Beeson podcast, Episode 457
Valerie Duval-Poujol
August 13, 2019

Announcer:          Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:     Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well, today we have the privilege of hearing a lecture delivered right here at Beeson by Dr. Valerie Duval-Poujol. If you're a faithful listener to the Beeson Podcast, you may have heard her name before. She's been with us several times, and we also have listened to her in chapel. She's a wonderful scholar, the editor of a new French version of the Bible called Bible en Francais courant. It's a contemporary French version of the Bible throughout all of the francophone world. Distinguished scholar, she teaches at the Institut Catholique in Paris, but a faithful Christian woman. She's married to a Baptist pastor. They live in Bordeaux in France. A wonderful woman of faith and devotion to Jesus Christ and to his church. And a biblical scholar of note.

Timothy George:     The lecture she's going to give, we're going to hear now, is called Does Translating Mean Betraying? Did you hear that title? Does Translating Mean Betraying? Let's go to Beeson Divinity School and listen to our friend Dr. Valerie Duval-Poujol from France, as she presents this lecture as a part of our Biblical Studies Lecture Series.

Valerie Pujoul:     Today we're going to talk about the challenges of Bible translating. Did you take your Bible or your tablets? We're going to open the Bibles. Excellent. Bible translating is a fascinating topic, and we will take time together to ask the question, does translating mean betraying? And I won't keep you in suspense, but I'm giving you the answer right now at the very beginning of the conference. Sorry for the one who will be late. Translating is not betraying, but it is always interpreting. It is always making choices. And we're going to listen to what the translators of the famous King James say about that. So you all have your handouts, and we will read out of this preface. [Stefana 00:02:22], you would read that for us? It's all English, you're going to see.

Stefana:           Okay. In the introduction?

Valerie Pujoul:     Yes.

Stefana:           Translation it is that openeth the window to let in the light, that breaketh the shell that we may eat the kernel, that putteth aside the curtain that we may look into the most holy place, that removeth the cover of the well that we may come by the water.

Valerie Pujoul:     Eat the kernel, look into the holy place, come by the water. This is what is supposed to happen when you read the scriptures in a good translation, right? And we could spend all two conferences together presenting the treasures of creativity and excellent work most translators do to allow us to enjoy the Bible in our native language. Yet these are things you already know, and I suggest we spend time on things that we don't often focus on.

Valerie Pujoul:     First today, the challenges and characteristic of translating the Bible, and you will follow with your handout. Then the importance of the paratext. It's not French, but paratext, and the work of previous translators, division into chapters, verses, choices of title, punctuation, and notes. And tomorrow, a jump to the past with the influence of the first Bible translation, the Septuagint, our New Testament's theology and vocabulary. And finally, some examples tomorrow of how translators' preconceptions can and have influenced their translations, through doctrine, gender, race, ethics, and so on. We will take many examples.

Valerie Pujoul:     But today, first, the five characteristics and challenges of Bible translating. The very first book to be translated has been the Bible. Before that, there were translations, but only of documents of small size. Major work of ancient world were not translated, but summed up, and then you translate the summing up. So when did this very first translation happen? Let me take you to Alexandria, this very large city of Egypt. We are third century before Christ, and since Alexander the Great and his conquests, Greek language had become the lingua franca of all countries around the Mediterranean.

Valerie Pujoul:     The Jews located in Alexandria and outside Jerusalem in Palestine, so we call them diaspora Jews, were speaking Greek, and they did not understand Hebrew anymore. So they translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the tradition, why do we call it Septuagint? The Belgium and Swiss know that. "Septuagint" meaning 70, because the tradition tell us that 70 or 72 translators were sent by the authorities in Jerusalem to Alexandria and translated the Torah, the five first books of the Bible. If you think of the word "Pentateuch" for the five first books of the Bible, it would be anachronistic, because this word "Pentateuch" only occurs by 150 after Jesus Christ, and there we have three centuries before Christ.

Valerie Pujoul:     So this is why this very first translation has been called Septuagint, which means the 70 translators. Contrary to the Targum, you have already heard this word, "Targum", which is the Aramaic oral translation of the Hebrew Bible, but Targum, they were read alongside the Torah. Well, contrary to that, the Septuagint replaced the Hebrew Bible in the synagogues. In the following centuries, the rest of the Hebrew Bible was also translated, and it became the scriptures for Greek Judaism. This is the biblical text someone like Philo is preaching on, and then it became the Old Testament of the first Christians.

Valerie Pujoul:     When the writers of the Gospels or Paul quote the Old Testament, they mainly quote the Septuagint, so we better know about it, if you want. Then the church fathers preached with it and elaborated the main doctrines of Christianity reading the Septuagint. It means that the Septuagint was the Bible read, preached, prayed, studied for seven centuries, from the 3rd century before Christ, we just talked about it in Alexandria, to the 4th century after Christ, when Jerome, the great Jerome, translated the Vulgate, the Bible in Latin that superseded the Septuagint. So seven centuries, and it's very important to know more about that.

Valerie Pujoul:     Today, the Septuagint is still the Bible read, prayed, and studied, and sung by Orthodox Christians. We have few in our countries, but you have countries where this is the main religion, so this is still their authoritative biblical text, the Septuagint, today. So we shall go back tomorrow, so I'll keep you, we shall go back tomorrow to the influence of the Septuagint on the New Testament. Since this very first Septuagint, there have been thousands of translations of the Bible. Translating the Bible is still a work in progress. The Bible is the most translated book, and you're going to see some figures on your handouts. We will not read them, but see the evolution between 1600s and today.

Valerie Pujoul:     See the numbers of language in which the Bible is now translated. But as you can see, even today we only have portions of the Bible translated in 2,500 languages, out of the 7,000 languages in the world. So it's a privilege to access God's Word in your native language. This is not the case for everybody in the globe. Many people access today God's Word through a translation, in a language that is not their native language, their mother tongue. For example, some people in Africa with the Bible in French. But French is the language they learn at school, not the daily language. And linguistics have shown the importance of your mother tongue. This is the language of your feelings, and it is a great privilege to read about God's love in all native mother tongue.

Valerie Pujoul:     And for some languages, like French, English, or German, there are dozens or even hundreds of translations. Do you know, have a guess, how many translations you have in English for all periods? Let's bet. It's more than 50, for sure, and it's less than 5,000, to give you an idea.

Audience:           [inaudible 00:09:19].

Valerie Pujoul:     Yeah, we have 450 in English for all periods, which is the most for all languages, 450 Bible translations for all periods. But English was not the oldest translation in a modern language. What language was it, the oldest for a modern language, the oldest translation? A French one, of course. It is a French Bible that has been translated at the Paris University of La Sorbonne, where I have studied and taught. We are in the late 13th century. So why is this Bible important? Not because it's French, but because this is where the final order of all books of the Bible come from. Have you ever wondered who decided which books in your Bible would come in what order? Who has decided that? Well, let me tell you in short this story.

Valerie Pujoul:     Before the 4th century, there were no books. You only had scrolls on the shelf, so no books. Then the father of the book was invented, the codex we call him, and it had to be decided then in what orders would the book come? In the first codex, Sinaiticus Vaticanus, in Alexandria, I will show them later to you, in this first codex there was a first ordering of these books, decided by Christian theologians. But with differences between the codex. It was not set yet, it was not fixed. And this ordering was then confirmed, also slightly changed by the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, and then finalized in the Paris Bible in the 13th century.

Valerie Pujoul:     It might be obvious for you that the last book of your Old Testament is Malachi, you pronounce it like that, yeah, Malachi? That is the last book in your Bible, but it is not for the Jews in a Hebrew Bible. What is the last book for them in a Hebrew Bible?

Audience:           Chronicles.

Valerie Pujoul:     Chronicles, that we all read daily. Chronicles, the last book of the Bible. And how does it end, the end of the end, the end of Chronicles? It ends with the Edict of Cyrus, in which Jews are invited to come to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. So the ordering of the books is a theological construction that we have inherited, and it's different, you see, if it's in a Hebrew Bible or a Christian Bible. In a Christian Bible, last book Malachi, with its messianic promises pointing towards the New Testament. And just turn one page and pow, John the Baptist. This is really a constriction. And in the Jewish order, it is about the coming back of the Jews to Jerusalem.

Valerie Pujoul:     Other figure, when was the first translation of the whole Bible in English? You all know that name. Tyndale, yes, dare to say it, yes. Wycliffe, sorry. Wycliffe. We'll come back to Tyndale after. Wycliffe in the 14th century. That's just to give you an idea of this process of translation. In France, if I go into a Christian bookshop, I could find about 20 modern Bible translations. How many would that be in a American Christian bookshop? How many could you today buy? Any idea? I couldn't figure this. I couldn't find this figure, because it's so many, even today. And you will see in the handout, one of the last poll that say what the Americans read as Bible translations.

Valerie Pujoul:     Second characteristic of the process of translating is legitimate. It is even in the DNA of the biblical texts. Translating is a necessity and a specificity of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Let us observe together three striking facts. First, the Bible in itself is a polyglot work. It is written in Hebrew for most of the Old Testament, with some passages in Aramaic, and then Greek for the New Testament. That's why it's so difficult for a student. You have to learn all these languages. But because it is a polyglot Bible, three languages for a single book, and this is very rare. This is the only religious document of this kind, with three different languages for only one book.

Valerie Pujoul:     Second fact, the writers of the New Testament quote a translation when they quote the Old Testament, so it's legitimate. When you read, "As it is written," you know often this comes, "as it is written." Well, the writers, they do not quote the Hebrew, but a Greek translation, the Septuagint, and this is why sometimes you have probably already noticed, there is a difference between what you see in Greek in the New Testament and then when you go to the quotation in English that is translating the Hebrew. You see a difference, not because they are doing any mistakes, but because they are quoting a translation and not the Hebrew.

Valerie Pujoul:     Let us take the most famous example, Isaiah 7:14. That is read each year at Christmas. "Therefore will the Lord himself give you a sign. Behold the virgin," or "the young man," check on your translation, what is there? "The young man, the virgin shall conceive and shall bring forth a son and call his name Immanuel." The Hebrew text speaks of an almah, a young girl, and it is the Septuagint that translates here with pathenos, a virgin. And in Matthew, when quoting Isaiah, he writes "the virgin," which fits better to describe Mary the mother of Jesus. To him, it's really perfect to quote here the Septuagint.

Valerie Pujoul:     And it's interesting to see, in your modern Bible versions, what do they choose in Isaiah 7:14? Even Bible versions who do not really like the Septuagint, or who do not really tradition, evangelicals are sometimes suspicion to tradition, so they don't like Septuagint, but here they translate not the Hebrew but the Septuagint, because it fits better to what Matthew is quoting and saying.

Valerie Pujoul:     And third striking fact, in what language did Jesus speak? You know this one. Aramaic. Jesus, he probably knew a few words of Greek, like most people on this earth knows a few words of English, if you want. This was the common colony language, but his language was Aramaic. So he speaks Aramaic, and in what language do we read his speeches, his parables? In Greek. All our Gospels are in Greek, except a few isolated words, [Aramaic 00:16:14], some really isolated words. We read now his words in a translation. There was no such thing as a gospel in Aramaic. From the beginning, there has been a translation of the teachings of the Lord. It is legitimate.

Valerie Pujoul:     And in the Gospels and the Greek world of Jesus's time, people did not call him "Jeshua", they called him in Greek "Iesous," Jesus. And it's important, because it means we are allowed to pronounce Jesus's name in the phoneme, the sounds of our own language. Incarnation, this is the heart of Christianity, incarnation goes that far, including saying his name in your language, with your sounds. And some people, and you hear that, especially in worship songs, they think they will get closer to him or maybe get more prayer answered, if they're saying the name of Jesus in Hebrew. You know, maybe he understands better if I call him Jeshua. It's a tendency. It's a trend you have. But it's nonsense when you look at incarnation. This is contrary to incarnation.

Valerie Pujoul:     You know that in other religions you are not allowed to translate the text. That is, you should read it in the sacred language of revelation. There is no such thing in Christianity. The Bible claims its incarnated character in the fact that each reader, each one of us, is allowed, has the right to read the text in its own language. Pentecost has proved the fact that translating is not only a must, a we-have-to kind of situation, or a last resort solution. No, translation is in God's plan. He chooses to give us his revelation in different languages. See Acts 2:10, "We hear them speaking in our own tongues the great things of God." He could have chosen a unique language, and could have helped everyone to understand this unique tongue.

Valerie Pujoul:     Likewise, in the Book of Revelation, where we discover God's plan in its final stage, when the heavenly Jerusalem is described, see what we read in Revelation 7:9, "After this, I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, every tribe, and people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the lamb" From every language.

Valerie Pujoul:     Third characteristic, no Bible is inspired. We have just been reminded of the value of translating in God's eyes. This is legitimate, and at the same time it's a paradox. At the same time, we also have to remind ourselves that only the original in Greek and Hebrew are inspired, not the translation. We hope it's inspiring, but it's not inspired. We do not possess, as you know, any of the original manuscripts of the Bible. We only read copies of copies of copies and translation of these copies.

Valerie Pujoul:     Nevertheless, there have been theologians who taught in the 20th century, some were not born maybe in the 20th century, that God chose one Bible translation in every language, and that this was the only one inspired. The King James for the English language, the Lutherbibel for German, and these versions were the equivalent of an inspired text. Yeah, why not? Well, the French theologian I am resists this theology, because in France, like in many countries, there has not been the equivalent of a Bible that shapes the language and culture as much as the King James has or the Lutherbibel did in England and Germany.

Valerie Pujoul:     From the very beginning of the printed Bible, there has always been at least two Bibles in France, one for the Catholics, one for the Protestants. You probably know the story of this elderly English lady who said, "If the King James was good enough for Paul, it is good enough for me." Sure. It is true that these two versions are fantastic, but even they are not perfect. I'm not only talking about the fact that they translate the Textus Receptus. I won't talk about that now. If you want to know more about it, you have this book. You all know the King James Version debate. But I'm talking about the fact that any human translations, even these two, although inspired by the Holy Spirit, are imperfect.

Valerie Pujoul:     I'll give you an example. When Erasmus published his New Testament in Greek... I brought you, we're going to have it circulated, a copy of his New Testament, it's Greek and Latin, it's 1516... he used, Erasmus, a dozen of manuscripts he had in the monastery in Basel he was working. He complied them. There were late Byzantine manuscripts. Not a single one was older than the 10th century, so you're going to see that. And for the last verses of the Bible, Book of Revelation, the manuscripts he had were missing these verses. Huh, so how do you do? Well, he took them from the Bible in Latin and translated them into Greek. So he had no manuscripts in Greek, but he translated from the Bible in Latin.

Valerie Pujoul:     And this is why in the King James, which follow Erasmus's New Testament, in the Revelation 22:19 you read, you have that in your handout, "And if anyone shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life." Instead here of "the tree of life" in all other versions. The King James here, following Erasmus, is given a text that is present in no single manuscripts in Greek of the New Testament, a text resulting from a scribe mistake. So a very imperfect edition, Erasmus's New Testament, and yet... I like God's grace... and yet his New Testament has been used as a basis for a translation by Luther or by Tyndale in England. It means this imperfect edition has helped a great revival called Reformation. So I love, you see, how God can use imperfect human works to accomplish great deeds.

Valerie Pujoul:     So even though we admire the work that translators do, at the same time, we affirm this is human, and we can expect fair criticism. Translation, translating is always interpreting, making choices. Therefore, we are entitled not to take any translation for granted. Listen to what is said in the Handbook of Bible Translators. Would you read that?

Stefania:           Sure. It is not possible to translate without determining the meaning of the texts in Greek or Hebrew. It means that interpreting is fully part of the process of communicating, during which a message elaborated in one language is presented into another one.

Valerie Pujoul:     Translating means making choice. This is what we are said here. To give you an idea, take an easy expression, "the love of God." Yes. Yeah, but what does that mean? Is it the love God has for you or the love you have for God? That's an easy one. You know that Luther experienced his amazing conversion thanks to a Bible translation problem. It happened when he finally understood the other meaning of "the justice of God." What does that mean, "the justice of God"? He was studying and translating the letter to Romans. He was fighting with the idea of the justice of God, a justice the way he understood it, the justice that comes upon us from God. And he was thinking there is nothing I could do to please God and be considered as righteous in the eyes of God's justice. And he was terrified. There is no way I can be righteous. The justice of God.

Valerie Pujoul:     And then he realized, thanks to the Holy Spirit, that the justice of God is a justice granted by God, the price paid by Christ, that Christ was the righteous one that satisfied God's justice, and that now this justice was granted to me. So Luther felt finally at peace with God, reconciled with him. The justice of God.

Valerie Pujoul:     Eugene Nida, one of the greatest Bible translation specialists, estimated that the Gospels only includes 700 places like that, 700 texts with ambiguity, where the Greek could be translated, understood in at least two directions. 700 just for the Gospels. So translating means making choices, and as we shall see again, the antidote against the subjectivity of any translation is to read several ones. If you only read one translation, you are bound to the choices of the translator, his interpretation.

Valerie Pujoul:     Fourth characteristic, translating is a difficult task. Let us start with a sexist comment, which you won't let on I shared with you. Translations are like women. If they are beautiful, they are not faithful, and if they are faithful, they are not beautiful. I apologize. More seriously, let us listen to Martin Luther, a Bible translator himself. How does he describe the difficulty of this task?

Stefana:           We are now sweating over a German translation of the prophets. O God, what a hard and difficult task it is to force these writers, quite against their wills, to speak German. They have no desire to give up their native Hebrew in order to imitate our barbaric German. It is as though one were to force a nightingale to imitate a cuckoo, to give up his own glorious melody for a monotonous song he must certainly hate.

Valerie Pujoul:     Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see the difficulty you have. The Jewish tradition has a saying to express this difficulty, almost a contradiction. You want to read it?

Stefana:           One who translates a verse literally is a liar, since he distorts the meaning of the text, and conversely, one who adds his own translation is tantamount to one who curses and blasphemes God.

Valerie Pujoul:     So you can choose between becoming a liar or becoming a blasphemer. You have the choice. What are the exact difficulties of this process of translation? Let us focus on the main difficulties. First, no language is perfectly translatable into another language. Words are not like labels you put on an object, and when you change language, you only change the label. In a tongue, a word covers different meanings, and it is very rare that in another language, the equivalent of this word covers the same meanings. Take the well-known word "paraclete". The paraclete. Jesus promised that he shall send us a paraclete. It means in Greek several things, so which one would you choose to translate? Someone who defends? Someone who comforts? Someone who encouraged you? What word would you choose? Advocate, counselor, helper, comforter, any of these words you would lose one of the meanings.

Valerie Pujoul:     So you could choose, like the Jerusalem Bible, the Catholic versions, to put "paraclet". It's not really easy for the reader to understand. So how do you translate play on words, alphabetical song? It only works in Greek or in Hebrew. This is difficult.

Valerie Pujoul:     Second difficulty, the difference of way of thinking between two languages. The Hebrew language speaks with many pictures. It is a very concrete synthetic language, like a painting. Think of an Impressionist painter describing the reality, small strokes by small strokes, in allusion more than in affirmation. Or English or French language is not like that at all. It's analytical, abstract, with many fewer images. An example, to express God's tenderness for his people, the Hebrew, very concrete, take an image, speaks of God's uterus for us. Well, you've never seen that in your Bible translations, about God's uterus. Have you ever preached about God's uterus? No? Try, try. Well, your translators, they prefer tenderness or words like that, mercy, compassion. They will lose the concrete aspect, the concrete image of the Hebrew. Often the Hebrew will use a very concrete term where we would prefer something more abstract.

Valerie Pujoul:     Third difficulty, the cultural differences. When you open the Bible, it's like traveling abroad in a foreign country. Reading the Bible is about getting exposed to a cultural shock. It is a problem if you do not feel this cultural difference. If you feel too much at home when you read the Bible, you should feel a distance. You should feel you are not really at home, because this is the daily life of Abraham or Paul. It was not like ours, and this is this distance that will make you cautious and make you try to understand the way they were living.

Valerie Pujoul:     When you travel, you take time to read about the culture, the habit of the people, what is not done and what is done, and to understand what you see and hear. So it is up to us, reader of the 21st century, to adapt the biblical text, not the contrary. But for a Bible translator, it is a difficult challenge. How much should we bring the text closer to the culture and understanding of the reader? Or should we let the reader do the job, all the work of understanding?

Valerie Pujoul:     One example of a modern translation that has tried to reduce this cultural gap between the reader and the text, to give you some example, a Dutch translator translating the Bible in the language in Malaysia where there were no fig trees decided to translate it using "banana tree." So in the Bible, you can read about the epistle of the cursed banana tree. See? We do try to reduce this cultural gap. In an old Batak translation in a country where there was no vineyard, for once, the wine had been translated "the vodka treat." See? You even have cultural differences between American and English Bible. You have Bibles for both American readers and for English readers. Is it "cornfield" or "grainfield"? That's a theological question, you know.

Valerie Pujoul:     Fourth characteristic, the translator has not the opportunity to explain. Sometimes you can use the footnotes. Most of the time you have to choose one wording or the other, and you cannot really explain why. Or it would take pages and pages.

Valerie Pujoul:     Fifth difficulty, the difficulty of some Hebrew or Greek words. What to do when the Hebrew or the Greek are very hard to understand? Well, like on hapax, when a word occurs only once, you will use the immediate context, the etymology, or the Septuagint. Let us take an important example. We prayed it yesterday. Our Father, the prayer that Jesus has asked us to pray. Let us look at the fourth request, "Give us today... " I'll listen to you, give us today what?

Audience:           Our daily bread.

Valerie Pujoul:     Our daily bread. Are we all unanimous? Yeah? Our daily bread. Well, our needed bread. In Greek, our bread, "[Greek 00:32:26]." What do these words mean? The problem is that this word is used nowhere else in the whole Greek literature in any times. This only time here in the prayer. So two possible meanings, depending on which Greek you connect it to. For the coming day, as you have all said, either today or tomorrow, or with origin and all Orthodox Christians still today, supernatural, essential to life, in reference to Jesus as the bread of life. So you may hear if you go in an Orthodox liturgy and they say the prayer of Jesus, "Give us our supersubstantial bread." That's another translation they have for that.

Valerie Pujoul:     So beyond this discussion about the translation, we wonder as translator why the choice of an unknown word here, for a prayer we are supposed to say to ask to Jesus things? Well, there is another passage in the Bible where food is also designated by an unknown word, in the desert with the manna. You remember this episode? The people of Israel were in the desert with no food, and God sent them every day a kind of frost on the ground. And when they saw it, they asked in Hebrew, "[Hebrew 00:33:50]?" "What is it?". So the name of the food is "what is it?" Manna meaning what is it? So it's a word that doesn't mean anything. What is it?

Valerie Pujoul:     And the aim here, you see the parallel between this passage with an unknown word and the prayer we say, Our Father. Well, the aim is to draw a parallel between a request to God our Father in the Gospels with this episode when God had faithfully provided with food for 40 years. So you may ask God your daily bread, or you may ask your supersubstantial bread, because he's faithful. You may ask him in confidence that.

Valerie Pujoul:     This tendency of a translator to adapt has been seen from the very beginning, even in the Septuagint. If you open your Bible and try to look at a passage like Genesis 4:8, "And Cain said to Abel his brother... And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him." Well, what did Cain say to his brother? The Hebrew does not tell us. Some modern translations here follow the Septuagint, and they know better than the others. They know what he has said to his brother, "Come on, let us go into the plain." But in fact, we totally ignore what Cain has said, so here it's very interesting. And it's really in Hebrew a verb introducing a sentence normally. Maybe we can see here a sign. We know that it is silence that gives birth to violence, and symbolically his silence speaks, if you want.

Valerie Pujoul:     Let us take another example. It's Moses's horn in Exodus 34:29. Moses comes back from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets, and in the paintings of this episode you see him either surrounding by a light or with horns, if you see the different paintings. Where do they come from, these horns? Well, it could be a different reading in the Hebrew. In the Hebrew, you know, the vowels have been inserted late by Jewish scribes, and sometimes with the same consonants you could have two different possibilities. So here the Hebrew word could mean that his face, Moses's face, was [Hebrew 00:36:09], it was shining. Or with other vowels, it was [Hebrew 00:36:14], it had horn.

Valerie Pujoul:     So either you understand that he was shining like the Septuagint did, and it led the church fathers like Origen to bring closer this episode to the transfiguration of Jesus. Or you translate like the Vulgate, with horn, in connection with the episode of the golden calf. He has horn too. And it would be then a way of comparing this idol to Moses, Moses being representing here with the characteristic, the symbol of strength, giving him a tremendous closeness to God.

Valerie Pujoul:     Sixth difficulty, the language is changing, reflecting a society also changing. Bible needs a revision every 30 years, not because we discover new manuscripts, it happens, but it's very rare, but only because the language is changing and evolving. Yesterday I was at the Civil Rights Center, and you can hear Martin Luther King's speech and preaching, and he's talking about the negro citizens. No one is shocked, especially in his mouth. Well, try that on a preaching today. That would be outrageous. So see, the language in 30, 40, 50 years really evolves, and we have to be careful in the language we choose.

Valerie Pujoul:     Seventh difficulty, difficulties connected to the [German 00:37:35], this German word for the text we use as basis for the translation. I will not have time to develop that today, but the question is what text do we translate? Most modern translators for the Greek will translate what you have in your Greek classes, the Nestle-Aland, or the [Hebrew 00:37:53] for the Hebrew. But this is an encouragement also to know more about the Septuagint, because sometimes it is the Septuagint that is the reflect of an older text than this Hebrew text. And this is what the Qumran discoveries has shown us, has proved us. In Qumran we have found manuscripts that were confirming texts different from the one we now have in our Old Testament. Anther difficulty, the eighth difficulty, the last one, are the translator's preconceptions and biased conceptions, but I will come back on that point tomorrow.

Valerie Pujoul:     The second thing I wanted to share with you today, after these characteristics of the translation, is the importance of the paratext and the work of the preceding translators. When we have to think of the question of the challenges of translating the Bible today, we have to think not only of the text, but also of the paratext, everything that comes along with the text. And the modern reading of the Bible must learn to distinguish the biblical text, words transmitted by copies and scribes, and what your translators or editors have added to the text, printers, publishers, translators.

Valerie Pujoul:     So we're going to have a look together at several manuscripts, if you would have a look. What is striking, the main difference, is this paratext. They don't have any paratext. They only have a text, without separation of words. You're going to see that. Without any punctuation. Without any titles. Without any footnotes. Everything is written in a row. So for example, the one you are holding is 200, the Gospel of John, a full century for the others that are circulating. So you will all have a look at that.

Valerie Pujoul:     This is really striking, comparing to a modern Bible here. Imagine, manuscripts were very expensive. For the codex, you have a picture of the Sinaiticus Codex, for example. Well, to have a whole Bible, a whole codex, it would take 360 sheep to have such a Bible. So who can afford to have 360 sheep? Well, only kings and popes, maybe. But this is why they want you to save space, and this is why everything is like that, no punctuation, no spaces between words, and so on. So let us see the different elements of this paratext and how it influences our understanding of the biblical text.

Valerie Pujoul:     First, chapters and verses. It's very late. For the chapters, and you have it in your handout, it's only by the 13th century that Stephen Langton, a scholar teaching at the Sorbonne again, and he was also our Bishop of Canterbury, he has divided the whole Bible into chapters. Well, maybe there were divisions before, but this is his division that has become very popular. Another very early division, if you learn Greek and you have a Nestle-Aland, in the margin of your Nestle-Aland you have Eusebius's canons. Eusebius, a church father, had already done a division of the Gospels, and this is what you can see in the margin, the figures you see in the margin of your Gospels.

Valerie Pujoul:     So from the 13th century only for the chapters. And the chapters, the Jewish publishers of the Hebrew Bible also adopted the same division, which is good, because it's really helpful when you have a dialog with Jewish scholars. We have the same division, and it comes from the time of printing. So verses, the division into verses occurred during the 16th century, by a printer this time, not a scholar but a printer. And the legend says that for the New Testament he did his work whilst he was traveling with a horse carriage to Paris, which explains sometime the bounce, the division, and not decision very well thought. And it explains sometimes, you wonder why the division is there or there.

Valerie Pujoul:     Maybe before that, it means that when you do your exegesis, when you study a biblical passage, well, you shouldn't be stopped by the division in chapters and verses. They are quite late, if you want. And you need to take seriously other signs in the text to choose your pericope, to choose the text you're going to study. And do not rely only on the division of chapters and verses.

Valerie Pujoul:     Let us talk about now the titles. We talked briefly about that yesterday in the preaching. These titles you see, they do not appear in any of the ancient manuscripts, except for some of the Psalms. And in fact, it does influence the reading we have of a passage. The tite of a passage brings you in one direction as a reader. Yesterday I mentioned Huldah and Martha, who do not appear in any titles in many modern Bibles, nor Rahab and the spies of Jericho. Well, there are so many more examples. Take Abraham's story. You will see how often Sarah his wife is mentioned in a title, everywhere. Or in Judges, Jephthah's daughter, who is sacrificed by his father because of a vow, don't you think she deserves a title? I mean, she's the one, you know? No, it would be Jephthah's vow, that would be the title. So it's also something that could influence your understanding.

Valerie Pujoul:     Let us talk about the punctuation. It's also something from the paratext. You see in the biblical manuscripts you have around, there is no punctuation, no question mark, no comma, no full stop, no exclamation point. Accentuation appeared in the 7th, 8th century, so it mean we should not waste our time in vain discussion about punctuation. See the example here of Luke 23. "Jesus answered to the criminal crucified with him, 'I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.'" Well, how will you punctuate this verse? Depending where you put the comma, you will have a completely different understanding. And the manuscripts, I repeat, do not give the answer. They are not punctuated here.

Valerie Pujoul:     There is also a debate about quotation marks. See 1 Corinthians 7:1. Paul declares, "Now for the matters you wrote about, it is good for a man not to marry." Well, who says, It is good for a man not to marry"? Who says that, Paul or the Corinthians? Depending where you put the quotation marks, and you didn't have any in the manuscripts. It's a decision of the translators. Well, you will have another interpretation of this verse, and I have given you two examples of two modern translations that have taken two different decisions for all the Corinthians. He is saying this.

Valerie Pujoul:     It is also up to the translators to decide when to put a capital letter or not. For example, is it the spirit, small S, or is the spirit, capital S, meaning the Holy Spirit? Take the example in 1 Chronicles 28. Two understandings, and I have given you the two examples. David gave his son Solomon the plans of all that the Spirit," capital S, "had put in his mind," here. Or English Standard Version, "And the plan of all that he had in mind," so in his spirit. So you see, it has been the decision of a translator to decide if was from the Holy Spirit or if it was from his creativity, his mind, if you want.

Valerie Pujoul:     Let us take an example in John, John 7:37, "The last day of the feast, the most solemn day, Jesus stands up and declare, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.'" Well, according to the punctuation you choose, you may understand this verse in two different ways. Do you end verse 37 with a point? And you see what it gives in the NIV. Or no point at the end of verse 37, but a point after "whoever believes in me," like the NRS? In the first case, in the NIV, the believer becomes living water, and in the second case, it is Jesus. So it's not the same understanding, according to the punctuation you choose. Translating means making choices.

Valerie Pujoul:     Oh, there is another difficulty here. We do not know what passage of scripture Jesus is mentioning, "as it is written." Really, we don't know, so many in your footnotes you have references, but we don't know where it comes from. This is not the only time Jesus is quoting a verse we do not find in the Old Testament. See for example Mark 10:19. I find it an interesting example. Jesus is answering to the so-called rich man. "You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother." If you compare with the Ten Commandments, well, there is one which looks strange if we know them by heart. "Do not defraud." You've never read that in Exodus or Deuteronomy. So either Jesus is making a mistake, that's a problem, or what is he quoting here? Most people think he's doing there a sum-up of the commands he has not said here, but it's interesting.

Valerie Pujoul:     There is a famous passage, and we talked about it with some students yesterday, where the paratext has been quite influential. Ephesians 5, about the submission of the woman. Ephesians 5:21 in Greek, there is a finely structured sentence talking about the mutual submission, submit to one another, in reverence for Christ. And then it specifically speaks of the wife. Yet most modern Bibles here add in verse 22 a verb that is not present in Greek, "wives submit." And they separate the two sentences with a point, and they add a title, The Duties of a Christian Wife. To be sure that when you get to that passage, don't read what is before, and you really get to the point, to what matters. So that's paratext. That's a construction as well. That's making choices.

Valerie Pujoul:     Other point of the paratext, footnotes, introductions, commentaries. There was a time where translators were also writing introductions. They were belonging to the text, and they are important. Like for Jerome, when he has written introduction, they have been so influential that for example, the name Chronicles, this is the third time I talk about the Chronicles today, but the name Chronicles comes from the translations of Jerome and his introduction to these books. So see how influential it has been.

Valerie Pujoul:     I say that for the people who are allergic to tradition, for people who think that we are in a direct connection with revelation. In fact, the Bible we have in front of us is the foot of a tradition. This is no bad word, this is the heritage we have from centuries. The name of the books of the Bible, the order of these books, which books is there, all of that is the result of a process and a tradition here. We should not get confused between sola scriptura, which is really a basis, the scriptures only, and nuda scriptura, the scriptures alone. No, there is a whole tradition.

Valerie Pujoul:     Back to the paratext and the footnotes. In the 19th century, there has been a dramatic change. Protestant's Bible have decided not to have any footnotes anymore. Some said it's because it made smaller Bibles, so cheaper, and others because they didn't want any catechism in these footnotes. And at the same times, on the Catholic side, you had the reverse. They started to have more footnotes to explain the text. It's only recent that in Protestant Bible you also have footnotes and introductions. And I find them very useful. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind, they are not inspired. This is not the text, it's paratext. It's added to the text. So you can be cautious with that, when a translator here is giving you his opinion or advice or especially in the cross-references he or she indicates. Cross-references are supposed to help you to understand better the text you are studying, but they are not from the manuscripts. They are a decision of your translator to help you, and sometimes it does influence the way you understand this passage.

Valerie Pujoul:     Other paratext, in some Bibles the paratext includes that the words of Jesus are written in red. You have that also in English? Yes. So it might be thought as a good idea, because it gives Jesus's words even more visibility. Yet there is a problem. It creates the illusion to the reader that he or she is standing at Jesus's feet, directly listening to his words. We should not forget all the intermediates, the mediation between Jesus speaking and the text you read, all the mediation that you have in between, if you want. He speaks in Aramaic. The Gospel writer translate them into Greek, and you read a translation.

Valerie Pujoul:     So of course, the Holy Spirit makes this text alive, but we should not, if you want, think that there is a direct link. We need some distance with the text. This distance is the distance that allows the Holy Spirit to make this text alive. If you do not have this distance, well, it means that you will read the text as a view of yourself, if you want. You take the risk to hear to your voice and not to God's voice from the text. This is a risk you take if you don't have this distance.

Valerie Pujoul:     Maybe a word about the consequences of the paratext. Well of course, paratext has been possible only thanks to printing. This is printing that has changed everything. I brought you a Gutenberg Bible. It's beautiful if you see that. You will see two columns. This is from that decision of that printer that we have two columns in most of our Bibles. There is no theological reason for that, it's only what the printer had decided, you see? So this is Joshua, yes.

Valerie Pujoul:     The printing has enabled many, many great things. It has helped the Bible to be widespread. It has helped the paratext as well. And sometimes as modern readers, we forget that before printing, Bible reading was something collective. You were not having a Bible in your own house. You were reading the Bible with others. You were gathering with others to read the Bible. Thanks to printing, we now have also the individual reading. We can read it at home. But we have forgotten that there is also treasure to read the scriptures with others. That's also really a great treasure.

Valerie Pujoul:     So printing has been a technology that has totally changed the way we read and use the Bible. And I will finish with these remarks. The history of Bible translation and transmission, in this history there has been such technological material changes that have been major. The change from scroll to book. The printing, with paratext and individual reading. And now there is a new reading technology, from scroll to scrolling, with many readers that have access to the biblical text on their phones, on their tablets and all kind of screens. My question is how will the move to electronic text change our attitude to scripture? Because every time you had this technological revolution, it has brought some changes in the reading of the Bible.

Valerie Pujoul:     It's probably too soon to tell. A few hypotheses. Maybe an electronic text is in constant state of flux. It could be updated everywhere. So what will that mean for the Bible to be updated every day? Maybe it would help to see the difference between the Word of God and a translation that can change, you see? Maybe we will enrich our reading with windows, you know? You read a word and you want to see a picture of the place you read about, or you want to read about archeological discoveries. You will open windows. That could be an enrichment to our reading. And maybe the risk is that it is harder to scroll, and you only see a few Bible verse on your screen, especially on a phone. And again, we may lose the context of the text. Maybe we're going to fall into that trap again. Well, will the gains and benefits of this new reading technology outweigh the losses? You, the new generation, will tell us. So we will see that with you.

Announcer:          You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.