MetaCatholic

I confess to always having had a weakness for the Jerusalem Bible’s translation of Ephesians 2:10

We are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live it.

Let me list the problems

• “work of art” is a bit of a stretch for ποίημα (poiēma) that seems almost more influenced by a reverse etymology of the English “poem”
• “to live the good life”  Not only is this a paraphrase of “for good works” (ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς) though “a life of good works” could be argued for as a reasonable interpretation., but “the good life” in modern English often carries hedonistic overtones.
• Taking the idea of these works being “prepared in advance” as “from the beginning” is probably, in the light of Eph 1:4 a legitimate interpretation of what it could mean, but far more than the text says
• Translating “as … he had meant us to live it” seems to look more to original intention in creation, than to the idea of a current way of life prepared as part of redemption.

So, generally, unlike the JB the NRSV is a quite accurate and unexceptional translation:

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

But I still find my imagination fired, my ethical vision stirred, and my heart excited by the Jerusalem Bible in a way the much more accurate NRSV simply fails to manage (along with every other translation I’ve looked at).  I don’t know what I should make of that theologically, except that it seems to me to belong to that whole range of fuzzy edges of additions, emendations, different readings, and strange translations that make scripture much more of a lively tradition in transmission than the repetition of a past text.

For me, this bad translation  is “inspired”, even though under most theories it probably shouldn’t be.