Syncretism

As we hand over more and more to national colleagues to do Bible Translation and be in charge of their own exegesis there is always going to be a danger of syncretism. The pendulum can swing from appropriate contextualisation to syncretistic approaches that over-emphasise local, traditional beliefs. To avoid this there is a temptation to choose translators and consultants who are demonstrably ‘sound’ – they can sign all the correct doctrinal statements, and have been trained by all the right (Western-funded[1]) theological institutions, as well as having been instructed by missionary trainers and consultants on how to do dynamic translations that make truth clear and simple. This would be fine if it were not for the fact that there are some much more subtle influences coming into play. In India, for instance, scriptures, to sound true, must be beautiful literature written in poetic form. If we, as outsiders, over-stress the clear, simple (propositional truth?) meaning of scripture we can do violence to the national translator’s desire to write beautiful literature that will be read and accepted by many as a holy book. The missionary-advised translation is useful, but only for evangelism. As soon as a church is in existence the believers crave a translation that reads and sounds like a holy book. And so it is that the church starts a second translation project, perhaps producing a high-literary style and somewhat more word-for-word translation that can be preached from.

It may be worth pointing out that within the Bible there are a variety of literary forms, and some books ought not to be high style. The gospel of Mark is one of those. But Psalms, Proverbs, the Prophets, John’s gospel, and many other parts of the Bible can be written in beautiful language and still reflect the genre of the original scriptures. This is probably the best way to go – choosing to work on the books that are high in style first, so that the people and language group accept these books as scripture, before moving onto books that ought really to be in a simple straight-forward style.

---

[1] These will often have a particular bias, e.g. reformed, pentecostal, charismatic and teach some kind of systematic theology, or worse still, a theology so influenced by modernism that folk enter as believers and come out as cynics.

Building Bridges

Whenever we share the gospel with someone we need to build bridges of friendship first. In sharing the gospel with those from other cultures we have to build a bridge of friendship and also a bridge between our culture and their culture, and more importantly between biblical culture and their culture. Our world-view affects the way we see things. It can be thought of as the spectacles with which we view the world.

Certain things appear more clear, other things may not come into focus at all. In building bridges we are ideally trying to find concepts and practices in their culture that match biblical ones. Often mismatches occur and these have to be explained. For instance in the Bible sacrifices were part of the worship of a believer’s life. They also had certain functions like removing sin. In many parts of the world sacrifices are carried out to ward off the evil eye and make sure nothing unfortunate happens to a person and their family. This is very different! Therefore we can’t simply use the word ‘sacrifice’ and assume it will be understood. The good thing about Bible translation, of course, is that words are usually explained in the context of stories. It is pretty obvious that Abraham offered sacrifices as part of his spiritual life, not because he was afraid of evil spirits or the evil eye or whatever. In the project we work in we have sometimes found some very nice bridges. One is the word for Yahweh. We translated it as Biribar (the One who is) in Exodus 3. This is very close to the biblical meaning of Yahweh in that passage, which is the derived meaning of the name in the language, its ‘etymology’. Another bridge is to try and use a better term for ‘peace’ than one that means lack of war. We used ‘salamat’ which means ‘healthy/whole’, but it also sounds like the word used in greetings, ‘salam’. So ‘Peace be with you!’ at the end of John’s gospel has been translated ‘Be whole!’ but sounds quite natural as a greeting.

King of Kings and Lord of Lords

A song we used to sing went like this:

King of kings and Lord of lords, glory, hallelujah!
King of kings and Lord of lords, glory, hallelujah!
Jesus, prince of peace, glory, hallelujah!
Jesus, prince of peace, glory, hallelujah!

My question for you Bible Translation types is this, when does 'Lord' in the New Testament refer to Jesus, and when does it refer to God the Father? Why is this important? Because in some languages there is no good word for 'lord', as they didn't have them in their culture (only elder brothers, fathers, uncles i.e. respected elders). Also, it can unhelpfully blur the distinction between Jesus the Messiah and the LORD of the Old Testament:

'Translations which fail to distinguish the divine name from the messianic title also prevent the reader from recognizing important passages where the divine name is applied to Jesus. Examples are Rom. 10:13; 1 Cor. 1:31; 10:17; Heb. 1:10; 1 Pet. 3:14–16; and perhaps 2 Cor. 3:16. If more English translations of the NT made even the small distinction indicated by ‘Lord’ versus ‘Lord’, as is done in many English translations of the Old Testament, then the readers would be able to see that the divine name is being applied to Jesus in these passages.' (Brown and Samuel, 2003).

So, how do we know the difference? Sometimes it is clear from context e.g. Lord of lords refers to the Lamb in Revelation 17:14 and the Word of God in Revelation 19:16 respectively. But are there any clues in the Greek? According to Rick Brown and Christopher Samuel's 2003 article 'the meaning of kurios in the NT' there may be:

http://www.sil.org/sil/roster/brown_richard.htm

Apparently kurios often refers to the divine name, the KURIOS/YaHWeH of the Old Testament, especially in quotes from the LXX. Ho kurios often refers to Jesus the Messiah. (For an explanation of Yahweh, see http://www.justforcatholics.org/d03.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism - note that Adonai and Kurios are Hebrew and Greek respectively for 'Lord').

Now, you budding exegetes, see what you can find in Logos or Bibleworks or whatever Bible software you use and get back to me on this one. We'd love to find out so we can translate the term correctly whenever we find it in the NT!

David Gray

On the Danger of Syncretism?

As we hand over more and more to national colleagues to do Bible Translation and be in charge of their own exegesis there is always going to be a danger of syncretism. The pendulum can swing from appropriate contextualisation to syncretistic approaches that over-emphasize local, traditional beliefs. To avoid this there is a temptation to choose translators and consultants who are demonstrably ‘sound’ – they can sign all the correct doctrinal statements, and have been trained by all the right (Western-funded[1]) theological institutions, as well as having been instructed by missionary trainers and consultants on how to do dynamic translations that make truth clear and simple. This would be fine if it were not for the fact that there are some much more subtle influences coming into play. In India, for instance, scriptures, to sound true, must be beautiful literature written in poetic form. If we, as outsiders, over-stress the clear, simple (propositional truth?) meaning of scripture we can do violence to the national translator’s desire to write beautiful literature that will be read and accepted by many as scripture. The missionary-advised translation is useful, but only for evangelism. As soon as a church is in existence the believers crave a translation that reads and sounds like a holy book. And so it is that the church starts a second translation project, perhaps producing a high-literary style and somewhat more word-for-word translation that is more useful for preaching, teaching, and Bible-studies.

It may be worth pointing out that within the Bible there are a variety of literary forms, and some books ought not to be high style. The gospel of Mark is one of those. But Psalms, Proverbs, the Prophets, John’s gospel, and many other parts of the Bible can be written in beautiful language and still reflect the genre of the original scriptures. This is probably the best way to go – choosing to work on the books that are high in style first, so that the people and language group accept these books as scripture, before moving onto books that ought really to be in a simple straight-forward style.

---

[1] These will often have a particular bias that is based on some kind of Western philosophy.

Re tweet

http://everytongue.co.uk/blog/?p=1897 is worth reading

Mission from There to Here

A friend of mine was back home in Wales recently and heard a group of Korean mission workers in the town centre singing Welsh hymns in Welsh. At the end some of them greeted those listening, again in Welsh. This friend was, 'Quite frankly gob-smacked' as well she might be. We are used to African churches starting up in larger city centres and drawing in African refugees and residents, but we are not used to those from more Christian nations than our own coming to our country and adapting to our language and culture in order to reach us. This is both humbling and amazing. Long may it continue, and long may it be an example to us!

Bulverism is Alive Today!

It seems that Bulverism is as alive today as it ever was when C.S. Lewis had to invent the term to describe what was going on in his day to describe the much over-used art of analysing why people think what they think:

'In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism.” Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father - who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third - “Oh, you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment,” E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.” That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.' C.S. Lewis, 'God in the Dock'.

http://www.barking-moonbat.com/God_in_the_Dock.html
accessed 1st April 2011

It seems today that we have now reached an advanced stage of Bulverism. We now expect people from the two-thirds world to have a chip on their shoulder about not being as developed as Western countries. Conversely those from the West feel unable to comment on issues in the developing world. When I was at college, we were told that Jews are better at interpreting the Old Testament than Christians are (no doubt true in some cases, but hardly a rule). This kind of crazy thinking means that, as Sugirtharajah as said, one would have to be a tree to be able to make any comment at all on deforestation (The Bible and the Third World). This is, of course, very postmodern, and it is typical that C.S. Lewis spotted it about 30 years before anyone else. But we cannot go back to being modern, as that would involve assuming a level of human objectivity we no longer believe in. Instead we need to treat people as people, and let them say what they think. Please, let's get together and listen and talk, instead of trying to work out what is going on in someone else's head!