Unity

GM asked for more translation posts. JA thinks I'm in over my head. Perfect! Let's try another.

Today's lectionary readings included Ephesians 4:1-16, which contains the familiar:

Ephesians 4:4-6 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

We looked at this in adult education before service. My pastor commented on the repetition of “one,” and how powerfully this repetition drives home the unity of the Church. This alliteration, by the way, goes back at least as far as Tyndale's “Let ther be but one lorde one fayth one baptim.” So I took a quick look in Nestle-Aland, and here's the Greek:

Ephesians 4:4-6 Ἓν σῶμα καὶ ἓν πνεῦμα, καθὼς καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν μιᾷ ἐλπίδι τῆς κλήσεως ὑμῶν· εἷς κύριος, μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα, εἷς θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ πάντων, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν.

There are a couple of things to notice here. The first is that Nestle-Aland (the Greek Text) sets this as poetry—fair enough. But the second is that the alliteration that is so powerful in the English isn't present in the Greek, because Greek is a declined language, and the form of the irregular adjective εἷς (heis) changes radically depending on the gender of the noun it modifies. In the critical, tight, confessional verse 5, it is εἷς—μία—ἓν, the masculine, feminine, and neuter singular forms respectively of the adjective “one.”

So here is my thought, and I'll grant that it's a stretch. While the alliteration of one—one—one isn't in the Greek, the sequence εἷς—μία—ἓν seems constructed too. And while it is certainly the case that humans love to impose imagined structure on top of randomness, I'm taking the position here that there are no accidents in poetry. Putting each of the genders of Greek in turn, as happens in verse 5, might be an allusion to a deeper union. Three-in-one.

So at this point, the mathematician in me takes over. What is the probability that a passage of three consecutive Greek nouns will hit all three genders? If we assume that each gender is equally likely, it's

3!/3³ = 2/9 ≈ 22%.

If we put in the actual distribution of masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns (243, 271, 111 resp.) in Ephesians, the probability estimate drops to 18%. Not compelling, not compelling at all. But suggestive.

My wife argued that the εἷς at the beginning of the 6th verse destroys the argument. Maybe. But I can easily accommodate this, as it looks to me as though the εἷς “closes the circle”: εἷς—μία—ἓν—εἷς. Hmm.

So, would a Greek ear hear this? Here I'll fully grant the justice of JA's disputing of my abilities and pretensions. I have no idea. But I like the thought, nevertheless.

Peace

Metanoia

Over on Kirby's blog, in response to a question by Emmy Bea, I noted Luther's dissatisfaction with Jerome's translation of the Greek word μετάνοια as penance, and to my surprise (but great pleasure), these remarks met with jh's approbation. Moreover, his note contained some additional remarks on the meaning of μετάνοια, and as I'd had some similar thoughts, I'd like to develop this a bit further, to three distinct ends:

1. I believe the question of how to properly understand the concept of μετάνοια, as Paul intended, is important.
2. The issue of how best to translate μετάνοια is illustrative of the difficulties translators face, and why the hope for a “perfect” translation is misguided.
3. I see in this a good opportunity to develop the faith/works discussion, in a way that I hope is less bound by a priori stereotypes, and which I hope will make the Lutheran position more comprehensible to people with a Catholic mindset. Please note that I'm merely hoping to explain, not to win any arguments.

Μετάνοια

So let's recall the starting point. In Romans 2:1ff, Paul is talking about divine judgment, the consequences of sin, and he touches on the transformative effect of God's love. Let me mash up a bit of English NRSV and Greek:

Romans 2:4b Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to μετάνοια?

Jerome's choice of translating μετάνοια as penance was unfortunate, and Luther's choice of repentance was better, but it does not feel perfect. I believe that the imperfection is in that both Jerome and Luther translated μετάνοια in terms of the consequences of the transformation, rather than in terms of the nature of the transformation, and I believe Paul was talking more about the nature of the transformation.

According to BDAG, the base meaning is “primarily a change of mind,” and suggested translational phrases are “repentance, turning about, conversion.” It is worth noting that the roots are μετά + νοῦς. “Meta” is a proposition, the translation of which is always tricky and beset with language specific idioms, whereas “nous” refers to “mind, intellect, understanding, way of thinking, attitude” etc.

jh raised up phrases like, “turning toward,” “seeking understanding and love,” and even the analogy of lovers making up after a spat. I think these truly are at the heart of the matter.

The classic Lutheran understanding of sin is separation from God. What does God want? He wants relationship. He wants his love for us to be mirrored in our love for him and one another. To place this in terms of jh's suggestions, in sin, we have turned away from God. His kindness is meant to turn us back. This is indeed the making up of lovers after a spat, where the lovers are God and us.

Is this really all there is? Does God really require nothing more of us when we fail than that we return to him? In a word, yes. But to stop with that one word is immature.

It is in understanding the steps that a mature Christian makes after turning back towards God that Luther's word choice and Jerome's come into play.

A mature Christian will acknowledge the reality of their actions, that they were in fact the actor, and that God did not intend for them to act this way. They will acknowledge the consequences of their actions. They will feel regret. This is where Luther's choice of repentance hits the nail on the head. Maybe not quite the nail that Paul intended, but on the head, nevertheless.

The second thing a mature Christian will do is to take responsibility for their actions, and this means that they will do what they can to repair the brokenness that they have brought into God's creation. Often, our actions have injured others, and an appropriate step is to make restitution to that person—to make them whole. This is where Jerome not only swung at the wrong nail, he missed it. The focus on penance is a focus on punishment, not restoration of either the sinner or the injured. And as this came to be interpreted, it had the effect of transferred the restitution from the injured party to the church, so that the consequences of sinful acts remained uncorrected, the brokenness unrepaired.

Translation

It simply isn't possible to fit a discussion like that above into a single word choice, yet translators do not have the luxury of interposing explanatory paragraphs into the midst of their translations. Even the standard mechanism of footnotes is inadequate for even a brief discussion along the lines that I've given above. Such discussions are necessarily relegated to commentaries, or perhaps to translator's notes. Translators have to pick a word, or at most a short phrase, recognizing that their choices will tend to miss some of the nuances of the original, perhaps emphasizing this part a bit more, and that part a bit less. They have to trust that their work will not stand alone, but will be supported by others.

It is worth reflecting here on the specific kind of choice involved. Will a translator try for a translation in which there is a tight correspondence between the words in their original, and the words in their translation? If so, simply using the word “change” would have been an excellent choice.

Or does the translator allow themselves word choices that draw the reader further down the theological path that they believed that the author intended? This is the kind of choice that both Luther and Jerome made in wrestling with Romans 2:4. It is a reasonable thing to do.

Or does the translator allow themselves greater freedom, and forsake a word-for-word translation in favor of a freer translation, which they hope will nevertheless come closer to the author's original intent? Here, “change of heart,” rather than a more literal “change” or “change of mind” might have been suitable. The Message is a good exemplar of a translation that is made in this style.

I practice, no translation is going to follow a pure strategy. All translations will make choices that favor literal readings in some places, and sense readings in other. I believe it is important to understand the translation philosophy of whatever English-language bible you have, and very useful to look at multiple translations which follow different strategies in doing deeper Bible studies.

But I think that it is both wrong and unhelpful to say that one strategy is right and another is wrong. All of these strategies are trying to convey the original, they just do so with different priorities regarding the tradeoffs that must be met. If you want a book that fully conveys all the nuances of the original, you have to read the original.

Faith vs. Works

The debate over faith vs. works has resulted in much oversimplification of the Lutheran side, and perhaps of the Catholic side as well. The Lutheran side is often reduced to "salvation by grace through faith," or "sola fides, sola gratia, solus Christus." [Lutherans, by the way, do not affirm "sola scriptura," although some Protestants do, and this leads to confusion.] Often, the Lutherans themselves have done the reduction. But the notion that Lutherans don't value or understand works is incorrect, they've simply transferred the point in their theology to which works are attached, and thereby transposed the Catholic understanding of the causative relationship between works and salvation.

In the Lutheran view, our works don't save us, and can't save us. Only God working on and through us can save us.

But once are saved, how then do we live? What is the nature of Christian life? What are its obligations? How do we respond to this great gift that God has given us?

The gift that we are given is the gift we must return: love. And the remarkable thing about this is that giving love does not diminish our store of love, it increases it. It is only by hoarding this treasure that we risk losing it. It is in living a Christian life that we should find good works, not as a means of salvation, but as a joyful response to salvation. And mature Lutherans can read James with appreciation, nod our heads, and agree: if you claim you have faith, but you're not moved to share God's love for all of us with your fellow man, and you're not moved to ease the pain and suffering of the world, then what sort of faith do you have? We are not saved by knowledge of doctrine, as even the devil has a knowledge of history and of the nature of God. We are saved by grace through faith, and in particular by a faith that transforms us.

And I think in this, there is actually very little difference between the Lutheran and Catholic positions as regards the sort of life that Christians should lead. The disagreement is really just this: are we saved because of our good works, or do we do good works because we're saved? Either way, we have both salvation and good works. I believe that much would be gained by consciously embracing our agreements, instead of just obsessing over our disagreements.

Peace

Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?

Today was the fourth of four discussions at my congregation on the ELCA's draft sexuality statement. Something odd happened, which I'd like to recount.

A member of the congregation—one of those who in the language of the statement is, “on the basis of conscience-bound belief ... convinced that same-gender sexual behavior is sinful, contrary to biblical teaching and their understanding of natural law,” read 1st Corinthians 6:9-10 from the RSV. I'm sitting there with my laptop, trying to catch up. So I switch to the RSV, and do a word search for “homosexual,” a word that was emphasized in her reading. It's not there—anywhere in the entire RSV—so I search by verse, find it, and am left wondering whether she'd added the word herself. Here's what I had:

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

No “homosexuals” there. So I show it to her after class, and she shows me her RSV— and there it is, “homosexuals” where “sexual perverts&rdquo is in mine. A quick check of the copyrights shows a 1952 copyright on her RSV, and a 1971 copyright on mine. There's also a very strange footnote in the 1952 RSV, “Two Greek words are translated by this expression.” Since I was the cantor at the next service, I didn't have time to dig any further, so off I went.

One thing that was really strange about this, and struck me as strange at the time, was her insistence when she read the passage on both the RSV version and the 1952 copyright. In retrospect, I believe she was aware that there were multiple editions of the RSV, and that they differed in how they translated this particular passage. Her purposes were better suited by her edition's language. And so she viewed the 1952 translation as authoritative, and subsequent changes as reflecting the efforts of those who would dilute God's word to excuse their own sinful behavior.

After service, I go back to the laptop, and check out Nestle-Aland (the current best version of the original Greek text), search out the underlying words, ἀρσενοκοίτης and μαλακός, and look at their respective entries in BDAG—A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edition—a standard reference work for New Testament studies. I can't say that the resulting entries will set your hair on fire, but if you're used to this kind of reference, you'll recognize that it is not for lack of trying.

BDAG is pretty graphic in terms of what is actually intended: μαλακός refers to the passive partner in male-on-male anal intercourse, and moreover emphasizes that this likely refers to catamites, an English word that wasn't part of my vocabulary until today. According to Wikipedia, a catamite is “the younger partner in a pederastic relationship between two males, which was a popular arrangement in many areas of the ancient world.” Websters gives a different, but supporting gloss, “a boy kept for unnatural purposes.” OK, I knew the concept and the context, if not the particular word. But BDAG goes further, taking a calculated swipe at two major translations of 1 Cor 6:9: “ ‘male prostitutes’ NRSV is too narrow a rendering; ‘sexual pervert’ REB is too broad.”

The definition of ἀρσενοκοίτης complements that of μαλακός, it refers to the dominant (and, in the likely case of a pederastic relationship, elder) participant in male-on-male anal intercourse. Moreover, the criticism of particular translations really ratchets up here: “on the impropriety of RSV's ‘homosexuals’ [altered to ‘sodomites’ NRSV] s. WPetersen, VigChr 40, '86, 187–91; cp. DWright, ibid. 41, '87, 396–98; REB's rendering of μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται w. the single term ‘sexual pervert’ is lexically unacceptable.” This is pretty dense, in keeping with the style of the reference, citing with specificity two scholarly articles regarding the proper interpretation of ἀρσενοκοίτης, contradicting the translation(s).

For a neutral, scholarly text, this is remarkable language: ‘impropriety’ is a hapax legomenon in BDAG, a word that occurs only this one time; ‘unacceptable’ occurs only four times, and in each of the other three occurrences, it is used in defining the lexical entry, rather than as a commentary on a translation's word choice. These are, within the confines of this kind of scholarship, fighting words.

I've also looked at every occurrence of ‘RSV’ and ‘NRSV’ in BDAG, and there is not a single other occurrence in which the author (presumably the most recent reviser, Fredrick William Danker) criticizes either translation. Likewise, the REB, which gets it coming and going in this sequence, although often cited in BDAG, otherwise escapes anything that resembles pointed criticism.

And it's not as if unnamed translations do any better. ‘Homosexual’ is used by the NIV, NASB, NAS95, GWORD, ESV, HCSB, NET, NLT. ‘Sodomites’ is used by NJB. I suspect that the only translations that would evade criticism from Danker for mistranslation are Messsage and BBE, both of which are be too vague to inform discussion or behavior. It appears that pretty much every English-language Bible does a disservice to the reader in translating 1 Cor 6:9. With apologies to Casey Stengel, can't anyone here play this game?

This is why I believe it is important to learn Greek, and to be willing and able to refer to the original texts, and to be willing and able to refer to the scholarly resources that are available. Because an error of superficial scriptural literalism, for which this passage constitutes the major proof-text, has resulted in the full or partial alienation of a significant fraction of the population from our churches.

As for the inconsistent readings of 1 Cor 6:9 with the RSV that got this whole ball rolling, it turns out that there were two major editions of the RSV, and the term ‘homosexuals’ was changed to ‘sexual perverts’ in the 2nd edition. Strangely, while the introduction to the 2nd edition talks about many of the changes that were made, it is mute on 1 Cor 6:9. I didn't know.

Peace

Ascents and Descents

I am learning Koine Greek. This is not easy, as I do not seem to be particularly gifted when it comes to languages. This is work, but it must be remembered that work is not a bad thing. In my case, this is a timely discipline, and I am thankful for the opportunity to follow it.

In reading the following, please keep in mind that I am an utter beginner in Greek, albeit a beginner who is willing to take risks. I fully expect any response to this to be of the form, “of course, we've known that all along.” Or, “What cluelessness!” I don't mind, either way, so long as the case is argued well enough that I learn something from it.

Greek has a number of words that convey the sense of personal movement. I've learned ἔρχομαι, πορεύομαι, ἀναβαίνω, and καταβαίνω, to name four. I always wonder in such cases why a language has multiple words. In English, this sometimes means little more than that borrowings happened from different languages, but even in then, a particular choice can shed light on the speaker, and their level of education and/or pretension. But in a language like Greek, it is more likely that the difference is semantic rather than contextual, and therefore a higher likelihood that the choice has significance.

I want to focus now on two of the four words of motion above: ἀναβαίνω—to go up; and καταβαίνω—to go down. I was working through John 2, when I came across these words used in rapid succession: Jesus goes down from Cana to Capernaum, and then he goes up from Capernaum to Jerusalem. Why down? Why up? So I check out the map. OK, I get it. From Cana to Capernaum is a 700 feet drop in elevation, and from Capernaum to Jerusalem is almost 2400 feet of increase. So the up and down can refer to elevation, and the necessarily greater awareness that elevation changes will have among those who walk from one place to another. But is that the complete story?

The worlds ἀναβαίνω and καταβαίνω occasionally co-occur, when there is a desire to create a particular contrast. Here are some examples:

Mark 1:10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. (NRSV)

Here we have the attractive vision that the significance of Jesus moving up while the Spirit moves down is that they are moving towards one another. Matthew 3:16 is a parallel passage, which contains the same imagery. Somewhat surprisingly, Luke 3:22 contains only the image of the descending dove.

John 1:51 And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (NRSV)

This recalls the story of Jacob's ladder, where the same juxtaposition occurs in the Septuagint:

Genesis 28:12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. (NRSV)

In translations, ἀναβαίνω is often rendered as “come up” to express ordinary human motion involving a change of elevation, whereas it is “ascend” when there is a spiritual objective, or a supernatural agent involved. Jerusalem, because of its physical situation, is a location that you ἀναβαίνω to, or καταβαίνω from. You don't ἔρχομαι to Jerusalem. I want to argue that there is a theological pun here, which is more visible in Greek than in English translations.

We know that the Bible often understands that there exist two Jerusalems: the Jerusalem of everyday experience, an imperfect earthly Jerusalem which is often the target of prophetic wrath; and the heavenly Jerusalem, where God reigns, and love and justice are perfected. Yet these two Jerusalems coexist, and might even be viewed as coincident in space. Thus, perhaps it is better to say that Jesus ascends to Jerusalem, prefiguring his ultimate ascent into heavan.

Peace