Greek Changing Paul

The title of my post is ambiguous. You can read it as "Paul was changing the Greek language" and as "The Greek language of Paul was changing." I'm talking about the Paul (or someone using his name) who used Greek to write much of the New Testament.

His language changes through the various letters he wrote. And Paul's Greek changes the way other writers after him use the language. Tracking the influences on Paul and Paul's on others could be a dissertation, or a lifetime of study. I think Paul was as much influenced by Aristotle and his Greek as anybody. Paul clearly was engaged in (if he didn't explicitly recognize) the sort of gripes that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had with the language and language flux of the old poets and playwrights and sophists (such as Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Heraclitus, Sophocles, Euripides, Protagoras, Epicurus, Zeno, Gorgias, Dissoi Logoi). When Paul was in Athens listening in on and then chiming in on the conversations of his contemporaries in that City and culture, he used the Greek language rhetorically in a very Aristotelian way, starting syllogistically with the givens of certain men of old. He treats theo-logy in his speech in many ways as Aristotle does, an acknowledging of truths but of errors to get at the Nature of God objectively.

Paul, unlike Aristotle, did acknowledge much of his personal change, his "growth" perhaps, and certainly his dramatic adult human conversion. In his short life, the rippling effects of that conversion can be seen in his letter writing. Bill Heroman does some wonderful reflecting on and some reconstructing of the possibilities of some of this change in Paul. T.C. Robinson challenges whether there's a theological construct in the traditional ordering of Paul's New Testament letters. Bill Mounce has looked at Paul's rare Greek such as δί·λογος / dí-logos /. And Joel Hoffman, with a number of others, has wondered whether Paul has new meanings for σάρξ / sarks /.

Language, Greek language, and translation scholar Willis Barnstone reflects on Paul. Barnstone sees the stability of the Greek language, its fluidity, and where Paul fits into that. On pages 114 and 115 of his new Restored New Testament, Barnstone gets us thinking:

The letters to the Romans (probably his last letter) and the Corinthians show Paul at the peak of thought and rhetorical magic. He achieves language magic in demotic Greek (Koine), with a flare of the classical period while keeping to the simplified syntax and virtues of the vernacular. He has the high flow of Plato, who wrote in Attic Greek, in his own less inflected tongue. To repeat my argument [i.e., Barnstone's argument] about the glory of Mark's Greek, Paul's work is not less effective for being composed in vernacular development of Attic Greek any more than Michel de Montaigne is less for writing in French, the regional vernacular of Cicero's Latin. Indeed, in terms of change, Paul's Greek is closer to Plato than E. M. Forster's English is to Shakespeare. Greek, in spelling, grammar, and usage, was very early established, while in English the dictionary thoroughness of Samuel Johnson, who established norms for English spelling and usage did not enter the scene until midway between Forster and Shakespeare.

If this volume [i.e., Barnstone's Restored New Testament] were predominantly a study Bible, then it would begin with Paul’s I Thessalonians, which, if not supreme, carries the authority and beauty of all his authentic letters. And despite the above encomia [i.e. Barnstone's own praise] for the apostle’s key letters, there are advantages at least for study purposes to keep in mind the probable order of Paul’s work. He grows as his movement grows, and his work moves to the climactic pivotal letters. A chronological order, even the thought of one, would provide an unbiased historical frame for secular and sectarian events and reveal the material culture scene of the Jews, Christian Jews, Greeks, and Romans who participate in the drama of each book.

While I separate the authentic Pauline letters from the pseudonymous, from a stylistic point of view, the would-be Paul letters do not jar. Being pseudepigraphic they imitate Paul's style, in not his depth and breadth.

While Barnstone may be making a few sweeping statements, he's absolutely correct to try to see Paul's writings and his Greek in light of developments in and of the language.  Barnstone goes on to instruct his own readers in what Aristotle taught as if to help us read Paul better.  That point shouldn't get lost on any of us.  Why would it hurt any of us to get at not only exactly what Paul meant by certain Greek words but also at exactly how and why (sometimes without self reflection at all) we read Paul?

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.

Antiquitopia's Hebrews Odyssey

Jared Callaway, at his wonderful blog Antiquitopia, has posted "Polutropos: Much-Turned Speech in the Odyssey and Hebrews."

After quoting side-by-side in Greek the first few lines of the Odyssey and the new testament letter called Hebrews, Jared starts in:

I thought I would write an essay—in Montaigne’ sense of a try, an experiment, an attempt that is never conclusive but always questioning—by bringing together two texts and just seeing what happens. It is really a midrashic moment, in fact, because I started thinking about these two texts due to a single word that appears in the first line of each with slight variation: πολύτροπον and πολυτρόπως. This bringing together two texts based upon the occurrence of a single word is, as noted, a midrashic technique, one known as gezera shawa, a technique employed by one of the texts under consideration—Hebrews—but, as we will see, my interpretive maneuvers of reading one text against another through the occurrence of a single word is . . .

Now jump over to his post for much more and many turns.

pedantic post on πίστεως

The really serious bibliobloggers are looking at this Greek word πίστεως. Well, the funny biblioblogger named N.T. Wrong is anyway: 100 Reasons πίστις Χριστοῦ is an Objective Genitive. Those who think that he's real, that he's really writing a book for real publication, and that Jesus is real are getting really excited.

What's their real question and his?  

Did Paul write in Greek to mean Jesus himself has real saving "faith" 

OR did Paul mean that others should have real saving "faith in Jesus" 

(OR is there "some other genitive meaning")?

So why should I get involved?  I shouldn't.  But Aristotle already wrote about this stuff, sort of. It's a philological mess now.  Pedantic.  

(At least Wrong warns readers about the pedantry, calling it a "rather esoteric, subtle, and arcane grammatical dispute."  

And I've already tried to say, again and again, that Aristotle didn't want us native-speakers of barbarian mother tongues to be messing around with his elite language for the boys at the Academy.

Haven't I also warned, again and again, that New Testament scholars and translators don't want others messing around with their Greek?  And that philosophers don't want others messing around with their Greek?  And that rhetoricians don't want others messing around with their Greek?  And that classicists don't want others messing around with their Greek?)

Pedantic is what this stuff is.  And, therefore, it's vastly important to Greek New Testament scholars and to Greek Rhetoric scholars too, for two different reasons.  NT scholars want the Greek word to mean "faith."  Rhetoric scholars want the Greek word to mean "proof."  (Philosophers care about other more important things, and classicists have a critical story or two to tell.)

It's a mess before anyone starts arguing about the "genitive" case (i.e., πίστεως), which is how Jesus gets dragged in.  So would I surprise you if I said women got dragged into the conversation a lot earlier than Jesus did?  Except, in contrast to the genitive question for Jesus, there was among Greek men no question as to whether women could have "faith" or "proof" or anything so valuable that men had.  The question, rather, was whether men can believe women, period.

You want examples, don't you?  

In his Anabasis, Xenophon tells of how his namesake character would not believe the man Eucleides:

ὁ δ’ αὐτῷ οὐκ ἐπίστευεν . . . .
And Eucleides would not believe him. . . .

ἰδὼν δὲ τὰ ἱερὰ ὁ Εὐκλείδης εἶπεν
and when Eucleides saw the vitals of the victims, he said

ὅτι πείθοιτο αὐτῷ μὴ εἶναι χρήματα.
that he was well persuaded that Xenophon had no money.

(lines 7.8.2-3
translated by classicist Carleton L. Brownson
with one little change by me).

Okay, fair enough.  That example had nothing to do with women.  I was just trying to show different Greek words in narrative context, where one man couldn't believe another and where "persuasion" (i.e., as in "rhetoric") was at play but is something altogether different from "belief."

Now to women.  In his Work and Days, Hesiod writes to men telling them how to trust their "brothers."  But then he transitions to how they ought not to believe women:

πίστεις δ' ἄρα ὁμῶς καὶ ἀπιστίαι ὤλεσαν ἄνδρας
Certainly trust [believability] and distrust [unbelievability] prove equally fatal to men.

μηδὲ γυνή σε νόον πυγοστόλος ἐξαπατάτω
Don't let a wily, wheedling woman who wiggles her bottom

αἱμύλα κωτίλλουσα, τεὴν διφῶσα καλιήν:
Wholly befuddle your wits: her purpose is rifling your pantry.

ὃς δὲ γυναικὶ πέποιθε, πέποιθ' ὅ γε φιλήτῃσιν.
One who is persuaded by a woman is persuaded by cheats and deceivers.

(lines 372-375
translated by classicist Friedrich W. Solmsen
with a couple of small changes by me).

And then there's this from Homer's Odyssey (lines 455-56 with a translation by classicist James Huddleston, with a touch-up by me):

κρύβδην, μηδ' ἀναφανδά, φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν
Take your ship to your beloved fatherland

νῆα κατισχέμεναι: ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι πιστὰ γυναιξίν.
secretly, not openly, since there's no way now to believe in women.

Then we fast forward past Aristotle (and Plato and Socrates).  We find, then, there's John's Jesus who does this (2:24 my translating):

αὐτὸς δὲ Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἐπίστευεν αὐτὸν αὐτοῖς 
Joshua himself, nonetheless, did not believe himself [believable] to them

διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν γινώσκειν πάντας
because he himself knew every one [of these mortals]

And Matthew translates Jesus, who exclaims (15:28):

ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῇ ὦ γύναι μεγάλη σου ἡ πίστις
Joshua said to her, "Oh wow, woman. That belief of yours is huge!"

While earlier Matthew's translated Jesus exclaiming this way (9:22):

ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς στραφεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν εἶπεν
Joshua, however, turning, looked for himself and said

θάρσει θύγατερ ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε
"Dauntless Daughter! That belief of yours rescued you!"

καὶ ἐσώθη ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ τῆς ὥρας ἐκείνης
Indeed the woman was rescued from that point in the season on.

Timeout for a minute. Let's rewind again. Greek men writing and Greek men speaking are hardly used to finding women believable. Men don't believe women, and men don't believe in women either. Men might be believable to one another on the other hand.  So John writes to say that mortal men are falling all over themselves in belief of this guy Joshua. And yet, he (the Joshua man) treats them like other men have treated women: he doesn't believe those other guys falling for him, and he doesn't believe in those men (because, John says, he "knows" all mortals). But he (the Joshua) does believe women, and does believe in women (which the examples from Matthew show).

So we're going to have to get to Jesus and Paul's genitive for Bible translators.  I promise we will.  Just believe me.  But let's work through Aristotle and his teachers and their translators first.

Here's Plato's Socrates in the Philebus (as also translated by philologist Harold N. Fowler all on his own):

διὰ δὴ τί μάλισθ’ ὑπολαμβάνεις με δεῖξαί σοι τὴν ἐν τῇ κωμῳδίᾳ μεῖξιν; 
Now why do you particularly suppose I pointed out to you the mixture of pain and pleasure in comedy?

ἆρ’ οὐ πίστεως χάριν?
Was it not for the sake of convincing you?

Notice how the genitive form stumps this translator-scholar! All of the sudden, there's the meaning "convincing" (as in "persuasive" and "proof") for πίστεως for Fowler. Who cares what Socrates meant when it's Plato writing about him. What I mean by that is, "Why would Plato have his teacher's character in this dialogue change the meaning of the Greek word in this context from 'Was it not to gain the favor of your belief' to how Fowler means it?" What's wrong with Plato's Socrates meaning, "Was it not to gain the favor of your belief" for "ἆρ’ οὐ πίστεως χάριν"?  (And can I persuade you by some proof to believe that a New Testament scholar-translator would want that to be "Was it not for the sake of grace through faith?"  Let's do that another day; can we?)

Now, we're ready for Aristotle.  Here's his Athenian Constitution (line 18.6, as also translated by philosopher H. Rackham):

καὶ πείσας αὑτῷ τὸν Ἱππίαν δοῦναι τὴν δεξιὰν πίστεως χάριν
and induced Hippias to give him his right hand as a pledge of good faith.

So we notice here that there is "faith," but "good faith" as a "pledge," which is more like "convincing persuasive proof" (even πείσας or "induction") than like "grace through faith"; and neither of those is like "the favor of belief."  In other words, the philosopher and the New Testament scholar tends to depart from the classicist.  Three different directions for the same word in the same context.  But why?  Doesn't the philosopher know Aristotle?  Yes, he does.

The rhetorician also knows Aristotle.  In the Rhetoric, as translated also by rhetorician George A. Kennedy, there's this:

ἐνθυμημάτων . . . ὅπερ ἐστὶ σῶμα τῆς πίστεως
enthymemes, which is the body of persuasion

Let's jump back over to the Bible now. It's only Wisdom of Solomon (3:14), not the bible really is it? And yet, look at the same language but how different the translating by the King James translation team: 

καὶ εὐνοῦχος ὁ μὴ ἐργασάμενος ἐν χειρὶ ἀνόμημα μηδὲ ἐνθυμηθεὶς κατὰ τοῦ κυρίου πονηρά δοθήσεται γὰρ αὐτῷ τῆς πίστεως χάρις ἐκλεκτὴ καὶ κλῆρος ἐν ναῷ κυρίου θυμηρέστερος

And blessed is the eunuch, which with his hands hath wrought no iniquity, nor imagined wicked things against God: for unto him shall be given the special gift of faith, and an inheritance in the temple of the Lord more acceptable to his mind.

Here there's now "faith" where once there was "proofs" (and "imagined wicked things" where once there were "enthymemes," and "gift" where once there was "grace" and "favor" in other contexts).

What are men like Aristotle and men like Paul and their translators doing with Greek?with the genitive form πίστεως?  

Unbelievable.

Know Your Abortion Histories

Yesterday, my daughter spoke up freely. She made her choice to speak out on abortion in her school in America in an essay turned in on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR FEMALES

But long ago, daughters as they were schooled in the democratic Athens and in the republican Rome didn’t have such free speech. (They didn’t have free choice for abortions either; but more on that in a moment).

Now, the Greek men did allow more women more opportunities to write and to speak publicly. Today, for example, we can read Sappho (and even Aristotle on Sappho as he has to fawn some over her) and, through Plato, we can read of Diotima and we can read Aspasia (who may have taught Pericles how to speak and Socrates how to dialog).

But the Roman males shut all that down, making outlaws of females who chose to write or to speak. (One of the best histories on this to date is Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold).

The legal code in the empire of Rome simply reflected the common practices of Roman men. Glenn puts it this way: “A particular point of Roman male pride seems to have been the deliberate exclusion of women from civil and public duties; and in the first centuries of its history, Roman law reflected rigid legal inequalities between males and females” (page 61).

(One Roman male was also a Jewish male who was also a Christian male. Parenthetically, here, I’m mentioning Paul/Saul of Tarsus to highlight the male Roman influence on the silencing of women. The multilingual, multicultural, multi-citizened, multi-monotheist Paul in his famous letter to the Roman church gave many instructions; but Paul didn’t have to instruct the women in Rome to be silent; by practice and by law, females were not allowed freedom of speech. Paul did, nonetheless, feel compelled to have to teach women in Corinth to be silent in the churches, as if they didn’t get the Roman practice. Paul also had his multilingual, multicultural, multi-monotheistic disciple Timothy instruct women to be quiet. Timothy had trouble giving up his Greek roots, so Paul got him to identify more with his Jewish side, and his new Jesus-following side, by getting his penis circumcised. Just to be clear, however, Paul frees slaves. Curiously, however, Paul writes to the Jewish Christians in Rome in the Greek language, saying there there are two kinds of humans, Jews first and then Greeks [but in his Jesus, there are neither the necessary distinctions between slave and free nor the must-have inequalities between male and female]; both kinds of humans [Jews and Greeks] have [for the Roman Paul] a more liberal practice and legal code than do the Roman males with respect to females writing or speaking in public; but in Rome to Romans, there’s no need to state the obvious: women don’t and shouldn’t have free speech. So when in Rome, . . .; and when elsewhere in the Roman empire, . . . )

NO CHOICE TO ABORT FOR FEMALES

What does all this have to do with abortion? Plenty. Just as Greek and Roman males prohibited the practice of free speech for females, so they prohibited their abortion practice too. Neither Greek nor Roman males allowed mothers to choose abortion. No, it was the men who chose abortion for the women.

In Section VI of his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, Mr. Justice Harry Blackmun makes this very clear: “Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn. If abortion was prosecuted in some places, it seems to have been based on a concept of a violation of the father's right to his offspring. Ancient religion did not bar abortion.” Women must be silent, for the gods and goddesses are silent, on “the father’s right” to choose “his offspring” or to abort it prematurely when the law allows it. Mr. Justice Blackmun also has made very explicit that “abortion was practiced in Greek times as well as in the Roman Era, and that ‘it was resorted to without scruple.’”

MINORITY VOICES OF PROTEST SILENCED

The men with “scruple” were few, according to Mr. Justice Blackmun’s history in Section VI of his Roe v. Wade decision. And yet he does praise two Greek males with “scruple”:

First, there is the “Ephesian, Soranos, often described as the greatest of the ancient gynecologists,” who “appears to have been generally opposed to Rome's prevailing free-abortion practices. He found it necessary to think first of the life of the mother, and he resorted to abortion when, upon this standard, he felt the procedure advisable.”

And, second, there is Dr. Hippocrates who wrote “the famous Oath that has stood so long as the ethical guide of the medical profession.” Hippocrates is “the great Greek (460(?)-377(?) B. C.), who has been described as the Father of Medicine, the ‘wisest and the greatest practitioner of his art,’ and the ‘most important and most complete medical personality of antiquity,’ who dominated the medical schools of his time, and who typified the sum of the medical knowledge of the past.”

Although Mr. Justice Blackmun gives praise to Dr. Soranos and Dr. Hippocrates in his Roe v. Wade decision, the American Supreme Court Justice effectively silences both Greek physicians in their teaching against the Roman and the Greek male practice of abortion. “Ancient attitudes” such as Dr. Soranos’s, “are not capable of precise determination,” asserts Mr. Justice Blackmun. And of the protests of Dr. Hippocrates, he complains: “The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation.” Let’s come back to the question of translation in a moment.

Let’s now get to the burning question Mr. Justice Blackmun rushes to: “Why did not the authority of Hippocrates dissuade abortion practice in his time and that of Rome?”

How would you answer that question in light of the male Greek and Roman practices and laws against free speech for females? Or in light of the fact that it was Greek and Roman males, not females, who had the choice to abort?

My guess is you would not have answered it how Mr. Justice Blackmun answers it. You probably would not have turned to Mr. Ludwig Edelstein, Ph.D., but that’s what Mr. Justice Blackmun does. The Justice reads from the classics scholar’s book: The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943). And the male Justice quotes the male scholar, putting his opinion into Roe v. Wade this way:

The late Dr. Edelstein provides us with a theory: The Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates' day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability. See Plato, Republic, V, 461; Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1335b 25. For the Pythagoreans, however, it was a matter of dogma. For them the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being. The abortion clause of the Oath, therefore, “echoes Pythagorean doctrines,” (p132) and “[i]n no other stratum of Greek opinion were such views held or proposed in the same spirit of uncompromising austerity.”

Dr. Edelstein then concludes that the Oath originated in a group representing only a small segment of Greek opinion and that it certainly was not accepted by all ancient physicians. He points out that medical writings down to Galen (A. D. 130-200) “give evidence of the violation of almost every one of its injunctions.” But with the end of antiquity a decided change took place. Resistance against suicide and against abortion became common. The Oath came to be popular. The emerging teachings of Christianity were in agreement with the Pythagorean ethic. The Oath “became the nucleus of all medical ethics” and “was applauded as the embodiment of truth.” Thus, suggests Dr. Edelstein, it is “a Pythagorean manifesto and not the expression of an absolute standard of medical conduct.”

Now, I wonder what would have happened if a woman had spoken up at this point? Yes, I know: 1943 is much earler than 1997. 1943 is when Mr. Edelstein, Ph.D. offers his theory of how minor the voice of Dr. Hippocrates must be. 1972 is when Mr. Justice Blackmun reads us Mr. Edelstein’s classic-scholar theory. But it’s not until 1997 that Ms. Cheryl Glenn, Ph.D. is finally able to speak out for Greek and Roman minor voices, namely the rhetorical voices of females. Rhetorician Glenn writes Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, beginning to give females an equal voice in their history, which is our history, the histories of men and women.

NOW TRANSLATION

Remember how Mr. Justice Blackmun suggests that “The Oath [of Hippocrates] varies somewhat according to the particular translation”? Well, translation, like history writing, seems to be skewed towards Greek male and Roman male ways of understanding. I’m suggesting, like Glenn does, that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero and Quintilian have created “the Tradition” and that our translations (following the epistemologies of these men) have helped to perpetuate “the Tradition.” If we must rewrite our histories more inclusively, more equally, then it takes lots of reworking, and sometimes much regendering. How then if we must retranslate some of the texts of “the Tradition”? Fortunately, some are doing that with the Jewish and Christian male-dominant scriptures already. What now of some of the classical Greek and Roman documents on which we base so much of our practice and so much of our law?

Mr. Justice Blackmun makes this simple assertion:

“The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation, but in any translation the content is clear: ‘I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion,’ or ‘I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.’”

And the Justice's conclusion about the Oath is rigid: “This, it seems to us, is a satisfactory and acceptable explanation of the Hippocratic Oath's apparent rigidity. It enables us to understand. in historical context, a long-accepted and revered statement of medical ethics.”

Now the male Justice for the male court majority has justified his views by the voice of the male classicist again. The rigid translations that we’re given are are those of Mr. Edelstein, Ph.D. But what we don’t get is even the excerpt of Dr. Hippocrates’s Oath alongside the translations. So here it is: οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι ξυμβουλίην τοιήνδε. Ὁμοίως δὲ οὐδὲ γυναικὶ πεσσὸν φθόριον δώσω.

And completely missing from Roe v. Wade is this very important question: Is the Oath only made to other men? Surely Hippocrates wouldn’t make a pledge to women, right? Surely he must only be writing to other males, to only men gynecologists, to midhusbands alone (and not to females or to midwives), right? No. Wrong. And wrong again. The physician’s vow is to men and to women, and most equally also to gods and to goddesses. (If Mr. Justice Blackmun is rightly observing the American constitutional separation of church and state by keeping out the theology here, then he’s perhaps right on other grounds—silent indeed—to reject the Oath of Dr. Hippocrates. But ignoring the silenced women, in voice and abortion choice, in Greece and in Rome, Mr. Justice Blackmun turns away from the inclusive and egalitarian Dr. Hippocrates and turns to the very sexist Greek and Roman males, who silence women and who abort babies by the father’s choice).

NOW A FEMINIST CHOICE TO TRANSLATE

Let’s pause here now to read the Oath, to consider its equality, and to reconsider how it might be retranslated to recognize its gendering against the male-only Greek and Roman choices. On the day after the 35th year, here’s the text silenced through the translation of Mr. Edelstein Ph.D. and through the majority opinion of Mr. Justice Blackmun:

Ὄμνυμι Ἀπόλλωνα ἰητρὸν, καὶ Ἀσκληπιὸν, καὶ Ὑγείαν, καὶ Πανάκειαν, καὶ θεοὺς πάντας τε καὶ πάσας, ἵστορας ποιεύμενος, ἐπιτελέα ποιήσειν κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμὴν ὅρκον τόνδε καὶ ξυγγραφὴν τήνδε.
Ἡγήσασθαι μὲν τὸν διδάξαντά με τὴν τέχνην ταύτην ἴσα γενέτῃσιν ἐμοῖσι, καὶ βίου κοινώσασθαι, καὶ χρεῶν χρηίζοντι μετάδοσιν ποιήσασθαι, καὶ γένος τὸ ἐξ ωὐτέου ἀδελφοῖς ἴσον ἐπικρινέειν ἄῤῥεσι, καὶ διδάξειν τὴν τέχνην ταύτην, ἢν χρηίζωσι μανθάνειν, ἄνευ μισθοῦ καὶ ξυγγραφῆς, παραγγελίης τε καὶ ἀκροήσιος καὶ τῆς λοιπῆς ἁπάσης μαθήσιος μετάδοσιν ποιήσασθαι υἱοῖσί τε ἐμοῖσι, καὶ τοῖσι τοῦ ἐμὲ διδάξαντος, καὶ μαθηταῖσι συγγεγραμμένοισί τε καὶ ὡρκισμένοις νόμῳ ἰητρικῷ, ἄλλῳ δὲ οὐδενί.
Διαιτήμασί τε χρήσομαι ἐπ' ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων κατὰ δύναμιν καὶ κρίσιν ἐμὴν, ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν.
Οὐ δώσω δὲ οὐδὲ φάρμακον οὐδενὶ αἰτηθεὶς θανάσιμον, οὐδὲ ὑφηγήσομαι ξυμβουλίην τοιήνδε. Ὁμοίως δὲ οὐδὲ γυναικὶ πεσσὸν φθόριον δώσω. Ἁγνῶς δὲ καὶ ὁσίως διατηρήσω βίον τὸν ἐμὸν καὶ τέχνην τὴν ἐμήν.
Οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιθιῶντας, ἐκχωρήσω δὲ ἐργάτῃσιν ἀνδράσι πρήξιος τῆσδε.
Ἐς οἰκίας δὲ ὁκόσας ἂν ἐσίω, ἐσελεύσομαι ἐπ' ὠφελείῃ καμνόντων, ἐκτὸς ἐὼν πάσης ἀδικίης ἑκουσίης καὶ φθορίης, τῆς τε ἄλλης καὶ ἀφροδισίων ἔργων ἐπί τε γυναικείων σωμάτων καὶ ἀνδρῴων, ἐλευθέρων τε καὶ δούλων.
Ἃ δ' ἂν ἐν θεραπείῃ ἢ ἴδω, ἢ ἀκούσω, ἢ καὶ ἄνευ θεραπηίης κατὰ βίον ἀνθρώπων, ἃ μὴ χρή ποτε ἐκλαλέεσθαι ἔξω, σιγήσομαι, ἄῤῥητα ἡγεύμενος εἶναι τὰ τοιαῦτα.
Ὅρκον μὲν οὖν μοι τόνδε ἐπιτελέα ποιέοντι, καὶ μὴ ξυγχέοντι, εἴη ἐπαύρασθαι καὶ βίου καὶ τέχνης δοξαζομένῳ παρὰ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις ἐς τὸν αἰεὶ χρόνον. παραβαίνοντι δὲ καὶ ἐπιορκοῦντι, τἀναντία τουτέων.

(PS: Now lest anyone accuse me, with the post, of some sort of titular play on David Letterman’s game “Know Your . . .,” let me respond by saying, “I’d never thought of that, until now.” My daughters and I are still hoping that the professional women and men on strike from their writing will get the raises they deserve before the Oscars. And we're pulling for Diablo Cody, Ellen Page, Jason Reitman, and Juno.)

Barnstone on Better Bibles

The mutual self-isolation
of linguistic and philosophical studies on translation
and the theory and practice of literary translators
is absolute.

Were linguistics to be serious about literary translation . . .
it would be welcome.

A deeper infidelity in Bible translation goes undetected, however.
For although it is assumed that the felony of contemporary Bible translators
is literary insensitivity, mediocrity, or overliteralism,
few people realize that from earliest Bible translation to the present
there has only been the appearance of literalism. . .

The translations of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures,
consciously or not, are similar to
the controlled news information in authoritarian states.
In other words, license (register c) and extreme freedom
has been applied to Bible translations, yet passed off as literalism (register a).

There is nothing uncommon about a misalliance of theory and practice,
of intention and realization.
The gap between proclaimed intention and realization
in regard to Bible translation is extreme, however.

The epigraphs above are all from Willis Barnstone in his book, The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice. Just reading the “absolute” and “extreme” rhetoric in his sentences (yanked by me out of his context for mine), one might be tempted to blame Barnstone for (a) the isolation he notes between linguistic and literary translators and for (b) the lack of recognition of his work among Bible translators.

I want, then, to start this post on “Barnstone on better Bible translations” just by acknowledging the divide between translators of various sorts. And to note that (so far) Bible translators (at least the blogging ones, drinking Coke and discussing literary translation and debating Better Bibles) ignore Barnstone and his work.

The challenge that Barnstone provides invites less of a wedge between translators and more of a bridge. I would encourage anyone interested in translation, to read, to study, to critically review Barnstone’s work, especially his Poetics of Translation. As a fledgling rhetorician (and as a linguist much more mature), I find what he says incredibly important. We rhetoricians (in Communications, in Classics, in Composition, with Literature or opposing Philosophy) and we linguists (whether theoretical or field working) do isolate ourselves in our own work by our own approaches in our own small societies for our own goals. My blog here has been to show, in part, how dangerous that exclusivism can be. We from the West in various academic and missionic pursuits far too long have followed Aristotle in his dominant Aristotelianism (fostering intellectualism, ethnocentricism, classicism, kingdom-building imperialism, a self-referential politics, and misogynistic sexism.) And yet, translation and feminisms, in the directions Barnstone might lead us, are radically helpful alternatives. (I’ll just risk losing a few more readers by quoting Barnstone here by saying, “Eve is the mother of translation.” And that’s hardly all of what he says on this woman and translation.)

So, it’s been a breath of fresh air to be welcomed into conversation by Bible translators in the blogosphere. Check the blogroll here for sites and conversations of an incredibly intelligent and friendly lot. But, from time to time, we all retreat to the safe group of our own kind. Then we lob labels across and at: “feminist,” “postmodernist,” “egalitarian,” “complementarian,” “literary,” “literalist,” “Ph.D.,” “amateur,” “infamous,” “fabulous,” and so forth (often simply trying to understand the others’ perspectives). In a bad week, a (first order) comment may hurt another (unwittingly and, unfortunately sometimes, through acerbic wit.)

I think Barnstone has experienced some of that. And he’s not even blogging. His beef is with translation that purports to do one thing but that does another. Translation that pretends to build bridges, but sharply divides. Contemporary Bible translation has done that, he says. So what is a better Bible according to Barnstone?

Barnstone is quite conservative in naming English Bible translators he valorizes. But he doesn’t shy away from criticism of those whose translations would divide the linguistic and the literary:

As we have seen in the instance of the Bay Psalm Book, the claims of fidelity have, in older glorious translations, interfered neither with the magnificence of style nor with accuracy. Translators and exegetes alike have invented meanings and words with the full powers of their determined imaginations.

In our century, however, the Bible has suffered ignominiously “accurate” translations. Accurate has replaced literal as the word to justify bad translation.

(The Poetics of Translation, 63)

So one may count exemplary this translation by American Puritans, the Bay Psalm Book (aka The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre [Cambridge, MA,1640]).

And Barnstone notes two others “who dedicated themselves to turning one great book of the Bible into a masterpiece, [namely] Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Herbert [Countess of Pembroke] from Elizabethan London” who gave “us a new rendition of the Psalms” (The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament, 16).

But, unfortunately, the Bible today has been

Abandoned by our best-known writer-translators and generations of readers. . . We have had no contemporary English or American equal to Poland’s Nobel laureate in literature, Czeslaw Milosz (who learned Hebrew specifically to translate the Songs of Songs into Polish), who might render distinguished books of the Bible in English. Perhaps it is an unfair burden to ask our leading contemporary religious scholars to become the Luthers and Dantes for our time an refresh the English language. In days of territorial specialization, literature and art are not their terrain. The consequences are clear. (The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament, 16).

Barnstone does find three or four exceptional exceptions. He notes [with my boldings here]:

In 1996 Reynolds Price published The Three Gospels . . . which includes Mark, Matthew, and John, a revision from an earlier version of the four canonical gospels. It is of the same literary quality throughout as the [Richmond] Lattimore [translation mentioned further below], less lofty and more modern, and very close to the Greek. It has extra words and is a literary breakthrough. Price uses “wrong” rather than “sin” as one way of reducing what he calls the “puritan” practice in translating from the koine. As pure observation and no reproach, I note that he comes closer than others, but makes no essential break with a strongly Christianizing bias in converting Greek into English and doesn’t move the text from a Hellenization of name, place, and spirit back to its Hebrew Bible base. He does mitigate, where he can without stylistic contortions, the domination of male gender words. (The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament, 17).

He adds:

A major change from the pedestrian Hebrew Bible translations that our century has sponsored has been the 1996 publication of Genesis in versions by Robert Alter and by Stephen Mitchell and the 1999 translation of Alter’s David. Alter and Mitchell are both literary, the Alter rhythmically rhetorical and austerely beautiful, with significant annotation; the Mitchell more contemporary, clean, and, like the Alter at once close to both the King James and to modern speech. Like the Everett Fox lineated translation of The Five Books of Moses, the first lines of Genesis in the Alter version have orchestral power and balance, although Alter does so in prose rather than in verse. (The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament, 17).

Barnstone dedicates his own translation of The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament to Alter, and calls Alter’s Genesis Barnstone’s “model.” Nonetheless, he praises another:

A masterly instance of close translation is Richmond Lattimore’s books from the New Testament. (The Poetics of Translation, 39)

And although his 1962 publication went largely unnoticed, it remains the finest version we have of the words of the Covenant scriptures in English. (The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament, 16).

But in his version of Scripture we hear the evangelists speak—as if we were hearing koine Greek. In his preface to The Four Gospels and the Revelation, Lattimore affirms the notion of letting Greek word order and rhetoric come through in English, as opposed to converting them to contemporary English idiom. He adopted this same method in brilliantly in his versions of Pindar and Aeschylus. . . The Bible in our time, sorely abused by unliterary handlers, finds in Richmond Lattimore its most effective translator. He re-creates Mark’s elegant plainness. The classical scholar writes in his preface, “I have held throughout to the principle of keeping as close to the Greek as possible, not for sense and for individual words, but in the belief that fidelity to the original word order and syntax may yield an English prose that to some extent reflects the style of the original” (vii). Just as Lattimore’s Pindar sounds like Pindar—not Pindar sounding like a modern, literate Lattimore—so, as Lattimore intended, Mark sounds in English like Mark. (The Poetics of Translation, 39)

Now, I’m excited to see that John F. Hobbins in “Faithful Bible Translation” (at Ancient Hebrew Poetry) seems to praise Lattimore in some of the ways Barnstone does. Even more thrilling is to hear Suzanne McCarthy (at Better Bibles Blog) follow Anne Carson and Robert Alter in her own literary translation of I Corinthians 13. As I look at the translations of Aristotle’s Rhetoric by classicists and rhetoricians, I find the kind of isolation Barnstone writes about and translates against. By working in collaboration, as does Barnstone, Carson, Lattimore, McCarthy, and others, I hope the result will be a translation of Aristotle that leads us more in the ways of his Sappho (and our Eve), a redeemed rhetoric not Aristotelian, not self-isolated (to men only, of any particular tribe).

UPDATE: LINK to Jobes on Better Bibles

Willis Barnstone on (Y)OUR Translation Approach

I have tried to chart--reductively, yet perhaps clearly--basic principles and problems of translation [on pages 25-29], suggesting a few variations in this connecting maze. Precisely because of the interconnections of these principles and problems, because, as in all literary theory, science and art merge, there will always be controversy renewing the art, confusion leaving it in darkened labyrinths, and illumination resolving its enigmas dogmatically. Absolutes may be proclaimed, but those absolutes will soon be translated into other absolutes. And although people will try to impose a single way, there can never be one conquering normative approach to translation.

In this study the translation paradigms will strongly depend on two early sources: translation of the Bible, with its frequent goal of literalism and absolute fidelity, asserted but rarely practiced; and classical translation, with its free-minded Roman poets and rhetoricians who chose to re-create, to paraphrase Greek letters into their Latin tongue. The Roman method was to dominate the practice, if not the pretensions, of secular translation from the Middle Ages, when antiquity strongly re-entered the West, until the early twentieth century.

The two paragraphs above are from page 29 of Willis Barnstone’s The Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice. Clearly, he’s outlining approaches to translation and is noting two early and rather persistent approaches: “Bible translation” and “Roman translation of Greek poetry and rhetoric.”

Barnstone translates both the Bible and Greek poetry and rhetoric. But I suspect Bible translators are more reluctant to include him in their society of Bible translators although, I think, Barnstone fairly understands their concerns.

I’d like to see Bible translators and Greek classicists and Greek rhetoricians today talk more together about our approaches. Can we muse about whether we’re rather dogmatic, for instance? Might we be brave enough to confess our translation-approach lineage? Could we find ourselves on Willis’s chart? Here’s the abbreviated version from page 25:

1. Register, or translation level

a) literalism

b) middle ground

c) license

2. Structure, or degree of source text in translation

a) retaining structure of source text in target text

b) naturalizing structure of source text in target text

c) abandonment of original structure and creation of new one

3. Authorship, or dominant voice

a) retaining voice of source language author in target language

b) yielding voice of source language author to translator’s voice in target language

(And Barnstone sidesteps what most translators of most approaches sidestep: the absence of women in our histories of translation. But that's another discussion.)