The Word: On the Translation of the Bible

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Other issues crop up when he discusses the doctrinal implications of linguistic data. I think it all boils down to one problem: Barton doesn't quite understand the evangelical doctrine of inspiration/inerrancy. He suggests, for example, that the imperfect Greek grammar of Mark and Revelation may contradict such beliefs. To anybody who has seriously studied the subject, however, that is simply preposterous. Translating words into another language requires careful thought but, ultimately, God’s word reaches us in a ‘person to person’ communication that is “alive and active” (Hebrews 4:12). Alter took an example from the “egregious” Jerusalem Bible’s ­version of Exodus 1: 8-14, about Pharaoh getting nasty with the children of Israel. Pharaoh’s words are rendered as: “We must take precautions to stop them increasing any further.” This, Alter says, “both in sound and diction could easily come from a bureaucratic report”. John Barton’s excellent new volume The Word: On the Translation of the Bible details the history, theoretical bases, difficulties and implications of biblical translation. As the former Oriel and Laing professor of the interpretation of holy scripture at Oxford, he is unusually well qualified to guide the reader through scholarly, ecclesial, ecumenical and wider cultural aspects of biblical study. The theological gear change necessitated by the new faith in Christ’s divinity, death and resurrection, and the subsequent history of Christian doctrine, is superbly narrated by Barton. From the first, the gospel writers and Christian thinkers sought to give the Hebrew Bible a suitably forward-looking spin, digging out apparent ‘testimonia’ to the coming of Christ in the older text. The Book of Isaiah in particular, with its references to “a son given to us ... a prince of peace” (Isaiah 9:2-7), was pressed into service. It was even repositioned towards the end of the Old Testament in the Christian bible, where its verses could form a bridge to the gospels, in which its “prophecies” would be fulfilled.

A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

The Bible is held to be both universal and specific, the source of fundamental truths inscribed in words that are exact and sacred. For much of Jewish and almost all of Christian history, however, most believers have understood scripture not in the languages in which it was first written but rather in their own - in translation. This book examines how saints, scholars and interpreters from antiquity to the present have negotiated the difficult task of producing usable versions of the Bible in their own language while remaining faithful to the original. It traces the challenges they faced, ranging from minute textual ambiguities to the sweep of style and the stark differences in form and thought between the earliest biblical writings and the latest, and explains the bearing these have on some of the most profound questions of faith: the nature of God, the existence of the soul and possibility of its salvation.

The Word is a fascinating and readable introduction to how we get from foreign texts in the ancient world to the modern English Bible heard in church or taken down from the shelf at home. The traduttore may be a traditore, but Barton is a faithful guide. This is a fascinating book! Much of the discussion around translation, especially in my circles, centers entirely around formal and functional equivalence. Barton does an excellent job here of demonstrating that the formal/functional spectrum is only one of several important features of the translational process. He considers matters such as doctrinal presuppositions, tonal register, archaism, gender inclusivity, textual criticism, genre, form criticism, and canon (as well as others) all factor into the process. His core thesis is that the adequacy of a translation depends in large part on its purpose, and therefore that, while there can be incorrect translations, there cannot be one uniquely correct one. I think he proves this point quite persuasively. Bible expert Professor John Barton tells the story of how the Bible has been translated and explains why that story matters. EXHILARATING”, says the cover blurb — and, amazingly, it is: scholarly intelligence, a readable style, and insights at every turn, with no language but English needed. This book is not a comparison of different Bible translations, but a study of how translators work, and the choices that they make. It is decades of expertise in the fine wood-grain of biblical texts and languages, applied to the clump of trees in a landscape that is scripture as we mostly encounter it.Sometimes metaphors and symbolism in scripture can bypass our left brain, logical approach. This is the dynamic reality of engaging and conversing with God in spiritual disciplines like Lectio Divina, where we create opportunity through meditation on the word for God to speak to our inner being. their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted This does not mean that all parts of Scripture are to be read as if one the same level. The book of Leviticus functions differently from the Gospel according to Matthew. But it does assume the traditional Christian belief that the ultimate author of Holy Scripture is God and that God does not contradict himself and that therefore, carefully read with due attention to their contexts, all parts of Scripture are compatible with each other. Barton is a truly subtle and genius mind; I remember a story my dad told me about one of his friends at University, Richard Cross, who was once remarked by Richard Swinburne as a truly 'subtle mind' who had this intelligence beyond compare. This is what strikes me about Barton- a man of truly great learning and a disposition away from confessional hard-headedness, looking towards a truth and an argument that is variated by interesting debate and scholarship. There's no right answer - and there are many examples of how the same passage has been treated in different version of The Bible that illustrate and illuminate the question. In the end it comes down to the audience for whom you're translating and the purpose for which you're doing the work.

Phillips was motivated by the inability of members of the youth club he ran, as a vicar in south-east London, to make head or tail of the Epistles in the Authorised Version of 1611. So he used the ­principle of equivalent effect, a trans­lation that “comes nearest to giving its modern audience the same effect as the original had on its first audiences”. John Barton’s new book gives a superb overview… condensing masses of research into an easily accessible volume for the non-specialist …even for those deeply familiar with the Bible there is much here to be learnt.”–Bart D Ehrman, author of The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the WorldLikewise, a text known to us as the Letter of Aristeas purports to tell how the Torah was translated into the cosmopolitan Greek of 3rd century BC Alexandria, at the command of Ptolemy II, further to enrich the collected wisdom of the Egyptian entrepôt’s eponymous Library. While the high drama lies in the immemorial and unverifiable past, the books of Wisdom and Law form a kind of practical guide to community life in ancient Israel. The “man of Proverbs”, for example, seems to get by according to a series of pragmatic aphorisms that indicate the advisability of keeping one’s head down. Proverbs 25: 6-7, for example, warns cagily: “Do not put yourself in the king’s presence/or stand in the place of the great;/for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here’/than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.” A fascinating journey through the history of “Amazing Grace”, one of the transatlantic world’s most popular hymns and a powerful anthem for humanity.” That is not adequate for understanding Classical texts, or Bible texts. Take the Book of Psalms: Barton refers warmly to the Prayer Book Psalter of Miles Coverdale (who had no Hebrew, and apparently no sense that such a deficit might disqualify him as a psalm-translator). As my first Bible was a GNB, I was mystified when people said that they loved the psalms. I thought that they were all the same: “God, you are great: I am miserable/happy/angry.” Conveying the ancient otherness of the Bible, and its complexity, need not always be off-putting. Biblical ideas are embedded in their context, and things can change or break when we force them into our thought world.