trans-apparent HIM

Below I'm demonstrating the much-taken "approach" - but just one approach taken - in order to translate gender.

Suzanne explains that this all-too-common "approach is to infer that grammatical gender reflects an underlying gender which is could be ontological, representative or metaphorical, but, which, in any case, ought to be translated." She illustrates how "using a gendered pronoun [in English translation] can alter the literal meaning of a [Greek] clause, as it appears to do in John 1:3 [where 'the word', the actual antecedent to the English pronoun, is not masculine in any way except by Greek grammatical gender].

'All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.'"

I've added the italics to make clear the correspondences. As we all know, to make "the word" masculine in English (as with the pronoun "him") is very strange. (For background, Suzanne's conveniently posted, The Intrusive Pronoun: An Index.)

But let's give most English Bible translators a break. They commonly require absolute "faithfulness" to the original text. (Never mind that they require a merely apparent faithfulness to the Greek. Never mind their faux faithfulness. Never mind their faithfulness to gender in grammar alone - masculine grammatical gender - that defies ontology, representation, and metaphor. Never mind that theirs is a faithfulness in translation that does not allow the writer, John, wordplay later in his text -- as in John 1 verse 14 here, in which the writer gives "the word" its "flesh," which is, of course, female flesh in John's Greek, grammar femaleness that is: σὰρξ, "the masculine word became feminine flesh; ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο." Never mind the wordplay.)

Below my illustration of this typical but absolutely "faithful" approach is a demonstration by the translation of Mark 4:13-20. This is one passage that Bible translators must get absolutely right. After all, it is the absolutely exact explanation of a wordplayful parable of the absolute Teacher. If our translation falls by the wayside, then we absolutely miss "him the word" indeed.

Please note that I'm also adding another absolute "faithfulness" in the common approach to translation of the Greek: transliteration of the words. Therefore: I give here not only (A) a very faithful "translation" of the masculine gender of the pronoun but I also provide (B) a very very faithful "translation" of the sounds of Greek using TRANSLITERATION OF GREEK SOUNDS IN CAPITAL ENGLISH LETTERS [with translator explanations in brackets]. The reader, then, gets (C) absolutely faithful "transparency" to the Greek language of Mark. The translation is a faithful (A) trans-lation of the Greek male pronoun; a fixed (B) trans-literation of the Greek male sounds; and the trans-apparent rigidly Greek language of JE-SUS.

(We'll just ignore the fact that Mark does not so faithfully "translate" or "transcribe" the grammatical gender of pronouns and the true sounds of the speaker's spoken Hebrew Aramaic. I boast here: "I am doing a better job in translation of Mark's Greek than Mark does in translation of the Jewish Joshua's Aramaic"! Please read the sarcasm here. Please know that I'm not disrespecting "THE WORD" but rather am poking fun at TECHNICAL BIBLE "TRANS-LATION" APPROACHES. Here goes.)

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¹³And HE [implied pronoun] said TO HIM AND TO HIM [figuratively, "to them"],

Do YOU MEN have no IDEA [from "eido"] what the meaning is of this PARA-BOWLED story [technically = "parable" with one and only one main meaning]?

And how then will YOU MEN GYKNOW [from "knowledge"=gnosko] all PARA-BLEs?

¹⁴ The SPERMER [lit. "sower of seed"] SPERMS the LOGOS [lit. "word"].

¹⁵And in the first place:

HE AND HE [fig. "they"] are the PARA-ODOS [in contrast to "Exodos"; lit. "those alongside the way"], where the LOGOS is SPERMED;

but when THESE MEN have ACOUSTICALLY RECEIVED [lit. "hear"; fig. "get it in the ear"],

then SATAN [note: "we all know who HE is"] comes EU-THEOS [rhymes in Greek with 'good god'; lit. "immediately"],

and HE ERECTS [lit. "lifts up"] the LOGOS that was SPERMED in the KARDIA [fig. "hearts"] of HIM AND HIM.

¹⁶And in the second place:

HE AND HE [fig. "they"] are the EPI-PETER [lit. "on the rock"] SPERMED; who, when HE and HE have ACOUSTICALLY RECEIVED the LOGOS, receive HIM EU-THEOS with CHARA [lit. "joy"];

¹⁷And HE AND HE [fig. "they"] are the possessed by a root in HIMSELF AND HIMSELF,

and HE AND HE [fig. "they"] so endures but for a PROS--> KAIROS [fig. "a time"]:

afterward, when affliction or persecution has that GENESIS of HIM AND HIM [fig. "them"] for the sake of the LOGOS,

then EU-THEOS immediately HE AND HE [fig. "they"] are SKANDALIZED.

¹⁸And in the third place:

HE AND HE [fig. "they"] are SPERMED among thorns; such ACOUSTICALLY RECEIVE the LOGOS,

¹⁹And the cares of this AGE [αἰῶνος], and the deceitfulness of riches, and the EPI-THUMOS [lit. "desires on" fig "lusts"] of other things together enter in, choke the LOGOS, and have unfruitful GENESIS.

²⁰And in the fourth place:

HE AND HE [fig. "they"] are SPERMED on good GYNESIS GYN GEN [fig. "ground" as in "geo" graphy and "geo" "LOGY"];

such as ACOUSTICALLY RECEIVE the LOGOS, and receive [implied Greek "HIM" grammatically - not "it"], and PARA-bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.

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Hmmm. Maybe Μάρκος and יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎, (Mark and Joshua, aka Jesus) were taking an-Other approach to translating gendered pronouns and gendered sounds and interlated language transparencies.

New Testament Translation Question

(Let's not use the word "feminist" today.) Let's (instead) focus precisely on the Greek text of the New Testament. Let me make a suggestion that I've made before, and then ask a question. Here's that suggestion:

that Mark is translating Jesus to give a pluralistic hermeneutic when he has him saying and asking:

Καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην; Καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς γνώσεσθε;

And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?

The entire parable and this whole pericopic episode seem to get at interpretive difficulties and ways of being and repentance and subjectivities against pretended objectivity and the like. Yes, I know I'm exegeting isogetically - but isn't that some the point here in Mark 4? To keep outsiders out and insiders in and to multiply statements and so forth?

So the question:

How differently would you read this story of this parable if it started, really and textually, in Mark 3:31? With Jesus being challenged about his ostensible inattention to his mother and his brothers. Yes, I know the manuscripts and therefore the text critics go bananas here in verse 33. But Mark has Jesus turning the whole question of precise definition back to those challenging him:

Καὶ ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς λέγων [ἀποκριθεὶς αὐτοῖς λέγει], Τίς ἐστιν ἡ μήτηρ μου [ἢ οἱ] [καὶ οἱ] [ἀδελφοί μου] ἀδελφοί [μου].

And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren?

Then he goes even further, and Mark does as well with his Greek:

34 Καὶ περιβλεψάμενος κύκλῳ τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν [τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν κύκλῳ] καθημένους, λέγει, Ἴδε, ἡ μήτηρ μου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί μου

Ὃς γὰρ ἂν ποιήσῃ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, οὗτος ἀδελφός μου καὶ ἀδελφή [μου] καὶ μήτηρ ἐστίν.

34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!

35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

Do you see how bold this interpretation? How additional to the text this marked detail? Is this a set up for the story of a sower sowing? Does gender matter? Embodiment in interpretationS? Wordplay in Texts?

In the words of Jesus: What does the text say? How do you read it?

More Difference in Translating

There are many identifiable differences in translating by some of the traditional (masculinist) methods and by the marginalized (feminist rhetorical) methods. In the dissertation, I've had to list a slew of these differences because our scholarship and our culture in the Western academic world blindly favors the traditional (masculinist) methods.

With no illustration below, here's just one contrast:

traditional translation

The translator’s gender is unmarked. And yet because unmarked, the male gender is default especially because no woman has to date published a translation of Aristotle’s treatise on Rhetoric. More than that the translators’ methods have been exclusively and exclusionarily masculinist and Aristotelian, employing opposition, dichotomy, and cerebration.

marginalized translating

The translator may be female or male but employs (intentionally or otherwise) feminist, rhetorical critical methodologies for the translating. “Preference [is] for relation over opposition, plurality over dichotomy, embodiment over cerebration: Montaigne’s begins to sound like a feminist project. Which is not to say that Montaigne was a feminist.” (Mairs 75)