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Translating Religious Texts

‘When we Learn to Speak, we are Learning to Translate’, Octavio Paz

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Abstract

Certain philosophical problems occur in biblical interpretations where concepts that belong to the scriptural world – full of references to demonic forces and miraculous events including raisings from the dead – have to be translated into meaningful concepts in our twenty-first-century western world. A crucial issue that arises is that any interpretation of a text can, at best, be probable and can never be absolutely final and certain. This in turn has implications for the act of faith that any believer makes. Church traditions, the teachings of the Church on matters of faith and morals, and papal dictates are also subject to interpretation and are equally problematic. Attempts by Kant and others to avoid these difficulties by arguing that biblical texts are not descriptive but quasi-performative are also considered and rejected.

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Notes

  1. See Henry Wansbrough, Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, Sheffield, JSOT Press, 1991, and the same author’s The Use and Abuse if the Bible , London, T and T Clark, 2010.See also James D.G. Dunn, Remembering Jesus: How the Quest of the Historical Jesus Lost its Way, in J.K. Bilby and P.R. Eddy eds. The Historical Jesus: Five Views, Intervarsity Press, Illinois, 2009. See also J.Fitzmyer et al., The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1990.

  2. See M. -J. Lagrange, Personal Reflections and Memoirs, New York , Paulist Press, 1988.

  3. Thomas L. Thompson, The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past, London, Pimlico Press,1999.

  4. See Margaret Macmillan, Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, The Modern Library, New York, 2009. See also the remarks on literary interpretation by the great Shakespearean scholar Frank Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative, Harvard University Press, 1979. Kermode rightly insists that biblical texts must be interpreted in exactly the same way as literary texts.

  5. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 4 vols., Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library, 1991–2009.

  6. Ian Boxall, SCM Studyguide to the Books of the New Testament, SCM Press, 2007.

  7. M. Kähler, The So-called Historical Jesus and the Biblical Christ, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1962, p.102.

  8. See Brendan Byrne, A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark’s Gospel, Collegeville, Minn., Liturgical Press, 2008.

  9. See Jeffrey Archer and Frank Moloney, The Gospel of Judas, London, Macmillan, 2008.

  10. See Psalm 22, p.803, fn. a, The Jerusalem Bible, London, Darton, Longman and Todd,1966.

  11. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth, New York, Bloomsbury, 2007.

  12. E. Schüssler Fiorenza, The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2007.

  13. E. Schüssler Fiorenza, ibid, p.56.

  14. See Brendan Byrne, ‘Scripture and Vatican II: A very incomplete journey’, Compass: A Review of Topical Theology, Winter 2003, vol.38, accessed from http://compassreview.org/winter03/2.html

  15. Summa Theologiae, 1a.8.3. For an excellent study of the concept of translation, see Edith Grossman, Why translation matters, Yale University Press, 2008. See also the brilliant essay on the difficulties of translating poetry and novels by Julian Barnes, ‘Writer’s writer and writer’s writer’s writer’, London Review of Books, 18 November, 2010. See also Eugene A. Nida, ‘The Sociolinguistics of Translating Canonical Religious Texts’, Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, vol. 7, no. 1 (1994), pp. 191–217, accessed from http://www.bible-researcher.com/nida4.html

  16. See Kevin Hart’s brilliant study, The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, theology and philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. See also the impressive work by John J. Collins, The Bible After Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2005.

  17. H. Wansbrough, Jesus and the oral Gospel tradition, Sheffield Academic Press, 1991, p.10.

  18. See Max Charlesworth, ‘Postmodernism and theology,’ in The Way: Review of Contemporary Christian Spirituality, 36/3 (1996), 188–202.

  19. See the section on Kant in Max Charlesworth, Philosophy and Religion: Plato to Postmodernism, Oxford, One World, pp.100–116.

  20. Karen Armstrong, The Case for God: What Religion Really Means, London, Bodley Head, 2009.

  21. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1925, §7.

  22. The text of Le Roy’s essay is available in The Problem of Religious Language, Max Charlesworth, ed. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall,1974.

  23. Keith Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: the Silencing of Palestinian History, Routledge, 1996.

  24. See John Barton, ‘Historical–critical approaches’ in John Barton ed. The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.9–19.

  25. Michael Barnes Norton, ‘An Interview with Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: Critical Reflections on Philosophy and Theology’, Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Vol 1, no. 2, 2004. Accessed from http://www.philosophyandscripture.org/Issue1-2/Schussler_Fiorenza/schussler_fiorenza.html

  26. See E. Schüssler-Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins, New York, Crossroads, 1983.

  27. E. Schüssler-Fiorenza , Democratizing Biblical Studies: Toward an Emancipatory Space, Westminster, John Knox Press, 2009.

  28. See the essay by Paul Collins, ‘And also with you: Is the new English version of the Mass a betrayal of Vatican II?’, Catholics for Ministry, 2009, accessed from http://www.catholicsforministry.com.au/uploads/28737/ufiles/Paul_Collins.pdf

  29. See Maurice Taylor, It’s the Eucharist. Thank God, Decani Books, Suffolk, 2009.

  30. See ‘Dei Verbum’ Ch.III, in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott, London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1966.

  31. See Max Charlesworth, Religious Inventions: Four Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp.120-121.

  32. Mark Johnston, Saving God: Religion after Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 2009.

  33. On Spinoza see Max Charlesworth, Philosophy and Religion: From Plato to Postmodernism, Oxford, One World, pp. 39–42.

  34. Mark Johnston, Op. Cit., pp. 25–26.

  35. See Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, Madison, University of Wisconsin, 1985, p.23.

  36. See the wonderful translation by Ariel and Chana Bloch , The Song of Songs: A New Translation, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998.

  37. Michael V. Fox, Op. Cit., p.189.

  38. See the exhaustive treatment of the various interpretations of the Song in Marvin Pope, Song of Songs, Yale University Press, 1997.

  39. See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, University of North Carolina Press, 1983.

  40. Jack Dominian, The Church and the Sexual Revolution, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1971.

  41. Adrian Thatcher, Living Together and Christian Ethics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

  42. See John Shepherd, ‘The Inclusivity of the Resurrection Experience’, St Georges Cathedral, Perth, 2008. For a magnificent historical account of early Christian views on the resurrection of the body see the study by Caroline Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, New York, Columbia University Press, 1995.

  43. Summa Theologiae, Ia 103 art. 6.

  44. See Anthony Kenny, The Metaphysics of Mind, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p.31.

  45. R. Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, San Francisco, Harper, 1976.

  46. E. Schlllebeeckx, ‘The present Christological crisis and its presuppositions’ in Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, Part 4, Section 1, pp.575–612.

  47. H.Küng, On Being a Christian, New York, Doubleday, 1976, pp.348–53.

  48. N.T. Wright, ‘Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem’ in Sewanee Theological Review, 41.2, 1998. Accessed from http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Historical_Problem.htm

  49. John Bookser, ‘The Historical Jesus: An Interview with John P. Meier’, St. Anthony Messenger, December 1997. Accessed from http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Dec1997/feature3.asp

  50. For further discussion see Max Charlesworth , ‘Anthropological Approaches to “Primitive” Religions’, Sophia, Vol.48, No.2, 2009, 119–125.

  51. On Jesus as a bodhisattva see the Wikipedia entry on this (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva). See also John D’Arcy May, Transcendence and Violence: the Encounter of Buddhist, Christian and Primal Traditions, New York, Continuum, 2003; and F. Clooney SJ., Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries between Religions, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010.

  52. Thomas C. Fox, ‘The Uniqueness of Jesus — Facing doctrinal questions, Peter Phan speaks his mind’, National Catholic Reporter, December 28, 2010.

  53. See also his book: Peter Phan, Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue, Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 2004.

  54. See Nicholas King, ‘Traduttore Traditore : The Translator as Interpreter (or worse)’, in Philip McCosker, What Is It That Scripture Says? London, T& T Clark, 2006, p.154.

  55. E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, London, Penguin Books, 1993, p.227.

  56. Wayne A. Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries, New

    Haven, Yale University Press, 1933, p.200.

  57. St Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, 11, 14. PL.39, 42.

  58. Josef Fuchs, Christian Ethics in a Secular Arena, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 1984, p.7.

  59. Francis J. Moloney, ‘Whither Catholic Biblical Studies?’, The Australasian Catholic Record, lvxi, 1989, 84–86.

  60. ‘Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum)’, ch.11, section 8, in Walter M. Abbott, ed. The Documents of Vatican II, London, 1966, p.116.

  61. Karl Rahner, ‘Christianity and Non-Christian Religions’, Theological Investigations, vol.V, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Martin Buber, Le Chemin de l’homme, Edition Alphée, 2007.

  64. On fundamentalism see Martin E. Marty, ‘What Is Fundamentalism?: Theological Perspectives’, in Hans Küng and J. Moltmann eds., Fundamentalism as an Ecumenical Challenge, Concilium, 1992/3, 3–13.

  65. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, London, Collins, 1979, p.551.

  66. Raymond Brown, ‘Does the New Testament call Jesus God?’ Theological Studies, Vol 26 no.4, 1965, 545–573.

  67. Ibid., p.566, fn 51.

  68. See Francine Cardman, ‘Vatican II Revisited’, America, Jan 4–11, 2010.

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    Max Charlesworth

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Charlesworth, M. Translating Religious Texts. SOPHIA 51, 423–448 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0337-x

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