MetaCatholic

I know it’s got its faults as a translation, but I’ve always (as one or two previous posts indicate) had a great fondness for the Jerusalem Bible. I suspect that one reason for it is that as Catholics just set free by Vatican II, its translators weren’t constrained by centuries of Bible English. More successfully than the NEB (perhaps because less contrived) it finds a natural English style, often appropriately colloquial, but at the same time draws on a wider English vocabulary, and more literary range of expression than most dynamic equivalence Bibles There are some particularly good examples in the story of Paul in Athens (Acts 17:16 ff) After each example I quote what seem to me the better among several other translations.

Verse 18 a
Some said: “Does this parrot know what he’s talking about?” (JB)
Some said, “What is this pseudo-intellectual trying to say?” (HCSB)
Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” (NIV)

Verse 18 b
“He sounds like a propagandist for some outlandish gods” (JB)
“He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” (NIV)

Verse 21
The one amusement the Athenians and the foreigners living there seem to have, apart from discussing the latest ideas, is listening to lectures about them.” (JB)
All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. (NIV)

Now in all of these, I freely admit the JB tends to paraphrase, and tips outright into it in the last of these examples, while catching Luke’s scorn to perfection. But they are all examples of how often the text sounds fresh, English and natural. This is a translation that is too easily overlooked in Protestant circles, and while I’m glad that the New Jerusalem Bible has toned down some of the JB’s flights of fancy, and textual adventurousness, I still regret that it has lost some of these touches of genius that could make reading the text a verbal delight.

Once or twice lately I’ve endured acts of worship where everything was projected on screen – often with bad typography and clashing visuals. But the main thing that made these experiences bad, in my view, was a complete sense of disempowerment. This was not “our” worship: it was simply us responding like Pavlov’s dogs to whatever the projector flashed up in front of us, with no sense of direction, structure or familiarity to enable ownership of the liturgy.

Something can and should be done about this, and a very simple way of giving people some sense of where they are and where things are going is this:

A line across the top of the slide (and every slide) setting out the main structure of the liturgy, with the current section highlighted, helps people locate themselves, and so participate not just in the moment but in the movement.

Having said that, this is still not my preference for something that follows a regular and pattern. People should, I think, be encouraged to learn and own common and frequently used texts, and inhabit the structure, so that worship flows freely, and can handle interruptions, or even common extemporarily offered prayer and praise. Visitors, and those learning their way around, can have simple cards or booklets, but these should be treated more as a pair of stabilizing wheels on a child’s bicycle, a learning device to enable participation. (In fact, everyone should have them, so visitors and learners don’t feel marked out, but people should not be encouraged to depend on them, but use them as learning aids / comfort blankets.)

The projector should be used primarily:

• For people’s texts, when the occasion is not a regular liturgy
• For people’s texts, when they are supplemental to the normal repertoire
• For musical texts, when one wants to encourage freedom of bodily expression
• For visuals, when wants to enhance what is going on
• For specific uses such as visual aids to prayer, or meditations in pictures

But, in my experience, and in my prejudice, constant use of the projector for everything is simply a technological return to an old-fashioned one-man band, where everyone does what the leader tells them. Am I just being grumpy?

Dan Wallace, on Parchment and Pen has an interesting post on Pauline Scatology, in which he can’t quite bring himself to say “shit”, even though he thinks it’s the best translation of σκύβαλα (refuse, dung, garbage – Phil 3:8). I’m personally not entirely convinced (see Sirach 27:4) though it’s quite possible. But I do think his subsidiary point is well taken, that there is more abusive language in the Bible than we think. (His main point is how to reconcile the texts that tell us not to be abusive in our speech with the texts that clearly are)

Another example he gives is Galatians 5:12, where the NRSV gets it about right

I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves! (NRSV).
As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves! (TNIV – a little coy)

Actually, my favourite, because it sounds so English (and humourous – Lingamish please note) is the original Jerusalem Bible:

Tell those who are disturbing you I would like to see the knife slip

I have a recollection that the earliest printings of the UK Good News Bible (unfortunately I can’t find mine) went a step too far for churches, and they changed it in subsequent editions, but they rendered 1 Samuel 20:30 as Saul saying to Jonathan “You bastard!” Others may still have such a copy to check my recollection. Others again (are you there John Hobbins?) can tell me whether that’s a fair translation. All except the partially colloquial  New Jerusalem Bible (”Son of a rebellious slut”) seem to have toned it down considerably to something no English speaker would actually say.

We do seem surprised when insults (especially rude ones) appear in the Bible. I don’t know why, and I don’t really have Dan Wallace’s difficulty with reconciling them with the verses that tell us not to abuse one another. Hey, it’s human. I still recall myself baffled by one argument I heard for the North Galatian hypothesis. “Paul,” said the lecturer seriously, “would never have called people living in the south of the Roman province ‘Galatians’ it would have been very rude.” I found myself asking what exactly he thought Paul was being when he said “Foolish Galatians” if not being rude.

Naughty language and ride words in the Holy Bible? Some may find it shocking, but personally, I find it a great comfort.