Proverbs 14 Part V

 In the mouth of the dolt is a rod of pride,

but the lips of the wise will guard them.

--Proverbs 14:3

(trans., Robert Alter)

Aristotle tells us that... 

creatures who are brave or just 

(like lions, bulls, roosters 

and the human male) 

have large deep voices....

The poet Aristophanes put a comic turn 

on this cliché in his Ekklesiazousai: 

as the women of Athens are about to 

infiltrate the Athenian assembly 

and take over political process, 

the feminist leader Praxagora reassures 

her fellow female activists that 

they have precisely the right kind of 

voices for this task.

--Men in the Off Hours 

 (by Anne Carson) 

This Part V of a series could be entitled, "How Aristotle Reads Proverbs 14."  He would want to construct the category that is, above all, the normal one in Nature.  /  And from that he would categorize the other as lesser, perhaps deviant.

But there are those who turn his categories around and upside down.  In this post, I'm hoping that we can see how the proverb we call "Proverbs 14:3" in Hebrew and especially in Greek translation turns the cliché, natural order of hierarchical categories.  Let's come back to that in a while.  First, let's look at how someone recently has categorized translation of the Bible, and other alternatives.  Then, we can read the biblical proverb, and its translation, to see how it goes.

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1. How someone recently has categorized translation of the Bible, 

and other alternatives.

Earlier in the week, John Hobbins sharply divided Bible translations into two constructed categories:

EITHER 

 “translations committed above all to reproducing the wording and register of the original, translating metaphors with metaphors, and sounding strange wherever the thought and language of the source text is strange relative to our cultural matrix.”     /

OR “translations committed to clarity and naturalness of expression”

John placed into his latter category (quoted above) only and all the Bible translations that he presumed that Wayne Leman and all the bloggers at BBB must surely favor.  He himself favors his former category.  Unfortunately, John didn't give a single example of any translated text of the Bible to justify his categories.  In reply, Wayne made this plea:  "I hope John can find time to turn his thoughts on translation into a series which will give examples of translation which could be compared with how we might prefer to translate here at BBB."  

Suzanne McCarthy did offer examples.  This is what Wayne was asking for but what John himself did not supply.  And, interestingly, these examples do allow us to begin questioning this binary "EITHER / OR" thinking.  In a helpful comment, she showed how the first translators of the Bible are in the category where John assigns Wayne:

One can also see the odd functional translation in the LXX. Moses was described as saying

ἐγὼ δὲ ἄλογός εἰμι
ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἰσχνόφωνός εἰμι

Is there perhaps a cultural reason why this metaphor was not translated?  Perhaps there are times when strangeness does indicate that the metaphor should be abandoned.

Notice how Suzanne is allowing that that functional clarity in these translation examples may include "strangeness" even when the translators decide that an unusual "metaphor should be abandoned."  There's not the absolute binary that John might force the translation into, either one way or the other.

What her examples show is how the Greek translations of Exodus 6:12 and Exodus 6:30 do not convey (ערל שפתים) -- the strange embodied female-male Hebrew metaphor of "lips"-"un-circumcised."  Instead, the Jewish translators use differently-strange but clear Hellene.  They first use (ἄ - λογός), which is literally something like "lacking"-"word" in 6:12.  And, in 6:30, they use the un-common Greek compound (ἰσχνό - φωνός), which is literally something like "meager"-"sound" for the Hebrew phrase.  The Greek much more clearly represents the problem Moses is trying to convey to God in protest:  he feels he lacks the words to go back into Egypt and to make his political argument; he is concerned that he will sound only meager in the courts of Pharaoh.  Suzanne has translated these Greek phrases as "un wordy (wild and irrational)" and "weakvoiced (stammering)," which give us a bit of the range of metaphorical extensions in the Greek.  The phrases are rare, strange, but clear in the LXX.  (The latter phrase is not in the NT, and that former phrase is only thrice used, uncommonly, in the NT, but not as some sort of Greek biblish; rather as just rather technical Platonic Greek - as in Acts 25:27, Peter 2:12, and Jude 1:10).

The Greek or Hellene strangeness was clearer and maybe more acceptable to the Greek readers of the Alexandrian empire.  The Hebrew metaphor was strange among the Greek colonizers.  But it was strange among the religious Jews worldwide only because of the idea of "lips" being "circumcised."  It's one thing for a Jewish male to be circumcised.  But his lips?  Naomi Seidman discusses how normal and natural penis circumcision was but suggests that to extend this to lips is strange and unclear in any context:

In passages like this one [i.e., Genesis Rabbah 46.1], the rabbis expressed their conviction that circumcision is an improvement over nature, the enhancement of an otherwise imperfect human form.  The circumcised body is not mutilated in removing the foreskin....  Circumcision, then has multiple significations beyond its biblical meaning of a covenant connecting the Jewish people with their God; it is a marker of Jewish affiliation for native Jews and proselytes, an act and symbol of resistance to imperial legislation, the final step toward aesthetic perfection, a bodily representation of Hebrew discourse, the access to Torah that constitutes a barrier for non-Jews and non-males, and perhaps also a sign of linguistic talent (remembering the biblical diagnosis of Moses' influent speech as "uncircumcised lips").

The above is from page 89 of Naomi Seidman's book, Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation.  What she is saying that some rabbis have said actually bears repeating:  "circumcision is an improvement over nature," but it's an improvement that inherently separates Jewish males from "non-Jews and non-males."  What she's suggesting that Moses might have said is that "uncircumcised lips" is a personal problem that is to be "diagnosed," an individual affliction that separates him from performing the political discourse that he's been called to as a Jewish male circumcised.  Having lips circumcised, metaphorically, could be a critical improvement for this man of the Hebrews.

It's not too much of a stretch, metaphorically, to see this as a gendered problem.  The "lips" are often in the Hebrew scriptures associated with women.  For example, here is the start of Alter's note for his translation of Proverbs 5:3 (with his italics and his bold font):

the stranger-woman's lips drip honey.  The sensual ripeness of the alliteration in the Hebrew nofet titofna siftey zarah has a nearly identical counterpart in Song of Songs 4:11.  In the translation, "lips drip" is a gesture toward this cluster of sound. 

And here Suzanne calls "the lips" (absent from the Sefer Yetsira, perhaps a "masculinist text") "feminine imagery." She says that Julia Smith's English translation of the "story of the tower" of Babel does bring this imagery across.  However, Suzanne cautions us to note:

While lip in Hebrew is one common way to talk about language, along with tongue, it does not usually appear in English. The lip came to represent the feminine, receptivity and passivity.

In other words, the masculinist way of considering the feminine is to categorize it as a lack, an absence from the necessary message, as having not so much productivity but receptivity and as not engaged in activity but actually devolving into passivity.  Is this why the LXX translators chose not to render the Hebrew metaphor used by Moses of himself in Exodus?  Suzanne asks questions, and adds this:

These are my questions and not my answers. But we do know for sure that the translators of the Septuagint chose to use dynamic equivalence in translation instead of a foreignizing oddness when they felt they needed to. No sign of a circumcision of the lips here.

Naomi Seidman stops short of offering the possibility that the strange Greek is a gendered dynamic equivalent of the strangely-gendered Hebrew metaphor.  However, she does consider one version of the LXX translator motivations:

The [Church] Fathers imagine the Jewish translators as passive channels of God’s [clear] message to the world;

To turn this around, however:

in the [contrastive] talmudic account God works to keep certain things [very clear and clearly] between the Jews and himself [i.e., away from the Greek and the Egyptian worlds], not only sanctioning Jewish conspiracy but taking the role of conspirator-in-chief.  In this regard, the talmudic rewriting of the [Christian] patristic Septuagint legend is a trickster text: the [Jewish] translator is a trickster, who in folklore ‘represents the weak, whose wit can at times achieve ambiguous victories against the powers of the strong.’ Not only does the Talmud present the composition of the Septuagint as an elaborate Jewish trick, it also describes the passages in the Hebrew Bible itself as a ‘hidden transcript,’ the private discourse of a minority culture. [page 63]

Notice how the "Fathers imagine the Jewish translators as passive," and remember how "lip came to represent the feminine, receptivity and passivity."  Could there be something gendered in the Greek translation of Exodus 6?  Or could the act of translation itself be gendered feminin-ish:  clear, and yet foreign and still gendered in a strange way?  Why the lack of the lips for the Greek speaking Moses?  But then again, why "un wordy (wild and irrational)" and "weakvoiced (stammering)"?

Well, pardon me for suggesting that the LXX translators were resisting using Aristotle's Greek.  His masculinist logic was exactly what he taught Alexander to use, for his ruthless ends.  And so, in Alexandria, in Egypt, the Greek-speaking Jews translating their own scriptures from their own Hebrew, might have wanted to turn things a bit.

Is this so unlike what Anne Carson reminds us that Aristophanes's women do?  Here's the fuller context of this post's epigraph above:

     It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God. These judgments happen fast and can be brutal. Aristotle tells us that the highpitched voice of the female is one evidence of her evil disposition, for creatures who are brave or just (like lions, bulls, roosters and the human male) have large deep voices. If you hear a man talking in a gentle or high-pitched voice you know he is a kinaidos (“catamite”).  [See how Aristotle puts this in one of his biological treatises, History of Animals 582a, and in Physiognomics 807a, where he himself has to vocalize nothing, since Aristotle there is a writer to readers, male to other males.]

     The poet Aristophanes put a comic turn on this cliché in his Ekklesiazousai: as the women of Athens are about to infiltrate the Athenian assembly and take over political process, the feminist leader Praxagora reassures her fellow female activists that they have precisely the right kind of voices for this task. Because, as she says, “You know that among the young men the ones who turn out to be terrific talkers are the ones who get fucked a lot.”

     This joke depends on a collapsing together of two different aspects of sound production, quality of voice and use of voice. We will find the ancients continually at pains to associate these two aspects under a general rubric of gender. High vocal pitch goes together with talkativeness to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control. Women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes fall into this category. Their sounds are bad to hear and make men uncomfortable. Just how uncomfortable may be measured by the lengths to which Aristotle [writing On the Generation of Animals 787b-788] is willing to go in accounting for the gender of sound physiognomically; he ends up ascribing the lower pitch of the male voice to the tension placed on a man’s vocal chords by his testicles functioning as loom weights.

Is it better to translate strange metaphor for the same strange metaphor (maintaining "un-circumcised lips") in both the Hebrew and the Greek?  Or is there an-other purpose behind translating one strange gendered metaphor for a different one?  In the world of Aristotle's masculinist binary logic, rhetoric for males only, doesn't "un wordy (wild and irrational)" and "weakvoiced (stammering)" turn his cliché?

--

2.  reading the biblical proverb, and its translation

Now we turn to Proverbs 14:3.

בְּֽפִי־֭אֱוִיל חֹ֣טֶר גַּאֲוָ֑ה וְשִׂפְתֵ֥י חֲ֝כָמִ֗ים תִּשְׁמוּרֵֽם׃

ἐκ στόματος ἀφρόνων βακτηρία ὕβρεως χείλη δὲ σοφῶν φυλάσσει αὐτούς

"In the mouth of the dolt is a rod of pride, but the lips of the wise will guard them." - Robert Alter (from the Hebrew and Greek)

"In the mouth of the foolish one a rod of pride; and the lips of the wise shall watch them." - Julia Smith (from only the Hebrew)

"Out of the mouth of fools comes a rod of pride; but the lips of the wise preserve them." - Lancelot Brenton (from only the Greek)

It's striking here is how seemingly literal the Greek translation of the Hebrew is.  Are the Hebrew metaphors strange?  Gendered?  Are the Greek metaphors also both equally strange and gendered?

Yes,

but do note how Aristotle would read this.  He would get the allusions to women although he'd not want to concede that they may be either rhetorically saavy or politically wise.  Maybe females could be sophistic.  But as speakers, especially as political speakers, they'd be useless.

In his Athenian Constitution, he prohibits women from the judicial and the legislative processes.  Only the men can have rods, which some English translators have rendered "canes," "staff," or "staves."  The word he chooses is the one the LXX translators have chosen for the "dolt" in Proverbs 14:3; in the Athenian Constitution, Aristotle describes the male-only instrument for procedures:

The courts [in Athens are to] have ten entrances, one for each tribe, twenty rooms, two for each tribe, in which courts are allotted to jurors [who are men, not women], a hundred small boxes, ten for each tribe, and other boxes into which the tickets of the jurymen drawn by lot are thrown, and two urns. Staves [βακτηρίαι] are placed at each entrance, as many as there are jurymen, and acorns to the same number as the staves [βακτηρίαις] are thrown into the urn, and on the acorns are written the letters of the alphabet, starting with the eleventh, lambda, as many as the courts that are going to be filled. [63.2, trans. by H. Rackham]

Aristotle would not have thought of Aristophanes's play as funny in the least.  Here's a bit where the lead woman is encouraging another woman to pretend to be a man of the court, to trick the court's audience, while the audience of the play is in on the trick:

Praxagora:  Quick then [disguised woman], take the chaplet; the time's running short. Try to speak worthily, let your language be truly manly, and lean on your staff [βακτηρίᾳ] with dignity. [line 150, trans. Eugene O'Neill]

So Aristotle would only allow only men who speak in politics to have the "rod," the staff, βακτηρίᾳ.  But he would think in terms of lips [χείλη] and open mouths [στόματος] when he categorized women, who were to be wives, to bear babies.  Here's from his gynecological writings:

It is a sign of conception in women when the place is dry immediately after intercourse. If the lips of the orifice [τὰ χείλη ᾖ τοῦ στόματος, literatlly "the lips of the mouth"] be smooth conception is difficult, for the matter slips off; and if they be thick it is also difficult. But if on digital examination the lips feel somewhat rough and adherent, and if they be likewise thin, then the chances are in favour of conception. Accordingly, if conception be desired, we must bring the parts into such a condition as we have just described; but if on the contrary we want to avoid conception then we must bring about a contrary disposition. [Hist. of An., 583a, trans., D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson]

If Aristotle or Alexander or any Athenian male trained in good Greek were to read the LXX Proverbs 14:3, then immediately they would read (or mis-read) it as strange, as gendered, but as a reversal of the Aristotelian logical belief that females are inherently lesser than males, that women are not to engage in rhetoric or politics, and that women are just tricky like the sophists but not at all wise.  The Hebrew proverb in Hebraic Hellene actually mirrors the Hebrew feminine metaphors, but it takes them forward into political dimensions as well.

Is it just either one sort of translation or the other?

EITHER 

 one of those “translations committed above all to reproducing the wording and register of the original, translating metaphors with metaphors, and sounding strange wherever the thought and language of the source text is strange relative to our cultural matrix.”     /  ?

OR one of those “translations committed to clarity and naturalness of expression”?

Well, not exactly.  Doesn't Proverbs 14:3 in Greek turn the constructs of the imperial Greek males and the royal Egyptian men all around?  Is it the ones with the rods who are wise?  The rods for males only?  Or are the rods jammed in their proud mouths?  Hasn't protection, rather, come from the lips that are wise?  What a funny wise turn, resisting the binary, from the feminine Hebrew to the feminine Hellene.

Better Bibles than those of Jesus or other Jews

The boys at Better Bibles Blog have said a number of consistent things about what makes and what does not make for better bibles.  Quite generally, they ignore what I call the feminist rhetorical translating that goes on with, around, and in much of the Jewish texts.  The bible of Jesus, and by Jesus too, for example, they don't always agree with.  Ironic stuff, huh?  My contention is that they are (unwittingly) influenced by Aristotle and by Aristotle's logic, his view of and practice with language (as "linguistics" if you will).  I'll have to come back to this in another post or more.  For now, I just want to recall some of the things that my blogger friends have said exactly:

"[W]e should not follow the practices of the authors of the N.T. or translators of the LXX when they translated." -- Wayne Leman

"I accept that in the original Hebrew there was very likely a deliberate word play....  My scepticism is about whether the LXX translators or the thinker Paul, pre-modern people ... would have recognised this word play and ... translated ... in order to preserve the word play." -- Peter Kirk

"He [God] just has to see that the writer He is inspiring gets point of the communication accurate. This is what gets us out of having stand on our heads theologically to deal with 'misquotes' from the LXX or questions about whether Jesus’ parables were true stories....  if you understand how humans actually communicate [as I do understand.... ]" -- Richard Rhodes

"Jesus was speaking to be understood and so we should expect a Bible translation of this passage to be understandable. If he used idioms of his era, they were used to bring impact to his message not mystery." -- David Ker

" I personally am not convinced by the argument that the Old Testament was Jesus’ Bible so it should be ours as well." -- David Ker

"the original is an idiom and so is the translation [e.g., 'Let this be a word to the wise']. Is the meaning accurate? If not, in what ways is it not accurate? In what ways is 'he who has ears to hear, let him hear' not accurate?" -- Mike Sangrey

"Thanks Mike, I think you’re on the right track, because I think you’re striving for a better Bible, which unfortunately I can’t say for some of the other commenters....  presumably all of Jesus’s listeners both had ears and were hearing him loud and clear… I wonder if it was almost a veiled insult. But [this] does not mean that the original words must stay, unless someone has evidence that in the Greek they too were odd and awkward!" -- Dannii Willis

"I wonder if the original phrase had the same authoritative sound. It’s very, very hard to determine that (which argues for as well as against!). You say that Jesus goes on to urge his hearers. That also works for your point as well as against it. If the idiom is quite confrontational to begin with, then why the extra effort to make the point even more authoritative?" -- Mike Sangrey

Naming Translation

Do names contain meanings?  And by "contain" I mean, "label."  I'm suggesting "limit."  Do names set "exclusionary" boundaries? 

"Labels are limiting. They're exclusionary." 

That's what linguist David Ker says when reading my post on the labels "feminism," "rhetoric," "translation," and the "Bible."

"Roughly speaking, the scientist tries to name things and the artist tries to avoid naming things."

That's what acclaimed scientist and acclaimed novelist Alan Lightman says when writing and speaking about writing scientifically and writing artistically.

So I want to know what happens when a name is translated.  Is the name now more of a name?  Is the translated name more limiting, more exclusionary, more scientific?

If you've read my blog much at all, then you know I'm curious about how quickly -- how so easily and so effortlessly -- we in the West accept the binary distinction between science and art.  We follow Aristotle.  Aristotle named things.  He named science, and he named art.  He wrote of Physics, and he wrote of Poetics.  He claimed Logic, and he warned of slippery Logos and of Dissoi Logoi.

So what? we say.  So what if we use names to contain?  So what if we exclude?

Well, I asked Lightman about this.  He conceded that the binary of "scientist trying to name" / "artist avoiding naming" just doesn't work.  And he had to concede when thinking about his own work.  But he wanted to concede especially when recognizing that translators -- when really good -- are best not only as scientists but also as artists as well.

Let's just say that again so we don't miss it:

Good translators both do some naming and also leave some naming to be done by their readers.

This is exactly what goes on in the earliest Jewish translation of Torah by the Jews.  The Jews translating the Bible into Greek worked against Aristotle's clean division between Logic and Logoi, between Physics and Poetics.

And, in fact, when we come to "the Gospel," which is the limit that David Ker names, then we see much of this sort of translation going on.  I'm calling it -- even naming it -- wordplay.  And by "wordplay," I mean both playfulness with words and also interpretive wiggle room.

In an upcoming post, I'm planning to show -- in the gospel of "Jesus" -- some of the striking translational wordplay.  There's an example of one of the writers using Greek mixing (even mixing up) names in Greek, in Hebrew Aramaic, and in Hebrew.

So what? we ask again.  And I do think Ker is on to something.  The "so what" is the question of exclusion.  Who gets excluded when the translator presumes only to be a scientist?  When the translator decides to get so serious with names that there are clearly-defined labels and severely-strict limits, then who gets cut and who gets cut out?

"Christians who have translated the Bible have changed the Jewish names so as to de-Jew them." 

That's what New Testament translator Willis Barnstone, a Jew, claims in his history, his theory, and his practice of translation.

"So many women are kept out of the ministry on the grounds of 'what the Bible says' but the Bible in Greek actually doesn't say anything against women in the ministry. (Mis)translation is a different matter." 

That's what New Testament translator Ann Nyland, a woman, says.

So I want us in the West who are all too eager to practice the Aristotelian binary in translation to think again.

"all languages are translations. The moment I write, I translate. I translate what I feel in this or that language, which I am going to destabilize. The encounters of my emotions in my thought with the French language, for instance, is going to de-French and re-French French -- to free French... Of course the translator has to be a great poet and also a kind of mathematician of an equivalent order to displace the original to its next of kin."

That's of course what Hélène Cixous, a translator, a Jew, and a woman, says.  She also asks other questions when translating:

"La question des juifs.  La question des femmes.  La question des juifemmes... 

The question of the Jews.  The question of women.  The question of jewomen..."

So Sherry Simon says:

"We are reminded here of Derrida's question: can the process of transfer between texts already written in a plurality of tongues still be called translation?  How to translate a text which is already infected by the multiplicity of language...?"

So I'm planning to post again, to translate some when I do.  And I'm going to start with "the Gospel."  I'm going to look at some things that Jews we know as "Jesus," "Matthew," and "Peter" do with names.  I'm going to try to do some of those things myself, to try naming and also to avoid naming.   The name of that post will be "translating Peter."

Aristotle and translation

To know Aristotle well, one takes the time to read his works (and even those works attributed to him) in Greek, his Greek. It's quite a body of work.

Most people who read Aristotle's body of written work read it mainly or only in translation. This is ironic and, for a number of reasons, problematic. It's ironic because Aristotle never intended for what he wrote to be translated from his elite Greek written for himself and for his educated-class, pure-Greek, male-only students into any bar-bar-ic mother tongue. If there was any translation to be done, it was to be a rendering of the lesser writings of foreigners into Hellene (as was done in Alexandria, the name-sake city of Aristotle's student Alexander the Great, as commissioned by a lackey king who called on Jews there to translate their holy scriptures from bar-bar-ian Hebrew into Greek for the elite students of Greek city states who would govern the empire).

There's more irony and then the problems also because the first translations of Aristotle's work were constructed most logically by the principles of Aristotle's logic. The first translations were from Aristotle's Greek into Arabic and into Latin by post-Greek world conquerors of a different sort, who were nonetheless similar to Aristotle and Alexander in their intentions to establish a global lingua franca. They were also similar in their allegiance to logic.  Aristotle's separational logic was the perfect method for their intentions of dominance. Logic divides and conquers, categorizes into us versus them, with "us" ultimately above "them." And translation can do this, logical translation, even translation from Aristotle's logical Greek into one's ultimately more-dominant language.

There's no surprise that people of Arab families, who found Aristotle's texts, used such appropriations of Aristotle's logic not only for their translation but also for advanced developments in astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and even religion. That some contemporary Mohammedians despise translation - and even murder the translators - of the Koran today is no surprise, given the legacy of appropriated separational logic. There's no surprise that the Romans, setting up their empire in various hierarchical ranks, were strict about who could speak in public (women could not) and how the men were to speak and write (in imperial Latin). There's little surprise that the British, establishing the global Great Britain, would explicitly refer to the Greek imperial project as proposed by Aristotle and Alexander. For example, the first extant English translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric is addressed in its “Preface” to the Monarch of England by the translator “H. C.” who, in 1685, suggests that Aristotle’s logical intentions with the treatise are global domination and that the intentions of his British King, James II and VII, might be as well:

The Emulation of the Englifh Verfion to approach as near as might be to the Greek Original, and to follow the Authors Example, embolden’d this Addrefs to your Honour. For they were not the Pedantic Rudiments of Rhetoric, which Ariftotle offer’d to one that had been his Royal Pupil, . . . Alexander. (“Epistle Dedicatory”)

Alexander, of course, is Alexander the Great, whom Aristotle tutored. Likely, the world dominator had studied Aristotle’s accounts of the global conquerors Darius and Xerxes in the Rhetoric (Book II, Chapter 20, 1393a – 1393b); translator H. C. certainly seems to have taken note of this possibility. The strong implication is of an elitism in the text (both in Aristotle’s original Greek and in H. C.’s English) that instructs the powerful on means to acquire nations so that there can be educational and colonial conquest. One common denominator between the Greek empire achieved by Alexander and the Great British empire of James II and VII is the learning of lessons from Aristotle and his Rhetoric. Even if H. C. has exaggerated the history of Aristotle’s influence on Alexander, the translator is inviting his own ruler to read the Rhetoric as if it teaches one, logically, to dominate the globe.

In the note by the English translator, H. C., we begin to see some of the problems of "translation." First, the dominance and pervasiveness of logic comes through even in his notion of translation. The nod to the "original" as if it means one and only one meaning is clear. In other words, what Aristotle's original Greek text says is what that original Hellene text by its author means. The author has one and only one intention. And the translator, likewise, has one and only one intention: the author's original and singular intention. Second, there's a problem because Aristotle's Rhetoric, which H. C. is translating, is not exactly a work on "logic" or even a work of "logic." Aristotle himself is unable to sustain logic in this work, although his first sentence of the treatise uses a separational formula of logic but turns out to be much less definitional and much more metaphorical. Third, there's a problem because how English translator H. C. gets at the presumed singular meaning of Aristotle is different from how Arabic and Latin translators got at it.

What's funny today in English translation of Aristotle's body of works is related to this third problem. When philosophers read Aristotle's works and translate them into contemporary English, then the lens of philosophy dominates. When rhetoricians read Aristotle's works and translate them into contemporary English, then their lens of rhetorical studies dominates. When literary critics read Aristotle's works and translate them into contemporary English, then the lens of literary criticism dominates. When classicists read Aristotle, then their translational lens dominates. And so forth.

When I started reading Aristotle's Greek texts, I came at them initially through the lens of translation, ironically. In other words, my Greek lens was not only Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides, Sappho, Gorgias, and the author of Dissoi Logoi (all of whom Aristotle and his logic disparaged), but also the Septuagint, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, the writer of "Hebrews," and Peter (all barbarians who came after Aristotle). These later works are largely works of translation from Hebrew and from Hebrew Aramaic. How very different the lens! How very different the notion of translation by these Jews! How non-logical (not necessarily illogical - if I can give a nod to Joel M. Hoffman for saying in a recent post "neither is it irrational — it is non-rational")! How very rhetorical in ways that Aristotle originally and logically despised rhetoric! How womanly in ways that Aristotle originally and logically despised fe-males! How accessible and bar-bar-ic in ways that Aristotle originally and logically despised the common and the lesser, non-Greek mother tongues!

But it may take another post or two to begin to illustrate just how different the concept and practice of translation that is seen in and by translators who have written the Bible of the Jews.  I'm talking specifically about the Septuagint translators and the writers of the New Testament who translated into Greek to write what Christians appropriate now as their Bible.  How very different the understanding and practice of translation by these early Jewish translators; how very different their understanding and practice from the Aristotelian understanding and practice of translation by Christian Bible translators today, whether these contemporary Bible translators employ the science of "linguistics" or push the dominance of "theology."

Hebrew "King": Mama moving waters, Like rain showering, Cupped hands receiving

from Rachel Barenblat, the Velveteen Rabbi, and her post Yom Kippur 5770:

5. King

The word מלך, "king," is a prevalent metaphor in the High Holiday liturgy. We can see this through a new lens if we unpack the individual letters of the word:

• מ / mem: this letter can be found in the mmm of mama and ima, the m-sound at the beginning of the word mayyim (waters, both cosmic and otherwise). Mem is a letter of motherhood and water.
  
• ל / lamed: this letter begins up high, then takes a crooked path to reach the ground below. Like the flow of divine abundance which begins on high and divagates as it reaches us; like our lives, which start out straight but always wind up complicated. Lamed is a channel from high to low.
  
• כ / chaf: this letter is cupped, like hands brought together to receive.
  

These three letters flow together sequentially in the alef-bet. Here in our liturgy they speak to us of divine kingship or sovereignty -- and they also speak to us of the root metaphor of motherhood and divine flow, coming down through its crooked channels into our hands.
Before reciting the ha-Melech prayer on Yom Kippur morning, Simcha Zevit gives over this teaching in the name of Reb Marcia Prager, and then invites us to rise and embody it: hands waving above our heads like the rish-rush of the waters, then twisting and flowing down toward the ground, then cupped to receive abundance and then to offer it to someone else in the room. Suddenly melech doesn't seem to be so much about power-over anymore.

evidence of feminine language in description of Jesus

Suzanne wrote a post today called "More feminine language for God."  She points us to Damian's post today, "Even more evidence of feminine language in description of God."  He points us to a comment from James K. A. Smith who points us to "a further reference in Augustine to ’suckling on the Breast of Jesus’ in his sermons on John or 1 John." Damian says of that last bit "but I couldn’t find evidence of it."  Interesting.

Well I confess I haven't bothered to go looking for the Breast.  And I doubt as many care about Augustine as they do about the New Testament writers.  Therefore, below I do show evidence of how four gospel writers show women and Jesus together.  And eventually one of them shows Jesus behaving like those women, modeling and exemplifying for his apprentices ways of being and of doing (like women, feminine perhaps like God.)

After the gospel writers' Hellene comes my English, which some comes from Willis Barnstone's Hebrew.  It's about as transparent as possible, from Mark 14, Matthew 26, Luke 7, and John 12 & then 13.

Καὶ ὄντος αὐτοῦ ἐν Βηθανίᾳ, ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ Σίμωνος τοῦ λεπροῦ, κατακειμένου αὐτοῦ, ἦλθεν γυνὴ ἔχουσα ἀλάβαστρον μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτελοῦς· καὶ συντρίψασα τὴν ἀλάβαστρον, κατέχεεν αὐτοῦ κατὰ τῆς κεφαλῆς. Ἦσαν δέ τινες ἀγανακτοῦντες πρὸς ἑαυτούς, καὶ λέγοντες, Εἰς τί ἡ ἀπώλεια αὕτη τοῦ μύρου γέγονεν; Ἠδύνατο γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ μύρον πραθῆναι ἐπάνω τριακοσίων δηναρίων, καὶ δοθῆναι τοῖς πτωχοῖς. Καὶ ἐνεβριμῶντο αὐτῇ.  Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν, Ἄφετε αὐτήν· τί αὐτῇ κόπους παρέχετε; Καλὸν ἔργον ἠργάσατο ἐν ἐμοί.

And while he was in Poverty's House [בית עניא / Beth Anya, bethany], in the house of Shimon [שמעון] the AIDS patient, he was reclining.  A woman came with an alabaster jar of myrrh perfume, that pure and extravagantly expensive spikenard ointment.  Breaking the alabastar jar she poured it on his head.  So, some stir up each of the others by saying, "Why would someone waste the myrrh?  It could've been sold for three hundred Silver Tenths [Denarii, denarion] and given to the poor!" And they provoked her.  So, Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] said, "Let go of her!  Why would someone pour trouble on her?  It's a good, beautiful work she's worked in me."

--Mark's telling & translating, and my translating Mark

Τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ γενομένου ἐν Βηθανίᾳ ἐν οἰκίᾳ Σίμωνος τοῦ λεπροῦ, προσῆλθεν αὐτῷ γυνὴ ἀλάβαστρον μύρου ἔχουσα βαρυτίμου, καὶ κατέχεεν ἐπὶτὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ ἀνακειμένου. Ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἠγανάκτησαν, λέγοντες, Εἰς τί ἡ ἀπώλεια αὕτη; Ἐδύνατο γὰρ τοῦτο μύρον πραθῆναι πολλοῦ, καὶ δοθῆναι πτωχοῖς. Γνοὺς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Τί κόπους παρέχετε τῇ γυναικί; Ἔργον γὰρ καλὸν ἠργάσατο εἰς ἐμέ.

So, when Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] was in Poverty's House [בית עניא / Beth Anya], in the house of Shimon [שמעון] the AIDS patient, a woman came with an alabaster jar of precious myrrh perfume, and she poured it on his head, as he's kicking back for dinner.  So, seeing that, his apprentices get stirred up by saying, "Why would someone waste that?  That myrrh could've made an extra excess, and it could've been given to the poor.  So, getting an earful, Joshua said, "Why would someone pour trouble on this woman?  It's a work of beautiful goodness she's worked into me." 

--Matthew's telling & translating, and my translating Matthew

Καὶ ἰδού, γυνὴ ἐν τῇ πόλει, ἥτις ἦν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἁμαρτωλός, καὶ ἐπιγνοῦσα ὅτι ἀνάκειται ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ Φαρισαίου, κομίσασα ἀλάβαστρον μύρου, καὶ στᾶσα ὀπίσω παρὰ τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ κλαίουσα τοῖς δάκρυσιν, ἤρξατο βρέχειν τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ τοῖς δάκρυσιν, καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς ἐξέμασσεν, καὶ κατεφίλει τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἤλειφεν τῷ μύρῳ. Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ Φαρισαῖος ὁ καλέσας αὐτὸν εἶπεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ λέγων, Οὗτος, εἰ ἦν προφήτης, ἐγίνωσκεν ἂν τίς καὶ ποταπὴ ἡ γυνὴ ἥτις ἅπτεται αὐτοῦ, ὅτι ἁμαρτωλός ἐστιν....   Καὶ στραφεὶς πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα, τῷ Σίμωνι ἔφη, Βλέπεις ταύτην τὴν γυναῖκα; Εἰσῆλθόν σου εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, ὕδωρ ἐπὶ τοὺς πόδας μου οὐκ ἔδωκας· αὕτη δὲ τοῖς δάκρυσιν ἔβρεξέν μου τοὺς πόδας, καὶ ταῖς θριξὶν τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτῆς ἐξέμαξεν.  Φίλημά μοι οὐκ ἔδωκας· αὕτη δέ, ἀφ’ ἧς εἰσῆλθον, οὐ διέλιπεν καταφιλοῦσά μου τοὺς πόδας.  Ἐλαίῳ τὴν κεφαλήν μου οὐκ ἤλειψας· αὕτη δὲ μύρῳ ἤλειψέν τοὺς πόδας μου. 

And look, a woman "in the city," she's certainly there in the city, a sinner.  And knowing that he's going to be kicking back for dinner in the house of the Separatist, she brought in an alabaster jar of myrrh perfume.  And standing behind his feet, she was crying, streaming tears, beginning to wet his feet with the tears.  And with the hair of her head she was moping them.  And she was kissing his feet.  And she was slathering the myrrh perfume.  So, look, the Separatist who'd invited him said to himself:  "This one, if he were a prophet, should know what sort of someone this woman is, someone who "touches" him, that she's a sinner....  And turning toward the woman, Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] said to Shimon [שמעון] the Separatist, "Pay attention to this woman.  I come into your house.  Water on my feet?  There's none given!  So, her tears wet my feet.  And with the hair of her head she mops up.  Kisses for me?  There's none given.  So, she from the moment she comes in, there's not stopping her from kissing my feet.  Oil for my head?  There's none slathered on.  So, she slathers her myrrh perfume on my feet."

--Luke's telling & translating, and my translating Luke

Ὁ οὖν Ἰησοῦς πρὸ ἓξ ἡμερῶν τοῦ Πάσχα ἦλθεν εἰς Βηθανίαν, ὅπου ἦν Λάζαρος, ὃν ἤγειρεν ἐκ νεκρῶν  Ἰησοῦς.  Ἐποίησαν οὖν αὐτῷ δεῖπνον ἐκεῖ, καὶ ἡ Μάρθα διηκόνει· ὁ δὲ Λάζαρος εἷς ἦν ἐκ τῶν ἀνακειμένων σὺν αὐτῷ.  Ἡ οὖν Μαριὰμ  λαβοῦσα λίτραν μύρου νάρδου πιστικῆς πολυτίμου, ἤλειψεν τοὺς πόδας τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, καὶ ἐξέμαξεν ταῖς θριξὶν αὐτῆς τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ· ἡ δὲ οἰκία ἐπληρώθη ἐκ τῆς ὀσμῆς τοῦ μύρου.  Λέγει οὖν εἷς ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ, Ἰούδας Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτης, ὁ μέλλων αὐτὸν παραδιδόναι, Διὰ τί τοῦτο τὸ μύρον οὐκ ἐπράθη τριακοσίων δηναρίων, καὶ ἐδόθη πτωχοῖς; ....  Εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἄφες αὐτήν·   ἵνα εἰς τὴν ἡμέραν τοῦ ἐνταφιασμοῦ μου τηρήσῃ αὐτό.

Then, Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] six days before Passover [פֶּסַח Pesach] went into in Poverty's House [בית עניא / Beth Anya], where Elazar [אֶלְעָזָר , lazaros] was, raised out of his corpse state by Joshua.  Then, they prepared supper for him there.  And Martha served.  So Elazar was one of the ones kicking back with him.  Then, Miriam  [מִרְיָם , mariam] took a pound of myrrh perfume, that pure and extravagantly expensive spikenard ointment.  She slathered it on the feet of Joshua.  And she moped with her hair his feet.  So, the house filled with the smell of the myrrh pouring out.  Then, there came this statement out of an apprentice of his -  Judah [יְהוּדָה , ioudas] of Keriot - the one about to give him up in betrayal:  "Huh? why wasn't this myrrh of someone's not sold for three hundred Silver Tenths [Denarii, denarion] and given to the poor?!"  Then, Joshua said, "Let go of her!  so that until the day when I'm put in the ground, she keeps it."

Πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ Πάσχα, εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι ἐλήλυθεν αὐτοῦ ἡ ὥρα ἵνα μεταβῇ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, ἀγαπήσας τοὺς ἰδίους τοὺς ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, εἰς τέλος ἠγάπησεν αὐτούς.   Καὶ δείπνου γενομένου, τοῦ διαβόλου ἤδη βεβληκότος εἰς τὴν καρδίαν Ἰούδα Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου ἵνα αὐτὸν παραδῷ, εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι πάντα δέδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ πατὴρ εἰς τὰς χεῖρας, καὶ ὅτι ἀπὸ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν καὶ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ὑπάγει, ἐγείρεται ἐκ τοῦ δείπνου, καὶ τίθησιν τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ λαβὼν λέντιον διέζωσεν ἑαυτόν.  Εἶτα βάλλει ὕδωρ εἰς τὸν νιπτῆρα, καὶ ἤρξατο νίπτειν τοὺς πόδας τῶν μαθητῶν, καὶ ἐκμάσσειν τῷ λεντίῳ ᾧ ἦν διεζωσμένος.  Ἔρχεται οὖν πρὸς Σίμωνα Πέτρον· καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ἐκεῖνος, Κύριε, σύ μου νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας;  Ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Ὃ ἐγὼ ποιῶ, σὺ οὐκ οἶδας ἄρτι, γνώσῃ δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα.

So, before the feast of Passover [פֶּסַח Pesach], Joshua [יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , ya'hoshua] had the idea that his moment had arrived in order he was stepping out of this world to go to Daddy.  He had loved his own in the world; into "the end" he had loved them.  And as supper time came, the devil had already placed into the heart of Judah [יְהוּדָה , ioudas], son of Shimon [שמעון] of Keriot, that he should give him up in betrayal.  Joshua had the idea that everything had been given him by Daddy into his hand and that from God he had come and to that God he was going.  He raised himself out of his seat at supper, and dropped the robe, and took a towel of linen as his girdle.  Now, he tossed water into the wash pan and began to wash the feet of the apprentices and to mop up with the linen towel which was that girdle around.  Then, he went to Shimon [שמעון], Rock [petros].  And made this statement to him, "Master, you're washing my feet?"  Joshua retorted, and said to him, "What I'm creating, you can't understand yet.  So, you'll know about it after this."

--John's telling & translating, and my translating John

Jewish rhetorics of the translated text

At this blog today, we come to a text that has men arguing over the proper reading of pure texts of the bible. The text we come to is a fragmented text. It is a text of Jewish translation from Hebrew-Aramaic into Greek. I've translated it below into English - unrefined translating. (It's called John 8; at least some of it is). Before the translating, here's a bit of commentary.

In the text (John 8), the point of issue for the arguing men is an unnamed woman and the force of the "hallowed" whole text of scripture (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah"), the undisputed, unfragmented canonical text of Moses. The unidentified text in question may also even be a piece of the whole (perhaps a translated piece, called Numbers 5). That whole "hallowed" text (or the parts) posed questions back then ( - especially when the parts were translated from holy Hebrew to homeric Hellene). But that undisputed text of males also poses questions now. If a woman today "as a Jew" asks "Is the text sexist?" and if she answers "Of course it's sexist!" - then is she disrespecting what a man, whether goyim or Jew, sees, in opposition, as his own "non-feminist alterity"? (I'm quoting my blogger friends Rachel Barenblat and John Hobbins). So do women get a say? Or mustn't the text get the last word, according to men? Mustn't women bow to this text of men as their (1) light, (2) compass, and (3) mirror?

The text we're coming to at this blog today is that different one (John 8). That fragmented one. It is what John "as a Jew" translates after his prologue. The text continues the story, carries the themes introduced, and builds the suspense. Ostensibly, the text is also (1) light, (2) compass, and (3) mirror - for men. But is it only these? Or does it more regard the position of the woman and of the man, in contrast? And how? Doesn't the translating do more than (1) just enlighten, more than (2) simply pass one along to the right point, and more than (3) merely flip one's natural image back and around?

Is this fragmented text (1) only proposition, (2) only imposition, and (3) only transposition?

Might it also be a(p)positions as well? In other words, as if playing with words, isn't this fragmented text both an a-positioning and an appositioning? Doesn't this text of this Jew take our positions and take them away? Aren't we un-positioned as outsiders to the text and by the text? And yet, and yet, doesn't it also as well throw its positions alongside its readers' positions, alongside our positions? An appositive, a re-placing of one noun next to another noun so that they change each other? Doesn't an appositive in language give the reader agency to interpret it as one noun both against and towards the other so that each changes, not only the two nouns in the reading but the reader also?

(1) Proposition is Aristotle's method, the "light" of logic.
(2) Imposition is the method of Alexander the Great, world domination to all points of the "compass."
(3) Transposition is Plato's method and Socrates' - finding the ideal by dialectic, by that "mirror" within the apparently real.

But what of the Hebrew methods of persons above the text? Isn't the text fragmented after all? And what if the person is Joshua? See the men of that first Joshua, right after Moses, listening to a woman, a prostitute, a foreigner named Rahab. Now listen to the translator of that later Joshua, that translator named John, listening to a woman, an adulteress, a female without a name as she is brought up on charges against the text of light, the compass, the mirror, the Book of Moses. These stories are thrown violently alongside your own, aren't they? Stories of the mothers of Moses, stories of Eve the mother of translation. And aren't the methods really those of a woman, your contemporary and mine, who "as a Jew" must be brought up against the text as if "obligated to find something within it which speaks to me [to her] on a spiritual level"? If the text is "patriarchal bullshit of the highest order" - then isn't something owed "to the text to be able to move beyond that knee-jerk reaction and to find something in it which speaks to me [to her]"? A(p)positioning. In other words, rendering, interlating, translating, parallelism, parable, analogy, indirection, subjectivity, profound and profoundly self-transformative hermeneutics.

Aren't these the methods of Aspasia, the prostitute, the foreigner in Athens, the rhetorician, the one paid so much differently than the (male) sophists, the translator of texts who silently writes ephemeral words in the dirt, in the dirtiness? And so we come again to the Greek rendered by the Jew, methods rendering other methods. The Jewish methods inclusive of other methods as rendering, translating, interlating, a(p)positioning. Listen to John "as a Jew" using rhetorics "as a Greek woman." Note how this translator has his Joshua speaking words as parallels to his prologue.

a Jewish understanding of the text

Peter Kirk follows up Suzanne's posts on the gendered translation of a pronoun with "The Word: he, she or it?" Among his other fantastic insights, Peter gets at (1) what John is doing by artfully telling the story and (2) what English translators do to spoil it.

Now I want to reconsider more carefully what Suzanne says about "a Jewish understanding of the text." Isn't John's story-telling Jewish? And isn't Willis Barnstone's translating Jewish as well? Aren't they both (1) not only keeping their readers momentarily in suspense but also (2) retelling and reminding readers of the parallels to another Jewish story already told? Aren't parallels in Hebrew stories Jewish? Furthermore, isn't it interesting how Barnstone goes so far as to say that, in the Jewish stories, the Jewish "God translates divine sound into matter and being. . . through the word"?

Here's from Barnstone's (Jewish) English translation of John's (Jewish) Greek. I've italicized the translator's text below to distinguish it from two of his footnotes, which I've also included and indicated by the asterisks:

In the beginning was the word*
and the word was with God,
and God was the word.
2 The word was in the beginning with God.
3 Through it everything came about
and without it not a thing came about.
What came to be 4 in the world was life
and the life was the light of people
5 and the light in the darkness shines
and the darkness could not comprehend it.

14 And the word became flesh
and lived among us.**
And we gazed on his glory,
the glory of the only son born of the father,
who is filled with grace and truth.

*John informs us in "In the beginning was the word," Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος (En arhe en ho logos) (John 1.1). God created through the word, ὁ λόγος. With that utterance God translates divine sound into matter and being, thereby bringing the cosmos, the earth, and the earth's inhabitants, great and small, into temporal existence. The creation through the word in John parallels the creation in Genesis 1.1 of the Hebrew Bible: "In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth": בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ (bereshit bara elohim et hashamayim veet ha-aretz). God in Genesis uses "the word" to speak the world into being through his order, "Let there be light," יְהִי אוֹר (yehi or), while in John "the word" of creation may be spoken or written, but it also is the initial cause of creation. And as in the Hebrew Bible, that word is immediately comingled with light. It has been observed that in John's prologue, the use of the logos offers a link between the divine mind and the human mind, which is rational and apprehends the word through reason, reason being another meaning of "logos." This beginning is often presumed to be a separate [Greek rhetorical, Greek literary] poem added or adapted to the gospel. . . . The logical sequence of this poem also suggests the syllogistic reasoning of the Sophists as well as the Cynics to whom leading theologians sometimes compare Yeshua. . . . More broadly, "logos" may be given multiple meanings: the word of God, knowledge, science, the Greek principle of reason ordering the universe, and a Kabbalist principle of the primacy of creating words and, before words, an alphabet of letters, so that God has the means of speaking the universe into being.

**God's word became human flesh in the person of Yeshua.

[UPDATE: It may be worth noting that Barnstone has a two-page prologue to his translation of the gospel of John, much on the "Prologue of the Gospel of John." There he gets into (what I call) the Greekiness of John's language. For example, Barnstone says, "The word in Greek is logos, and logos was a familiar philosophical term, already in Greek currency through its usage by the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus and by the Stoics. John uses logos to convey a specific message...." Barnstone has an extensive bibliography for his entire work, including the works of Elaine Pagels, from which Suzanne has quoted. I would also refer anyone interested in the Greek logos per se to Edward Schiappa's Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric.]

par elle, et elle a habité parmi nous, et nous avons contemplé sa gloire

Suzanne's Bookshelf offers "one example" of a Greek text that "demonstrates the enormous fallacy and extremely limited scope of any discussion of pronoun gender in translation."

The one example illustrates how,

English readers are cut off from the diverse ways that this passage could be read at the time it was written. We are cut off from how this passage is read in other modern European languages. The English translations are also committed to an interpretation which is foreign to a Jewish understanding of the text.

Read more in the post, "All things were made by her ..."

She, the Rabbi, Speaks

She's reading "This week's portion, Bamidbar, [which] begins with instructions to take a census of the Israelites, head by head, each man attached to his ancestral household."

And the Velveteen Rabbi writes, "The tradition traces Jewishness through the mother, but this census takes note of men and their fathers -- no mention of the women at all."

And Rachel Barenblat speaks:

HEAD BY HEAD (BAMIDBAR)

Take a census
family by family
listing the names
every female, head by head . . . .

Listen: Who is "recording," and who is "the recognized head of her ancestral house," and who is "able to plant seed," and "who can teach the ways" usually given only to men?

Hebrew to Israeli in Israel: But it's the Bible

Today, on the campus of Bar-Ilan University, the second largest institution of higher education in Israel, there's an insider debate going on. Should the new Bible translation into everyday Hebrew, or Israeli, become standard in schools? Will old Hebrew then be lost?

The Jerusalem Post online in English gives world wide web readers on the outside a glimpse in. Linguist and "Israeli language" scholar Ghil'ad Zuckerman, on the one hand, is all for the new translation. Translator and writer Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, on the other hand, believes that "Israeli children today will be robbed" by the new version of the Bible. (Are there implications for women and men? Aren't there?)

At Bar-Ilan University, such questions about translation have already been asked. What happens when Jews translate their holy scriptures? What has happened, for example, when these sacred writings became "The Greek Bible"? Was it, is it, "Light or Darkness"?

When it's the "Bible" for the people of that book what does translation do?

Sex and Wordplay and Sexism

First, from Rhosa's rhetorical blogora blog, a playful post of sex and religion:

this just in (ha ha):

oooh, baby do you know what that's worth??
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=7686
ha ha ha ha h(e)aven is a place on earth
("some poles have been surprised....")

but willie get tenure for his book?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPb6orr8TUqqiIof81VUGb...
betty won't.

and is the pope infallible? never mind on that one.
none of us is, y'all.

Second, searching into or to find my blog, The WOMBman's Bible, someone has googled this:

"word for playful in greek"

which makes me wonder why there I'd skipped over this:

"ἐγένετο δὲ πολυχρόνιος ἐκεῖ παρακύψας δὲ Αβιμελεχ ὁ βασιλεὺς Γεραρων διὰ τῆς θυρίδος εἶδεν τὸν Ισαακ παίζοντα μετὰ Ρεβεκκας τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ

which is the playful Greek wording for this:

וַיְהִי כִּי אָֽרְכוּ־לֹו שָׁם הַיָּמִים וַיַּשְׁקֵף אֲבִימֶלֶךְ מֶלֶךְ פְּלִשְׁתִּים בְּעַד הַֽחַלֹּון וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה יִצְחָק מְצַחֵק אֵת רִבְקָה אִשְׁתֹּֽו׃

which is also known as Genesis 26:8 -- translated in the King James Bible as this:

"And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac [was] sporting with Rebekah his wife."

The playful word in Greek is παίζοντα [paizonta] which is "sporting" enough - and is sexual too, given the reaction of Abimelech the king towards two supposedly platonic alleged siblings, who were indeed engaged in play, perhaps foreplay.

That makes us think of Gorgias and his rhetorical praise of Helen. But he's not involved in foreplay, because he's investigating the alleged sexism, the supposed rape of Helen by the Trojan man. Why else would she abandon the men of Greece, he asks. Remember, Bettany Hughes reminds:

When, in Ancient Greece, the rhetorician Gorgias stood up and delivered his 'Encomium of Helen' (a defence of Helen of Troy's indefensible character) - this was a great joke. How can you laud the most sluttish femme fatale of all time? But the rhetoric also got people thinking - maybe, just maybe the skilled speaker had a point.

So Gorgias isn't engaging in foreplay the way the Jewish translators of their own histories translate that bit of history of Isaac [Ha! Laughter!]. Gorgias is playing with sexuality and with sexism; but his play comes at the very end, like the punchline to his joke:

ἐβουλήθην γράψαι τὸν λόγον Ἑλένης μὲν ἐγκώμιον, ἐμὸν δὲ παίγνιον.

Notice the final Greek word in Brian Donovan's translation:

I wanted to write the discourse, Helen's encomium and my plaything.

("plaything" or sport or παίγνιον /paignion/.)

Which makes us wonder if Gorgias was trying to get his contemporary readers, thinking about Helen, also to remember the sexism in Homer. Remember? Yes, I'm thinking with you now about "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter."

It begins:

I sing of the revered goddess, rich-haired Demeter,
and her slim-ankled daughter, whom Hades snatched
(far-seeing, thundering Zeus gave her away)
while she and Ocean's deep-breasted daughters played,
far from golden blade Demeter, who bears shining fruit.
She picked lush meadow flowers: roses, crocuses,
lovely violets, irises, hyacinths--and narcissus
Gaia grew as a lure for the blossoming girl,
following Zeus' bidding, to please Lord of the Dead.

You may recognize this as Diane J. Rayor's wonderful translating. And you may remember other translations -- because there have been many -- that have Hades raping the girl instead of merely "snatching" her -- as Rayor renders it.

"In modern usage the word rape emphasizes sexual consummation," a certain 'consume-a-shun', "which is uncertain in this case." This is Helene P. Foley's commentary on her own translating, which says the daughter of Demeter is one "whom Aidoneus seized."

Both Rayor and Foley prefer to leave a little play in the English because of the wordplay in the Homeric Greek. Neither of these translators rapes their reader with a certain anything.

And regardless of whether "rape" or "snatch" or "seize" by "Hades" or [his more Greek sounding name] "Aidoneus" - there is something common for all the many English translators of this Greek text. They all render what the little girl is doing, when interrupted, as "play."

Of course, around all the sex and horrible sexism, that word for play and playful in Greek here in this Hymn is παίζουσαν [paizousan]. And so the sporting continues, sometimes translationally, sometimes sexually, but sometimes as the horrible force of sexism.

Levine on Amy-Jill

Amy-Jill Levine writes her own story (marking herself, as Christians often to do her kind, as a Jew) in her introduction to The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus:

When I was seven, this early fascination with Christianity came to a head with two events. First, I became insistent upon making my First Communion. All my friends were preparing for this special event, and I didn't want to be left out. My desire was not motivated by religious fervor or even religious understanding; I lacked both. Rather, I wanted the dress with the matching white patent-leather shoes. To provide me some consolation, my mother bought me a wedding gown for my Barbie doll. I'd dress Ken in his groom suit, with the jacket on backwards and with white construction paper for the clerical collar. Then, practicing what I learned from my friends, I'd have Barbie, in her bride dress, take Communion from Ken every morning before school.

Second, that year a friend on the school bus said to me, "You killed our Lord." "I did not," I responded with some indignation. Deicide would be the sort of thing I would have recalled. "Yes, you did," the girl insisted, "Our priest said so." Apparently, she had been taught that "the Jews" were responsible for the death of Jesus. Since I was the one one she knew, I must be guilty. But at the time I did not understand the reason for the charge or have the means to address it.

Barnstone on "Barnstone"

I think I may have been too hard on Rich Rhodes in the previous posts because he explains, as he confesses it in a comment, what he was intending: "I wasn't intending to poke fun at Barnstone, but some 30 years ago I was at a big charismatic conference in Kansas City and one of the speakers from Jews for Jesus . . . had none of the awkward/archaic wordings of the English of Barnstone's translation." Jews who just don't get it, you see, sound nothing like (Jewish) Christians. (All Christians know that).

Willis Barnstone writes his own story in more than one place. But then he has lived in many places, always as a Jew, maybe an archaic one. And his life itself has had the awkwardness of an orphan, he notes in We Jews and Blacks; his father ("who never tried to pass [racially]") committed suicide and left the boy with "Marti," his Mexican stepmother, and "with her mother Rebeca, a Sephardi from Constantinople, who normally called [him] mancebico, young man (in Medieval Spanish)." He goes on:

The one school I applied to was Yale, and they turned me down. For the religious blank, I wrote "Quaker" [a lie.] I didn't have my brother and mother prodding me. I did it on my own. I think they turned me down because my application, the smudgy work of a fifteen-year-old, wasn't very good, not because they suspected that Barnstone [another lie] was Bernstein (meaning "amber" in German or literally "burning stone"). When I say Barnstone, and my pals in the know often kid me for having a phony name. I love the name Barnstone, as I do Willis (one lacking will). A "barn stone" is a thing in nature. And I've lived most of my adult life in a rebuilt barn, which my brother designed.

Since my father was a jeweler, importing Swiss watches, he imported, at my sister's suggestion, a watch with our own mark on it: Pierre Grange (meaning Stone Barn). They were beautiful watches that he designed, with Corbusier-like shapes, and in the last years I always quote Pierre Grange in scholarly and creative books. He's very kind to me and lets me say what I would not feel as comfortable saying myself. He also has a mind of his own and gets inspired to say aphoristic words and quotable parabraphs I'd never come upon or dream up. For my book The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory & Practice (Yale, 1995), he was unduly generous. I cited him epigraphically and in many tight spots. Conforming with proper acknowledgments, in the bibliography I had his diverse books and essays all translated from the French by a Pole living in France, Velvel Bornstein. If my grandparents had stayed on in eastern Poland until the village of Haradok was bulldozed by the Nazis and the people taken away or if I had ventured to live with my parents in Warsaw itself, I would have carried the good name of Velvel Bornstein. Soon after the war I wen to Warsaw and was taken to the ghetto by a friend, Bronislaw Zielinski. He had been in the Polish resistance, was captured by the Germans and tortured by them; later he was tortured by the postwar government as a Catholic opponent.

[here Willis Barnstone includes his dark, awkward poem: "Vevel Bornstein in the Warsaw Ghetto." The last two lines go like this. . . .]

My witness. That Jew and visitor
Is writing this. He could be me.

There were surely many joyous and fated Velvel Bornsteinns in the prewar Pale, perhaps in my own unknown and disappeared family in the village of Harodok. But was there a real Pierre Grange? "Grange" is rare in France; "La Grange" plentiful, like "Miller." My dear friend Professor Pierre Citron recently wrote, informing me that he had found just two authors in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris with the names Pierre Grange. . . . One day in those early postwar years, as we were walking through the ghetto--already elegantly rebuilt and no longer a site for Jews--Bron [i.e., Bronislaw Zielinski] told me he had experienced and seen too much raw cruelty: "I am a ruined species. The option of forgiving or forgetting is not an option. We cannot forget. My generation must die."

Of Course, What He Meant Is

Richard Alan Rhodes tells the world his middle name when translating one of the family names in the Bible - "using Barnstone’s idea of making the translation [to] sound more Jewish, especially in the names."

Of course, what Rich meant to say is he was using Willis's idea of making the translation sound less exclusionary of the Jews, especially less-Christian-only in the names.

BTW, the family name "Barnstone" is neither Jewish nor Polish.  What is it?

Reading Anointed in Greeky Hebrew

Yesterday our pastor preached a brilliant sermon (on the ways Moses changed and matured) the text of which was Hebrews 11:24-26:

²⁴By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. ²⁵He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. ²⁶He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. (NIV)

Today I want to look at other things in and around the text:

--> especially the ways the early writers and / or editors and / or translators liberally (or "progressively") change this text to increase the play in it (and by "play" I mean both "playfulness" and also interpretive "wiggle room");

--> but how the Christian Bible translators seem to want to do the opposite.

Here's Greek for comparison:

24Πίστει Μωϋσῆς μέγας γενόμενος ἠρνήσατο λέγεσθαι υἱὸς θυγατρὸς Φαραώ, 25μᾶλλον ἑλόμενος συγκακουχεῖσθαι τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ ἢ πρόσκαιρον ἔχειν ἁμαρτίας ἀπόλαυσιν, 26μείζονα πλοῦτον ἡγησάμενος τῶν Αἰγύπτου θησαυρῶν τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἀπέβλεπεν γὰρ εἰς τὴν μισθαποδοσίαν.

Immediately, the reader is transported back to Egypt to ask questions.

There's the daughter of Pharaoh (θυγάτηρ Φαραω) in Hebrews 11:24; and she's lifted right out of Exodus 2:5 & 2:6 & 2:7 & 2:8 & 2:10 in the Greek translation of the Hebrew. That is, this "Hebrews" text points in reverse to an earlier Jewish-Greek translation of the traditional masoret Hebrew text, playfully named "Exodus" (i.e., the Odyssey-like "Way Out of Egypt"), commissioned and completed in Egypt. In Egypt, professor Sylvie Honigman of Tel Aviv University points out, the commissioned Hebrew translators render their old text in the "Homeric paradigm." And, as we're looking back to how the writers and/ or editors and/ or translators of the "Epistle of Hebrews" writes in Greek, Jared Calaway, at his blog Antiquitopia, lets us see and hear the Homeric play - through the first or second century right up to our own.

What we're beginning to question is whether Christian Bible translators work in this paradigm (i.e., the paradigm of Homeric play of the Hebrews). Or is the paradigm of Christian Bible translators more typically aristotelian? Aristotle, by logic of course, wanted to avoid ambiguities in Greek. The text was to lock down the meaning and was to say the one thing that the original author intended and nothing else.

As the reader reads the text above in English translation, an initial question is whether the text points forward to the future. To a precise point. And how far forward into the future? And whom and what might the text be pointing forward to? The quick and precise and unambiguous and objectively obvious answer must be: "to the Christian Christ." But we may be resorting to aristotelianism again - as if that's "translation." And we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we? So back up from now. Let's back up from "Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" when such a remote spot focuses on a place such as bible-belt USA, where non-Hebrews here and now (the majority the population I dare guess) claim "The Book of Hebrews" as a text for Christians alone despite the fact that most Jews can rightly reply, "You can have it!"




Back in Egypt, there's this new King of Egypt (not necessarily Φαραω but certainly the monarch put there in Alexandria after the city is named after Alexander the Great who, we have to add, learned under Aristotle in the aristotelian paradigm). And there, but in the Homeric paradigm, in the Hebrew play with the Greek text in Egypt, this newer King is like the Pharaoh of old who interacted with Moses. Except he must interact with Hebrews who are translators of Moses. As the writer(s), or editor(s), or translator(s) of the epistle of Hebrews quote from these earliest translators, we wonder whether they sensed any fear in those first translators - but we have little doubt that they sensed anything but the proof of belief and the lack of fear in Moses. They write:

27Πίστει κατέλιπεν Αἴγυπτον, μὴ φοβηθεὶς τὸν θυμὸν τοῦ βασιλέως, τὸν γὰρ ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρῶν ἐκαρτέρησεν.
27By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. (NIV).

The reader immediately notices something and someone hidden. Perhaps more than one somebody missing. Yes, the invisible God. Yes also the hidden daughters. For all the repetition given to this daughter of Pharoah (Exodus 2:5 & 2:6 & 2:7 & 2:8 & 2:10) and for all of the recognition given to her, the text never gives her name. We know her because her name is invisible and unspoken and she acts like God: she saves the dying, the male, the Hebrew, the son. And she alone gives him his name. The name she gives translates into Hebrew wordplay: משה - the Egyptian Mosheh punning playfully on the agency of his Egyptian MaMa אם who Mercifully delivers him משה from the Muddy Ruddy Bloody Murderous waters מים - as if out of the womb and out of the lips of the Egyptian mother and midwife and princess christener and nurse provider.

In the old Greek text (that Hebrew translation done back in Egypt as "Exit Odyssey" or Exodus 2:11), Moses grows up: μέγας γενόμενος Μωϋσῆς. In the new Greek text (as Hebrews 11:24), the transition seems as abrupt: Μωϋσῆς μέγας γενόμενος. By the new text, the reader is carried back but is simultaneously thrust forward to a midrash-like analysis of an entire episode of the old story. An entire complex narrative turns on one little clause: ἠρνήσατο λέγεσθαι refused to be known. In the old story, the grown boy becomes a witness to injustice and murder and flees the scene. In the new text, he becomes the son of a mother no longer and is faithful to another.

At least this is how most English Christian translations of this text lock down the story.

It never moves forward from that.

There's the rejection of the female, a rejection of the faithful salvation by a woman of a male as if she were his very own mother and as she collaborates with other women braver than fathers and brothers (either Hebrew or Egyptian) - the baby's very own mother and sister collaborating with the princess - the incredible mix of Egyptians and Hebrews, faithful language and rhetorical naming and playful translation and ancient feminisms.

The Christian text in English rejects the feminism. So let's read more closely. Let's ask questions so that the apparent male dominance and Christian dominance of the text doesn't make it always only one thing and never ever anything else. (Yes, I know - such dominance sounds like Aristotle not necessarily anything like the Septuagint translators or the writers of Hebrews of a far different, absolutely more different in play.)

How different might the text (i.e., the Greek translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew in the Homeric paradigm) be?

The identity "υἱὸς θυγατρὸς Φαραώ" in Greek might be translated in English as "a son of a daughter of Pharaoh." The collocation of son and daughter does not suggest an easy dominance of one over the other or even of the one purely different from the other. The collocation, in fact, syntactically mirrors an appositive - which is just a fancy way of saying that both nouns translate one another in what Mikhail Epstein might, rightly, see as an inter-lation as much as a trans-lation. And both, then, are related together to the proper noun "Pharoah" in a sense. This reading (which English translators tend to lose with "the son of the daughter of the Pharaoh") makes the contrast in the next verse very compelling.

There's more feminism (more gender inclusivity) than unmarked male-dominant sexism in Hebrews 11:25. (Long before the English bible gender debates in Chrsitianity especially, we get this inclusiveness in the Greek text of Hebrews). The identity "τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ" in Greek is definite even in translated English: "the people of the god." The contrast of identities for the Hebrew around Πίστει is from indefinite son-daughter of Pharaoh to definite people of the Divine One. There's no necessary rejection of females or of the participation of a foreign Egyptian female. Moses, of faith (and prior to Jesus Christ and faith in him), does not lose his sonship with respect to the daughtership of the princess of Egypt. Moses is not even renouncing his lineage in the least - as Paul seems to when calling himself a Hebrew of Hebrews (of a particular tribe of the nation of Israel with a baby's circumcision to boot) while renouncing this identity "for the sake of Christ" as we read that in English. No - Moses "a son" who is in many ways like "a daughter" of Pharaoh is also one of "the people of God." And "a daughter" like that, we read in the old text and say again, is like "the God" who saves the son. If it we're not for her, he would not have the name Moses, the wordplay name, the feminist name of a princess collaborating in translation with a few slave women.

Which brings us to another verse:

26μείζονα πλοῦτον ἡγησάμενος τῶν Αἰγύπτου θησαυρῶν τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἀπέβλεπεν γὰρ εἰς τὴν μισθαποδοσίαν.

Christians who translate tend to make the "τοῦ Χριστοῦ" here refer to "Christ Jesus" only and obviously, quite objectively and logically, to no one else. (In another post, we've wondered why the English translation has to commit what Robert Alter calls "the heresy of explanation" when referring in Greek to Ἰησοῦς - who must always and only be explained by the translator to the reader as either "Jesus" or the other guy "Joshua.") So now again the English translator finds useful Aristotle's convenient logic boxes. "Christ" is the real (if abstract) category for the "Christian" - and nothing else fits.

But the text of Hebrews pushes readers back again to the Septuagint. First, we go back to Egypt and to daughters and a son being rescued. But then the translation brings us to lyric and poetic Hebrew beyond the epic narrative "Exodus."

First, from the phrase "τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ" to Exodus 2:3 in Greek translation and a similar clause:

ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐκ ἠδύναντο αὐτὸ ἔτι κρύπτειν, ἔλαβεν αὐτῷ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ θῖβιν καὶ κατέχρισεν αὐτὴν ἀσφαλτοπίσσῃ καὶ ἐνέβαλεν τὸ παιδίον εἰς αὐτὴν καὶ ἔθηκεν αὐτὴν εἰς τὸ ἕλος παρὰ τὸν ποταμόν.

Notice the verb, κατέχρισεν - it's what the Hebrew daughter is doing. She's anointing the basket, she's "besmearing" says translator Lancelot Brenton, and she's "plastering" it says translator Larry Perkins. And those who read Homer's epic Odyssey remember hearing this at least four times as women are doing things on behalf of others in need:

τὰρ ἐπεὶ λοῦσέν τε καὶ ἔχρισεν λίπ’ ἐλαίῳ,
ἀμφὶ δέ μιν φᾶρος καλὸν βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνα,

In another post at another blog, we've read the wordplay of Hebrews into Greek. But the point we want to make here is that such play is Homeric not aristotelian. The very idea of the Greek translation that "Christ" the English word comes from is from early ancient Greek feminism. It's messy stuff of lyric of epic of women of poetics of rhetorics that Aristotle tried to avoid. It's the messy stuff that Christ-ian translators today still try to avoid.

But it's the very stuff that Hebrews writing and translating their own scriptures embraced and produced.

So, in Hebrews 11:26, the writers-translators have Greek readers turning. Turning first back to the Homeric translating of Exodus 2:3 - a daughter translating a basket into a womb. We are taken back again to the Christ-verbs (to things women do and do again) in the Odyssey. Next, Hebrews 11:26 takes us back but forward a bit.

We are now turned to and turning in the "Strummings of Strings" in the "Psalms." The salient sounds of "τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ" have their reverberations in Psalm 89.

(The Psalm in Hebrew is more "A Maskil [מַשְׂכִּיל "wise, nationalistic song"] of Ethan [איתן 'the Enduring'] the Ezrahite [אזרחי "Native Son"]-- notice the wordplay of the Hebrew names lost but found anew in the Greek a wise, nationalistic song which in Greek is by Αιθαν τῷ Ισραηλίτῃ or literally, "Shining / Blazing, the Israelite." Bacchylides loves the word αἰθᾶν in speaking of Apollo - so why not use it for איתן, the play on אזרחי?).

Listen to the reverberations from Hebrews 11:26 in the lyric Greek, in the Greek Psalm that is of Αιθαν τῷ Ισραηλίτῃ the "Shining Israelite." Here's the song in responsive dialogue with the Lord in Greek (Psalm 89:52, echoing 89:38, echoing 89:20). Listen:

οὗ ὠνείδισαν οἱ ἐχθροί σου, Κύριε,
οὗ ὠνείδισαν τὸ ἀντάλλαγμα τοῦ χριστοῦ σου

σὺ δὲ ἀπώσω καὶ ἐξουδένωσας,
ἀνεβάλου τὸν χριστόν σου·

εὗρον Δαυιδ τὸν δοῦλόν μου,
ἐν ἐλαίῳ ἁγίῳ μου ἔχρισα αὐτόν.

Who Anoints as a Greek woman might (verse 20)? And whom is Anointed (mashach משח)? Isn't God anointing his son David?

Why is the psalmist complaining? What good is the anointing if it seems the Lord is casting it off (verse 38)?

When the enemies reproach the anointed one, won't there be remembering (verse 52)?

משיח mashiyach חרף charaph

ὠνείδισαν oneidisan τοῦ χριστοῦ tou christou

Or will all be lost in translation? In the aristotelian paradigm of "translation" that separates:

"male" from "female"
"the son" from "the daughter"
"peasant women" from "a princess"
"Moses" from "Egyptian lips"
"Hebrews" from "the kingdom of Egypt"
"Jesus" from "Joshua"
"Christ" from "feminine anointing"
"Christ" from "David"
and finally
"Christian Hebrews" from "Jewish Hebrews"

In this post, I know I'm using hyperbole, exaggeration for effect. I'm not trying to overwhelm anyone with the exhaustive possibilities of wordplay. I am wanting to show some of the unaddressed power of Aristotle's method. And to show how separating and silencing Christian translation, by its limited logic, has tended to be. And to show that aristotelianism is not what Hebrew translators (including women as agents in Hebrew narrative) tend to use. And to reassure all of us that logic is okay as long as logic is not our only human tool or our only personal language.