easy question?

Should I start this blogpost with a question?  Ha.  What's blogging for?

Recently, I read a 547-page dissertation that is a commentary on Aristotle's Book III of his Rhetoric.  The author of the thesis asked me to be the main Greek reader of his dissertation committee, which I was.  So, for that, I also re-read all of Aristotle's Rhetoric (and much of his Poetics) in Greek, and the former in two different English translations.  I also read feminist rhetoric translation stuff, and whether the writer liked it or not, had to pay attention to how much feminists must pay attention to Aristotle and his rhetoric and even Book III of his female-denigrating treatise.  Whew.  We the committee members suggested changes, the doctoral candidate made them, and we read the whopping paper all over again.  Then, I'm happy to say that the dissertation writer not only passed his defense but did so with distinction as determined by the consensus of the committee.  He has a doctor of philosophy in rhetoric and is the world's expert on the Greek in Book III of Aristotle's Bible on Rhetoric.  Whew again.

So now the writer emails me today with an "easy" question:

"BTW, just a question: do you think that πνευματικῇ (as at Colossians 1:9) is formed or functions as a noun in a similar manner as rhêtorikê?"

So what would you say?  How much else would you read to give your answer?

Hitler's Shoah Novel; Aristotle's Woman Poem

No, Hitler didn't write a novel, much less one on the Holocaust of the Jews.  Nor did Aristotle either write poetry or praise females.

My sarcastic title is to emphasize the fact that Adolf Hitler avoided writing fiction and that Aristotle never composed poetry.

Rather, Hitler wrote only in prose:  Mein Kampf   [aka My Very Own Sorrowful Struggles].

And so did Aristotle, scientific things like:   ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ and ΠΕΡΙ ΡΗΤΟΡΙΚΗΣ    [aka  AROUND CREATIVITISTICS  and AROUND SPEAKERISTICS  or, what's been called Poetics and The Rhetoric]. 

These men believed that it took the pure prose of non-creative, non-fiction to call for the destruction of those of another race and to observe the denigration of the other sex.

In another post, soon when I have a bit more time, I want to talk about the values of ambiguity, of poetry, of fiction, and of creative nonfiction.

"ALL IN ALL": language

[UPDATE: I wrote this post very quickly in a very short amount of time yesterday. This morning, I thought to go back through to correct the typos and to adjust the Greek marginal formatting and to help you readers out with clarity in other editorial ways. But now I'm hoping you'll just make what you can of it. Know that I have been thinking through or at least thinking on some of these things. The conversation at BBB continues, and it's a good discussion, I think, at least an important one for many of us. Perhaps for you, there's something pertinent too.]

Teacher:  A good language must have one and only one meaning for each single word!
Young pupil Kenneth Pike:  But, sir, how then could we learn language?

         --Ken Pike, recollecting to some of us, his linguistics students

The Stranger: ... ποιήσῃ τῶν στοιχείων ἕκαστον πάντων ἐν πάσαις ταῖς συλλαβαῖς τὸ μὲν ἕτερον ὡς τῶν ἄλλων ἕτερον ὄν, ...
Young Socrates:  Παντά-Πασι μὲν οὖν.

         --Plato, The Statesman

I like very much the way the philosopher Goodman has stated (1978:x) that "what emerges can perhaps be described as a radical relativism under rigorous restraints" [emphasis mine, KLP].

         --Kenneth Lee Pike, Talk, Thought, and Thing

Here I go again, starting a blog post with three epigraphs.  So you get what I'm doing by now, don't you?  I'm wanting to use language to reflect on language use.

In particular, I want to start my post by blurring the lines between poetry and prose (or so called "propositional truth language").   Let me first (1) rather rhetorically listen in on the English language dialog between two bloggers.  Then (2) let's consider other English.  We might (3) just return to some Greek.  And then (4) we'll talk about translation.

Here goes:

(1)

John Hobbins of the blog Ancient Hebrew Poetry makes a brilliant comment at Dannii Willis's Better Bibles Blog post.  He starts:

"... my inner poet rebels against the notion that it is possible to translate a phrase like 'all in all' into propositional truth language."

John goes on to show how the phrase "'all in all' is part of a "beautiful song." He's already admitted, nonetheless, and has very clearly stated that it's not just lyrical sung poetry but that "propositional truth is [indeed] communicated" in the original Greek phrase that Dannii is concerned with (i.e., παντα εν πασιν).  And yet, John draws attention away from the propositional nature of this Greek phrase and then towards what he calls "the diction of the original."  John remarks pointedly that - because of the phrase's vagueness or ambiguity ostensibly - "it could be taken" by Greek readers and listeners alike "in the wrong way."  He implies that this problem is overcome by context.

Dannii replies rather curtly that the English phrase "all in all" (i.e., to translate the Greek phrase παντα εν πασιν) is "just a nice sounding Christian catchphrase."  And Dannii adds rather syllogistically that "catchphrases have no place in our Bibles."  This is his firm conclusion, and so far John has said nothing to rebut it.

My analysis of this conversation:

What I want to draw attention to is that John uses prose or, what he calls "propositional truth language" to make his claim and to build his case.  He does not use poetry, even poetry in the limited way he himself so propositionally defines poetry in contemporary English at his prosaic blog he's named Ancient Hebrew Poetry.  John himself quotes the lines from a song, but of course he cannot sing it in his written comment.

Dannii then comes back curtly (as I said already), in quick propositions.  But notice the nice sounds in his sentence, "It’s just a nice sounding Christian catchphrase."  With all that alliteration and all of those sibilants and affricates and voiceless stops, it's almost poetry.  Maybe it's song.  And it's rather puny because "Christian catchphrase" seems to be a "catchphrase" of "Christians."  Here's propositional truth proof, some of it propositional and scientific:  Bible Read Through and Christian Catch Phrases and Scientists Warn of Shortage in Christian Catchphrases.

(2)  Now this part 2 on considering other English isn't all that clever.

I just remember reading Sir Philip Sidney's piece "The Defense of Posey [i.e., Poetry]" and thinking, Hey, he is using prose here to defend poetry.  I think Mary Sidney's one of the best translators of the Bible ever -- just thought I'd through that in to see if you were paying attention.  Thank you, then!  And click on this link if I've gotten too propositional for you (and if you want an image of something cool).  And I also remember watching Dr. Ken Pike do a monolingual demonstration, give a follow up lecture with a bit of Q & A, and then recite poetry.

He told poems
as if
they could not
be
told otherwise

Now, I'm thinking I've just made a capital E out of a bad poem.  Don't know what that means, really.  Maybe you'll make something of it.

(3) Now Greek.  No, not Aristotle's this time.  I'm going to show you Plato's Greek (which had some impact on the young Aristotle, I must add).  Plato's got this Young Socrates character learning from a Stranger (and neither is the real Socrates, who taught Plato, or the Socrates who shows up as the real Socrates in most of Plato's dialogs).  The stranger is teaching his student the Young Socrates about Politics and being a Statesman (and they are all men, you know).  His using examples to explain examples to get to the politics stuff.  So he starts with the alphabet.  Yes, Greek.  And he says this:

Ἀνάγειν πρῶτον ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνα ἐν οἷς ταὐτὰ ταῦτα

ὀρθῶς ἐδόξαζον, ἀναγαγόντας δὲ τιθέναι παρὰ τὰ μήπω

γιγνωσκόμενα, καὶ παραβάλλοντας ἐνδεικνύναι τὴν αὐτὴν 

ὁμοιότητα καὶ φύσιν ἐν ἀμφοτέραις οὖσαν ταῖς συμπλοκαῖς, 

μέχριπερ ἂν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγνοουμένοις τὰ δοξαζόμενα ἀληθῶς

παρατιθέμενα δειχθῇ, δειχθέντα δέ, παραδείγματα οὕτω γιγ‑ 

νόμενα, ποιήσῃ τῶν στοιχείων ἕκαστον πάντων ἐν πάσαις 

ταῖς συλλαβαῖς τὸ μὲν ἕτερον ὡς τῶν ἄλλων ἕτερον ὄν, τὸ

δὲ ταὐτὸν ὡς ταὐτὸν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἑαυτῷ προσαγορεύεσθαι.

Yes, I hear the It's All Greek to Me catchphrase.  What you might see, nonetheless, is how Plato's Stranger is using a favorite Greek catchphrase of the Greek-writing Roman-citizen Christian-Jew Saul-Paul.  It's not exactly poetry, but it's not exactly propositional truth, not just yet.  This is Plato, remember, not yet Aristotle.  So did you see it, right there in the dialog?  Or at least in the monolog bit of the Stranger?  πάντων ἐν πάσαις

All in all.  He's talking (as Plato's writing) about the each and every correspondences of letters to syllables and such.  As an example of something like this example and like politics.  It's a nice way to learn.  Take something similar but different.  Stack it up next to something similar but different.  See what you can make of that.

And what do you make of the Young Socrates's response.  Oh that's right, you need to see it.  He "says":

Παντά-Πασι μὲν οὖν.

Now, I'll bet you a few pennies that most English translators have completely missed the Greek wordplay here.  You, however, can see it can't you?  All those π's and Π's and παν's and πασ's.  What's that mean?  Well, on the propositional level, the Young Socrates says "Certainly" or "That's altogether so."  At least that's what translator Benjamin Jowett and translator Seth Benardete have respectively said he said.  What if they'd said something more poetic?  More playful?  More punny (or is it punier?)?


Truth be told, and all in all, I really haven't seen this Greek catchphrase or the wordplayful response anywhere much at all between Plato and Paul.


(4)  Okay.  Let's talk.  About translation I mean.  What do you think?

Riddle me ree: Here's one for you

Let me just warn you that I'm writing very quickly this morning.  I almost entitled this one "Jesus: the feminist rhetorical translator" (since recently I finished Tom Thatcher's important book Jesus the Riddler:  the power of ambiguity in the gospels). 

But let me start this particular post by saying that, after very careful study of Aristotle in his own Greek writings, it's become apparent to me that he was neither feminist nor rhetorical -- that is, he rather despised females and denigrated ways of knowing and of communicating that were not "logic."  Aristotle wanted translation, but only in one direction:  his.  That is, he taught his powerful elite male students - such as Alexander the Great - to conquer, even by logic and by the Greek language.

Which is all very different (and maybe ironically opposite) from an odder and later figure in our histories:  Jesus.

The problem that many of us have in writing and reading history now is that we forgo the sort of methods Jesus used for Aristotle's logic.  (but to be clear, Aristotle never intended for any of us of any less-educated, un-Greek, or fe-male species to translate his logic as ours).  One method Jesus used, which needs substantial recovering, is "the riddle."  (to be clear, Aristotle taught his students very directly against riddling.)

As mentioned earlier, I was reading Tom Thatcher's book Jesus the Riddler while re-reading Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology and it occurred to me for the first time:  wordplay (i.e., the sophistry that ARistotle and Plato and Plato's Socrates rails against -- the "rhetoric" and the "riddling" they so dispise) is a sort of methodology or is a set of methologies that many poets, sophists, women, and rhetoricians have used down through the years.

And there is much resistance to if not just ignorance about the cross-cultural and historical uses of wordplay.  (A respected contemporary new testament Greek scholar, such as Bill Mounce, for example, confesses he isn't familiar with Dissoi Logoi, the pluralistic sophistic reviews of what goes on in various societies who construct knowledge and being by language in radically different - sometime ambiguous - ways.)

Let me leave this post, then, because i'm nearly out of time.  Let me leave you with just a quick example of the riddling of Jesus (from Thatcher's very careful but not yet exhaustive study).  Thatcher notes how Jesus (according tot he various gospel writers translating him into playful Greek) would mark a riddle with the statement:

"Whoever has ears to hear let him or her hear"

or would ask rhetorically, "having eyes, don't you see and having ears, don't you hear?"

[οἳ ἔχουσιν ὀφθαλμοὺς τοῦ βλέπειν καὶ οὐ βλέπουσιν καὶ ὦτα ἔχουσιν τοῦ ἀκούειν καὶ οὐκ ἀκούουσιν]

Through Aristotle's (non-sophist, non-rhetorical) eyes and ears, the contemporary translator would guess and speculate and suggest it means something like:

Let this be a word to the wise 

Thatcher rather playfully says this sort of logic has the Greek phrase [ος εχει ωτα ακουειν ακουετω] "as a functional synonym for the modern maternal admonition 'Pay attention!'" (page 31).  But when one listens for Jesus as a riddler telling riddles (a kind of dialectic of wise sophistry among Jewish rabbis) then you might hear the Greek translated phrase as "functionally equivalent to 'Riddle me ree' or 'Here's one for you,' although the subject matter [in the public conversation and teaching] is obviously more significant than the pub jokes [where] we [might] introduce those phrases today" (page 40).

Subversive Rhetoric: Phillis Wheatley "Plays" Roman

 MAECENAS, you, beneath the myrtle shade,
Read o'er what poets sung, and shepherds play'd.
What felt those poets but you feel the same?
Does not your soul possess the sacred flame?
. . . .
The happier Terence all the choir inspir'd,
His soul replenish'd, and his bosom fir'd;
But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace,
To one alone of Afric's sable race;

The previous post "Subversive Rhetoric: Against Slave-Owning Americans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans" is Herbert Marbury's illustration of how slaves used double-meanings in songs, scripture, and poetry as subversive rhetoric.  In this post, there's more:

Phillis Wheatley's subversive use of Roman culture, her particular "'play' in and among the interpretive gaps and disjunctions between the social worlds of slave and slave holder."

First, (re)read her poem "To Maecenas."

Next, (re)view why white men could not at first believe she herself wrote it (black, African, a female, a girl no less, a slave too of course).

Finally, (re)cover the double meanings that you may have missed (but that one of Carol Percy's students could begin to hear).

Subversive Rhetoric: Against Slave-Owning Americans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans

If you get there before I do

Coming for to carry me home

Tell all my friends I'm coming too

Coming for to carry me home

      Within a matrix of overwhelming repressive power, the rhetoric of the spiritual and its ability to "play" in and among the interpretive gaps and disjunctions between the social worlds of slave and slave holder became a powerful subversive tool against repression.  Such rhetoric is political; it takes sides.  It simultaneously subverts and directs power.  Black preachers and others who employed the song ["Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"] for political purposes carefully crafted a multivocal rhetoric in which both slave and slave master could participate, albeit with very different interests and understandings.
      Since the rhetoric was appropriately constructed to attend to each group's social and political interests, each group could participate in their own symbolic world of meaning.  The slaveholder certainly would not have been aware that the rhetoric signaled the arrival of the Underground Railroad and the slaves' intent for freedom here instead of the hereafter.  Those slaves who had not read 2 Kings or heard the story of Elijah preached might not have been aware that there was another signification for the rhetoric in the planter class's romanticized notions of slave piety.  Only those individuals who traveled between both worlds, such as slave preachers, would have understood the rhetoric's double signification and why the song needed such a multivalent character to be effective.
      The separatist rhetoric of Ezra 9-10 and Nehemiah 10-13 is similarly multivalent.  Like the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," the rhetoric of Ezra and Nehemiah also emerges from a context of repression.  Judah suffered under Persian domination that was no less brutal than that of the Assyrians and Babylonians before them or that of the Greeks and Romans who succeeded them.
---
above, an excerpt from the chapter "Ezra and Nehemiah," by Rev. Dr. Herbert Marbury, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University, and Clergy of the North Georgia United Methodist Conference, in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora.  (HT David Ker)

Translating Hélène Cixous

     Cixous' translation strategy is consistent and coherent:  she provides in English a very close echo of the French text, a persistent shadowing of the French, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase.  This close reading inevitably creates estrangement effects in English....
     Only one paragraph seems to depart radically from this system of strict equivalences and coincidences.  This is a paragraph where the question of Cixous' Jewish identity is broached in a kind of paroxysm of anguished jubilation.  What is the relation between women demonstrating in Iran against the veil and the "Jewish question"?

La question des juifs.  La question des femmes.  La question des juifemmes.  La questione della donnarance.  A questāo das laranjas.  The question:  Juis-je juive ou fuis-je femme?  Jouis-je judia ou suis-je mulher?  Joy I donna?  ou fruo filha?  Fuis-je femme ou est-ce je me ré-juive?

The question of the Jews.  The question of women.  The question of jewomen.  A questāo das laranjudias.  Della arancebrea.  Am I enjewing myself?  Or woe I woman?  Win I woman, or wont I jew-ich?  Joy I donna?  Gioia jew?  Or gioi am femme?  Fruo.                                                                                                                (Cixous 1979)

     Here we see Cixous writing across languages, moving from jubilation to lament, moving through English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian [and dare we see German and transliterated classical Greek?], between Clarice Lispector and Joyce, in an outburst of ambivalent self-accusation.  Here, the absence of any mechanical idea of equivalence between languages reinforces the dynamic of Cixous' writing which is to create meaning in the spaces between words, in the interplay between them.
     The careful, restrained linguistic shadowing which prevails elsewhere in the text collapses entirely as the plurality of codes is equally produced in all languages.  We are reminded here of Derrida's question:  can the process of transfer between texts already written in a plurality of tongues still be called translation?  How to translate a text which is already infected by the multiplicity of language (Graham 1985:215)?  In this passage, Cixous brings to the surface the tensions among identities through which her text is constructed.  The unity of the speaking subject's identity explodes, as does the unity of language.
     There is a certain violence in this expression of non-identity, in the dispersion of familiar linguistic traits.  The reader of the translation is faced with "stiff or limping English, full of gaps, blocked by untranslated matter" (Willis 1992:107).  Exposed to the eye are two texts, one dependent on the other, each language showing itself to fill the gap of the other, supplementing and at the same time revealing the faults and gaps of the original, in a complementary and simultaneous act of completion and deformation.  The poles of wholeness and loss are indicated by the orange and the apple, the orange pointing to a mythic completeness, the apple drawing attention to the divisions at the heart of being:  apple becomes appel, appeal:  how to call, what to call?  The speaker draws attention to the shift from orange to apple, claiming in the text:  "I am guilty also of voluntary translation" (Cixous 1979:38).  Clarice [Lispector], however, is the instrument who will translate the apple into the orange.  Vivre l' orange [by Cixous], in Sharon Willis' strong reading, is a text that "exposes its own fault, faultiness, an internal rift, across the figure of the orange being displaced, occupying the place of Iran, of I, of woman, of the body through which the voice passes" (Willis 1992:113).  It performs the failure of the journey toward the proper name, toward the security of a linguistic home.  The interdependence of the double text echoes the absent origin of the speaker, the displacement of her quest.

--from pages 97 and 98 of Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission by Sherry Simon

Xenophon & Paul: Strong Rhetoric, So So Translations (repeat: strong, so so)

Earlier in the week, Bill Mounce stated that

διλογος is a rare word occurring only one other time in Greek literature, and that in the second century A.D. where it means “repeating.” Its two closest cognates are equally rare, διλογια meaning “repetition” and διλογεω meaning “to repeat.”

Yesterday, I suggested that Xenophon had used the word in the third century B.C. and that Xenophon's use may have been inspired by the fourth century B.C. Δισσοι Λόγοι / Dissoi Logoi /. So Today, Mounce said

* It is true that Paul may not have coined the word; it may be that we just don't know. However, Paul does this repeatedly throughout his writings, and coining words was as acceptable then as it is today in German or in American educational circles.

* The argument from two early church fathers (i.e., Greek) that they understood it to mean "deceitful" and another as "saying one thing to this man, and another to that" is significant. Greek was their language and their opinion linguistically (as opposed to theologically) is generally seen as important.

* I am unaware of Δισσοι Λόγοι, so I don't really have an opinion. We do know that Paul was very aware of their Greek culture of his day and often find, for example, uses of technical terms in Stoicism but given a Christian meaning.

In this post, I'd like
(1) to show how Xenophon and Paul used the word,
(2) to suggest that their use of the word is strong rhetoric, and
(3) to stress that the translation "repeating" (or variant forms such as "repetition" or "to repeat") is just so so if not just downright lousy as a translation.

In another post sometime then, I'd also like
(4) to see what the early church fathers say
(5) to situate the sophists and their Dissoi Logoi a little more in the discussion (since Mounce has added his comments, as noted above).

(1) How Xenophon and Paul Used Δί·λογος / Dí-logos /

Xenophon writes this:

μώτεροι ἂν δοκοῖεν εἶναι. εἰ δέ τις δι·λογεῖν ἡμᾶς οἴεται, ὅτι περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν λέγομεν νῦν τε καὶ πρόσθεν, οὐ δι·λογία ταῦτ’ ἐστίν.

Paul writes this:

διακόνους ὡσαύτως σεμνούς, μὴ δι·λόγους, μὴ οἴνῳ πολλῷ προσέχοντας, μὴ αἰσχροκερδεῖς

(2) How Their Rhetoric is Strong

We don't really have to understand the "true" meanings of the word in question, and we don't really even need to understand Greek, in order to get much of what's going on here. There are a couple of things, at least, to notice.

First, both Xenophon and Paul use a negative word in the phrases with the word dí-logos. This is to signal to the readers that the writers believe the whole idea of dí-logos is not positive. (To be clear, when he first uses the word dí-logos, Xenophon uses a sort of conjecture with the words εἰ τις to imply the negative: "If someone's thinking I'm doing dí-logos, then they're wrong 'cuz I'm not." And when he uses the word the second time, then he just explicitly negates it with the negative word οὐ. Which brings us to our second thing to notice.)

Second, both Xenophon and Paul use repetition. We should see that whether we're native Greek speakers or are readers of only other languages. It's the Burma Shave signs all over again, and again.

Xenophon and Paul don't want their readers to miss the points that dí-logos is not good. Repeat: dí-logos is not good.

Now if you need a stuffy academic book to convince you further, I'd recommend Paul Gordon's The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse. That's Paul Gordon's The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse. (Gordon, you'll see, even knows some about Dissoi Logoi, which is an early critical double.)

(3) How "Repetition" is Just a So So (if not a lousy) Translation of Dí-logos

There's only time today to show you what one translator does with this. But as we know, all English translators of Xenophon's wordplay phrase here (so far) have rendered his dí-logos as "repetition." Let me repeat, then: Xenophon's actual repetition of the term is strong rhetoric. But "repetition" as the translation of dí-logos is just so so, and is rather weak. Did you get that? Xenophon's actual repetition of the term dí-logos is strong rhetoric. But "repetition" as the translation of dí-logos is just so so, and is rather weak.

So here's how one translator's rendered it. And below that is a stronger possibility.

"If anyone thinks that we are repeating [??] ourselves, because we are referring to matters already dealt with, this is not repetition [??]."

Here's a stronger translating:

"If someone thinks that I am using sophistic double-speak because I have referred to matters already dealt with, then know this: this is not sophistic double-speak."

A point to note is that Xenophon is clearly interested in repetition, in repeating, in saying things twice. He's not, however, interested in being perceived as using or in actually using "sophistic double-speak."

I'm out of time. So later sometime perhaps, I'll try
(4) to see what the early church fathers say
(5) to situate the sophists and their Dissoi Logoi a little more in the discussion.

Double Trouble in Greek Bible Translation

In this post, I'm going to look at three words in the Bible that are only used once. They are two wordplays that Paul uses and one wordplay that James uses. Because each wordplay is used just a single time by the writers, the wordplay spells double double toil and trouble for translators. So we'll look at how some Bible translators have translated the wordplays.

 (Joel M. Hoffman reminds us to call these a "hapax legomenon" which is how to pronounce the Greek, ἅπαξ λεγόμενον, which can mean something like "a statement used once." In contrast, of course, is a "dis legomenon," or δις λεγόμενον, which might be used to suggest a "doubly-made statement." And we could play all day with this, inventing real or imagined words like "tris legomenon" and "tetrakis legomenon" and claim technical or imprecise meanings for them all.)

When a writer plays with a word, then a translator does well to show the wordplay. (The writer might be Xenophon or Aristotle, Paul or James). Too often, however, the translator gets bewildered and flummoxed by the following concern: "We simply do not know what the word truly means." (This is the concern of William D. Mounce as he considers the concerns of Mark L. Strauss). The translator looks around for how other writers used the word or whether anyone ever used the word. The translator looks around at how other translators translated the word. The translator asks again, answers again, and concludes that there are TWO solutions: "can we know—with precision—what it means? Of course not. We just don’t know. And hence we have the two solutions proposed by formal and functional translations."

 (So Mounce says again, "we simply do not know for sure what the word means," and then he wants Strauss, himself, and others "to leave that [word-meaning] debate for the commentaries, pastors, and blogs.")

THE WORDPLAYS AND THE TRANSLATORS

So what're the wordplays?  And who are the translators?

Paul's wordplays are δί·λογος / dí-logos / and λογ·ική / log-ikḗ / (as he writes them respectively in I Timothy 3:8 and in Romans 12:1).

The wordplay by James is δί·ψυχος / dí-psychos / (and he writes it in James 1:8 and in James 4:8; but should we call it a "dis legomenon" because of his double use of a single wordplay?).

The translators are the teams for the ESV and the TNIV (since Mounce and Strauss are playfully arguing over these translations).  And I'm interested in translators Richmond Lattimore, Ann Nyland, and Willis Barnstone - since these three have translated and worked in Greek far beyond the New Testament.  Let me (J. K. Gayle) play with translating too.

Now before we get to the translations, we'll do well to think a bit more about peculiar wordplay. "Double double toil and trouble" is rhetorical, isn't it? Yes, it really is poetical too. But the poetry draws attention to the words, and the words - for a writer like Shakespeare - let three Scottish witches call in demons as they wait for a king, Macbeth, and all his trouble. This lets English listening audiences through years and decades and centuries now consider the powers of incantations and politics. It even lets children tv film makers in America entertain the population of families who are willing to pay for it: yes, the Olsen twins with Cloris Leachman. How would a translator in China translate any of that into Chinese? I mean, "We native English speakers whether in England or in one of its now-predominantly-anglo former colonies simply do not know what these words truly mean."

So we move on to the old Greek wordplays.  Paul's two words δί·λογος / dí-logos / and λογ·ική / log-ikḗ / play on the word λογος / logos /.  The latter is the very common Greek word for "statement."  It was an extremely important word for Greek science and for Greek philosophy and for Greek knowing.  Hence, meaning-wise λογος / logos / became over determined.  By that, I mean, its different meanings were differently determined depending on which different people were using it.  The gospel writer, John,  for example, cleverly uses λογος / logos / to open the very peculiar (i.e. non-synoptic) gospel.  But long before Jews started using Greek for montheistic religious purposes, Greeks were using the word λογος / logos / in ways that were almost mythic.  This seemed to trouble Socrates, then Plato, and then even more Aristotle.  The wordplayful sophists were using the "statement" in all sorts of indeterminate ways.  

In fact, some of the sophists (anonymously it seems) produced a work of radical cultural relativism and pluralism called Δισσοι Λόγοι / Dissoi Logoi /.  That spelled double double toil and trouble for the pan-Hellenists who were trying to unite the Greek city states in a single Republic with a single Politics and a single Ethics.  Somewhat literally the title of the work means something like "Two Statements."  Aristotle's response was to invent an entirely new λογος / logos / which he coined by adding the feminine suffix -ική / ikḗ to form a singularly-determined method of knowing that we now call "logic" or even λογ·ική / log-ikḗ /.  Aristotle didn't much like Xenophon's wordplay when writing about horsemanship either.  The latter had taken the prefix δις / dis / and added it onto λογος / logos / to make δί·λογος / dí-logos / - a wordplay which he used twice to let his readers know that he wasn't just making double-trouble statements when giving them instructions on riding horses up and down hills.

I think Paul was facile enough in Greek to have some familiarity with Xenophon and with Aristotle and with the writings of the sophists.  I think James was just downright playful with his Greek.  (I think the best Bible translators and scholars are those who are facile with the word  λογος / logos / and the wordplays on it, whether the wordplays of the sophists, or of Xenophon, Aristotle, Paul, or James.  Likely they have better facility after reading works such as Edward Schiappa's Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric, Ekaterina V. Haskins's Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle, Jeffrey Walker's Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity, Richard Leo Enos's Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle, and Cheryl Glenn's Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance.  Certainly they are facile in their understanding of wordplay after reading primary texts such as the primarily-Greek new testament, Dissoi Logoi [even as translated by Thomas M. Roberston], and the bodies of work by Sappho, Homer, Hesiod, the myriad playwrights, and Plato and Aristotle, at least.  Well, enough of that.)

THE GREEK
AND THE ENGLISH

μὴ δι·λόγους / mḕ di-lógous /  (Paul to Timo-THeos)
not double-tongued (ESV)
sincere (TNIV)
not two-tongued (Lattimore)
not two-faced (Nyland)
not two-tongued (Barnstone)
not making two statements like a wishy-washy sophist (Gayle)

τὴν λογ·ικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν / tḕn log-ikḕn latreían hmōn /  (Paul to Greeks and Jews in Rome)

which is your spiritual worship (ESV)

this is true worship (TNIV)

which is your rational worship (Lattimore)

This is your reasonable service (Nyland)

Which is your reasonable temple worship (Barnstone)

which is that aristotle-logical, statement-istical temple service of yours (Gayle)

ἀνὴρ δί·ψυχος / anḕr dí-psychos /  (James 1:8 to Jews in the diaspora of the Greek empire)

he is a double-minded man (ESV)

they are double-minded  (TNIV)

a man who is of two minds (Lattimore)

a double-minded person (Nyland)

one who vacillates (Barnstone)

a two-personality human (Gayle)

δί·ψυχοι / dí-psychoi /  (James 4:8)

you double-minded (ESV)

you double-minded (TNIV)

you doubters (Lattimore)

You double-minded people (Nyland)

You of two minds (Barnstone)

You two-personality ones (Gayle)

OBSERVATIONS
Notice how the translations are all over the place.  Double double toil and trouble.  What's that mean?  Sometimes two is one, and mostly it's wordplay for rhetorical effect, for the effect of statements.

Barnstone, Aristotle & Paul

Its disturbing message reveals how strong were the ties of many early Christian Jews with the Roman Empire and its vast slave network, which Paul, as a possible Roman citizen, espouses without criticism.

     For all these good reasons, because the Bible should sing us into its depths and rapture, Romans and Corinthians begin the letters.  A Bible like a novel, play, or opera has a movement leading to the reader's pleasure and enlightenment.  As with the classical drama, following Aristotle's dictum, we have suspension of disbelief in order to become fully involved in the drama and achieve catharsis.  All these instructions are applicable to the Bible, and they work for the believer and the skeptic.

     The Bible is a work of art.  Were it not art, were it simply an instruction manual, it would not satisfy or convince, and very likely wound not have survived.

--Willis Barnstone, "Introduction, Canon of the Restored New Testament," page 116, The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas 

translating Light of the World

Traditionally John 8:12 and Matthew 5:14 are translated from Greek into English as follows:

"I am the light of the world"

and

"You are the light of the world."

But why does John translate (from Hebrew Aramaic into Greek) Jesus as saying

Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου (from John 8)?

Why does Matthew translate him as saying

Ὑμεῖς ἐστε τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου (from Matthew 5)?

In Hebrew Aramaic are "light" and "world" animate and personal? Doesn't linking these nouns with personal pronouns such as "I" and "you" create some interesting havoc?

And what if gender is introduced in the pronoun? Suzanne posts an introduction.

But how different is what Aeschylus writes (from what John and Matthew write for Jesus) when the Chorus, in the work called the Persians (918-931), say the following?

ὀτοτοῖ, βασιλεῦ, στρατιᾶς ἀγαθῆς
καὶ περσονόμου τιμῆς μεγάλης,
κόσμου τ’ ἀνδρῶν,
οὓς νῦν δαίμων ἐπέκειρεν.
γᾶ δ’ αἰάζει τὰν ἐγγαίαν
ἥβαν Ξέρξᾳ κταμέναν Ἅιδου
σάκτορι Περσᾶν. ᾁδοβάται γὰρ
πολλοὶ φῶτες, χώρας ἄνθος,
τοξοδάμαντες, πάνυ ταρφύς τις
μυριὰς ἀνδρῶν, ἐξέφθινται.
αἰαῖ αἰαῖ κεδνᾶς ἀλκᾶς.
Ἀσία δὲ χθών, βασιλεῦ γαίας,
αἰνῶς αἰνῶς
ἐπὶ γόνυ κέκλιται.

And why does Robert Potter in 1777 render that into English as follows?

O thou afflicted monarch, once the lord
Of marshall'd armies, of the lustre beam'd
From glory's ray o'er Persia, of her sons
The pride, the grace, whom ruin now hath sunk
In blood! The unpeopled land laments her youth
By Xerxes led to slaughter, till the realms
Of death are gorged with Persians; for the flower
Of all the realm, thousands, whose dreadful bows
With arrowy shower annoy'd the foe, are fall'n.

And why does Herbert Weir Smyth translate that so differently also in 1922?

Alas, my king, for our noble army, for the high honor of Persia's rule, and for the splendor of the men now cut off by Fate! The land bewails her native youth, slaughtered for Xerxes, who has crowded Hades with Persian slain. Many warriors, masters of the bow, our country's pride, a great multitude of men, have perished. Alas, alas, for our trusty defence! The land of Asia, the leading power of the earth, has piteously, yes piteously, been bowed to her knees.

Is κόσμου τ’ ἀνδρῶν better "world of men [i.e., not women]" or "glory's ray o'er Persia, of her sons" or "the splendor of the men"? Is "it" the inanimate quality or possession of man?

Is πολλοὶ φῶτες better "much light" or isn't it more "the realm" of men and not women, "a great multitude of men"?

What do bible writers using Greek mean when they talk of the Kosmos? Don't they also aware of the pseudo-Aristotle's theological cosmology, On the Kosmos (aka De Mundo)?

And might Matthew be familiar with Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics (1235b)?

For things advantageous for a healthy body we pronounce good for the body absolutely, but things good for a sick body not—for example doses of medicine and surgical operations; and likewise also the things pleasant for a healthy and perfect body are pleasant for the body absolutely, for example to live in the light and not in the dark, although the reverse is the case for a man with ophthalmia. (translated by H. Rackham, 1935)

τούτου δὲ διωρισμένου ληπτέον ὑπόθεσιν ἑτέραν. τῶν γὰρ ἀγαθῶν τὰ μὲν ἁπλῶς ἐστιν ἀγαθά, τὰ δὲ τινί, ἁπλῶς δὲ οὔ. καὶ τὰ αὐτὰ ἁπλῶς ἀγαθὰ καὶ ἁπλῶς ἡδέα. τὰ μὲν γὰρ τῷ ὑγιαίνοντί φαμεν σώματι συμφέροντα ἁπλῶς εἶναι σώματι ἀγαθά, τὰ δὲ τῷ κάμνοντι οὔ, οἷον φαρμακείας καὶ τομάς. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἡδέα ἁπλῶς σώματι τὰ τῷ ὑγιαίνοντι καὶ ὁλοκλήρῳ, οἷον τὸ ἐν τῷ φωτὶ ὁρᾶν καὶ οὐ τὸ ἐν τῷ σκότει· καίτοι τῷ ὀφθαλμιῶντι ἐναντίως.

How can Jesus, John, and Matthew get away with personalizing and feminizing the categories of inanimate and of masculinity?

Top 10 Bibliobloggers / Feminist Bloggers on Obama on Abortion

From the Top, from President Obama: "no matter how much we want to fudge it . . . the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable."

From the Top 10 blogs & sites on Obama at Notre Dame on Abortion. Two camps:

bibliobloggers (and all men):

1. Dr. Jim West - "There’s nothing fair minded or open minded or open hearted or loving or compassionate or Christian about murder [i.e., abortion]. . . . That’s not being closed minded or demonizing others [i.e., not demonizing Obama] . . . ."

2. Ben Witherington - [silence, so far]

3. Joel L. Watts - "This is why we must continue to pray for our leaders and turn away from an out right hatred of President Obama. . . . [H]e speaks about the pro-life movement, and understanding that the debate is more than just words. Further, he has moved the Freedom of Choice Act to a lower priority list."

4. James McGrath - [silence, so far]

5. Airton José da Silva - [silence, so far]

6. Michael S. Heiser - [silence, so far]

7. Scott Bailey - [silence, so far]

8. Mark Goodacre - [silence, so far]

9. John Hobbins - "It is too early, of course, to formulate a judgment about POTUS Obama. But . . . [i]t is a mixture of boilerplate liberal rhetoric and 'genuine co-optation' of centrist and conservative themes. . . . I intend to extend to Obama the presumption of good faith of which he speaks. . . for him to deliver from his end, on the issue of abortion . . . because I will judge the extent of his fair-mindedness based not on the rhetoric of his speeches, but on the content of the legislation he seeks to pass."

10. Thomas Verenna - [silence, so far]

Feminist sites and blogs (including collaborations of women and some men):

1. Feministing.com's Ann Friedman - "I'll be joining three other bloggers for a discussion of Obama's remarks about abortion at Notre Dame this weekend. . . . [from video:] One of the things I agree with President Obama on strongly, that all of us can agree on I think, is that abortion 'is not something any woman takes lightly'"

2. Shakespeare's Sister's contributor Deeky - "Liss hasn't read [Obama's speech transcript] yet and I am not even remotely interested. If anyone has any insight, leave your witty repartee in comments." [70 comments so far].

3. Feministe's Jill - "the controversy about Obama's Notre Dame appearance is less about him than about divisions within the American Catholic community. . . . Despite how Notre Dame protestors are framing it, it’s not actually about Catholics vs. non-Catholics; it’s about social conservatives vs. social liberals."

4. Bitch Ph.D. bloggers - [silent, so far]

5. Alas! a Blog bloggers - [silent, so far]

6. David Weigel - "The biggest problem for conservative Catholics has not been getting the Obama speech portrayed in the press as a scandal, but in distancing from some of the people trying to take ownership of the outrage."

7. Echnidne of the Snakes blogger - [silent, so far]

8. now.org - [silent, so far]

9. plannedparenthood.org - [silent, so far]

10. community.livejournal.com's Trianna Maxwell - "The bestest paper evah (or just my personal fav) ["Conciliatory Fighting Words" By E. J. Dionne ejdionne@washpost.com] Guess I'm making myself the de facto 'Obama and the pro-life/pro-choice folks in the news' poster. Oops, and I like staying hidden on the internet. But oh man do I love this president. As a discussion starter, I am not sure I see this speech as all that conservative. Y/N, Why/why not?"

Sex and Wordplay and Sexism

First, from Rhosa's rhetorical blogora blog, a playful post of sex and religion:

this just in (ha ha):

oooh, baby do you know what that's worth??
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=7686
ha ha ha ha h(e)aven is a place on earth
("some poles have been surprised....")

but willie get tenure for his book?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jPb6orr8TUqqiIof81VUGb...
betty won't.

and is the pope infallible? never mind on that one.
none of us is, y'all.

Second, searching into or to find my blog, The WOMBman's Bible, someone has googled this:

"word for playful in greek"

which makes me wonder why there I'd skipped over this:

"ἐγένετο δὲ πολυχρόνιος ἐκεῖ παρακύψας δὲ Αβιμελεχ ὁ βασιλεὺς Γεραρων διὰ τῆς θυρίδος εἶδεν τὸν Ισαακ παίζοντα μετὰ Ρεβεκκας τῆς γυναικὸς αὐτοῦ

which is the playful Greek wording for this:

וַיְהִי כִּי אָֽרְכוּ־לֹו שָׁם הַיָּמִים וַיַּשְׁקֵף אֲבִימֶלֶךְ מֶלֶךְ פְּלִשְׁתִּים בְּעַד הַֽחַלֹּון וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה יִצְחָק מְצַחֵק אֵת רִבְקָה אִשְׁתֹּֽו׃

which is also known as Genesis 26:8 -- translated in the King James Bible as this:

"And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac [was] sporting with Rebekah his wife."

The playful word in Greek is παίζοντα [paizonta] which is "sporting" enough - and is sexual too, given the reaction of Abimelech the king towards two supposedly platonic alleged siblings, who were indeed engaged in play, perhaps foreplay.

That makes us think of Gorgias and his rhetorical praise of Helen. But he's not involved in foreplay, because he's investigating the alleged sexism, the supposed rape of Helen by the Trojan man. Why else would she abandon the men of Greece, he asks. Remember, Bettany Hughes reminds:

When, in Ancient Greece, the rhetorician Gorgias stood up and delivered his 'Encomium of Helen' (a defence of Helen of Troy's indefensible character) - this was a great joke. How can you laud the most sluttish femme fatale of all time? But the rhetoric also got people thinking - maybe, just maybe the skilled speaker had a point.

So Gorgias isn't engaging in foreplay the way the Jewish translators of their own histories translate that bit of history of Isaac [Ha! Laughter!]. Gorgias is playing with sexuality and with sexism; but his play comes at the very end, like the punchline to his joke:

ἐβουλήθην γράψαι τὸν λόγον Ἑλένης μὲν ἐγκώμιον, ἐμὸν δὲ παίγνιον.

Notice the final Greek word in Brian Donovan's translation:

I wanted to write the discourse, Helen's encomium and my plaything.

("plaything" or sport or παίγνιον /paignion/.)

Which makes us wonder if Gorgias was trying to get his contemporary readers, thinking about Helen, also to remember the sexism in Homer. Remember? Yes, I'm thinking with you now about "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter."

It begins:

I sing of the revered goddess, rich-haired Demeter,
and her slim-ankled daughter, whom Hades snatched
(far-seeing, thundering Zeus gave her away)
while she and Ocean's deep-breasted daughters played,
far from golden blade Demeter, who bears shining fruit.
She picked lush meadow flowers: roses, crocuses,
lovely violets, irises, hyacinths--and narcissus
Gaia grew as a lure for the blossoming girl,
following Zeus' bidding, to please Lord of the Dead.

You may recognize this as Diane J. Rayor's wonderful translating. And you may remember other translations -- because there have been many -- that have Hades raping the girl instead of merely "snatching" her -- as Rayor renders it.

"In modern usage the word rape emphasizes sexual consummation," a certain 'consume-a-shun', "which is uncertain in this case." This is Helene P. Foley's commentary on her own translating, which says the daughter of Demeter is one "whom Aidoneus seized."

Both Rayor and Foley prefer to leave a little play in the English because of the wordplay in the Homeric Greek. Neither of these translators rapes their reader with a certain anything.

And regardless of whether "rape" or "snatch" or "seize" by "Hades" or [his more Greek sounding name] "Aidoneus" - there is something common for all the many English translators of this Greek text. They all render what the little girl is doing, when interrupted, as "play."

Of course, around all the sex and horrible sexism, that word for play and playful in Greek here in this Hymn is παίζουσαν [paizousan]. And so the sporting continues, sometimes translationally, sometimes sexually, but sometimes as the horrible force of sexism.

Reading Anointed in Greeky Hebrew

Yesterday our pastor preached a brilliant sermon (on the ways Moses changed and matured) the text of which was Hebrews 11:24-26:

²⁴By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. ²⁵He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. ²⁶He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. (NIV)

Today I want to look at other things in and around the text:

--> especially the ways the early writers and / or editors and / or translators liberally (or "progressively") change this text to increase the play in it (and by "play" I mean both "playfulness" and also interpretive "wiggle room");

--> but how the Christian Bible translators seem to want to do the opposite.

Here's Greek for comparison:

24Πίστει Μωϋσῆς μέγας γενόμενος ἠρνήσατο λέγεσθαι υἱὸς θυγατρὸς Φαραώ, 25μᾶλλον ἑλόμενος συγκακουχεῖσθαι τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ ἢ πρόσκαιρον ἔχειν ἁμαρτίας ἀπόλαυσιν, 26μείζονα πλοῦτον ἡγησάμενος τῶν Αἰγύπτου θησαυρῶν τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἀπέβλεπεν γὰρ εἰς τὴν μισθαποδοσίαν.

Immediately, the reader is transported back to Egypt to ask questions.

There's the daughter of Pharaoh (θυγάτηρ Φαραω) in Hebrews 11:24; and she's lifted right out of Exodus 2:5 & 2:6 & 2:7 & 2:8 & 2:10 in the Greek translation of the Hebrew. That is, this "Hebrews" text points in reverse to an earlier Jewish-Greek translation of the traditional masoret Hebrew text, playfully named "Exodus" (i.e., the Odyssey-like "Way Out of Egypt"), commissioned and completed in Egypt. In Egypt, professor Sylvie Honigman of Tel Aviv University points out, the commissioned Hebrew translators render their old text in the "Homeric paradigm." And, as we're looking back to how the writers and/ or editors and/ or translators of the "Epistle of Hebrews" writes in Greek, Jared Calaway, at his blog Antiquitopia, lets us see and hear the Homeric play - through the first or second century right up to our own.

What we're beginning to question is whether Christian Bible translators work in this paradigm (i.e., the paradigm of Homeric play of the Hebrews). Or is the paradigm of Christian Bible translators more typically aristotelian? Aristotle, by logic of course, wanted to avoid ambiguities in Greek. The text was to lock down the meaning and was to say the one thing that the original author intended and nothing else.

As the reader reads the text above in English translation, an initial question is whether the text points forward to the future. To a precise point. And how far forward into the future? And whom and what might the text be pointing forward to? The quick and precise and unambiguous and objectively obvious answer must be: "to the Christian Christ." But we may be resorting to aristotelianism again - as if that's "translation." And we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we? So back up from now. Let's back up from "Jerusalem, and all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" when such a remote spot focuses on a place such as bible-belt USA, where non-Hebrews here and now (the majority the population I dare guess) claim "The Book of Hebrews" as a text for Christians alone despite the fact that most Jews can rightly reply, "You can have it!"




Back in Egypt, there's this new King of Egypt (not necessarily Φαραω but certainly the monarch put there in Alexandria after the city is named after Alexander the Great who, we have to add, learned under Aristotle in the aristotelian paradigm). And there, but in the Homeric paradigm, in the Hebrew play with the Greek text in Egypt, this newer King is like the Pharaoh of old who interacted with Moses. Except he must interact with Hebrews who are translators of Moses. As the writer(s), or editor(s), or translator(s) of the epistle of Hebrews quote from these earliest translators, we wonder whether they sensed any fear in those first translators - but we have little doubt that they sensed anything but the proof of belief and the lack of fear in Moses. They write:

27Πίστει κατέλιπεν Αἴγυπτον, μὴ φοβηθεὶς τὸν θυμὸν τοῦ βασιλέως, τὸν γὰρ ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρῶν ἐκαρτέρησεν.
27By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king's anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. (NIV).

The reader immediately notices something and someone hidden. Perhaps more than one somebody missing. Yes, the invisible God. Yes also the hidden daughters. For all the repetition given to this daughter of Pharoah (Exodus 2:5 & 2:6 & 2:7 & 2:8 & 2:10) and for all of the recognition given to her, the text never gives her name. We know her because her name is invisible and unspoken and she acts like God: she saves the dying, the male, the Hebrew, the son. And she alone gives him his name. The name she gives translates into Hebrew wordplay: משה - the Egyptian Mosheh punning playfully on the agency of his Egyptian MaMa אם who Mercifully delivers him משה from the Muddy Ruddy Bloody Murderous waters מים - as if out of the womb and out of the lips of the Egyptian mother and midwife and princess christener and nurse provider.

In the old Greek text (that Hebrew translation done back in Egypt as "Exit Odyssey" or Exodus 2:11), Moses grows up: μέγας γενόμενος Μωϋσῆς. In the new Greek text (as Hebrews 11:24), the transition seems as abrupt: Μωϋσῆς μέγας γενόμενος. By the new text, the reader is carried back but is simultaneously thrust forward to a midrash-like analysis of an entire episode of the old story. An entire complex narrative turns on one little clause: ἠρνήσατο λέγεσθαι refused to be known. In the old story, the grown boy becomes a witness to injustice and murder and flees the scene. In the new text, he becomes the son of a mother no longer and is faithful to another.

At least this is how most English Christian translations of this text lock down the story.

It never moves forward from that.

There's the rejection of the female, a rejection of the faithful salvation by a woman of a male as if she were his very own mother and as she collaborates with other women braver than fathers and brothers (either Hebrew or Egyptian) - the baby's very own mother and sister collaborating with the princess - the incredible mix of Egyptians and Hebrews, faithful language and rhetorical naming and playful translation and ancient feminisms.

The Christian text in English rejects the feminism. So let's read more closely. Let's ask questions so that the apparent male dominance and Christian dominance of the text doesn't make it always only one thing and never ever anything else. (Yes, I know - such dominance sounds like Aristotle not necessarily anything like the Septuagint translators or the writers of Hebrews of a far different, absolutely more different in play.)

How different might the text (i.e., the Greek translation of the Greek translation of the Hebrew in the Homeric paradigm) be?

The identity "υἱὸς θυγατρὸς Φαραώ" in Greek might be translated in English as "a son of a daughter of Pharaoh." The collocation of son and daughter does not suggest an easy dominance of one over the other or even of the one purely different from the other. The collocation, in fact, syntactically mirrors an appositive - which is just a fancy way of saying that both nouns translate one another in what Mikhail Epstein might, rightly, see as an inter-lation as much as a trans-lation. And both, then, are related together to the proper noun "Pharoah" in a sense. This reading (which English translators tend to lose with "the son of the daughter of the Pharaoh") makes the contrast in the next verse very compelling.

There's more feminism (more gender inclusivity) than unmarked male-dominant sexism in Hebrews 11:25. (Long before the English bible gender debates in Chrsitianity especially, we get this inclusiveness in the Greek text of Hebrews). The identity "τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ" in Greek is definite even in translated English: "the people of the god." The contrast of identities for the Hebrew around Πίστει is from indefinite son-daughter of Pharaoh to definite people of the Divine One. There's no necessary rejection of females or of the participation of a foreign Egyptian female. Moses, of faith (and prior to Jesus Christ and faith in him), does not lose his sonship with respect to the daughtership of the princess of Egypt. Moses is not even renouncing his lineage in the least - as Paul seems to when calling himself a Hebrew of Hebrews (of a particular tribe of the nation of Israel with a baby's circumcision to boot) while renouncing this identity "for the sake of Christ" as we read that in English. No - Moses "a son" who is in many ways like "a daughter" of Pharaoh is also one of "the people of God." And "a daughter" like that, we read in the old text and say again, is like "the God" who saves the son. If it we're not for her, he would not have the name Moses, the wordplay name, the feminist name of a princess collaborating in translation with a few slave women.

Which brings us to another verse:

26μείζονα πλοῦτον ἡγησάμενος τῶν Αἰγύπτου θησαυρῶν τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἀπέβλεπεν γὰρ εἰς τὴν μισθαποδοσίαν.

Christians who translate tend to make the "τοῦ Χριστοῦ" here refer to "Christ Jesus" only and obviously, quite objectively and logically, to no one else. (In another post, we've wondered why the English translation has to commit what Robert Alter calls "the heresy of explanation" when referring in Greek to Ἰησοῦς - who must always and only be explained by the translator to the reader as either "Jesus" or the other guy "Joshua.") So now again the English translator finds useful Aristotle's convenient logic boxes. "Christ" is the real (if abstract) category for the "Christian" - and nothing else fits.

But the text of Hebrews pushes readers back again to the Septuagint. First, we go back to Egypt and to daughters and a son being rescued. But then the translation brings us to lyric and poetic Hebrew beyond the epic narrative "Exodus."

First, from the phrase "τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ" to Exodus 2:3 in Greek translation and a similar clause:

ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐκ ἠδύναντο αὐτὸ ἔτι κρύπτειν, ἔλαβεν αὐτῷ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ θῖβιν καὶ κατέχρισεν αὐτὴν ἀσφαλτοπίσσῃ καὶ ἐνέβαλεν τὸ παιδίον εἰς αὐτὴν καὶ ἔθηκεν αὐτὴν εἰς τὸ ἕλος παρὰ τὸν ποταμόν.

Notice the verb, κατέχρισεν - it's what the Hebrew daughter is doing. She's anointing the basket, she's "besmearing" says translator Lancelot Brenton, and she's "plastering" it says translator Larry Perkins. And those who read Homer's epic Odyssey remember hearing this at least four times as women are doing things on behalf of others in need:

τὰρ ἐπεὶ λοῦσέν τε καὶ ἔχρισεν λίπ’ ἐλαίῳ,
ἀμφὶ δέ μιν φᾶρος καλὸν βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνα,

In another post at another blog, we've read the wordplay of Hebrews into Greek. But the point we want to make here is that such play is Homeric not aristotelian. The very idea of the Greek translation that "Christ" the English word comes from is from early ancient Greek feminism. It's messy stuff of lyric of epic of women of poetics of rhetorics that Aristotle tried to avoid. It's the messy stuff that Christ-ian translators today still try to avoid.

But it's the very stuff that Hebrews writing and translating their own scriptures embraced and produced.

So, in Hebrews 11:26, the writers-translators have Greek readers turning. Turning first back to the Homeric translating of Exodus 2:3 - a daughter translating a basket into a womb. We are taken back again to the Christ-verbs (to things women do and do again) in the Odyssey. Next, Hebrews 11:26 takes us back but forward a bit.

We are now turned to and turning in the "Strummings of Strings" in the "Psalms." The salient sounds of "τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ" have their reverberations in Psalm 89.

(The Psalm in Hebrew is more "A Maskil [מַשְׂכִּיל "wise, nationalistic song"] of Ethan [איתן 'the Enduring'] the Ezrahite [אזרחי "Native Son"]-- notice the wordplay of the Hebrew names lost but found anew in the Greek a wise, nationalistic song which in Greek is by Αιθαν τῷ Ισραηλίτῃ or literally, "Shining / Blazing, the Israelite." Bacchylides loves the word αἰθᾶν in speaking of Apollo - so why not use it for איתן, the play on אזרחי?).

Listen to the reverberations from Hebrews 11:26 in the lyric Greek, in the Greek Psalm that is of Αιθαν τῷ Ισραηλίτῃ the "Shining Israelite." Here's the song in responsive dialogue with the Lord in Greek (Psalm 89:52, echoing 89:38, echoing 89:20). Listen:

οὗ ὠνείδισαν οἱ ἐχθροί σου, Κύριε,
οὗ ὠνείδισαν τὸ ἀντάλλαγμα τοῦ χριστοῦ σου

σὺ δὲ ἀπώσω καὶ ἐξουδένωσας,
ἀνεβάλου τὸν χριστόν σου·

εὗρον Δαυιδ τὸν δοῦλόν μου,
ἐν ἐλαίῳ ἁγίῳ μου ἔχρισα αὐτόν.

Who Anoints as a Greek woman might (verse 20)? And whom is Anointed (mashach משח)? Isn't God anointing his son David?

Why is the psalmist complaining? What good is the anointing if it seems the Lord is casting it off (verse 38)?

When the enemies reproach the anointed one, won't there be remembering (verse 52)?

משיח mashiyach חרף charaph

ὠνείδισαν oneidisan τοῦ χριστοῦ tou christou

Or will all be lost in translation? In the aristotelian paradigm of "translation" that separates:

"male" from "female"
"the son" from "the daughter"
"peasant women" from "a princess"
"Moses" from "Egyptian lips"
"Hebrews" from "the kingdom of Egypt"
"Jesus" from "Joshua"
"Christ" from "feminine anointing"
"Christ" from "David"
and finally
"Christian Hebrews" from "Jewish Hebrews"

In this post, I know I'm using hyperbole, exaggeration for effect. I'm not trying to overwhelm anyone with the exhaustive possibilities of wordplay. I am wanting to show some of the unaddressed power of Aristotle's method. And to show how separating and silencing Christian translation, by its limited logic, has tended to be. And to show that aristotelianism is not what Hebrew translators (including women as agents in Hebrew narrative) tend to use. And to reassure all of us that logic is okay as long as logic is not our only human tool or our only personal language.

Like Waterboarding for Chocolate

Many more of you may have read (or watched the film version of) Laura Esquivel's novel Como agua para chocolate than have read the chapter of the bible I'm going to blog on a bit. Likewise, many more of you evangelical Christians (of the "complementarian" camp) have camped out in Ephesians 5 than have even considered the bible chapter we'll discuss here. It's Numbers 5. (Or a segment of the fourth book [ בַּמִּדְבָּר, Bamidbar] of the Torah.)

At the end of this post, I'll tell you what got me looking at it again. But there's a more important reason why we all might want to look at this old canonized text:

It suggests that a husband, who suspects the chocolate his wife is eating might have come from another man, may send his allegedly disrespecting wife off to the priest for waterboarding.

Okay, that's a stretch. We don't know if the Jews still had any chocolate left in the desert after breaking free from the Egyptians. And the kind of torture jealous husbands sent their wives off to in the wild-er-ness wasn't exactly waterboarding (if it did involve water and torture). What isn't a stretch is that this is the bible, the word of God giving the words of God to men about what to do with their women who terrorized them and their camp with their dalliances. Writers of the new covenant (or the New Testament) write similar things; and religious bible-believing people like Emerson Eggerichs write books today to get at how married men even today need and deserve and by implication should expect respect from their wives. (Suzanne McCarthy is blogging an entire series on that "love and respect" interpretation after John Hobbins mentioned Eggerichs a couple of times).

So, I invite you to go back to read Numbers 5, or to read it for the first time. I'm drawn back into it because of the Jews' own Greek translation of the text when back in Egypt. The Hebrew language of the masoret text already has enough wordplay, but the Greek of the Septuagint text has even more rhetoric. Look, see for yourself. You tell me whether "male and fe-male" are created equal in Numbers 5, whether in Hebrew or in Hellene. And next post, I'll look at some of the wild liberal translator choices such as the words παρεμβολῆς (par-em-bolEs) and ἐμβαλεῖ (em-balei), like a deadly priest-imposed amniotic fluid embolism for a disrepecting wife, like water torture for a suspicious box of chocolates.

until we’ve recovered

"Look, despite the mutterings of disgruntled troglodytes or airbrushed, hymenoplastied Palin supporters, women have not achieved anything even close to equity. We still make, on average, seventy-six cents on a man’s dollar, and yet there are people who fight over whether that figure should be two or three cents higher, as if that would make it all dandy, as if close is as good as the cigar."

--Regina Barreca, In Defense of the F Word, 2009

What Aristotle Looked Like

In every department of civilized existence, the influence of Aristotle must be taken into account, and his judgment of women’s position in society—a view sincerely held and on the whole most temperately expressed—has had far more effect on the world than have the idealist theories of Plato. . . . in [Aristotle’s] time the position of women could hardly have been altered for the worse, but by his blind followers in later ages [his view hardly budges since] his slightest word [is] regarded almost as inspired truth . . . . If he had been a little more of a poet and idealist—in other words, if he had not been Aristotle—he might have taken another view [on the need for women to be submissive to men] . . . . Aristotle’s influence in this matter has been an enormous hindrance to human progress.

--F. A. Wright 

Aristotle wore his hair short and had male pattern balding, I think.  This was his ideal hairstyle, and he railed on the Spartan men who in fact let their hair grow long and their women go wild.  Aristotle probably looked a little like Seinfeld’s George Costanza but with his glasses off. 

His ideal age for a man to marry a young girl?  Aristotle’s real, actual age.  The peak time of a man’s body and a man’s mind?  Yep, you guessed again: Aristotle’s real, actual age. The ideal system for a male-dominant household and for ownership of natural-born slaves?  Right again.  Aristotle’s system.

   Aristotle would have loved those lines from Alexander Pope (if he didn’t so hate poetry and barbarian mother tongues such as Pope’s English): 

“Whatever is [for Aristotle], is right [for nature].” -- which is a translation of Pope's "Whatever is, is right."

Here’s some evidence from Aristotle’s writings and his life:

“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."

--Aristotle, DE GENERATIONE, 784a (translated by A. L. Peck, 1943)

When he was around 37 years old, Aristotle married a girl named Pythias who likely was around 18 years of age; at that time, he wrote his treatise on Politics in which “he specified as the optimal nuptial ages thirty-seven for the man and eighteen for the woman” (Abraham Edel, Aristotle and His Philosophy,  page 14).  The implications are not missed by F. A. Wright, who declares, “The whole arrangement is obviously wrong” (213); and Wright explains:

The gap between husband and wife is far too great for any real physical or moral companionship.  The husband, moreover, remaining unmarried until the age of thirty-seven, can hardly be supposed to have escaped from the illicit connections which were allowed and encouraged. . . [and] to say that such an one is in his prime is surely to mis-state the case (213). 

In the Rhetoric (1390b), Aristotle did in fact say that the prime age for a man’s body is thirty-five but for his mind forty-nine.  At the time he wrote this, Aristotle was forty-nine and had already outlived Pythias, who would have been thirty.  They had a daughter named Pythias who would have been, at age twelve, approaching the baby-bearing age if still a few years from the optimal marrying age.

            Wright notes related personal issues:

The art of being a grandfather also under this system [of Aristotle’s] tends to disappear, for a man could hardly hope to see grandchildren of his own, if neither he nor his sons married till they were thirty-seven:  his daughters, of course, . . . on marriage passed altogether out of their father’s life (213). 

By Aristotle’s arrangement, then, his daughter Pythias and any grandchild she might bear would be under another man’s authority.  And it does not take much imagination to picture, through the years, the various problematic issues for a wife, a mother, a concubine, and a grandmother, who experience different translations and distanced relationships with respect to men.  It is important to consider the other women, children, and slaves in Aristotle’s life and their problems.  History does record that Aristotle fathered another child, a son named Nichomachus by a wife or concubine or slave named Herpyllis although the details are sketchy (Edel 14). 

And we do know that “[un]questionably,  Aristotle owned numerous slaves. . . [which he logically rationalized by] a kind of structural racism” (Neel, Aristotle’s Voice, page 19).  These are not unimportant facts when one is translating Aristotle’s Rhetoric rhetorically and feministically.  Jasper Neel, goes on to observe that “[i]n Aristotle’s system, soul is privileged over body, intelligence over emotion, humans over animals, men over women, and freemen over slaves” (26).  However, Neel claims “Aristotle did not need to spend much time on slavery in the Rhetoric because he had justified it in detail in the Politics, the master art in which his rhetoric is a subsidiary” (16).  For Aristotle, “rhetoric” does not have the status of other “arts.”  Neel adds, “And by now, of course, it is clear why we read the Rhetoric alone, pretending that it can be extracted from the political and social theories in which Aristotle embedded it. . . .  [T]hrough his eyes, things ‘make sense’ in a terrifying way” (18).   Our readerly pretense is that “rhetoric” does not need to fit in the context of Aristotle’s terrible, terrifying map of knowledge.  Neel specifies that Aristotle’s terrifying map of knowledge includes “[s]lavery, sexism, and racism [which together as a system] made perfect sense to Aristotle, even though he clearly knew persuasive and cogent arguments against them all” (25).