Is it absolutely necessary to read Hebrews 4:8 in the Greek (as perhaps once upon a time a translation of Hebrew into Hellene) and to conclude absolutely that the text must only refer to Joshua of the Book of Joshua? Sure, the verse comes right after the two quotations of Psalm 95:7. (The first quotation begins that discussion of Moses and the people unable to enter "rest" in the promise land; and the second directly precedes verse 8 of Hebrews 4.) Sure, the writer most definitely intends "Joshua" when using the Greek name Ἰησοῦς. So I'm not asking what the writer intended, or what the text directs all readers to.
Rather, I'm asking if there can't be a second meaning here. Could there be a meaning that the writer never intended at least not at first? And could there be a second meaning that all readers won't quickly get but that some might agree to? Could it be a meaning that the writer (or that the Greek translator of the Hebrew writer) would concede?
You know, we tend to think that Thomas Jefferson would concede to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that "All men are created equal" is a text that allows later readers to see that "All men and women are created equal" is a second possible meaning.
And C.S. Lewis thinks, likewise, that Plato would concede that he was writing also about the suffering and death of Jesus when he wrote about the unfair suffering and death of Socrates. (Lewis thinks that Virgil might deny he was writing about mother Mary and baby Jesus when he prophesied of a virgin birth - and yet, Lewis believes Virgil's text has this second meaning).
And readers such as Mary Daly get us seeing positive meanings in "eavesdropping" and unintended sexist meanings in "the-rapist" (once the "therapist," for example) and in "stag-nation" (first intended perhaps benignly as only "stagnation").
But would the language of the Bible, the Christian part of it no less with the Hebrews name nonetheless - would that language really ever have wordplay which racists or sexists might try to eliminate? I think the game of many male Christian Bible translators today is to "disambiguate," which means to declare for the reader that there must be only one meaning, and then to declare in the same breath what the single meaning must be. (No one often thinks that this is Father Aristotle's game too - the sexist, racist Aristotle one might add).
What I'm trying to ask also is whether translating Ἰησοῦς as "Joshua" in Hebrews 4:8 but as "Jesus" in Hebrews 2:9, 3:1, 4:14, 10:10, 10:19, 12:2, 12:24, 13:20, and 13:21 robs the English reader? Willis Barnstone thinks "Jesus" actually robs this Jew of his Jewishness and that this English transliteration of the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew actually robs Jews of this Joshua. And Barnstone, himself a Jew, is also an acclaimed Greek classicist, a brilliant translation theorist and historian, and an outstanding translator of many texts including the gospels of the New Covenant. Barnstone wonders what would happen if the world of translators, by analogy, made Socrates not Greek by transliteration and in an anti-Hellenist move then turned the world against all Greek people who are responsible for his death. That, I think, is often a bit much for anglo-centric Western Bible translators of the Christian church of this century to take in.
So I'm just asking: What's the problem for readers really when the translator is brave enough to avoid what Robert Alter calls the "heresey of explanation"? And what's the benefit if the English Christian "Jesus" in Hebrews were always "Joshua"? And might ever the reader be able to see the play when Joshua (as Jesus and / or as Joshua) can be the one(s) who did not give the people God's rest way back then?
Here's the verse, and I'd love to hear what you think:
If, in fact, they by Joshua had been given rest,
there wouldn’t ever have been another spoken of after that day.
If, in fact, they by Jesus had been given rest,
there wouldn’t ever have been another spoken of after that day.
εἰ γὰρ αὐτοὺς Ἰησοῦς κατέπαυσεν,
οὐκ ἂν περὶ ἄλλης ἐλάλει μετὰ ταῦτα ἡμέρας.
2 comments:
Barnstone wonders what would happen if the world of translators, by analogy, made Socrates not Greek by transliteration and in an anti-Hellenist move then turned the world against all Greek people who are responsible for his death.One of these days I will finally read Barnstone. You make his point clear and irrefutable.
Barnstone comes to his point, Suzanne, in difficult conversation with his very good friend over the years, Jorge Luis Borges. In a couple of books, he mentions the dialogue. And, most recently, in that translation of the four gospels and John's Apocalypse, Barnstone includes an essay at the end entitled, "Sparing Greeks for Execution of Socrates." But, I think, his most brilliant articulate of his point is in The Poetics of Translation, in which he takes the space of several pages to write a beautifully troubling "Parable of the Death of Socrates" in which we the readers and listeners watch Christians appropriate the pagan into their fold as their hero, condemning the rest of the Greek race as murderers.
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