John Hobbins joins those criticising the first sighting of the CEB (among whom I seem to be a relatively mild critic). Some of his criticisms I agree with, but one in particular struck me as a little odd. It is based on his musings about what is arguably the most daring aspect of the CEB (and one I think I rather admire at least for its courage): their decision to render “Son of Man” as ‘The Human One”. John says:
CEB seems destined to repeat NRSV’s lamentable tendency to translate phrases one way in the text Jesus is quoting, and a different way, but without justification, when Jesus quotes it (Daniel 7:13 a human being coming with the clouds of heaven = Matthew 24:30 the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven;
This can’t actually be a criticism of CEB, since they have not released a text of Daniel. In fact, I suspect that the CEB of Daniel will have something along the lines of “one like a Human” to help make precisely that sort of connection.
However, John’s point is certainly a criticism of NRSV. But is it justified? First a diversion, before coming back to the text of Daniel and Matthew.
Probably the most notorious translation issue among many contested ones (which again concerns St Matthew) is the varied translation of Isaiah 7:14 as quoted in Matt 1:23. NRSV translates the Hebrew text (ha-almah – הָעַלְמָ֗ה) of the Old Testament (the one that Western translations have chosen as their base text) as “the young woman”. Matthew cites this from the Greek text (hē parthenos – ἡ παρθένος) which NRSV translates as “the virgin”. No doubt one could debate whether the (slightly archaic) English word “maiden” might do double duty here for connotations of both youthfulness and virginity, but the NRSV’s choice is a problem with the different languages and texts which the translators are working with.
In the case of Dan 7:13 / Matt 24:30, there is even more of a problem for the translators. Daniel’s Aramaic is the much disputed phrase bar enash – בַ֥ר אֱנָ֖שׁ over the meaning of which NT and historical Jesus scholars rage. That it translates literally as “son of man” is not in dispute: what it actually means is hotly contested. So Daniel’s Aramaic might be rendered “one like a son of man” as NET translates it – despite KJV there is no definite article). The LXX likewise has no definite article “like a son of man” ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου). Whether Matthew had a different Greek text, or whether he is influenced by the Son of Man sayings he knows, he actually quotes this text differently (and reverses the word order).
LXX: “Behold, on the clouds of heaven like a son of man he was coming” (ἰδοὺ ἐπὶ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου ἤρχετο)
Matt: [They will see] the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven (ὄψονται τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐπὶ τῶν νεφελῶν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ)
The Greek follows its source text rather closely. The innovation is in the New Testament citation which introduces a definite article and arguably changes the idiom and the meaning.
What then is a translator to do? The initial problem lies in the complexity of the texts to be translated. The New Testament, here as elsewhere, does not cite the Massoretic Text. The translator (at least the Western Protestant translator) is obliged by tradition to work with the Massoretic Text, at least as the base from which any departure must be carefully justified.
I agree with John that, if possible, translators should enable us to make links between the texts being quoted and the texts doing the quoting. Sometimes, however, faithfulness to both quoter and quoted itself works against that goal, since New Testament quotations play fast and loose with the text they quote. This, I think, is a case in point.
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Thanks for picking up on this. A couple of comments.
I’m not sure your “fast and loose” comment catches the essence of what is going on here. It’s more a case of “this is that” (Acts 2:16), something I would think Christian exegesis will almost inevitably affirm in the cases at hand, Dan 7:13, Isa 7:14, Zech 9:9, to which one might add Dan 3:25.
To be sure, respect for the meaning of the OT texts apart from their fulfillment in Christ makes it impossible to translate as KJV did:
Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Behold, thy King cometh unto thee . . .
Lowly, and riding upon an ass,
And upon the colt the foal of an ass.
I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.
And behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven.
The problem with KJV in all these cases is that the translation *limits* the sense, or would seem to limit it, to that the Christian tradition discovered in it, based on what it became a witness of.
It’s the same, really, in the case of LXX Isa 7:14. Greek parthenos was not meant to refer, from the point of view of the translator, to a sexual virgin, but to a young woman.
How then shall we translate? It is a dilemma. My first point is that a translation does well to seek to preserve the coherence of the biblical narrative taken as a whole by means of its translation choices. That will mean preserving a higher degree of concordance than relatively free translations like NRSV and CEB are wont to do.
A translation like TNIV, your blog’s translation of reference, though it tends to be freer than ESV, takes pains, no less than ESV, to incorporate the traditional interpretation of passages like Isa 7:14, Dan 7:13, and Zech 9:9 into its translation thereof.
Or one may choose to provide a translation that obscures the connection between the diction of the original text and later interpretation thereof. Either way, the need for annotation is apparent.
Yes to the “this is that” although sometimes for the interpreter it’s more a question than a statement. And broadly I think w’re in agreement.
As for translation of reference, it’s more about what the plug-in allows. TNIV is, I think, the least worst of the options on offer, but RefTagger as it’s called doesn’t offer RSV, NRSV or NJB, and I think ASV is too archaic, and ESV too biased in its attitudes to gender balanced language.
Is ESV any different than RSV and NJB with respect to gender sensitivity? I wonder what you are referring to. This is the kind of pattern I’m familiar with:
2 Thes 2:15:
Stand firm, then, brothers, and keep the traditions we taught you, whether by word of mouth or letter. (NJB)
Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours. (NAB)
So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. (ESV)
So then, brethren, pray for us, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. (RSV)
TNIV, on the other hand, has “brothers and sisters” here. I can accept that, though I have yet to run across anyone, man or woman, who, upon reading any of the versions quoted above, seriously thought “brothers” or “brethren” was not to be understood as gender-inclusive.
But TNIV 2 Thes 2:15 (and 3:6) is unacceptable because of its theological avoidance of “traditions” (and “tradition”) in translating paradosis.
So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. (TNIV)
As you well know, John, every translation has verses you can seize on and point to problems with.
In terms of the gender sensitivity question, I think my problem with the ESV is that too many of those involved with it created it as a translation that would fit their biases against women in leadership. With RSV inclusive “he” is as natural as addressing God as “thou”. It is of the age. In ESV it is at least counter-cultural if not doctrinal.
Apart from that I generally find ESV wooden, but I can’t say I’ve used it at length or in depth.
I find ESV wooden as well, Doug. I suppose it is true that ESV contains anti-Catholic, anti-Orthodox verses as TNIV does, though I can’t think of any offhand. Perhaps another commenter knows more. In this sense, ESV is advantaged because it is based on RSV.
Some of ESV’s sponsors are famous for their conservative stances on gender and other issues, but aside from the “brothers” vs. “brothers and sisters” issue, it affected their translation work very little indeed. That, I think, is what matters most. NRSV is even more exemplary in this sense. NRSV, to the dismay of some, made a strong effort to represent patriarchal passages as such. The NT in any translation contains a number of texts which provide sufficient support for traditional stances on a range of issues. A non-traditional stance, like the one you and I hold to, is an uphill battle on an objective view of the NT. To get there, a “strong reader” is required, of which there are many examples nonetheless in the history of church theology. Or am I supposed to pretend otherwise?
I don’t think inclusive “he” is inappropriate in translating a text like the Bible, especially if the alternative, chosen by NRSV and TNIV, is always or almost always to pluralize, even when that fouls up the sense of the source text. That, at any rate, is where the debate stands.
I image you will agree that it is important not to frame this as an intra-Protestant debate. Take a single verse, John 14:23, and compare it across various translations. You find pluralization in NRSV, TNIV, and NLT. You find the singular masc. pronoun, preceded by a generic “anyone” or “whoever,” in REB, NAB (including the very recent revision), NJB, ESV, and HCSB. Chart that up according to geography, theological Tendenz, etc. Interesting, to say the least.
It’s a very odd debate in a way – and I guess a particularly English language one. English speakers mix an unusually ungendered language (among those in use in feminist and post-feminist influenced societies) with an almost complete ignorance of how other languages are different. It predisposes us to over-reactions.
In one sense it isn’t an intra-Protestant debate, although the Catholic form – mainly driven by US debates and conservative reactions – focusses on the liturgy, and has landed English speaking Catholics with a hopelessly latinate proposal that sacrifices good English for fidelity to Latin form and a literal woodenness. It is an intra-Protestant debate in that only Protestants over-invested in a word-level understanding of plenary verbal inspiration see this as a live-or-die issue.
At least that’s how it seems to me.
As a rather conservative interpreter, I would say that it’s not just necessarily a view of inspiration down to the lexical level, but it’s also a translation approach apart from theology itself. Namely, it’s a difference in where we fall on our priority of the “then” syntax and the “now” syntax. While the ESV may be “wooden,” it is static; we note well the drawbacks of this, but there are advantages as well. It does obscure meaning to be wooden, but it’s a translation that won’t grow even more obscure as time goes by, since it isn’t grounded so heavily in contemporary (and therefore fluctuating) English.
Now I do admit with the need for less rigid translations, but attempts to preserve the original mind-set (which blatantly anti-Catholic or anti-Orthodox renderings fail to do!) is a goal that I consider valuable.
I will admit in regard to gender-inclusive language, I simply don’t see the argument for it in light of how common grammatical gender is on a global linguistic scale. It just seems like a modern artifice in a particular language — an artifice that (I don’t think) could be applied more globally.
Two over-simplified and naive solutions to this: 1. Increase literacy. 2. Treat women better. If women develop identity and an understanding of their own potential as people, then grammar issues would be of less consequence.
However, back to the original discussion, I would like to ask a question. What are your thoughts on Matthew 27:54? The TNIV’s “like a son of one of the gods” reminded me of this question. Whether the Roman soldier spoke in Greek (if text is verbatim) or in Latin (blindly considering Vulgate to be approximate), both “son” and “god” could be taken as indefinite. If we remove our “pious bias,” I think it makes more sense to consider the Roman somewhat ignorant of Jesus’ full identity, but doubtlessly acknowledging His divinity.
While this does not directly relate to the NT-quoting-OT discussion, it is another example of the Christian reinterpretation. Or is it?
Thanks for some interesting and helpful comment.
I’ve only got access to online TNIV which says “Surely he was the Son of God!” so I’m intrigued by your quotation. It’s very hard to know what level of definiteness is present, and whether Matthew intended any ironic ambiguity. Those questions probably can;t be resolved at the linguistic level.
I think my point on gendered language is this: how in fact do you translate a language in which all nouns are gendered into one where (generally speaking) only personal nouns are sexed?
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