The proliferation of translations of the bible is not an unimixed blessing. Professor Alan Crown looks at the difficulty of obtaining an accurate translation, faithful to the original Hebrew or Greek text.
God's Word or the word of the bible translators?
Which Bible Do You Read?
by Professor Alan D. Crown
It is a truism that if one wants to understand the literature of any people, one reads that literature in the original tongue. Translations, by and large, tend to lack the qualities of freshness, the plays on words, fine nuances and subtle meanings that a skilled writer may have written into his work in his own language.
We accept the truth of this statement when we need to read French, German, Italian or any other literature, but often enough are content to read the Bible - whether New Testament or Old, in translation from Greek or Hebrew, without giving thought to the possibility that we are missing many shades of meaning. There are even people who so venerate the cadences of the English translation known as the King James Version that they regard it as the only Bible text worthy of reading. Yet. the Bible is not a 'simple" work - a literary work which relies for its beauty and purpose on its artistic messages and style. It is these, and also a theological work, a collection of books which aim to teach us moral and historical messages and truths, some of which are phrased in language so subtle that no translation can capture the reality.
Moreover, translation cannot render exactly the meaning of even relatively simple phrases, let alone complex ones. When we transpose words from one language into words in another we are forced to draw on our experience of life and its situations to make the transfer from one language to another even in regard to simple intelligible matters.
Let us demonstrate these points. Here we see the same verse from the third chapter of Genesis in eight different translations.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman. Yea, hath God said. Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (Authorised/King James Version).
- The serpent, wiliest of all the field animals the Lord God had made, said to the woman, "So God has told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?" (Modern Language).
- The serpent was the craftiest of all the creatures the Lord God made. So the serpent came to the woman, "Really?" he asked, "None of the fruit in the Garden? God says you musn't eat any of it?" (Living Bible).
- Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" (Revised Standard).
- The serpent was more crafty than any wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?" (New English).
- Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: "Yea. hath god said: Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" (Soncino).
- The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, 'Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?" (Jerusalem).
- Now the serpent was craftier than all the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman. Has God said you shall not eat of any tree of the garden? (Koren).
The message conveyed in these verses is as transparently simple as the serpent, yet simple or not, none of the eight version agrees. Was the serpent craftier, more crafty or the most crafty? Did he say to or ask the woman? Did he speak of any or every tree? Was the serpent he or it? What was the question that the serpent asked? None of the translations departs too far from the words in Hebrew, but none of them is strictly an accurate translation - The New English Bible (no. 5) is the most accurate in most respects except that it turns the phrase "that God had said" into "God has forbidden".
Moreover, none of the translations picks up the obvious pun in the word translated as 'crafty' or 'subtle'. To explain that this word Arum is the same as the word Arum, translated 'naked' of the man and the woman, and the writer is commenting on the apparent simplicity of the snake - its naked 'transparent' state - which hid a cunning interior, takes the translator beyond the realm of translating into, commentary. Yet the pun is there and is only one of a series of puns in the same passage.
This pun, like the other puns has a point to make: in verse 7 of the same chapter, when both meanings of naked and aware come together, when the man and the woman discover that they have no clothes. Should the translator ignore this pun? Can he really convey the meaning of the passage without drawing our attention to the word play?
The argument that the translator should not lead us into interpretation is an argument that breaks down when we consider what sort of garments the man and woman whipped up for themselves out of the fig leaves. The translators tell us that they made themselves 'apron' 'skirts' 'to cover themselves round the hips' 'loincloths' 'girdles'.
Clearly, here, the translators are not translating but are interpreting the Hebrew word hagorah to try and make it fit the context of hiding nakedness. Not only are they trying to fit the context, but some translators are drawing on their canons of decency to make the hagorah hide the upper part of the torso as well. Plainly translated the word hagorah is a cincture, a strap-like or belt-like device which is quite distinct from a waist covering (that covers a good deal of flesh). But a cincture could hardly be used for covering much of the flesh so we are forced to interpret the word to mean some strap-like device that was wide enough to cover the pubis. The bottom of a bikini - a monokini.
The variety we find in English Old Testament translations would be acceptable if we were dealing with a work of literature. But, when we are dealing with a body of work on which many of our contemporaries base all sorts of religious beliefs and arguments, on which they hang their conduct and on which, at times, they are willing to stake their lives, this is not acceptable.
How much reliance should one put, for example, on the New English Bible version when one realises that the translators don't necessarily follow a Hebrew text as it is, but, as they think it ought to be, listing their selected readings in a 269 page book? So we find God finishing his work on the sixth day, not the seventh (Gen.2:2), and Noah waiting seven days between sending the raven and the dove to explore the world for signs of land. (Gen.8:8)
How much should one rely on the Jerusalem Bible which substitutes phrases from Greek manuscripts for readings taken from the Hebrew manuscripts without acknowledging this to be the case.
Translating the Old Testament is difficult for several reasons. One of them is that, obviously enough, we don't always understand what the writers were trying to say, and even what the words they use, mean.
Even in English one word may have several, unrelated meanings. So lead, could be a dog-lead, the metal from which pipes are made, a clue, or a verb. In Hebrew, the same thing applies.
We may know several meanings of a word, but not all of them, and so may misunderstand a passage. When a passage is very difficult indeed. translators are tempted to look at Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, Latin or Samaritan texts to see if they have a more understandable version, though the chances are that these translations - which is what they are - reflect the same difficult passage in their version. Our finished English product then. may be very different from the Hebrew text.
Secondly, the text itself may not be secure. Not all manuscripts are the same. This point was brought home very clearly to the writers of the Hebrew text which became the standard Old Testament text. Jacob ben Hayyim and Daniel Bomberg, the scholars and printers who standardised the Hebrew Bible in the early sixteenth century, used their own initiative when faced with different text readings and chose the one they thought to be most suitable.
We should, then, be very cautious indeed when we quote one or another version of the Bible to bolster an argument. We should stop and ask ourselves whether what we are quoting was said, written or proposed by a Biblical writer, character or teacher, or whether it in someone else's version of what he thought ought to be in the Bible.
Alan D. Crown is emeritus Professor of Semitic Languages at the University of Sydney
From "Annals Australia" July 1997
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