I ended up writing a commentary. Now, some of the things, or good, many of the things that, that I talk about. Are literary aspects. 'cause I am a literary scholar, uh, of, uh, the text, uh, narrative point of view, um, inter echoing of terms, uh, the deployment of dialogue and, and so forth. and those are aspects of the text that are not addressed in the, probably thousands of commentaries, uh, on the various books of the Hebrew Bible that, that exist. So I, I felt that there was, uh, room to say something and something important to say, but the example from Song of Songs, very often, there's some kind of nuance, or obscurity, or implication in the original that you can't get into the comment into the translation. And so, you explain it in the commentary. uh, Samuel Johnson Johnson once said that, that, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Something we may be especially conscious of these days in the United States. Uh, and, um, I would, paraphrase that and say, commentary is the last refuge of a scoundrely translator. You know, where, where when you can't get it into the translation, you stick it into the commentary. Well said. And, uh, professor Hartwood, uh, did you have, uh, thoughts on this question of the availability of, uh, footnoting? Yeah, I mean, I also at first naively thought that I could do a translation without footnotes. now if you look at my, My translation, the number of footnotes per words, uh, on the page of translation varies from book to book, correct. At times for the, uh, the gospels, especially the synoptic gospels and acts. Only a few clarifications here and there seem necessary, whereas other books, from what I decided was there, there are certain things about the period and about the words being used that almost no modern reader is likely to know. Uh, and in those cases, so the Book of Jude, the letter of of Jude, which is an extremely small text, really has probably the greatest number of footnotes, you know, per capita or whatever the term should per ra. There's certain things that simply you can't do in the transit because there's not a one-to-one correspondence and you certainly can't capture certain intentional ambiguities or, inevitable ambiguities, such as gospel of. When, uh, the word PMA or pans, it would be mispronounced by most, new Testament scholars. And the word PMA is used of spirit, but also of the wind and of the breath. and there translators in the past have simply written both wind and spirit giving no clue to the vital reality. That in the verse is just one noun, and moreover, a noun that actually, according to the metaphysics at the time, presumed by most persons in the eastern part of the Mediterranean world of the Greco-Roman world, uh, actually is not even, it's not even a metaphorical association. They really did think of breath and wind and the vital, I core the divine, I core that, that, that holds, uh, life together in the body is all one in the same sort of elemental reality. And also, and having, so of course, I and uh, later. In one Corinthians 15, Paul, or actually I shouldn't say later, but the same, the same issue comes up again later, because Paul speaks there of, of psychical and spiritual bodies. And so it was necessary at all of these places to use footnotes because otherwise the translation would not really have been a translation. It would simply have been a cipher for what the meaning of the verse would've been, uh, for those at the time, who knew, uh, the language, who would've heard it as having these meanings. So it just became inevitable that footnotes were necessary. And then of course, there's the perverse pleasure that one can get from a critical apparatus, especially if one's trying to provoke. Protestants, uh, or others, you know, by, uh, using the footnotes and the, uh, and it, in mine of course, there's also very long post script below the line, right? Yeah. So, uh, calling attention to the places where the text actually, fails to say what later tradition makes us want it to say. And there are obscurities in the text that, that I think should be preserved ambiguities. That should be preserved as ambiguities. But when you do that, it's wise to use a note to explain that you're doing that. But you know the word PMA again, and Paul, quite often it's impossible to tell when he uses the word what, what he means, whether he means the Holy Spirit, which he seems at times to have a distinct concept of the human spirit. Spirit as again, the sort of cosmic element. That it constitutes the bodies of angels and of stars, you know? So it might be fair to say that, uh, that, uh, to some extent your footnotes might be a, a, a map to the, the points at which you're making Yeah. Some of your more important, uh, interventions. I mean, the truth is we're separated from the first century, obviously by language, by culture, but by our, our vision of reality too. And many words that had a very particular set of connotations in the first century in the Greco Roman, the Jewish and pagan worlds, uh, simply don't have those meanings for us. We've, we attach all sorts of different connotations to them as the result. Both just a natural cultural evolution, but also of, uh, theological and doctrinal tradition. And without the footnotes, I realized I wasn't really going to be able to produce a translation, but just a kind of. As I say, quite often it's just a set of ciphers pointing in the direction of a mystery. I have to say that, that there's an exact parallel in biblical Hebrew to pma. In Greek, there's this word, ruach, which begins to appear in the, the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis. That means precisely these three things. It, it means wind, it means breath, and it means spirit. And it's sometimes a hard judgment call to figure out which, and, like David Hart, I felt obliged in many instances to explain why I opted for one and not the other, and perhaps why the other was also possible. Right. Well, okay. Uh, let, let's, uh, let's follow up with a question. And this was, I guess we, we, we entered briefly into the, into the, at the beg, at the outset, into this question of what, uh, what book you most enjoyed translating. And that got us into some aspects of the, uh, of the relationship to the, uh, to the personal, in these, uh, translation projects.

Personal Touches in Translation

28:02

I wonder to what extent, or did, were there ever points at which you were introducing what you felt to be an idiosyncratic translation where, uh, you know, perhaps, uh, the ambiguity of the text allowed you to introduce what might not be the correct or in the absence of a, of a, of a clear, precise equivalent. You, you were kind of conveying, uh, your own view. Uh, or to put the question differently, how, if at all, do these translations offer, uh, windows into your own thought as people, as thinkers? Uh, so again, this is a kind of question that could be asked of both of you and maybe Tering could. I'll, I'll offer one or two examples where I came up with a translation, which as far as I know absolutely differs from all proceeding translations. Now, when Abraham passes off, Sarah as his wife to Abbi, Genesis 20, he, uh, you have your chapters right. Uh oh. Thank you. Yeah. Well, that's the years I never grew up knowing chapters in a traditional Jewish education. But the years of teaching in a Christian context have led me to that Abraham whe, when pushed to the Wall by Albert Meah explains that he started doing this when, and then he says, when Elohim made him a wanderer. Now, Elohim famously is the standard word for God in the Hebrew Bible and has a plural. Masculine, plural ending, but it's treated as a singular grammatically. So why that should be so we don't know. Uh, my suspicion is a li, it's a linguistic fossil from the time that Elohim referred to a bunch of gods and not just not the God. However, in this case, when Abraham is speaking to a, he says he uses the plural, he uses a plural verb with Elohim. And the few times that that happens, it doesn't refer to God. I I don't think it, it refers to the God, so I translate it. and so when the Gods made me a wanderer, which I know has shocked a few readers after Abraham the first monotheist, but I think he's gauging his speech. To, uh, the ear of a, a polytheist. And he's maybe not, uh, espousing polytheism, but, but he's saying, you know, the, in a manner of speaking the gods made me a wander as if to say fate, my destiny, whatever made, made me a, a wanderer. And people do that. People, when, when, when you're speaking with somebody, you adapt your speech to their understanding. Exactly. That's exactly what anybody would do. Mm-hmm. Right. And, and that, that's very good. And, and that's precisely why biblical, dialogue is so lively and is the real predecessor, I think, to novelistic dialogue. You know, friends, I think this might be a good time to, to pause. I know we are, we're waiting for, um, professor Hart's response to the same question about idiosyncratic or personal translation. But let's take a break there and everyone will necessarily have to come back and listen to the second half of mind in scripture. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back to minding scripture. I am Gabriel Saed Reynolds from the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. But animating this discussion are my colleagues, Francesca Murphy and Svi Novik. We're speaking with Professor Robert Alter from Berkeley and Professor David Bentley Hart, and the question is now on the floor for Professor Hart. Regard to the, um, the personal Edelman of his translation. Right. I think, yeah. And specifically whether there were willfully eccentric, well, willfully eccentric in the sense that, uh, doing it, knowing that that others would disagree, even though I thought it was right. yeah, I mean, uh, in many cases some of them are, are, uh, large issues, which I think we're get, we're supposed to get to later, like the aons and know. But even, uh, certain small things like, um, the story of the rich man in Lazarus, the, the, the phrase translated typically as bosom of Abraham. I actually, uh, translated as the Valley or the Veil of Abraham, because puls, it's, it's true that, that later you can find, uh, the use of the word chach in Hebrew, or there's at least one reference in post-Christian or the, uh, literature. This, it's actually not a preexisting, figure of speech. When I was reading it, I read Cultos, uh, in a more, uh, literary manner. Since Luke is the most literary of the writers of the New Testament, aside from the author of Hebrews as meaning of Valley, which is a, a perfectly normal use of the word, but also because I thought that his entire, uh, image of Shale or Hades, uh, was drawn from first Enoch, and that it's a very specific reference to four valleys. Uh, there, there's a valley that's full of flowing water in greenery, that's the place of blessedness and three dry dark valleys, uh, for the reprobate awaiting the judgment. Again, uh, this created more controversy than I expected. But helpfully, the sort of controversy that got me, it got, gave me a chance to be flamboyantly scholarly in print and make myself look good. Or, um, just another simple thing, but it's funny, often I, I came to the conclusion that the simple decisions were often more important than at first. They appeared when it, when, uh, scripture speaks of Jesus and the disciples crossing the cron. The word used, at least in one place is Kim Maros, which in the septin is always used only of a wadi or a fresh and a, a, a, a, not, not any brook, not any torrent, but specifically one that runs only in the winter. And in fact, that's what the cron is. Um, and, uh, though by the first century, sometimes the word was used in differently just for any kind of flowing stream or brook, I, in my translation, said the brook, which flows only in the winter, or which flows in the winter. Which for some reason, again, excited some degree of, of, uh, of censure. But it occurred to me that I, I think that's specifically why the word's being used there. I mean, the Greek of the New Testament is very much determined by the Greek of the Sep and that it's not wise, especially in the Gospel of John, where the word appears to ignore any imagery of water, flowing water or not flowing. And that just to leave that to tail out, that that word in particular is the one that the author of the Fourth Gospel used, is to risk losing something vital, even if I don't know what it is. I find that actually it was small decisions like that, that, that tended to be of most interest to me. Again, they're the large deci decisions to translate arga as observances in Paul rather than works or aons to mean of the age rather than eternal. And of course, again, you're try, you're trying to get provoke people, aren't you? I mean, well, it's interesting also, I mean, we'll, we'll, we'll switch off this in a moment, but, and then perhaps we'll get back to the question of reception later, but I hear, uh, professor Harden, you're kind of identifying, controversial translations and that's, I guess profess of all do. You mentioned perhaps, things that surprised readers, but not so much of controversy. But it does seem to me that the, uh, with respect to the religious communities, uh, that may be reading these translations, the fact that Christians are in the religious context are almost inevitably reading these texts and translation, uh, in contrast with, uh, the case of the, of the Hebrew Bible where, liturgical, uh, readings are in the Hebrew, uh, means that, There's, a little bit less at stake or a little bit less, uh, kind of controversy to insight say, uh, when it comes to translating the, uh, so reform synagogues use scripture in the, or in, in English or in the vernacular of the place? I guess I, uh, I couldn't say, uh, across the board, but there, but, uh, there, there is a, a kind of an ideal, uh, I mean the, the liturgical scroll read in Hebrew is written in Hebrew. And so, uh, when you're using the scrolls, you're reading it in Hebrew, and you could, it could be accompanied by an English translation or, or commentary, but, but the Hebrew text, uh, occupies a much more central liturgical role. And so hence translation choices. So also couldn't write liturgically, uh uh. Right, right. Well, I, I, I, I would point out that also that I, uh, I'm Greek Orthodox, so actually the liturgical reading that I hear every week is in fact the original text. Ah, fair enough. Now, I should add that, the, although the reading is in Hebrew. Most of the congregation will not understand the Hebrew, A handful in any congregation will. Yes. Okay. So I'm gonna go on to my next question, which

Theologian vs. Translator

37:46

is this. Do you regard yourself as a translator first or a theologian first? And how do the two vocations overlap? That's a question for David. Uh, neither actually. I mean, I, I, I think of myself as a writer first who writes about theology sometimes. and, um, in doing this translation though, I thought of myself as a translator first because, my concern was trying to get back to as, as close as I could to what I thought was going on in the text, absent. Two millennia of theological interpretation and controversy and animus. So then going on to the related question, you have been involved in a very robust debate about universal salvation. Yeah. So I'm asking which comes first, the translation or the theology, for example, with your translation of Unos as, um, the age to come or the age was traditionally it's been translated as eternal. And of course this affects the meaning of many passages in the New Testament about how an eternal hell fire actually only, only one. There's only eternal fire, right? There's only one in Matthew 25. Actually, the notion of an eternal hell is not explicitly present in the New Testament. Unless you read that one verse in Matthew 25 as being an explicit statement to that effect. Which again, it isn't for two reasons. Uh, and just, it isn't in the sense simply that it's ambiguous in its language, both the word for punishment and the word that's translated as eternal. But actually I didn't, I didn't make the translation, uh, I didn't change in the way the word was translated for that reason. It's true that I, in the eastern tradition, especially in the early centuries, universalism was a dominant point of view in many areas and the greatest figures, in the tradition, the ones I most admire happened to have been like Origin and Gregory of Nessa and Isaac and Nineveh Universalists. But I think it's also important given the fact that most Christian readers will go back, will go to the, to, to the text and see Christ using all sorts of different metaphors for judgment. They're actually contradictory with one another. If you try to take them literally and immediately impose upon them their expectations from later pictures of a clear notion of a hell, that's God's eternal torture chamber. Where, where he'll prove his infinite love to us by subjecting many of us to infinite suffering. Uh, that in fact that they will think that's what they're reading in the text, even when they're not. So there is a, there is a reason for wanting to call attention to the fact that the text is far more ambiguous, and it comes from a period in which this, this notion has, is, has emerged. I mean, definitely we see it in intertestamental literature that the influence of, of Persian thought on Jewish thought had created some pretty ferocious images of judgment in certain books, again, with variation. Yeah, I mean, I wanted to call attention to it. The truth of the matter is, I just think that it's inept to read back our notion of what eternal means, which either, just means timelessness or actually most people's minds just infinite duration into a language. That drawing on the Sept two genal usages is probably more a reference to the difference between the al you know, the, the age that we're in now in the, in the Alba, the, the age to come. And so simply making Aus a figure of, of the age, which you can interpret as you like, meaning, a final eternal state of being or the age, the cosmic age to come, or the divine eon and all these ideas are very much a part of Greco-Roman Judaism at the time. If nothing else, at that point, the ambiguity helps to clarify. That's a place where unclarity. It gives us a better sense of what the text is really doing, but I didn't set out to, to translate the word in a specific way so that at that one crucial verse, I could get past the, the difficult issue that it might raise. You know, I, I honestly believe that, that there isn't a concept of a simple infinite duration behind that word. I don't, at least that's not the only concept that possibly attached to it at the time, and that there are much more likely ways of reading it. So you don't think David, the theologian influences David, the translator? Well, David, the theologian in the sense that David, the theologian who knows how much of later theological tradition is an arbitrary or, or mistaken reading. Yes. I mean, it helps to have enough theological training to know that that words like say justification have no meaning. Now because they've be, become so overlayed with connotations that would've been entirely absent. From, say, the mind of Paul. So, yes, it's good to have a theological training because otherwise you don't know how to discriminate between different words and, uh, may not know what words come freighted with what meanings for Christian readers. But I definitely didn't go back to the text hoping to make it fit in with the picture of Jesus and the early church that I wanted to promote. Fair enough. Do you have plans to translate the Sept? Well, I've thought of it because of course the Masoretic text and the septer differ not only in the fact that the latter has some, the, the books that were written only in Greek, but also that there, there are places where you can see earlier texts of Hebrew scripture differed probably from place to place. And so there are different readings that were crucial for later Christian thought. Of course, trying to deduce from the translation what the original Hebrew was. Hard right there places. I agree. Yeah. There are places. Where did you look at the septin? When you at, at all? Did you ever refer to the Septin? Oh, yes, of course. Yeah. Uh, well, I mean, there's some places where you can see that, that there are different textural traditions. Like, you know, Deuteronomy, the nations are divided according to the numbers of L Yeah. In the, or the number, the chil the Sons of God, you know, or the Sons of Israel in the Masoretic. And that's a huge difference. So, I mean, those things are interesting. And the septer is literarily more appealing than the New Testament, again, because it was a good translation for the most part of very beautiful books. I'm just, I'm just being honest, but it's such, it's such a big job, you know, and, and, you know, death approaches rapidly and times winged chariot. Is it my back? So I don't know if I would've the time, but it's an appealing idea to do a sub subter as well, a translation of the Greek Old Testament I would call it. So I've got a related question for Professor Alter with David. I asked him, which came first, the theologian or the translator with Professor Walter. I would ask, how did your early interest in the tre criticism affect your work as a translator? I got into, uh, working on the Hebrew Bible, by, um, writing a book on biblical narrative years ago. And, uh, then I did a book on biblical poetry and by, I, I suppose that, that when I did those two books, I imagined, well, I'm a literary critic. I have all the, these sophisticated tools for dealing. With literary texts, so I'm going to apply them to the Bible. To a certain extent I did that. But really what I found wa was that the, there were all kinds of things going on in the Bible and literary ways that were teaching me about narrative, teaching me about poetry. And, um, the more I worked on these topics, the, the more I came to appreciate the subtlety, the sophistication, the power of the literature, the Hebrew Bible. And that is what then brought me to attempt translation because I, I thought, well, one has to make some effort to get into English more of the, the literary mastery of the Hebrew. So here I have a question, which I'm asking with some trepidation because I have taught the art of biblical mat narrative many times. Many generations of my students have learned all the different kinds of repetition, the verbal repetition, the types, scenes, all about putting, showing ahead of telling and so on, the use of dialogue and so on. Now, I haven't taught the art of biblical poetry as often, but I've told a lot of students about the repetition, uh, the long literal repetition from verse to verse and so on. So I've been teaching this for a long time. So I have to ask with trepidation whether you've changed your mind about those early books as a result of translating the whole Bible. You know, do you have a different feeling? Would you have said things differently or not said those things at all? Well, I did, uh, revise additions of both those books, maybe seven or eight years ago. And, um, interestingly, there, there wasn't much that I changed at all in the, the poetry book. In the narrative book. I felt that I had been a little bit too dismissive, of biblical criticism and, uh, uh, hadn't really accommodated much the, uh, persuasive arguments about the, the composite nature, the text and inconsistencies in the text. So I, I did some modest revising in that direction. Otherwise, there were certain ideas that occurred to me, and this wasn't a change in my basic position, but certain ideas that occurred to me as time passed that I hadn't really put into those books. For example, I came to appreciate more and more. The liveliness and the complexity of dialogue in the Bible. And, and, and it fully dawned on me something that I said earlier in our conversation, that the true precursor of dialogue in the novel is dialogue in the, in the Hebrew Bible. And so I tried to, get at that, in my rendering of the, the, uh, speeches between characters in the Bible. then there was actually one narrative convention that I just hadn't noticed ba back in 1981 when I wrote the narrative book. yeah. Which is, we know there's a set way to present dialogue in the Bible, and so and so said to so and so, and then you have the speech and then, uh, this is followed by. The other guy says, and so, and so answered, and he said, and his speech. But in quite a few instances, I think I've compiled at least 50 or 60 something different happens. That is you have, let's say, uh, Reen and Simeon and, and Reuben said to Simeon, and then you have a speech. And then what follows is a repetition of the Inqu formula, the formula for introducing speech. And Reuben said to Simeon, which is a little surprising, and in every one of these cases, it's a signal that the, the interlocutor or the second party in the dialogue has a problem in response. That person is either astounded or baffled or embarrassed or, or confused. And the repetition of, of the formula for introducing speech tells you that, and that then gives you a clue to what's going on in the interaction between the character. So there are things that I did not discover all those years ago, so you know, more of course, right. I think they say, right. The best way to, uh, learn a subject is to teach it. So I guess the best way to learn a text is to translate it, right? No, I do have Israeli colleagues also who, uh, who say that, uh, who kind of envy, uh, the American, the, the fact that American scholars when they write articles and English need to translate their texts into English because that allows them to kind of dwell on them in a way that, uh, Israeli scholars might, kind of, not, not be able to, or not occur to them to do. Maybe I'll follow up, professor Als with one another. one more question, for you. I'll quote something that you say about, A translation, a well-known translation, of the Petit by Everett Fox. In your introduction, uh, you say, uh, his English has the great virtue of reminding us verse after verse of the strangeness of the Hebrew original, but it does so at the cost of often being not quite English, and consequently of becoming a text for a study rather than a fluently readable version that conveys the stylistic poise and power of the Hebrew. And I take that to be a pretty good summary. Uh, again, you can correct me, uh, but of the, of your goal, uh, a fluently readable version that create, that conveys the stylistic poise and power of the Hebrew. Despite that you do uphold his general view that biblical translations should represent the Bible in English rather than explain it. Uh, and then you reflect in the slight on the kind of extraordinary concreteness of biblical Hebrew and the importance of conveying that concreteness in English, uh, retaining the metaphors, the retaining, the metaphors. I wonder, uh, were there situations where it wa it was difficult to do that precisely because of this danger of producing a translation that's not quite English, or whether you could, uh, reflect on cases where reproducing the, the concreteness of the language just came at too great a cost for the readability of the English. My commitment is through a rather literal translation of the Hebrew. I think that my translation is even somewhat more literal than the King James version, although I admire the literalness of the King James version. But there, there are certain points. It just sounds too weird. So the, there are, moments where you have to follow the prison. Never sound weird. On the other hand, there were definitely moments when, I felt that, to be honest, to the Hebrew, I had to be a little ungainly in, in the English. And I wasn't particularly happy with the ung uncleanliness, but I did it. and uh, here, here's an example right from the beginning of Genesis. Uh, well, first of all, there's no Adam in the, in the garden. He's ha Adam. That's with, with a definite article. So that's the Adam, and Adam means a human person. we know from Genesis that even though it's grammatically male. It's, not inflicted as to gender because in the image of God, he created the Adam, male and female, he created them. Now obvious if it's, if it's, if it's male and, and female, Adam can't be restricted to man. So in most instances you can't translate Adam a, a as man. so what I did wa was following the Hebrew, quite literally. I translated it as the human, but I know perfectly well that the human is, a little bit awkward, but I decided to, to. Take on the awkwardness here in either, in order to be faithful to the meaning, because it sounds like an adjective, like the human condition. Yeah. Right, right. Or like it looked like a martian would refer to the human, you know? Exactly. Well, he maybe I'm really, I believe Professor Alter is actually right. Professor, you were, you were, yeah. You were, I think, uh, remembering some objection to the non weirdness principle. Right. The same thing of course happened. I mean, in the Greek, anthropo also, doesn't mean specifically any, doesn't mean a, a male. so it's, it's used quite often and there're places where obviously there I would opt for human being or something, even though it, it lack, but the difference is that I'm not actually doing any injustice to the text. You know, the weirdness or the awkwardness isn't really, uh, you know, how can I. He's in no way a, a betrayal of the source materials. And for the most part, I mean, I love the Apostle Paul, but my, my, my rendering of Paul is immensely more awkward, broken, and weird than anyone else is because that's the way the Greek reads. I mean, the, it's, it's a prose that abounds in Anaca Luther and Axxis and weird turns of phrase because Paul apparently never paused for a breath, let alone, let alone a punctuation. so in that sense, I, I, I start with an easier task because the weirdness as, as jarring as it might be to the average reader, it's not to my mind, it, it doesn't actually diminish the, the Greek. Okay. So my one final question for both of you. What in the critical response to your translation surprise you most? I actually, not a lot. I, I got the, what I expected, the classicists tended to give me the best reviews. The very best reviews came from purely literary critics who were just interested in getting a text that read differently from what they, the New Testament scholars all had their complaints where my translation didn't fit, say things they'd published in the past on a certain passage. So, I, I, so in general, the critical responses followed the patterns. I was, I was prepared for, I was surprised at times about the small things again, like why translate HUMS says specifically as winter flow or whatever it was. But, you know, I, I knew from which critics to expect ideological, uh, resistance and from, from which critics to, uh, expect broad acceptance. so I'm, I haven't really been surprised, professor. Well, as far as reviews go, I've been very happy with the reviews. and they've hardly been hostile reviews, maybe a couple that express reservations about one thing or another. what surprised me was email messages from readers. Oh, yes, those, yeah. Yeah. Most of 'em are very enthusiastic. and what fascinates me, and I did not expect this, I, is that I got a lot of enthusiastic response from believers of all sorts, but especially from Christian, uh, believers. I hadn't specifically had this audience in mind, but what struck me was that there was a kind of hunger among many, believing Christians. And this comes from Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Episcopalians. There's a kind of hunger. For, getting back through all the, the layers that ha have accreted over the centuries to what the, the original Hebrew is really all about.

Conclusion and Farewell

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We use your text, um, of Genesis, what in my foundation sociology class we read your text of the Akita story. So thank you so much, professor Altar and Professor Hart. Well, it's been a pleasure being here. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me friends. Thank you for joining us and be sure to be with us for the next episode of Minding Scripture. We Divine Word and Human Reason Meet.