Shame, Philomela, you unbiblical liberal bird

"When we say 'built on common ground,' we mean that the Common English Bible is the result of collaboration between opposites: scholars working with average readers; conservatives working with liberals; teens working with retirees; men working with women; many denominations and many ethnicities coming together around the common goal of creating a vibrant and clear translation for 21st century readers, with the ultimate objective of mutually accomplishing God's overall work in the world."
-- Paul Franklyn, PhD, associate publisher for the Common English Bible

"All these are unpersuasive for the reasons given.  Yet Gorgias' exclamation to the swallow when she flew down and let go her droppings on him is in the best tragic manner:  he said, 'Shame on you, Philomela'; for if a bird did it there was no shame, but [it would have been] shameful for a maiden.  He thus rebuked the bird well by calling it what it once had been rather than what it now was."
-- Aristotle

If you know the story of Philomela in Greek mythology, then you know how she was raped and how her rapist cut her tongue out because she yelled out exclamations of protest and how tragically in the end the gods translated her into a swallow.  If you know the Greek language of Aristotle here in his Rhetoric (Bekker page 1406b line 18), then you know how he's calling Philomela a παρθενον /parthenon/ but how he's praising Gorgias for calling her a bird, or rather for calling this swallow a shameful Philomela, because she's pooped on him.  That's right. Aristotle himself is saying that Philomela is still a "parthenon" who [read between the lines here] pooped on the man who desired her ['Shame on you, Philomela, because you did this to a man before you were a bird and while you were still a virgin, conservatively speaking, before he transformed you into something else, you maiden.  How inappropriate of you.  How shameful of you'].  Yes, this can be subtle stuff.  And in our status quo world, so conservative and so man first, we should not read too much into these things.  And if you do, then shame on you for your protests.

If you know how male English translators care about this word, parthenon, especially when it's sacred, then you know that "conservatives" translate it "virgin" while their opposites, the "liberals," translate it "maiden."  If you pay attention to how the man Paul Franklyn divides the world, then you see his polar opposite binaries as follows:

"scholars" / "average readers"
"conservatives" / "liberals"
"teens" / "retirees"
"men" / "women"
"denominations" / "ethnicities"

Opposites, in this way of thinking, are distinct even if there can be something in common between them, some common ground below them.

"a bird pooping" / "a maiden dropping protests of No! No! No! No!"

In these binaries, very subtly, not all is equal between the opposites.  Notice, if you will, how the men ordering the opposites put the better one on the left of / the lesser one. 

"men" / "women"
"denominations" / "ethnicities"
"virgin as translation of παρθενος" / "maiden or young lady or young woman or (unmarried) girl as translation of παρθενος"

Now listen to the language, the ordering of pairs, from BBB blogger Wayne Leman in his recent post on the question of whether Franklyn's Common English Bible translation is "liberal" or not.  Leman is attempting to deconstruct the "conservative" / "liberal" binary.  Ironically, however, he re-constructs his own binary, with "liberal" as the still-botched category:

"Some conservatives consider translation of Hebrew almah in this verse [i.e., Isaiah 7:14] as 'young woman' instead of 'virgin' to be liberal. But is it, or does it actually reflect accurate biblical scholarship?"

"What you think might be a liberal translation of some verse may be shown to be an accurate translation, especially when you find other verses in the translation which continue to support whatever is your own theological viewpoint."

Did you see it?  Here it is:

"accurate biblical scholarship" / "liberal"

"an accurate translation" / "a liberal translation"

Of course, Leman is arguing that "young woman" (as the best English for "almah" in Isaiah 7:14) is an actual reflection of biblical scholarship that is accurate.  In opposition to that, for Leman, is the very same translation that is motivated by what would be liberal.

Commenter Joel Hoffman says something similar, quoting and with some nuance correcting Leman:

"I think everyone agrees that changing 'virgin' to 'young woman' for alma in Isaiah 7:14 is 'accurate biblical scholarship,' but the decision to prefer that scholarship over tradition is liberal."

Here, as a variation, Hoffman's binary pits what is good against what is (not "liberal" exactly but what is, rather, instead) botched "tradition":

"accurate biblical scholarship" / "tradition"

The point for both Leman and Hoffman is that which opposes "accurate biblical scholarship" is botched, is lesser, is "in-accurate" and "un-biblical" and "not scholarly."

The binary (i.e., that "either / or" division) is what allows men who know things to know them op-positionally.  And what comes first (i.e., on the left side of the pair in a left-to-right listing) is determined, actually pre-determined by them, to be naturally what's best.

---

So let's now look at how this works out in Bible translation.   Franklyn lists these binaries as opposites that must find common ground for his Common English Bible translation:

"men" / "women"
"denominations" / "ethnicities" 

When you look at the CEB team of translators (i.e., individuals on either side of his oppositions), what's interesting is how somebody like Adele Berlin on the team can neither be one of the men nor is actually able to be person of a Christian denomination.  Must Berlin, a woman, be the opposite of the men?  Is she, as not a member of a denomination, a person of some specific marked ethnicity?  Which one?  Is this a Christian / Jewish binary?

It's no secret that the problem in Bible translation with the words almah (עלמה) and pathenos (παρθενος) is the problem over whether the girl Mary (the mother of Jesus) was a virgin, or not, when these words are used.

How this seems to mirror Gorgias' and Aristotle's own tragic problem of whether Philomela is an ὄρνιθι /ornithi/ or a παρθένος /parthenos/.  One is appropriate and not shameful; the other is inappropriate, and shameful.


The Hebrew alma is in Isaiah 7:14.  So is the Greek pathenos in the earliest translation of Isaiah 7:14.  Whoever the maiden is that this scripture and that these words refer to might have been a virgin.  And the "young woman," as the common denominator CEB translation team has translated the Hebrew, might she be the prophesied Mary, the mother of Immanuel as Jesus, or not? 

The binary way of knowing the answer will not tolerate ambiguity.  Either she is, or not.  Either this is accurate, or not.  Either it is respectable, or it's shameful.

When we get to the New Testament, then we leave the Hebrew and have only the Greek.  Moreover, both in the gospel of Matthew and in the gospel of Luke, we have the story of the pregnant Mary not being "known" or "impregnated" by her man, her fiancé, her husband, Joseph.  In both stories, she is a virgin with child by the Holy Spirit.  So now, in these contexts, is the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) any less ambiguous than the Hebrew almah (עלמה) and its Greek translation the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) in Isaiah 7:14?  Do the stories of the virgin Mary require the Greek word to be translated unambiguously in Matthew 1:23 and in Luke 1:27?

Is one translation accurate, biblical, scholarly, respectable, and the other not?

I'll let you answer.  And to help, it may be interesting to see how various translators have translated the words:

the Hebrew almah (עלמה) as "young woman" in Isaiah 7:14 - JPS, JPCT, RSV, NET, NEB, NABRE 2011, NAB 2011, The Inclusive Bible

the Hebrew almah (עלמה) as "the young woman is with child" and "a young woman who is pregnant" and "A girl who is presently a virgin" and "a young woman is now with child" and "young woman is pregnant" in Isaiah 7:14 - NRSV and Good News Translation and The Message and The Bible in Basic English and the Common English Bible

the Hebrew almah (עלמה) as "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 - pretty much all the other translations

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in LXX Isaiah 7:14 - Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, NETS by Moisés Silva

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "maiden" in Matthew 1:23 - Weymouth, Richmond Lattimore

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "the unmarried girl" in Matthew 1:23 - Ann Nyland

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "young woman" in Matthew 1:23 - Willis Barnstone

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in Matthew 1:23 - pretty much all the other translations

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "young woman" in Luke 1:27 - The Inclusive Bible

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "the unmarried girl" in Luke 1:27 - Ann Nyland

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in Luke 1:27 - pretty much all the other translations

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "girl" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - W. Rhys Roberts

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "young lady" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - J. H. Freese

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "maiden" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - George A. Kennedy

the Greek pathenos (παρθενος) as "virgin" in Aristotle's Rhetoric - anon, 1683

Is one translation accurate, biblical, scholarly, respectable, and the other not?

Mary, mother of Jesus, Jewish feminist

"Mary, mother of Jesus, Jewish feminist"

Well, doesn't that just grab your attention, your imagination?  In her comment to a blogpost earlier this week, Kristen started me imagining but also remembering.  She said:

... so it is natural that we [women] should have developed non-hierarchical ways of thinking, in contrast to Aristotle's and Hitler's. I find the ways of thinking Jesus displayed in the Gospel accounts to be distinctly non-Aristotelian and non-hierarchical (and female-inclusive) as well.  I imagine that Mary must have been a powerful voice in his early life. 

Earlier this week, I quoted several Jewish feminists who spoke of G-d's presence in Auschwitz.  Some of them were speaking of their mothers and grandmothers.  And it appears that Hitler, as early as 1919 by his "Gimlich letter," was targeting these women of "Mosaic faith," although both what he wrote and how he reasoned is starkly "in contrast to" how these women write and speak and live, who they are.

So today in this blogpost I just want to make clear four things.  First (1), the roots of this lineage of women really do grow deep.  Second (2), the womanly resistances to masculinist logic (i.e., that uber-male reasoning of Adolf Hitler) really are exceptional in just extraordinary ways.  Third (3), it would be useful to recover the historical Miriam (or Mary) as the mother not only of Jesus but also as a mother and daughter of Jewish feminisms.  Mary was a Jew.  Mary was a woman.  Mary was of faith.  Mary was a feminist.  Mary did not limit herself to binary logic but expressed other ways of knowing, of being.  Fourth (4), our paying attention to Hitler's rigid logic allows us, ironically, to focus on her and her methods of speaking and of knowing and of being.  Given that this is just a blogpost (and not a dissertation) I'm going to have to keep it short, to draw sharp conclusions only indirectly, to invite you yourself to make some of the connections.

"(1) Deep Roots and (2) Extraordinary Resistances"

Outside of Auschwitz, non-Jewish women in Germany were resistant to the Nazi conceptions of Mary and of religion.  They were drawing profoundly on a lineage of womanly thinking that goes back, at least, to the Jewish woman, Mary.  They could easily see through the duplicity that Hitler attempted to hide.  It wasn't just his closest followers who saw how politically two-faced the Führer was; nonetheless, to be clear, his male fellows were able to see the intended deceptions of this man.  "Amid his political associates in Berlin," Albert Speer recalls, "Hitler made harsh pronouncements against the church, but in the presence of the women he adopted a milder tone -- one of the instances where he adapted his remarks to his surroundings" (page 95, Inside the Third Reich).  Speer goes on to say how Hitler ordered his "chief associates ... to remain members of the church" even though "vast numbers of his followers had left the church."  And Hitler "too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he [himself] said, although he had no real attachment to it," although he would continue to make those private "harsh pronouncements against the church." He knew that publicly he needed to impress women.  However, women could see through what he was doing and how he was trying to do it.

German women saw through Hitler's veneer of acted religiosity.  Lillian Leigh Westerfield in her wonderful book, "This Anguish, Like a Kind of Intimate Song": Resistance in Women's Literature of World War II, notes how they recognized and resisted.  "German women resisted," she notes, "when they spoke out against the [Nazi] regime's official view of womanhood."  And continuing from page 49 (through page 51), Westerfield explains how religious women protested:

Some Protestant women chose resistance in conjunction with the Bekennende Kirche, which made extensive use of women behind the scenes.... [The] women took over the bulk of the illegal Church's routine work....  Female curates were permitted [by the Church] to assume ministerial functions ... and they kept the Church in operation by doing such routine tasks as duplicating politically dangerous liturgies or lists of intercession.... [even] falsifying the records of the collection money for the previous twelve months because the Church was trying to prevent the Gestapo from seizing the funds it used to finance its work....
      ... Catholic women [were] more sceptical [sic] than the Protestants of the Nazi ideology of womanhood. The Roman Catholic tradition of the Virgin Mary stood in direct contrast to the regime's portrayal of women as the biological provider of children who would strengthen the race.... Catholic women found themselves unable to honour the Church's ideal of virginity and at the same time fulfil [sic] their duty to the nation and the 'Aryan' race as child bearers. Already reluctant to embrace the dictatorship's image of womanhood, Catholic women were further alienated by the Third Reich's interference in the private, Catholic-run schools.... Women cooperated with Catholic bishops.... Catholic women have been credited with helping to bring an end to Hitler's euthanasia program.... The issue that became a lightning rod for Catholic women's anger and dissent... was the regime's demand for the removal of crucifixes from schools in 1936.

In the short space of this blogpost, I'd like to suggest that there was a sisterhood in Germany among Protestant women (in the illegal Bekennende Kirche and in other congregations) and Catholic women and observant Jewish women.

In Germany (15 years before Adolf Hitler typed up and signed his racist, sexist, religionist, "reasonable" letter to Adolf Gimlich) the deep roots and extraordinary resistances of feminism were showing and growing among Jewish Germans of Mosaic faith. We can look back to pre-Hitler Germany with biographers Elisa Klapheck and Lara Daemmig, who look forward to and particpate in "Jewish Feminism in Post-Holocaust Germany."  Klapheck and Daemmig recall:

In 1904 Bertha Pappenheim had established the Jüdischer Frauenbund. Together with like-minded fellow militants, she fought for equal status for women in the Jewish community, for the right to vote and be elected and for women’s right to professionalize their abilities. For Pappenheim, all these constituted no deviations from Jewish tradition.

Pappenheim did inspire observant Jewish feminists in Nazi Germany, women such as Regina Jonas:

In 1930 Regina Jonas, the first woman rabbi in the world, completed her studies at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academy for the Science of Judaism) in Berlin with a halakhic thesis entitled “Can Women Serve as Rabbis?”

And yet Pappenheim and Jonas would both recognize their foremothers.  Pappenheim worked, for example, to recover what Glückel von Hameln, a German, a Jew, a woman, a person of faith, a feminist, had written by hand in Yiddish as preserved by her daughters and then her granddaughters after she died in 1724.  In 1910, in her preface to her translation, Pappenheim wrote:

Die Übertragung des Textes in gemeinverständliche Sprache und Schriftzeichen hat den Zweck, das Bild einer Frau neu zu beleben, die, tief in ihrer Zeit wurzelnd, durch ungewöhnliche Geistesgaben hervorragte, die treu war ihrem Glauben, treu ihrem Volke, treu ihrer Familie und treu sich selbst.

Translating the text [from handwritten Yiddish] into generally-understood speech and print has the effect of recovering anew the image of a woman, deeply rooted in time, exceptionally extraordinary by intellect, and genuinely true to her faith, true to her people, true to her family, true to her herself. 

[her German, my English translation]

To be sure, there is much to remember of Pappenheim.  She is one of the Jewish intellectuals that Hitler was likely referring to when he warned other women in Germany that "slogan 'Emancipation of Women' was invented by Jewish intellectuals."  But Pappenheim was aware of a deeper, wider sisterhood; Marion Kaplan observes:  "Aware that Protestant and Catholic women had their own national organizations, Pappenheim believed Jewish women also needed a national organization to represent their needs."  And she went on to found that organization and to do much recovery work, much work of translation and of writing, sometimes using the pen name Paul Berthold, but often now buried, only referred to by the history of, and the name, Anna O.  And now Kristen started me thinking of Bertha Pappenheim as someone like Mary, or Miriam, of the gospels.

"(3) the quest for the historical Mary

and (4) the recovery of her Jewish religious feminist rhetorical translational methods"

My name is Shosanna Dreyfus and THIS is the face... of Jewish vengeance!  I am going to burn down the cinema on Nazi night.  And if I'm going to burn down the cinema, which I am, we both know you're not going to let me do it by myself.... But that's not all we're going to do....  Marcel, my sweet, we're going to make a film.  Just for the Nazis....  I have a message for Germany.  That you [Nazis] are all going to die.  And I want you to look deep into the face of the Jew that is going to do it!  Marcel... burn it down.  -- Shosanna

Well, doesn't that just grab your attention, your imagination?  In contrast to those Inglourious Basterds in Quentin Tarantino's film by the same name, is the imagination of what it might be like to reverse Hitler's methods, to use his duplicitous, masculinist propaganda against him.  To recover what has been covered over.  And I'm intentionally taking a bit of a digressive path here from my subtitle, "(3) the quest for the historical Mary."  But what if it takes this kind of imagination to get at, to start to use, some of "(4) her Jewish religious feminist rhetorical translational methods"?  What does it take, what must it take, for women and men to get back what's been lost in our creative, egalitarian God-Created image?

Let's, for now, just listen in on the child of Mary speaking?  What did he recall?  And how?  Here, hear for yourself:

And you have heard in Deuteronomy,
If a man sends his wife away,
Give her a proper bill of divorce,
But I also tell you that any man divorcing and sending his
    wife away,
Except for dirty harlotry,
Makes her the victim of adultery;
And any man who marries a woman divorced and sent away
Is himself an adulterer.

Ἐρρέθη δὲ [ὅτι]
Ὃς ἂν ἀπολύσῃ τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ,
δότω αὐτῇ ἀποστάσιον·
ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅτι
ὃς ἂν ἀπολύσῃ [/πᾶς ὁ ἀπολύων] τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ,
παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας,
ποιεῖ αὐτὴν μοιχᾶσθαι [/μοιχευθῆναι]
καὶ ὃς ἐὰν ἀπολελυμένην γαμήσῃ
μοιχᾶται.

  --Jesus, aka Yeshua (Willis Barnstone's English translation of Matthew's Greek translation of Mary's son's Hebrew Aramaic and perhaps of the Hebrew of Devarim.)

And now (y)our turn.  This is not a dissertation but is something inspired by Kristen's blogpost comment.  What do we remember?  What did Miriam say?  And how?