very super practical intercourse and paradise

What do you mean by the title to my post? Fair enough, you first want to know everything I intend by it. How long do you have? and how deep do you want to go?

Let me just explain initially that I'm first just trying to show wordplay. I'm giving words with much "play." In other words, there's much "wiggle room" in the meaningS of the words AND there's also much "playfulness" in them. More than that, the words have play for you that is different perhaps than their play for me. If Aristotle could or would share our English, then this would give him fits. He'd probably scoff that we're barbarians with a mother tongue sounding like the tricky slick language of sophists such as Gorgias and only-half-serious philosophers such as Heraclitus or, worse, like the polluting, ambiguous lips of females like Sappho or Aspasia or (the gods help her) Helen.

Another thing I'm trying to do is to use a parable, an analogy of sorts.

I'm hoping to begin an answer to Dannii's "very super practical" question. Dannii has read through some of my posts and has patiently and kindly re-read The Silence of (Rahab and) the Joshuas. He asks a number of related questions, so let's just consider his first to see how far we can go:

My question is really a very super practical one here: assuming we had all the time and energy, the translation/linguistic skill and experience, a deep knowledge of the Bible and other writings of the time, an insightful understanding of all the past cultures involved and today's culture, and your crazy feministic theories, how exactly would we translate Hewbrews 4 for a normal English-speaking adult, for my friends at uni, my bus driver or even my sister.

Dannii's question is a fair one, a legitimate one if you will. He's setting assumptions, and he's making other assumptions (such as the assumption that translation is an "exact" process and that the feminist theories are mine and are crazy).

So I'm asking Dannii, and any of us really, how we might translate our English into another language. The analogous English is the playful and unconstricted English in my title. I'm suggesting that the Greek of Hebrews 4 is as full of wordplay; and before we get to someone else's Greek it may be helpful to try to get at our English.

But, to be sure, "our" English is originally part of a story Mike Sangrey tells at another blog. Mike's trying to use his story and his English at least as a parable to say, "Gethsamane means oil-press. Should one translate it? Or transliterate it?" David Ker jokes with him, "The real reason you wrote this post is so you could share that racy story!" Maybe this is the exact and real reason I am writing this post: to share Mike's racy story. Here's a bit of it:

Mike is on the phone with someone who is helping him update his personal records, his address. She asks first:

“City?”

“It’s a small town.” I paused. “…Intercourse.”

She giggled. “Really?” she said.

I replied, “Yep, that’s the name.”

“Ok. What’s your new address? I need the street first.”

I gave her the street name.

“And having left Intercourse where did you move to?”

I could tell there was a smile behind the question. It was at this point in time I realized this was going to be a bit funny.

“Well, ummmmmm…” I paused. “…Paradise.”

Now how, if exactly, will we translate Mike's story into any other language?

If Portuguese, for example, should we just use paraíso? Or might we opt otherwise for Céu or for lugar agradável?

If Spanish, for example, should we just use intercambio and explain in a footnote also that it might just be trato, relaciones, contacto sexual? Are we going to explain somewhere somehow all of the English play?

If Chinese, for example, should we be content with 天堂, 伊甸园, or 乐园? And do we make our Chinese reader giggle with 交往 or 交流?

Should we, can we, mustn't we try to bring across or to create wordplay? Shouldn't we understand the problems with our own language (with Mike's own, with the phone operator's own): "intercourse" and "paradise"? And how if very super practical?

Won't the "crazy" feminist theories insist on the personal before the logical? The (feminine) body written and not silenced or abstracted? The voices once lost in the original now found in translation? The marginalized humans recentered?

I'm now just asking questions. Questions for translation.

I'm wondering what French writer (teacher and historian) Laurent Dubois means by translating English from Spanish in his "'Man's Darkest Hours': Maleness, Travel and Anthropology" (and what Ruth Behar and Deborah Gordon mean by including that in their Women Writing Culture:

Search no more for paradise. Yesterday, I burned it.
Busques de no más el paraíso. Ayer, lo quemé.

It's the conclusion to his little story about someone else that concludes Dubois' essay. The story is called "Paradise." What do you mean by that?

mother of Matthew

So how do you read Matthew's gospel, if you're a woman? How, if you respect your mother?

Can we enumerate some of the problems, especially with the "Lord's Prayer"? Did you see Bob MacDonald's wonderful mention of maridly in a comment on an earlier post here? What translational problem is Bob getting at? What can it mean?

But what are other translational issues, if you're a woman? What, if you respect your mother?

Who is πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς? Who is our father, that one in the skies? Who's Matthew's father, and why don't any of the gospels say for sure that it's Alphaeus? Who is the father of this Joshua (aka Jesus, who is the "Lord" saying this prayer that Matthew translates)? Why does Matthew begin his gospel of Jesus listing men (i.e., fathers), when the ultimate father (i.e., Joseph) is not the father at all? And how come Matthew makes David "king" in that list of men? How is the prayer requesting a "father" to ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία, to "bring the kingdom?" Why does Matthew mention the father of the king Herod, and why does he have John the Baptist questioning his Jewish brothers about whether Abraham is their father? And why Greek, if Matthew doesn't know Aristotle or Homer and their fathers? And how different from his own mother tongue, and Jesus's mother tongue, if the latter is punning "the words 'father' (אבא, abba), 'Abraham' (אברהם, abraham) and the verb 'to do' (עבד, `abad)"?

But why these other translational issues, if you're a woman? Why, if you respect your mother?

Where is Matthew's mother tongue? Where is she, Matthew's mother? Is she Alphaeus's woman, the woman (i.e., the "wife") of father Clopas? Why is she not named, this other Mary, another Miriam?

How come Mary the mother of Jesus, Miriam the mother of Joshua, is not in the list of named men at the beginning of Matthew's gospel? Why do English translators mention "father" overtly if Matthew does not translate his mother tongue אבא (abba), πάτερ here in this list? Why does Matthew name women in this list of men as the ones ἐκ τῆς "out of whom the" males come? Why the father-seducing Tamar, whose namesake later was the victim of rape by her father's son, whose brother murdered him and then fathered his own daughter of the same name? Why the foreign whore Rahab? Why the foreign woman Ruth? Why the unnamed woman of the man named Uriah, whom the king father stole from and murdered dead?

Where is Joshua's (i.e., Jesus's) mother tongue? Doesn't it slip out and into Matthew's Greek translation? Doesn't it speak out "eli eli lama sabachthani" when he cries out on the cross, within earshot of his mother, Miriam? Why is she present there at the end, but not the father, not the one in the list at the beginning, and not the father at the beginning of the prayer, why, and why not, and where?

So how do you read Matthew's gospel, if you're a woman or a man? How can you translate across cultures and languages and millennia as if you are equal to all your very own answers about respecting mothers, your very own mother? How is she so unimportant, so silent and so silenced, so unequal?

some questions on my birthday

כַּבֵּד אֶת־אָבִיךָ וְאֶת־אִמֶּךָ
τίμα τὸν πατέρα σου καὶ τὴν μητέρα

Birth is mysterious in the first place. I'm forever grateful to Mom and Dad for conceiving me and to her for having given birth to me.

So a first question (below) is Why?

Why is a bilingual, multicultural Hebrew scholar like Paul (a dual citizen of Tarsus and of Rome no less) silent towards mothers? He writes in Greek to his friends in Ephesus and in Colossae, and he gives explicit rules to husbands and wives; to masters and slaves; and to fathers and children (who are to obey and to honor both father and mother). But Paul says not one word to mothers. Why not? Why the silence?

Likewise, why is a monolingual Greek scholar like Aristotle (an itinerant of the Hellene cities) silent towards mothers? He writes in Greek for his students a treatise on Ethics named after his father Nicomachus, and he writes of different sorts of friendships in which one person is over the other: fathers over sons; elders over youths; husbands over wives; rulers over subjects; and parents over children. But Aristotle does not address friendships of mothers. Why not? Why the silence?

The Greek texts (and their silences on mothers are below).

First Paul to children and fathers:

τὰ τέκνα ὑπακούετε τοῖς γονεῦσιν ὑμῶν ἐν κυρίῳ
καὶ οἱ πατέρες μὴ παροργίζετε τὰ τέκνα ὑμῶν ἀλλὰ ἐκτρέφετε αὐτὰ ἐν παιδείᾳ καὶ νουθεσίᾳ κυρίου

τὰ τέκνα ὑπακούετε τοῖς γονεῦσιν κατὰ πάντα
οἱ πατέρες μὴ ἐρεθίζετε τὰ τέκνα ὑμῶν ἵνα μὴ ἀθυμῶσιν

Now Aristotle on various kinds of unequal friendships (but none involving mothers):

ἕτερον δ' ἐστὶ φιλίας εἶδος τὸ καθ' ὑπεροχήν,
οἷον πατρὶ πρὸς υἱὸν
καὶ ὅλως πρεσβυτέρῳ πρὸς νεώτερον,
ἀνδρί τε πρὸς γυναῖκα καὶ παντὶ ἄρχοντι πρὸς ἀρχόμενον.
διαφέρουσι δ' αὗται καὶ ἀλλήλων:

οὐ γὰρ ἡ αὐτὴ γονεῦσι πρὸς τέκνα καὶ ἄρχουσι πρὸς ἀρχομένους,
ἀλλ' οὐδὲ πατρὶ πρὸς υἱὸν καὶ υἱῷ πρὸς πατέρα,
οὐδ' ἀνδρὶ πρὸς γυναῖκα καὶ γυναικὶ πρὸς ἄνδρα.
ἑτέρα γὰρ ἑκάστου τούτων ἀρετὴ καὶ τὸ ἔργον,
ἕτερα δὲ καὶ δι' ἃ φιλοῦσιν:
ἕτεραι οὖν καὶ αἱ φιλήσεις καὶ αἱ φιλίαι.

Now the question continues (further below) but in a different direction: Why?

The other students of Joshua (i.e., the students other than Paul) have their Rabbi saying much about and for and around and with mothers. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have Jesus talking, in their written Greek translation, about both his parents (including his step father) and more about and with his own mother. Why?

As he died, Jesus was with the woman who had given birth to him, and she was of course there with him. Some of his final words were these:

γύναι ἴδε ὁ υἱός σου

ἴδε ἡ μήτηρ σου

And why does another Greek scholar, Sappho (not Aristotle), so honor mother and father? Here are fragments remembering and receiving such sweetness:

Γλύκεια μᾶτερ, οὔ τοι δύναμαι κρέκην τὸν ἴστον,
πόθῳ δάμεισα παῖδος βραδίναν δἰ Ἀφρόδιταν.

Ϝέσπερε, πάντα φέρων, ὄσα φαίνολις ἐσκέδας ᾽ αγως ,
φέρεις οἴν, φέρεις αἶγα, φέρεις ἄπυ ματέρι παῖδα.

Δώσομεν, ἦσι πάτερ.