About a week ago I suggested that red-letter Bibles were a bad thing (or as I put it in very understated and obviously totally serious language) the worst evangelical heresy. In a response today posted both there and on Evangelical Textual Criticism, Stephen Carlson disagrees with what seems to me to be a slightly odd comparison, but definitely the most original one.
I’m afraid these reasons also argue against the modern practice of using quotation marks in the narrative. How would you distinguish the use of quotation marks from the use of red-letter? Or are both bad?
I stand by my criticism of red-letter Bibles as a bad idea. But I do not think quotation marks are the same, for several reasons.
- Question marks are thoroughly conventional. They characterise speech as speech, but they do not say the speech contained in them is more important than the narrative in which the speech is contextualised. True, in a translation they may perforce interpret whether something is speech or not: witness the notorious disagreement about where Jesus’ speech ends in John 3.
- Speech marks, as a convention, belong within the flow of the narrative, as much as any other punctuation. They are as interpretative as any other feature of the work of translation, but they call no particular attention to themselves. Red-letter Bibles keep shouting “This is the important bit.
- There are some places where one could argue that quotation marks are the normal English translation of introductory ὅτι.
- In so far as red lettering has any pedigree in English, it is to distinguish what is lettered in red from the text around it, hence the concept of rubrics, marked differently from liturgical text precisely to draw attention to them as standing in a different relationship. Punctuation serves no such purpose.
I suppose it might be possible to construct a purist argument that all our texts should be written in a largely unpunctuated stream of uncials …
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I’m not (yet?) convinced:
1. Red lettering has been conventional among many English Bibles, as have quotation marks, though both are lacking in older Bibles, both English and in the original languages. Limiting the bounds of a quotation is a problem for both red lettering and quotation marks.
2. Both are interpretative: quotation marks say this is someone speaking; red lettering says this is Jesus speaking. That some people think the words of Jesus are important will happen regardless of the formatting convention.
3. Arguably, red lettering is a way to translate the words following ὁ Ιησους εἰπεν (ὁτι).
4. Quotations marks also distinguish text they enclose from text surrounding them. In fact, all punctuation calls attention to relationships among texts, e.g. full stops, capitalizing the beginning of sentences, making the first letter of a chapter extra large, etc.
The purist argument shows that all punctuation is a matter of contemporary convention. Theological arguments against them, as well as any other kind of formatting, leave me at a loss.
The difference in “conventionality” is that red-lettering is a limited BIble convention. Punctuation is a convention of all types of text. Can you translate anything into good English without employing its linguistic conventions?
This is, I think, particularly so on point 3. English texts do not conventionally signal speech by changing the colour of type. Since ὅτι is a normal convention it should not be translated by an abnormal convention.
Well, of course, red lettering is mostly limited to Bibles: that’s where the words of Jesus are. (The expense of printing in a different color also has something to do with the extent of its use.) At any rate, “abnormal convention” just begs the question of what convention is “normal.” For example, is ὅτι recitativum a “normal” convention? It is not good Classical Greek and the gospel writers differ markedly in their use of it; see BDF §470(1).
By “convention” I mean one that is used across a wide range of literature. I think you’re now tending to prove my point that some people want to treat “the words of Jesus” (not that we have those anyway) as though we do have them and they are more “the word of God” than anything else in the Bible.
Given that early Christian sacred texts adopted conventions at variance from their surrounding culture (extensive adoption of the codex, nomina sacra, etc.), I don’t that use “across a wide range of literature” is a good or appropriate standard to judge a convention in formatting Bibles.
Well, if you want to encourage people in the delusion that they’ve not only got access to Jesus’ real words, but that those words are more important than the things that Jesus is reported as having done, I can’t stop you.
Punctuation doesn’t do that. Red letter Bibles do.
Your choice.
I’m not encouraging any “delusion” (nor, for that matter, apparently able of disabusing of you of yours
.
Coincidentally, Richard Burridge gave a lecture at Duke today making the point that too many people look to the words of Jesus in exclusion to his deeds in formulating their ethics. So I certainly appreciate your concern. Nevertheless, it has not been my experience that people have been abusing red lettering for that, but perhaps people are different over where you are. To me, red lettering is a fairly innocuous aid to the reader.
Oh, well, you can’t say I didn’t try to disabuse you of your belief. I remain convinced that letters incarnadine do not serve the incarnation well.
I suppose it might be possible to construct a purist argument that all our texts should be written in a largely unpunctuated stream of uncials…
I don’t think you were being entirely serious, but using capital letters for “God,” while required by most modern standards, takes one Hebrew/Greek word and turns it into two English ones, so a translator always has to choose between “god” and “God.” Even though the choice is usually clear, just the fact that one word in Hebrew/Greek has become two in English can diminish the impact of the original.
And in cases like I Kings 18:24 (“you call on your god and i will call on the lord and the god who answers by fire is the god”) it’s hard to know where to put the caps. Different translations differ, and end up with very different meanings. (They all capitalize “I.” It’s the second “god”/”God” that’s the issue.)
-Joel
Rubrics! Yes! I’d like the Psalms to be rubricated rather than the words of Jesus. Besides, do we rubricate what the Angel of the Lord said to Jacob? And what about the Burning Bush?
Regarding your last point about uncials, in which you also implied no word spaces in imitation of Codex Sinaiticus and earlier, have you happened to read Space Between Words by Paul Saenger?
@ Joel: I suggest You call on your god and I will call on YHWH, and the god who answers by fire is the God.
very interesting discussion… sadly, most christians are not reading any Bible.. red-lettered…quotation marks or not…
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