Saturday, December 18, 2004 AD
The Heresy of Explanation
In the comments for my recent post on evangelical ambivalence about Christmas and the Incarnation, a discussion arose over the NIV's translation of sarx as "sinful nature" rather than "flesh".
While, as I said during that discussion, I think it's possible to overdo the NIV-bashing, "sinful nature" is perhaps a good example of the NIV falling into "the heresy of explanation".
This useful and enlightening phrase comes from the introduction to a new translation of the Pentateuch, "The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary" by Robert Alter, which is reviewed by Digby Anderson in this week's Spectator. Anderson describes how new translations of Scripture may "at least initially" send people back to their Bibles and increase sales, but "rarely have these new translations given the overwhelming experience" of the Authorised Version. He continues (emphasis added):
Robert Alter's view is that "the translation closest to the original is, despite its many faults, the King James", which is almost enough to dig out a copy of the Authorised Version and use it instead of the ESV for a couple of days. But then the ESV stands in the same stream as the Authorised Version, flowing from Tyndale down 500 years of English-language Christianity, with many of those old cadences and turns of phrase still intact, which is yet another thing I like about it.
To close, here's a sample from Robert Alter's translation, which Robert Fagles has praised as for "reanimating the King James version" and for its "cadenced gravity" ("You could not say either of those things about the New English Bible or Jerusalem", as Anderson points out):
While, as I said during that discussion, I think it's possible to overdo the NIV-bashing, "sinful nature" is perhaps a good example of the NIV falling into "the heresy of explanation".
This useful and enlightening phrase comes from the introduction to a new translation of the Pentateuch, "The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary" by Robert Alter, which is reviewed by Digby Anderson in this week's Spectator. Anderson describes how new translations of Scripture may "at least initially" send people back to their Bibles and increase sales, but "rarely have these new translations given the overwhelming experience" of the Authorised Version. He continues (emphasis added):
Their fault, apart from limp prose, says Alter in his introduction, is "the heresy of explanation". When accurate translation produces a word or phrase that the translators feel is strange or "inaccessible" to modern readers they adjust it so that it explains itself. The result is "a betrayal" and, since strangeness is a quality of the Hebrew original, the translation places "readers at a grotesque distance from the distinctive literary experience of the Bible in its original language".As Anderson points out, "This is spot on", and the greater retention of "concrete" metaphors over abstract language is one reason among many why I greatly prefer the ESV over the NIV.
The sort of thing Alter has in mind in speaking of the heresy of explanation is the rendering of metaphors of body parts such as "hand" by the function for which they stand e.g. power, control, responsibility. The substitution is needless — the meaning was clear anyway — and it subverts the literary integrity of the story in which it occurs where "hand" is repeatedly used in a connected way. Another example is the substitution of offspring, heirs etc. for seed, which cuts a passage off from all the other ones where seed is used.
Robert Alter's view is that "the translation closest to the original is, despite its many faults, the King James", which is almost enough to dig out a copy of the Authorised Version and use it instead of the ESV for a couple of days. But then the ESV stands in the same stream as the Authorised Version, flowing from Tyndale down 500 years of English-language Christianity, with many of those old cadences and turns of phrase still intact, which is yet another thing I like about it.
To close, here's a sample from Robert Alter's translation, which Robert Fagles has praised as for "reanimating the King James version" and for its "cadenced gravity" ("You could not say either of those things about the New English Bible or Jerusalem", as Anderson points out):
And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and that it was lust to the eyes and the tree was lovely to look at, and she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her man, and he ate. And the eyes of the two were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and made themselves loincloths.
... And the Lord God said to the serpent,
"Because you have done this,
Cursed be you
Of all cattle and all beasts of the field.
On your belly shall you go
And dust shall you eat all the days of your life.
Enmity will I set between you and the woman,
Between your seed and hers."
