MetaCatholic

I want to go back to my earlier discussion of the translation of μυστήριον (secret, later mystery) in the New Testament. This was a response to Rich Rhodes’ stimulating post at Better Bibles. Continuing the conversation, he left a helpful comment on my response:

We come to use pseudo-Greek terms in English to refer to things that theologians have worked out over the last two millennia. The problem is that none of those understandings were present in any but a seminal form at the time the Scripture was written. (I’ll have to post on this sometime soon.)

Moreover, μυστήριον is a technical term in Roman era Greek culture, but it doesn’t refer to anything like valid Christian mysticism. (Things to be believed/lived rather than to be simply understood.)

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not denying that such things are important by any means. It’s one of my main complaints about the evangelical church today is that is is too much about knowing and doing and too little about being. However, I still think that it is a mistake of the most serious kind to read our theology back into Scripture and use that to govern our translation. I have yet to read a translation that doesn’t somewhere do exactly that.

I’m not sure I find the matter quite so straightforward. A large part of me agrees with Rich: translation should work with the meaning of the original text in its original context. There is a nagging voice at the back of mind, however, that wants to raise some other questions about this.

It’s not just about the word μυστήριον obviously. There are many other fine candidates. Some have been controversial for centuries, largely because of theological controversies at the time, such as ἐκκλησία (assembly, church, congregation) or ἐπίσκοπος (overseer, supervisor, bishop). Others seem to be freshly raised: should βαπτίζω be “dip, immerse” or “baptise”?

This is not just a question of translation. Orthodox Christians reading the Greek text will be reading the later time-hallowed ecclesial meanings into these texts without any translation being involved. The text both helped create these meanings, and then is re-conceived with them present. It is the problem with a living text which is used in so many diverse ways within the ongoing life of the community that authored it, and one might also wish to say, theologically, under the guidance of the Spirit who inspired it. Some of the developments of textual criticism also point to the nature of the Scriptures as a living text, that is continuously reread and has, as it were, a biography behind it.

There are also various intra-canonical examples of which Matthew’s use of a translation of Isaiah 7:14 is just one of the more hotly debated. The LXX and NT authors did not follow Rich’s prescription for what makes a good translation. The church increasingly followed this scriptural example in its christological reading, especially of the psalms. It was above all Christology that popularised the reading “kiss the Son” in Psalm 2. Interestingly, the Church of England’s recent debates about the translation of the Psalter for use in worship covered this same debate. Did one pick a translation which, while harder to defend as a strict translation of the Hebrew, nonetheless picked up the rich echoes of that psalm’s uses in the developing spiritual tradition of the church?

I have no answers to these questions: I merely observe that they are there, and they are there because the Scriptures have belonged not solely to the generation of the more-or-less apostolic authors, but to every generation since. Perhaps reading with the church has some implications for translations that make more room for customary readings. I sense a further need of translation footnotes coming on.