SBC Condemns The Declaration of Independence in translation

In an effort to achieve consistency with their condemnation of the NIV 2011, the men of the SBC and of its Committee of Resolutions met late into the evening of July 3rd, 2011.  Just before midnight, in an open meeting before all of the world, the Committee allowed more discussion on the banning of all gender neutralizing translations and paraphrases of Thomas Jefferson's original Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

“This nearly is as big as it gets; next to God's Word, this is as big as it gets,” said Tom Underton of Yougoman Village Baptist Church in Monroe, La., who brought his emergency resolution to the floor after a resolutions committee declined to include it in their report. “This is the word of the Fathers, our Founders. The best-selling translations in the United States and around the world are now gender neutral.”

“As Southern Baptists, I don’t think we have the luxury of not speaking to this important issue either,” Underton said. “People are buying flags and fireworks and these translations unaware of what’s happening. We are the anchor of the patriotic evangelical world.”

The resolution expressed “profound disappointment” with various translators for their “inaccurate translation of Thomas Jefferson's inspired Declaration, which, of course, mentions God and men, all created equal and equally endowed.”

It asked LifeWay Christian Resources, the SBC publishing house, to refuse to sell these translations in its stores and encouraged pastors to make their congregations aware of concerns about them.

“We cannot commend the following to Southern Baptists or the larger Christian community,” the resolution concluded.

"The Declaration of Independence was never intended

for kids or
for women, or
for pinko commies or
for Southeast Asians in general or
for "Americans who cuss" even if they're as equal as any other man created or
for dummies of any kind for that matter.  We condemn the following:

--The Declaration of Independence Translated for Kids, 2000:  “We think that all people are created the same and that God wants every one of us to be free and happy.”

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s and colleagues’ Declaration of Sentiments, 1848:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;”

--Hồ Chí Minh’s Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945:   “Hỡi đồng bào cả nước, Tất cả mọi người  [each and every one, all people] đều sinh ra có quyền bình đẳng. Tạo hoá cho họ những quyền không ai có thể xâm phạm được;”

--some unknown translator rendering the Declaration of Independence of the USA into Malaysian, 2002:  “Kita berpegang kepada kebenaran yang nyata ini, bahawa semua manusia [each and every one, all humankind] diciptakan sama tarafnya, bahawa mereka dikurniakan oleh Pencipta mereka hak-hak tertentu yang tidak boleh dipisahkan;”

--H. L. Mencken’s “The Declaration of Independence in American,” 1921:  “All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a d*mn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else.”

--The Declaration of Independence for Dummies, Part I, 2003:  “We think it’s pretty obvious that God created every person equal, and he gave each person specific unchanging rights which should never be trampled upon.”

[end quote]"

Reappropriating Parable: recovery to interrogate the ideology of slavery and absolute submission in the parables

Ancient Roman slavery ideology that required absolute submission and unyielding loyalty from slaves and freedpersons is reflected in the New Testament.  These reflections of the social reality of slavery and slave ideology are not limited to Pauline texts.  But the Pauline and deuteropauline texts that mandate the submission of slaves and women certainly have evoked creative responses from African Americans, forcing us either to reinterpret oppressive texts or to find refuge, affirmation, and hope in other, more liberating texts.
      Confronted with the potential obstacle of [slave and woman] oppressive Pauline texts, African American women appropriated other texts to support God's call on their lives....
      Certainly, many Pauline texts are ostensibly antithetical to the claims of Gal. 3:28 and have been used to oppress women and others.  But the Pauline texts are not the only texts that reinscribe and fail to challenge prevailing ancient slavery stereotypes and ideologies.  For example, several parables in the Synoptic Gospels reinscribe ancient slave ideology.  The parables about slave-master relationships promote proper servile behavior and condone severe punishment of noncompliant slaves.
      Why is there not as much indignation [of African Americans] expressed toward slave language in the Gospels as in the Pauline texts?  Jennifer Glancy makes a helpful point:  "Slavery in the parables typically functions metaphorically, representing the Christian's relationship to God.  Perhaps because of this theological displacement, New Testament scholars have been slow to interrogate the ideology of slavery in the parables." ....
      Slavery in first-century Roman society was no less cruel and inhumane than in any other slave society....  In general the oppressive ideals of ancient Roman slavery are reinscribed upon some biblical texts....  African Americans have reinterpreted, trumped, and rejected such oppressive texts and the oppressive hermeneutical maneuvers that have relied on such texts.  But African Americans must [also] treat with suspicion other biblical texts, such as parable narratives that also reinscribe ancient slave/ master [and male/ female and any oppressive one human / another, subjugating] ideology.  Therefore, African Americans ... should acknowledge the merit in Audre Lorde's admonition that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."  But this affirmation should not presuppose that every tool the master uses belongs solely to or was conceived of or created by the master.  When white slave-masters claimed sole authority over the Bible and its interpretation, our ancestors creatively seized and reappropriated some of the very tools the master used against them.

-------

above, an excerpt from the chapter "Slavery in the Early Church," by Dr. Mitzi J. Smith, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Origins, Detroit Center, Ashland Theological Seminary, in  True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary.  (HT Rod)

Black Comparisons

Yesterday, I listened to G. K. Chesterton's introduction to Aesop's Fables.  (This is one of the advantages of modern technologies - http://librivox.org/ plays right into my iPhone through the automobile speakers while I'm driving).  As I listened to what Chesterton has written about Aesop and his fables, I couldn't help but make comparisons to what Aristotle has also written about Aesop and his fables.

Generally, I like things that Chesterton writes because he tends to open up meanings, like Aesop and his fables do.  But in his Introduction, Chesterton closes down meanings like Aristotle does; he tries to box meanings up much more like Aristotle does.

So let's compare.  Here's Chesterton on Aesop and his fables:

The historical AEsop, in so far as he was historical, would seem to have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially and symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He lived, if he did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in the time of that Croesus whose story we love and suspect like everything else in Herodotus. There are also stories of deformity of feature and a ready ribaldry of tongue: stories which (as the celebrated Cardinal said) explain, though they do not excuse, his having been hurled over a high precipice at Delphi. It is for those who read the Fables to judge whether he was really thrown over the cliff for being ugly and offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is no kind of doubt that the general legend of him may justly rank him with a race too easily forgotten in our modern comparisons: the race of the great philosophic slaves. AEsop may have been a fiction like Uncle Remus: he was also, like Uncle Remus, a fact. It is a fact that slaves in the old world could be worshipped like AEsop, or loved like Uncle Remus. It is odd to note that both the great slaves told their best stories about beasts and birds.

Now, here's Aristotle:

It remains to speak of the proofs common to all branches of Rhetoric, since the particular proofs have been discussed. These common proofs are of two kinds, example and enthymeme (for the maxim is part of an enthymeme).  Let us then first speak of the example; for the example resembles induction, and induction is a beginning.  There are two kinds of examples; namely, one which consists in relating things that have happened before, and another in inventing them oneself.  The latter are subdivided into comparisons or fables, such as those of Aesop and the Libyan.

Λοιπὸν δὲ περὶ τῶν κοινῶν πίστεων ἅπασιν εἰπεῖν, ἐπείπερ εἴρηται περὶ τῶν ἰδίων. εἰσὶ δ’ αἱ κοιναὶ πίστεις δύο τῷ γένει, παράδειγμα καὶ ἐνθύμημα· ἡ γὰρ γνώμη μέρος ἐνθυμήματός ἐστιν. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν περὶ παραδείγματος λέγωμεν· ὅμοιον γὰρ ἐπαγωγῇ τὸ παράδειγμα, ἡ δ’ ἐπαγωγὴ ἀρχή. παραδειγμάτων δὲ εἴδη δύο· ἓν μὲν γάρ ἐστιν παραδείγματος εἶδος τὸ λέγειν πράγματα προγενομένα, ἓν δὲ τὸ αὐτὸν ποιεῖν. τούτου δὲ ἓν μὲν παραβολὴ ἓν δὲ λόγοι, οἷον οἱ Αἰσώπειοι καὶ Λιβυκοί.

The translation above by J. H. Freese is older and technical English, which compares pretty well to Aristotle's older and technical Greek.  We could compare this with a newer English translation, one by W. Rhys Roberts, which actually shows how Aristotle (whether he intends to or not) is performing the kind of "rhetorics" that he, by logic, is trying to map out rather objectively.  Note how translator Roberts uses several English language devices -- (a) the grammar parenthesis, (b) the abbreviation "e.g., for example," and (c) the appositive -- to make more of a direct comparison in the last line here:

... and the fable (e.g. the fables of Aesop, those from Libya). 

Now, when we look at the statements of Chesterton and Aristotle side by side, what we may begin to notice are similarities.  Both Chesterton and Aristotle narrowly construct what Aesop's fables are (i.e., what they are vs. what they are not).  The categories of both Chesterton and Aristotle could be severely critiqued as not only limiting but also, in some instances, as inaccurate.

(Chesterton, for example, says "fables" are "not fairy tales," and he goes on to assert that Aesop "understood that, for a fable, all the persons must be impersonal. They must be like abstractions in algebra, or like pieces in chess. The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always double of two. The fox in a fable must move crooked, as the knight in chess must move crooked. The sheep in a fable must march on, as the pawn in chess must march on. The fable must not allow for the crooked captures of the pawn.... Something of the same sort may have been meant by the animal worship, in which Egyptian and Indian and many other great peoples have combined. Men do not, I think, love beetles or cats or crocodiles with a wholly personal love; they salute them as expressions of that abstract and anonymous energy in nature which to any one is awful, and to an atheist must be frightful. So in all the fables that are or are not AEsop's all the animal forces drive like inanimate forces, like great rivers or growing trees. It is the limit and the loss of all such things that they cannot be anything but themselves: it is their tragedy that they could not lose their souls."

Notice in the words I've bolded above how Chesterton works to essentialize what fables are and are not; in essence, they are other than fairy tales, are abstractions, are pieces, are dependent on the essential nature of animals, are not fairy tales.  Notice how "other," how "impersonal," how "awful," how "Egyptian and Indian," how "abstract," how supposedly "Natural" Chesterton's categories for Aesop's fables must be for him.  However, when you read the fables of Aesop yourself, you can easily find counterexamples to Chesterton's assertions.  He can't keep Aesop or his fables in the box he constructs for them.  If you yourself read Aesop's fables, you can easily find in some of them humans interacting with animals as the Greek gods and goddesses interact with their humans.  You can easily see that the animals are personal and not always predictable.  And when we read Aesop's fables, ironically and fascinatingly, you see how Chesterton himself does much of what Aesop does -- what he tries to ignore the fable teller doing:  they both use comparisons to make points for, and with, the reader and listener.  This is like Aristotle too, who is using comparisons while disparaging certain "essential" aspects of fables qua rhetoric.  Aristotle is trying to be logical, at best trying to sound logical.  He opens his treatise on Rhetoric with a definition:  "Rhetoric is the antistrophos of Dialectic."  Essentially, rhetoric is different from dialectic -- and both are under logic, which can define them.  The funny, ironic thing is that Aristotle ends up abandoning pure logic when giving examples of fables, which he categorizes and essentializes.)

What is most interesting, when comparing Chesterton and Aristotle writing, is how the two white men are comparing Aesop (likely a slave) and his fables to black people and their fables.  Chesterton says -- insinuating that Aesop could have been "ugly and offensive" -- that readers of Aesop really "may justly rank him with a race:  ... a race too easily forgotten in our modern comparisons: the race of the great philosophic slaves."  Chesterton then names Uncle Remus, an African American storyteller.

Aristotle, who writes to elite pure Greek males, makes this comparison:   τούτου δὲ ἓν μὲν παραβολὴ ἓν δὲ λόγοι οἷον οἱ Αἰσώπειοι καὶ Λιβυκοί.  To compare that with our barbarian English it goes something like this:  "There are stories thrown violently alongside your own:  Aesop's and Libyans'."  And just as Chesterton's readers and listeners understand the "race" and the name of "Uncle Remus" so Aristotle's readers and listeners understand the black race and his naming of the Libyans.

Uncle Remus, of course, is the black storyteller of African American folktales ostensibly.  And the Libyans, who might they be?

In the Odyssey, Homer suggests where Libya is.  And he insinuates what it's like, Afric, exotic, a place where goods and slaves are bought and sold.  The Greek hero Odysseus says, "I wandered to Cyprus and Phoenicia, and to the Egyptians, and reached the Ethiopians, Sidonians, and Erembi, and Libya, where rams become horned suddenly" (4.83-85) and "he put me on a seafaring ship to Libya, falsely advising me that I'd be bringing back cargo with him, but so he could sell me there and get an untold price for me" (14.295-97).

But Libya for the Greeks is also a woman.  She is a half goddess and a foreigner raped by a god to produce foreign men.  And Libyans also are related to Gorgones:

Pliny (H. N. iv. 31) thought that they were a race of savage, swift, and hair-covered women; and Diodorus (iii. 55) regards them as a race of women inhabiting the western parts of Libya, who had been extirpated by Heracles in traversing Libya.

The most famous Gorgon, of course, is the infamous Medusa:

In her images, her hair sometimes resembles dread locks, showing her origins in Africa. There she had a hidden, dangerous face. It was inscribed that no one could possibly lift her veil, and that to look upon her face was to glimpse ones own death as she saw your future.

So, when Aristotle compares Aesop to Libyans and their stories with one another, there is something either intentional or at best unconsciously denigrating.  Aristotle was not fond of slaves, or barbaric foreigners, or females, or their rhetorics.

I'm running out of time here.  But I do want to say that during black history month it's helpful for us to think more about "fable."  The Greek word Aristotle uses here (in his Rhetoric 1393a line 30) is παραβολὴ [transliterated with the English alfabeta as parabolḕ].  In other contexts of Aristotle's writings, translators tend to render that in English as "comparisons."  Bible translators tend to make it "sayings" or "words" when bringing the Greek translation of the Hebrew into English (i.e., from the LXX).  When it's "Jesus" telling the fables or giving the sayings or speaking the words, then Bible translators tend to technically assign that to him as "parables."  What's lost is the apt comparison of Jesus and his rhetorical methods to Aesop and his methods.  What's lost is the violence of a story thrown beside one's own, of a para bola.  What's lost is the simultaneous safety that hearing such a story provides the listener with ears to hear -- since the story is not exactly my story, I can suspend judgment.  What's lost is the apt comparison of Jesus to women, to black women especially.

Now, most of you already know I am neither black nor a woman.  But you do know how interesting, helpful, I think it is to compare afrafeminist methods with good parabolizing, as good translating.  When Suzanne calls my bible-reading influences "very feminist," I am very grateful how she notices.  And yet I think some of us, like me, have still a lot to learn from very (black) feminists such as Gayl Jones, who, like Chesterton's Aesop and Aristotle's Aesop, throw violent stories (call them fables, comparisons, and parables) beside our own.

Growing an Audience

"Growing an Audience" sounds like Aristotle's concern. And it really is if you read Julia Purdy's essay, "How to Write for an Audience: Use Aristotle’s Triangle to Connect With Your Reader." If you do read what Purdy wrote, then as part of her audience you read things from Aristotle's Poetics and become part of his audience.

But "Growing an Audience" is Julia O'Brien's essay. James F. McGrath had been posing a similar question to O'Brien's query about "the angles from which authors and scholars seek to connect the Bible to concerns and interests of modern readers," and so he (now part of the O'Brien audience) encourages his readers to become her readers. And Jim West (who's interested in size when it comes to his own biblioblog audience) says that "Julia O’Brien has a nice and useful essay" so he can also shout down atheists in Iowa (so as to keep out all poachers and encroachers on his territory).

O'Brien has more to say. She says more than the bit McGrath relays, and her issue is not just "nice and useful" as West would characterize her article. She notes that in pop scholarship on the Bible what she doesn't find:

What I don’t find is any popular treatment of what most interests me about the Bible: how it shares with other literature the ability to invite reflection on the human conditions. I use the plural of “conditions” because I’m not interested in resurrecting an old Bible as Literature approach in which intellectuals of a particular social class, gender, and sexual orientation claim to speak for all people. Rather, I’m interested in how the Bible, like novels, helps illumine the particularities of humans and their societies. On my website, I’ve launched Reading the Bible as an Adult as an attempt to do this kind of reading (http://juliamobrien.net).

When we go to her website, we find titles of studies such as "Joseph: Queering Categories." And that reminds me of Rodney's recent post "a questionable interpretation of Matthew 8:5-13?" in which he looks at the Greek word pais, which really was used for boys (perhaps enslaved) in gay relationships with their teachers. Our English word pederasty comes from παῖς (pais) "boy-child" and ἐραστής (erastēs) "lover." Greek literature is full of this, which makes it very surprising that the Bible would be rid of it so easily.

So it's important to see the Bible (even Matthew) as literary, as we would read Aristophanes's "The Clouds" or Plato's "The Phaedrus" and "The Symposium." Then when we can see ourselves as part of Matthew's audience, we might come to see him as not only an author but also as a translator. And translation, like storytelling, is also rhetorical.

If we're uncomfortable with the Greeks, and their debates about rhetoric and story and translation, then we might turn to others. But we might see that the others haven't said much different than the Greeks said. Gorgias (as Plato tried to straighten him out) sounds like George Steiner, who sounds like Mark translating Jesus. Literature is difficult. The bible is too. It connects us to human conditions.

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?

Listen? Look? Really?

Ἀκούετε. ἰδοὺ ἐξῆλθεν ὁ σπείρων σπεῖραι.
καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ σπείρειν
ὃ μὲν ἔπεσεν παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν,
καὶ ἦλθεν τὰ πετεινὰ καὶ κατέφαγεν αὐτό.
καὶ ἄλλο ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸ πετρῶδες
ὅπου οὐκ εἶχεν γῆν πολλήν,
καὶ εὐθὺς ἐξανέτειλεν διὰ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν βάθος γῆς:
καὶ ὅτε ἀνέτειλεν ὁ ἥλιος ἐκαυματίσθη,
καὶ διὰ τὸ μὴ ἔχειν ῥίζαν ἐξηράνθη.
καὶ ἄλλο ἔπεσεν εἰς τὰς ἀκάνθας,
καὶ ἀνέβησαν αἱ ἄκανθαι καὶ συνέπνιξαν αὐτό,
καὶ καρπὸν οὐκ ἔδωκεν.
καὶ ἄλλα ἔπεσεν εἰς τὴν γῆν τὴν καλήν,
καὶ ἐδίδου καρπὸν
ἀναβαίνοντα καὶ αὐξανόμενα,
καὶ ἔφερεν ἓν τριάκοντα
καὶ ἓν ἑξήκοντα
καὶ ἓν ἑκατόν.
καὶ ἔλεγεν, Ὃς ἔχει ὦτα ἀκούειν ἀκουέτω.
--Mark and perhaps Peter the Rock (translating for Joshua of Nazareth)

πῶς οὖν χρὴ δίκαιον ἡγήσασθαι τὸν τῆς Ἑλένης μῶμον,
ἥτις εἴτ' ἐρασθεῖσα
εἴτε λόγῳ πεισθεῖσα
εἴτε βίᾳ ἁρπασθεῖσα
εἴτε ὑπὸ θείας ἀνάγκη ἀναγκασθεῖσα
ἔπραξεν ἃ ἔπραξε, πάντως διαφεύγει τὴν αἰτίαν
--Gorgias of Leontini (speaking for Helen of Troy)

It can be all Greek to me, and yet, and still, we all can see the play.

I've bolded and italicized and formatted the bits of text above to show some of the repetition, the variation on a theme, the parallelism even across parables.

Aristotle despised such play in language. Here's why: it didn't seem true to reality.

Reality has males above messy females, logic above messy dialectic and its counterpart rhetoric, and educated natural-born Greek men above all messy bar-bar-ians or slaves. End of story.

There is no need for fables, for parables, for others' stories. There is no need to change. No need to mess up reality.

When Aristotle at age thirty seven married Pythias his first wife, he that year declared that age thirty seven is the optimum age to marry for a man. He'd gotten his "virgin," as Hesiod said to:

Take to your dwelling a woman when you are ready to marry,
Not long after your thirtieth birthday is something behind you,
Nor when you're very much older, for that is the age to get married.
See that she's four years older than puberty; wed in her fifth year.
Marry a virgin to teach her all her respectable duties.
Most of all marry a woman who lives in your neighbourhood, nearby.
Looking about you, be sure no neighbour makes fun of your marriage.
Surely a man can obtain nothing better at last than a woman
When she is good; if she's bad, there is nothing more thoroughly tiresome;
Keeping her eye on her dinner she kippers her husband however
Strong without smoke. She'll bring him unwilling to early old age.
--Work and Days (697-705, trans by Daryl Hine)

So just guess how young Aristotle's virgin was when he got her so naturally?

When Aristotle went bald early, he observed the reality that "The front part of the head goes bald because the brain is there and man is the only animal to go bald, because his brain is much the largest and moistest. Women do not go bald." And he went on to observe "Again, one quality or action is nobler than another if it is that of a naturally finer being: thus a man's will be nobler than a woman's," something the men of Sparta with their hair - their long hair - and with their ignobly free women failed to grasp.

If life changes sometimes, that's only natural. And nature from time to time will need a helping hand. Why? Well, logically because females sometimes fail in the procreative act. And their failing nature leads to female babies (which are penis-less and otherwise botched males); sometimes a defective mother having sex defectively can even lead to male offspring that's defective, to dwarfs and to other mutations. Fortunately, logic allows female infertility and animal mothers producing defective offspring to be overcome. Why, even good horsemen know this nature:

Aristotle advises, "After an interval put the horse to the mare again because the mare cannot bear it continuously." Here he's talking logically, literally: "Ἴσως δὲ μᾶλλον ἂν δόξειεν ἀπόδειξις εἶναι πιθανὴ τῶν εἰρημένων λογική [“logic”]—λέγω δὲ λογικὴν [“logic”] διὰ τοῦτο ὅτι ὅσῳ καθόλου μᾶλλον πορρωτέρω τῶν οἰκείων ἐστὶν ἀρχῶν. . . . . οὗτος μὲν οὖν ὁ λόγος [“logos”] καθόλου λίαν καὶ κενός• οἱ γὰρ μὴ ἐκ τῶν οἰκείων ἀρχῶν λόγοι [“logoi”] κενοί, ἀλλὰ δοκοῦσιν εἶναι τῶν πραγμάτων οὐκ ὄντες. He's writing here on animal sex generally (i.e., Generation of Animals) but gets into the particular realities of geometry and of fixed, unchanging nature, by logic. Logic listens to nothing else but reality, nothing but nature, as the educated Greek male (not the Spartan man, mind you) so coldly and objectively sees it.

Krista Ratcliffe, in all her wonderful work on rhetorical listening, has correctly observed that Aristotle rejected "listening" in his canons of rhetoric.

Ratcliffe's is no small insight. Which may explain why Aristotle didn't hear Gorgias (whom his teacher Plato in the dialogue "Gorgias" has his teacher Socrates disparaging as mere Gorgias the "rhetorician"). Gorgias, in real reality, rather playfully was listening to Helen, giving her lots of wiggle room as to why she'd run off with a barbarian instead of staying home with an educated Greek man. Gorgias was listening to a woman. A vulnerable mess. This is listening rhetorically. Listening with intent for very personal, very subjective implications that are prone to make you soften your heart and change. You don't necessarily need to know educated Greek to hear.

If Mark had written and translated so that Aristotle could have read, then Aristotle wouldn't have listened to this nonsense either. Aristotle didn't listen to barbarians. Aristotle didn't change nature or his own nature.

"Parable" of Translation: Bible puzzler

"Almost all Bibles are a translation of a translation, or a revision of a translation," Suzanne begins her post A translation of a translation.

What if we could acknowledge that all Bible translations are parables?

Parable, of course, in English has come to mean fable or story or comparison. Which is not too far from what it came to mean in Greek. It is what Aesop tells (and so does the "Libyan"), Aristotle notes in his Rhetoric. It is an ineffective or faulty way of knowing, he notes in his Metaphysics and his Politics and his Ethics. Even the parable of the Cave in the Republic of Plato is not logical, Aristotle helps his own students infer. (Aristotle doesn't want his own students to get mixed up by the parable of illogical teachers, even the parable of his own teacher).

Why, then, does Mark translate using the word parable? Why does he put that into the mouth of Jesus as some effective method of teaching?

Why in chapter 4, for example, does he say this:

ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς ἐν παραβολαῖς πολλά

"he taught them in many parables"?

and

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

"he spoke to them:
'Not getting this parable,
then how are you going to know each of the parables?'"?

Are parables unwise, as Aristotle teaches? Or are they otherwise, as Mark translates Jesus as teaching?

Well, if that's not a puzzler enough, let's get a little closer to Aristotle with the Bible. Let's go to the great city founded by his careful student Alexander the Great. And let's listen in on how the Jews there commissioned by an Egyptian king chose to translate some wise statements from their Hebrew into Greek.

Solomon's קֹהֶלֶת‎, Kohelet, they called Εκκλησιαστής, Ecclesiastes. (Never mind how much this translated title might have reminded listeners and readers of the comic play by Aristophanes called Ἐκκλησιάζουσαι, Ecclesiazusae, or The Assemblywomen. Or maybe we should mind because this is exactly the slippery slope Aristotle warned his students about - and the barbaric Hebrews with their women are sliding down it almost unnoticed).

So readers can't get out of chapter 1 of Ecclesiastes without encountering parable. Solomon originally writes this (verse 17). But these translators tell it originally in Greek like this. So compare:

וָאֶתְּנָה לִבִּי לָדַעַת חָכְמָה וְדַעַת הֹולֵלֹות וְשִׂכְלוּת יָדַעְתִּי שֶׁגַּם־זֶה הוּא רַעְיֹון רוּחַ׃

καὶ ἔδωκα καρδίαν μου τοῦ γνῶναι σοφίαν καὶ γνῶσιν,
παραβολὰς καὶ ἐπιστήμην ἔγνων,
ὅτι καί γε τοῦτ' ἔστιν προαίρεσις πνεύματος·

So a bible translating team, such as the ESV team, will make the Hebrew into English something like this:

"And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind."

And bible translating individuals, such as Lancelot Brenton and Peter Gentry respectively, will render the Hebrew-Greek into English just like this:

"And my heart knew much -
wisdom, and knowledge, parables and understanding:
I perceived that this also is waywardness of spirit."
(Brenton)

"And I applied my heart to know wisdom and knowledge; derangements and understanding I understood, that, indeed, this is preference of spirit."
(Gentry)

Now then, we fast forward to the end of Solomon's book (12:9). And we hear him saying this:

וְיֹתֵר שֶׁהָיָה קֹהֶלֶת חָכָם עֹוד לִמַּד־דַּעַת אֶת־הָעָם וְאִזֵּן וְחִקֵּר תִּקֵּן מְשָׁלִים הַרְבֵּה׃

And this is how the Jews hearing Solomon in Egypt render that into Greek:

Καὶ περισσὸν ὅτι ἐγένετο Ἑκκλησιαστὴς σοφός, ἔτι ἐδίδαξεν γνῶσιν σὺν τὸν λαόν, καὶ οὖς ἐξιχνιάσεται κόσμιον παραβολῶν.

And now the ESV team (from Solomon to American English):

"Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care."

And then Brenton and Gentry (from Hebrew-Greek to Englishes):

"And because the Preacher was wise above [others, so it was] that he taught man excellent knowledge, and the ear will trace out the parables."

"Beyond the fact that the Ecclesiast was wise, he also taught the people knowledge, and an ear will track out an arrangement of parables."

Aren't we left with some questions?

Are the Jews in Alexandria translating Solomon's משל (mashal) as παραβολῶν (parable)? but his הוללה (howlelah) and / or his סכלות (cikluwth) [madness and / or folly] also as παραβολὰς καὶ ἐπιστήμην [parable and / or knowledge]? Aren't they making Solomon like one of those comic Assemblywomen? Like a Greek sophist? Or does parable do something else for its listeners, for those with ears to hear?

Are Mark and Simon [aka Peter, Rock] in Jerusalem putting much unwise and / or otherwise rhetorical Greek rhetoric into the mouth of Joshua [aka Jesus] and his closest pupils? Isn't the Greek-speaking Joshua in Jerusalem saying and showing that parable is important for understanding and knowledge? Isn't parable a kind of slippery translation of the original?

A Certain Fable of Buchephalas

Her name is lost in history. She is found only in a fable:

Her master called her Boukephalē, which was "a Christian compliment." He meant it, he said, as an allusion to the great wild horse tamed by young Alexander the Great. (Of course, Alexander was calling the animal "Ox Head.")

She was not originally from Macedonia, because her mother was Libyan. And her father (clearly Greek from her skin and eyes and nose though not her hair) no one but her mother knew. Her master, Korigedora, had a kind affection for her. He used her not only in the fields but also in his famous church library. She cataloged for him the various books from Alexandria and from Jerusalem, Korinth, Philippi, Antioch, Syria, Silisia, Thessaloniki, Ptolemaida, and Ephesus. She did all required to keep him the faithful Bishop of Vergina: serving him - this husband of Mariam (ΜΑΡΙΑΣ) the Jewess - to make him the requisite "one-wife man" (ΜΙΑΣ ΓΥΝΑΙΚΟΣ ΑΝΗΡ). His sons, then, were Jews. They were circumcised on the eighth day - though more out of custom, he announced, than out of law. He himself was proudly an ethnic of the believers (ΤΩΝ ΠΕΠΙΣΤΕΥΚΟΤΩΝ ΕΘΝΩΝ); specifically, he was Greek - a good label from the collected writings of that Sent-Apostle Paul, the Tarsusian (who, was also "Jewish, Hebrew, a son of Isra-El" and a "Roman" who invariably wrote in Hellene, even to Hellene men). And he prided himself on handling slaves lovingly. On the wall of his study, he had posted a bit of one of the scriptures, a letter of Paul:

ΟΙ ΔΟΥΛΟΙ ΥΠΑΚΟΥΕΤΕ ΤΟΙΣ ΚΥΡΙΟΙΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΣΑΡΚΑ ΜΕΤΑ ΦΟΒΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΤΡΟΜΟΥ ΕΝ ΑΠΛΟΤΗΤΙ ΤΗΣ ΚΑΡΔΙΑΣ ΥΜΩΝ ΩΣ ΤΩ ΧΡΙΣΤΩ ΜΗ ΚΑΤ ΟΦΘΑΛΜΟΔΟΥΛΕΙΑΝ ΩΣ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΑΡΕΣΚΟΙ ΑΛΛ ΩΣ ΔΟΥΛΟΙ ΤΟΥ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ ΠΟΙΟΥΝΤΕΣ ΤΟ ΘΕΛΗΜΑ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ ΕΚ ΨΥΧΗΣ ΜΕΤ ΕΥΝΟΙΑΣ ΔΟΥΛΕΥΟΝΤΕΣ ΤΩ ΚΥΡΙΩ ΚΑΙ ΟΥΚ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΙΣ ΕΙΔΟΤΕΣ ΟΤΙ Ο ΕΑΝ ΤΙ ΕΚΑΣΤΟΣ ΠΟΙΗΣΗ ΑΓΑΘΟΝ ΤΟΥΤΟ ΚΟΜΙΕΙΤΑΙ ΠΑΡΑ ΤΟΥ ΚΥΡΙΟΥ ΕΙΤΕ ΔΟΥΛΟΣ ΕΙΤΕ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΚΥΡΙΟΙ ΤΑ ΑΥΤΑ ΠΟΙΕΙΤΕ ΠΡΟΣ ΑΥΤΟΥΣ ΑΝΙΕΝΤΕΣ ΤΗΝ ΑΠΕΙΛΗΝ ΕΙΔΟΤΕΣ ΟΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΥΜΩΝ ΑΥΤΩΝ Ο ΚΥΡΙΟΣ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΕΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΟΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΡΟΣΩΠΟΛΗΨΙΑ ΟΥΚ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΠΑΡ ΑΥΤΩ ΤΟ ΛΟΙΠΟΝ ΑΔΕΛΦΟΙ ΜΟΥ ΕΝΔΥΝΑΜΟΥΣΘΕ ΕΝ ΚΥΡΙΩ ΚΑΙ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΚΡΑΤΕΙ ΤΗΣ ΙΣΧΥΟΣ ΑΥΤΟΥ ΕΝΔΥΣΑΣΘΕ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΝΟΠΛΙΑΝ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΟ ΔΥΝΑΣΘΑΙ ΥΜΑΣ ΣΤΗΝΑΙ ΠΡΟΣ ΤΑΣ ΜΕΘΟΔΕΙΑΣ ΤΟΥ ΔΙΑΒΟΛΟΥ

He taught her many things in the privacy of that library.

So, when he was away on a long trip with his sons, and when Miriam was asleep for the night, this slave girl would bring her mother, the Lybian, to the library. She'd unroll the scrolls of the Penta-Teuch. She'd stop at the fifth chapter of ἈΡΙΘΜΟΊ. She'd read aloud to her illiterate mama as if Helen in the plays of Euripides. Except this Helen spoke with bar-bar-ian lips, the mother tongue, that Berber of home. And her reading was playful, what Karen Jobes calls a "bilingual quotation," which she overhears Lynn Visson calling "Condensation, deliberate omission and addition, synecdoche and metonymy, antonymic constructions, grammatical inversion, and the use of semantic equivalents are a few of the tools that help do the job." In her play acting, she did not pretend to be objective. This slave girl was free from that. "I am not certain that the translator is even obliged to make the modern reader understand what is overheard," she said to her mother, as if quoting Phyllis A. Bird.

Or was she quoting Paul, writing to the men in Korinth who taught their women at home after church?

She had the most fun with her mama, unfolding the pages of the copy of that letter Handy the slave (ὈΝΗΣΙΜΟΣ) handed to his master from Paul. (But since her name is lost, or is simply Corrigedora or Buchephalas as if within a parenthetical afterthought, this remains only one of those terribly inventive, easy fables.)

(hypothetical) equivalence

[O]ne does not translate between equivalents; rather, one creates tropes of equivalence in the middle zone of translation between the host and guest languages. This middle zone of hypothetical equivalence, which is occupied by neologistic imagination, becomes the very ground for change. 

--Lydia H. Liu, Tokens of Exchange, page 137

If it is true that the translator . . . in the host language always initiates the linguistic transaction by inviting, selecting, combining, and reinventing words and texts from the guest language and, moreover, if the needs of the translator and his/her audience together determine and negotiate the meaning (i.e., usefulness) of the text taken from the guest language, then the terms traditional theorists [in the West] use to designate the languages involved in translation, such as “source” and “target/receptor,” are not only inappropriate but misleading. 

--Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice, page 27

My youngest child has taken up learning Mandarin.  She is twelve going on thirteen; but the language is exactly 684 years old.  We know that because this particular Chinese originated with 中原音韵, which she calls "Zhōngyuán Yīnyùn" but which the translation scholars have rendered into English as "The phonology of the Central Plains" by 周德清.  She's mastered the piano, the ukulele, won the science project at school, has scored a few goals for her soccer team, and reads and writes English fluently; so I don't think she'll have much problem getting Mandarin. Besides, many of her grandparents' friends use the language here in the US, and so do many of her dad's students at the university, and so does her own friend, Mei Fuh, who goes by May.  She also checked out "Speak in a Week: Chinese" from the local library, and is now on day 5.  She's surrounding herself with all the right teachers.

I'm being a little silly here (although everything I've written so tongue in cheek is absolutely true).  You were being most serious when you started reading those italicized epigraphs, above, by Lydia H. Liu.  

Why is my being silly and your being so serious such different things?  Did you know that Lydia Liu was once twelve going on thirteen?  

What I'd like us English speaking westerners to notice is how we play such "important" games with "equivalence" in "translation."  "Christians" reading the "Bible" are the worst at it.  But "poets" like Robert Frost give "them" (or is that "us"?) precedence.  Remember how Frost said things such as "Poetry is what gets lost in translation" and then he insisted that "Two roads!" meant "one" thing and not the other!?  He was not fooling around.  He didn't bother with Mandarin either.

I'm writing discursively again, narratively, in a blog post.  It's a "parable." 

But my bible-translating blogger friends are writing much more clearly.  "Scholarly," we presume (neither poetry nor parable).

I'm wondering if anyone will notice.  I mean, Peter Kirk posts at Better Bible Blogs mentioning, "Craig Blomberg’s interesting defence of the rendering 'brothers and sisters' [in translation] . . . [which] touches on the gender issues"; but Kirk insists that Blomberg "also goes beyond them [i.e., those specific ho-hum points on gender issues in translation] to make [rather different and even] more general important points about Bible translation."

Now, if he dares, Kirk will come over here to this blog to defend his own intentions. Or some of you other readers will defend his author's rights. And, I agree, we have to listen to what he means, and not put proverbial words in his mouth (or in this case in his hand). But I want to protest. Isn't Kirk getting away with something?

Look how one writer (i.e., Kirk) "initiates the linguistic transaction by inviting, selecting, combining, and reinventing words and texts from the" other writer (i.e., Blomberg) but how "the needs of the" first writer (i.e., Kirk; or is Kirk the second writer?) "and his . . . audience [i.e., that "audience" would be Kirk's readership with him] together determine and negotiate the meaning (i.e., usefulness) of the text" (i.e., the meaning of the original text of the first author).  Lest you missed it, I am quoting Lydia H. Liu, in English, from my epigraph above. Do you see what we've done? We claim to be so very faithful to the author and his (or her) intentions. But we always have our own intentions. And sexism doesn't need to be linked, always, to the more important points about Bible translation.

So let's keep going. Now biblioblogger Mike Sangrey is asking ("us"?) "Is it mean to not mean what you mean?" Sangrey is also quoting another author, Steve Runge, but decides what is most important that Runge says: "he talks about semantic meaning versus pragmatic effect. Translators need to get their minds around this. . . value of pragmatic effect." Sangrey ends up saying "the originally intended effect" is the most important place for translators to start because, in the end, "it’s vital to reproduce that effect." To get to all of that, Sangrey has been walking us through a text in which the author is interrupting his own narrative. (The author is also the translator of all the dialogue that Sangrey says he interrupts, but Sangrey doesn't bother to interrupt his own blog post text to get us to notice the translating. Rather, he gives us lessons on translating, which presumably starts and ends with the attempt to make equal in the target language some "intended" or "meant" original something of the "original" writer who is the only "author" to consider.) Sangrey means nothing like this: "This middle zone of hypothetical equivalence, which is occupied by neologistic imagination, becomes the very ground for change." And again, we're reading Liu in English but changing a bit what Sangrey means, as if he is not changing what Runge means, or what John means, who changed what Jesus means. (Oops, we're NOT to change what the man means, whoever he is, even if he does.)

So let me now do what Aesop and the Libyan (whom Aristotle disparged) had to do. It's what Jesus had to do too (or at least his translators had to do for him). Let me give the moral of the fable, of the parable, of that story always thrown beside our own story to effect an unequal change (in me, in us, YIKES).

The moral: "Equivalence" is always the creation of the translator. And, for the translator to pretend absolute faithfulness to the original author and the original text is one of the greatest (sexist, elitist) hypocrisies of the West.

translatin' like: Clarence Jordan

This morning I read that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sent Clarence Jordan a very compassionate letter. You've got to be impressed with both people. Here's the letter. And here's where you can read Dr. Jordan's translating of much of the New Testament. His notes on translation inspired me to try. So reading Luke 12:41-48 anyway, I took a stab at it. Can you tell which is Jordan's and which is mine and which is Luke's?

“Massa,” continues Rocky, “You just makin’ this here story up for us? Or you tellin’ it for all them people?”

And the Master says,
“Who be da housekeeper ya just gotta’ believe, makin’ da rules of da home? Who got some deep sense? Who da masta’ leanin’ on for nursin’ his own an’ givin’ ‘em, at just THE right time, da wheat? It be da happy slave, da one da masta’ find doin’ da creatin’ stuff.

Yall want da unveilin’? Here go: she da one be gettin’ leaned on for all his doin’s.

Now s’pose there be da slave sayin’ deep in his heart sumpin’ like this?
‘It bin takin’ a good long time fa Massa ta git by here.’
S’pose he start beatin’ up da workin’ boys and girls? Suppose he start eatin’ right away, an’ drinkin’, an’ gettin’ drunk? Well, da slave’s masta’ goin’ come ‘round one day when he aint ‘spectin’ him. Aint goin’ know da hour. Da slave’s masta’ goin’ tear him up, leanin’ them parts he got left on nothin’ ‘cept them slaves he don’t no longer believe.

So ya gots da slave who aint know nothin’ his masta’ wish for and aint preparin’ or creatin’ much ‘long da lines of what he be wishin’. Lots a thrashin’s comin’ to him. An’ ya gots da one aint know nothin’. He be makin' a ruckus an’ just get them thrashin’s to spare.

All them people who been gettin’ lots a things, lots goin’ be sought from ‘em. And them leaned on for lots a things, goin’ get lots more things asked from ‘em.

εἶπεν δὲ ὁ Πέτρος κύριε πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην λέγεις ἢ καὶ πρὸς πάντας

καὶ εἶπεν ὁ κύριος
τίς ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ πιστὸς οἰκονόμος ὁ φρόνιμος ὃν καταστήσει ὁ κύριος ἐπὶ τῆς θεραπείας αὐτοῦ τοῦ διδόναι ἐν καιρῷ τὸ σιτομέτριον μακάριος ὁ δοῦλος ἐκεῖνος ὃν ἐλθὼν ὁ κύριος αὐτοῦ εὑρήσει ποιοῦντα οὕτως

ἀληθῶς λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐπὶ πᾶσιν τοῖς ὑπάρχουσιν αὐτοῦ καταστήσει αὐτόν

ἐὰν δὲ εἴπῃ ὁ δοῦλος ἐκεῖνος ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτοῦ
χρονίζει ὁ κύριός μου ἔρχεσθαι
καὶ ἄρξηται τύπτειν τοὺς παῖδας καὶ τὰς παιδίσκας ἐσθίειν τε καὶ πίνειν καὶ μεθύσκεσθαι ἥξει ὁ κύριος τοῦ δούλου ἐκείνου ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ᾗ οὐ προσδοκᾷ καὶ ἐν ὥρᾳ ᾗ οὐ γινώσκει καὶ διχοτομήσει αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ μέρος αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ἀπίστων θήσει

ἐκεῖνος δὲ ὁ δοῦλος ὁ γνοὺς τὸ θέλημα τοῦ κυρίου αὐτοῦ καὶ μὴ ἑτοιμάσας ἢ ποιήσας πρὸς τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ δαρήσεται πολλάς ὁ δὲ μὴ γνούς ποιήσας δὲ ἄξια πληγῶν δαρήσεται ὀλίγας

παντὶ δὲ ᾧ ἐδόθη πολύ πολὺ ζητηθήσεται παρ' αὐτοῦ καὶ ᾧ παρέθεντο πολύ περισσότερον αἰτήσουσιν αὐτόν

Rock said, "Sir, are you telling this Comparison just to us, or to everybody else, too?"
The Master said, "Well, who is the loyal and efficient employee whom his employer will put in charge of the payroll to see that everyone is promptly and accurately paid? Happy is that worker who, when the boss shows up, is doing a good job. I'm telling you a fact, he'll give him one promotion after another. But if that worker begins to say to himself, 'My boss will be late this morning,' and starts throwing his weight around and abusing those under him, then he goes out to get something to eat and a few beers, sure as everything his boss will show up just when he is least expected, and will chew him out and fire him.
"Now that worker who understands fully what his boss wants done and doesn't get busy and do the job, will have the book thrown at him. But the worker who didn't understand, even though he did what he shouldn't have, will get off light. The more one is given, the more is expected of him; the more somebody is entrusted with, the more he must account for.

A Translation Is Like A Personal Story

Sometimes others' stories impact your own (in ways that seem to demand you stop translating and pause from writing a dissertation to listen). Won't you listen?

In some of Saul Bellow's stories, the protagonists won't read the stories in the newspapers, because they might believe them. And this is exactly why a young rabbi, a rather obscure one at the time, told stories saying, "Only for the ones who have ears to hear, please." So more on that in a moment.

Now, "Free Zimbabwe" is the story "for the next several days . . . for the Lingamish blog," which is a translation of this story:

"Enough is Enough" is the story of several lifetimes for Zimpundit at http://enoughzimbabwe.org/, which is a translation of this story:

"Sokwanele and Zvakwana both mean 'enough is enough' in the vernacular"; and this is the story of women who cry out for "Dignity. Period!," which is a translation of the stories of terror and tears:

"This Is Zimbabwe" is only a folder of terrible stories within a whole site of folders, a serial volume mapped as http://www.sokwanele.com/.

So the young rabbi tells disturbing stories or, rather, stories that disturb the credulity of the stories of the listeners. They are never perfect or accurate translations.

A kid named Matthew hears one in his heart language, and writes it down in a heady language like this (but stay with him a bit because you'll hear it from Jane next in her French):

ἄλλην παραβολὴν παρέθηκεν αὐτοῖς λέγων

ὡμοιώθη ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἀνθρώπῳ
σπείραντι καλὸν σπέρμα ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ αὐτοῦ
ἐν δὲ τῷ καθεύδειν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους
ἦλθεν αὐτοῦ ὁ ἐχθρὸς καὶ ἐπέσπειρεν ζιζάνια ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ σίτου καὶ ἀπῆλθεν
ὅτε δὲ ἐβλάστησεν ὁ χόρτος καὶ καρπὸν ἐποίησεν
τότε ἐφάνη καὶ τὰ ζιζάνια
προσελθόντες δὲ οἱ δοῦλοι τοῦ οἰκοδεσπότου
εἶπον αὐτῷ
κύριε οὐχὶ καλὸν σπέρμα ἔσπειρας ἐν τῷ σῷ ἀγρῷ
πόθεν οὖν ἔχει ζιζάνια
ὁ δὲ ἔφη αὐτοῖς ἐχθρὸς ἄνθρωπος τοῦτο ἐποίησεν
οἱ δὲ δοῦλοι λέγουσιν αὐτῷ
θέλεις οὖν ἀπελθόντες συλλέξωμεν αὐτά
ὁ δέ φησιν οὔ μήποτε συλλέγοντες τὰ ζιζάνια ἐκριζώσητε ἅμα αὐτοῖς τὸν σῖτον ἄφετε συναυξάνεσθαι ἀμφότερα ἕως τοῦ θερισμοῦ καὶ ἐν καιρῷ τοῦ θερισμοῦ
ἐρῶ τοῖς θερισταῖς
συλλέξατε πρῶτον τὰ ζιζάνια καὶ δήσατε αὐτὰ εἰς δέσμας πρὸς τὸ κατακαῦσαι αὐτά τὸν δὲ σῖτον συναγάγετε εἰς τὴν ἀποθήκην μου

Luckily enough for us, Jane Stranz of life, laughter, and liturgy tells that this way, with her friends:

Il jetait une autre histoire à côté de leurs histoires personnelles

Le palais royal dans les cieux est comme quelqu’une
Qui plante de bonnes semences dans son jardin
Puis pendant que le people dort
Son ennemi vient planter des graines de mauvaises herbes parmi les semences de fleurs et s’en va
Au moment où les fleurs fleurissent les mauvaises herbes apparaissent aussi
les ouvriers du jardin allait voir la paysagiste lui dire
« Madame, n'avez-vous pas planté des semences de fleurs au jardin?
D'où viennent alors les mauvaises herbes? »
Elle répondait « C'est mon ennemi qui a fait ça. »
« Voulez-vous que l'on abattent les mauvaises herbes? » demandaient les ouvriers.
« Non, en les abattant vous abattrez en même temps les fleurs.
Qu'elles poussent ensemble jusqu'au moment où il faut couper les fleurs pour les bouquets. A ce moment là je dirai aux fleuristes – abattez les mauvaises herbes et mettez les en piles à brûler, mettez les fleurs dans mes vases. »

Now if you've stayed with us long enough so far (and enough is enough), then you might suspect there's an English translation, my story telling, in there some where. There is. It was a day in April when enough is enough, I say.

But don't stop with my story. Pick up a newspaper. Read of the terror, of the horror in someone else's state. Visit Zimbabwe. You don't have to translate perfectly. Listen!

What’s the Point of Feminism? The (Original Greek) Dialogue

What’s the point of feminism?

ARISTOTLE:

>>Ἔχουσι δὲ πλείους οἱ ἄρρενες τῶν θηλειῶν ὀδόντας καὶ ἐν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἐπὶ προβάτων καὶ αἰγῶν καὶ ὑῶν· τὸ γὰρ θῆλυ ὥσπερ ἄρρεν ἐστὶ πεπηρωμένον· Τοῦ δὲ θήλεος ἴδιον μέρος ὑστέρα, καὶ τοῦ ἄρρενος αἰδοῖον,

>>τή γυναικική ἐστιν τῶν θηλειῶν

>>ὅμοιον γὰρ κἂν εἴ τις ᾡ̂ μέλλει χρη̂σθαι κανόνι, του̂τον ποιήσειε στρεβλόν.

ASPASIA:

Sir, would you care to say that in English for the audience?

ARISTOTLE:

Οὒ!

PLATO:

No, Aristotle says. My pupil doesn’t believe in translation. For him, it’s the denigration of our language by the BarBar-ian tongues of the La-La-lands. (He does chuckle when I tell him that those uncivilized Dutch men named the blacks in the remotest part of the dark continent the “Hot-Ten-Tots.” And he’s trying to convince his Great little pupil Alexander to make Jamie Uys translate “The Gods Must be Crazy” into Greek for us.) I’m hoping to persuade Aristotle that Barbarian tongues can be the shadows in the cave, reflections however imperfectly and inaccurately of his original Greek and his logical syllogisms in Greek.

SOCRATES:

“The shadows prove the substance,” my good Plato. But don’t the shadows prove the sunlight?

ASPASIA:

Thanks gentlemen. Today our discussion is placed (“topically”) around our personal politics with respect to our respective genders here. Isn’t it important for the world to know what Greek men and women think? Is there really much value in thoughts if they are only translated in one direction?

PLATO:

Right, Aspasia. I see some of what you mean. But let me take a crack at translating Aristotle’s logic here into English for our wider, worldly audience.

[His major premise here is this. And, mind you, he gets all of his premises from observing hard-fact nature objectively:]

>>Ἔχουσι δὲ πλείους οἱ ἄρρενες τῶν θηλειῶν ὀδόντας καὶ ἐν ἀνθρώποις καὶ ἐπὶ προβάτων καὶ αἰγῶν καὶ ὑῶν· τὸ γὰρ θῆλυ ὥσπερ ἄρρεν ἐστὶ πεπηρωμένον· Τοῦ δὲ θήλεος ἴδιον μέρος ὑστέρα, καὶ τοῦ ἄρρενος αἰδοῖον,

>>Males have more teeth than females in the case of humans, sheep, goats, and swine. The female, in fact is, as it were, a mutilated male. The respective part of a female is an emptiness, a uterus, and of a male is a spear, a penis.

[Now that the male/female binary is set, and the hierarchy of classification of male / female is established, the minor premise is this:]

>>τή γυναικική ἐστιν τῶν θηλειῶν

>>Feminism is female.

[Necessarily, all of Greece, someday the world, must follow this conclusion]:

>>ὅμοιον γὰρ κἂν εἴ τις ᾡ̂ μέλλει χρη̂σθαι κανόνι, του̂τον ποιήσειε στρεβλόν.

>>Therefore, [feminism without much teeth] is like making the stick crooked [and thereby pointless] which is intended for use [straight use straightaway].

ASPASIA:

So that’s Aristotle’s logic, huh? Is it always so pointed? And Plato, isn’t your translation revealing of your own personal politics? Did you read Toni Morrison's essay Home yet? Can you distance yourself from your student’s sexist words, or are you making them your own here, and making them the words of men, despite the tongue?

ARISTOTLE:

Ἀσπασία, Ἔστι δὲ καὶ δύσθυμον μᾶλλον τὸ θῆλυ τοῦ ἄρρενος καὶ δύσελπι, καὶ ἀναιδέστερον καὶ ψευδέστερον, εὐαπατητότερον δὲ καὶ μνημονικώτερον,

PLATO:

[My apology for him. That would be:]

Aspasia, you ignorant slut. I see what you’re doing here, You’re twisting my language, putting things in my mouth. It’s postmodernism and feminism veiled.

SOCRATES:

Now, now, my pupils. Do you see any reason to choke on hemlock now? Pericles listens to Aspasia, and I think you’ll want me in one of your dialogs one day, listening to both of them. What do you think, Plato? And is that really an accurate translation of what your student said? And do you let him speak so? Forgive us, Aspasia!

PLATO:

No, O Socrates, my teacher. I was just practicing dynamic equivalence translation. And I’d been watching too many SNL reruns. Dan Ackroyd is the one calling her a slut in public if after ten o'clock in the evening; Jane Curtin is her I mean.

[What Aristotle is really saying is the following, when to translate his original words by “formal equivalence,” which may be more like your dialectic, which is my ideal, less the realism of Aristotle’s logic anyway. So, literally, Aristotle is saying this in English]:

Ἀσπασία, Ἔστι δὲ καὶ δύσθυμον μᾶλλον τὸ θῆλυ τοῦ ἄρρενος καὶ δύσελπι, καὶ ἀναιδέστερον καὶ ψευδέστερον, εὐαπατητότερον δὲ καὶ μνημονικώτερον,

Aspasia, The female is more dispirited and more despondent than the male, more shameless and more lying, readier to deceive and possessing a better memory for grudges.

Now if I can get my student, Aristotle, to write that down in his treatise on “The History of Animals,” then you, O Socrates, and Pericles too deserve the center places in my “Menexenus” with both of you listening to Aspasia.

SOCRATES:

Thanks.

My dear Aspasia. Will you correct me if I’m wrong?

As for the “point” of feminism, my only question is whether there aren’t feminisms?

Until I get to Morrison, I’ve been musing about Helen Logino’s “Feminist Epistemology as a Local Epistemology” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71 (1) , 19–36 and how she claims that “many commentators take feminist epistemology to be a species of naturalised and social epistemology, but just as there are ways of naturalising and ways of socialising epistemology, so there are ways of doing feminist epistemology.”

And Aristotle, didn’t you yourself get away from the one single naturalizing epistemology “of nature” when you wrote the following?

>>“ἡ ῥητορική ἐστιν ἀντίστροφος τῃ̂ διαλεκτικη̂ ͅ: ἀμφότεραι γὰρ περὶ τοιούτων τινω̂ν εἰσιν ἃ κοινὰ τρόπον τινὰ ἁπάντων ἐστὶ γνωρίζειν καὶ οὐδεμια̂ς ἐπιστήμης ἀφωρισμένης :”?

PLATO:

[Excuse me, O Socrates. That would be this in written English]:

>>”Speakerism is a different creative turn from that “-ism” of talked-through truth. There are, in fact, around these two at least the very common turns that all make, men and women too, in order to know things, and not one of them makes tight precise boundaries around understanding anything.”

ARISTOTLE:

Οὒ! καὶ ναί

ASPASIA:

Thanks gentlemen. Thanks, Aristotle, for your question. So, do feminisms need to be as pointed as your question today seems to be? Is sexism always as logically pointed? What is the male author’s intentions? And need a translation always and only veil any reader’s personal politics? Can we all agree that Plato is getting a little better with his translating? This has been a most revealing discussion.

Tune in next time when Barbara Cohen and Bahija Taffuhi Lovejoy join us to talk about their book Seven Daughters and Seven Sons. Warning, at first glance, it’s a story of men, of men from the middle east, of men from the middle east who collapse the gods into one, a male One albeit with ninety-nine names; and they say that He is to be revered and that their daughters are to be veiled. Rather, if you can be conscious of your own readerly sexual politics--the marked and the unmarked--it’s a story, of women, a woman story, as heretical in Jerusalem, except to the women there and everywhere who under stand theology much differently than such theogic-logic allows. It is a book for children but profound enough for adults. It is not all Greek, and yet it sinks deep.

Here’s a sneak peak without giving away anything:

“I wore no veil. After all that had passed between us, to what purpose would I have hidden my face from him? Even my mother couldn’t insist upon it, though she and Darirah had covered theirs. So I didn’t have to answer him. The smile I gave him was enough. . .

‘O Mahmud!’ I exclaimed. ‘Can the son of the Wali of Tyre marry a woman whose name is tossed around in bazaars and khans?’

‘But Buran,’ Mahmud replied, his eyes, his mouth, his whole face smiling, ‘if your story hadn’t been known, my hair could have been white before I found you. . . It’s because of the story that I found you as quickly as I did.’ His hand reached out and grasped mine. ‘Besides how could such a thing be kept secret? Tell me that. How could such a thing be kept secret?’”