Blessings,
James

Two things are needed to worship—holiness and fear. “Worship Jehovah in holy splendor” (Psa. 29:2). No one who has seen God can allow sin or any unrighteousness to remain. When we go before people, our first thought is of our clothing; the same is true when we go before God. We must worship Him in holy splendor. Those who live under the glory of God say, “I am a sinner.” Those who see God, fear Him. “Our God is also a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). Everything that can be burned, He will burn. God cannot consume those who have passed through drastic dealings by the cross. However, it is dangerous for those who do not know the work of the cross to meet God. Fire could not consume Daniel’s three companions. Once a person sees God, he will spontaneously fear God.

This is from his collected works.

That said, I find little justification for making an English translation of the Bible, overall, sound like it was written by non-native speakers of English.

The question of how natural or unnatural a translation is in English is not necessarily related the question of the literary approach.

Translator Fox does, indeed, make a translation that sounds very alien in English (he’s my personal favorite, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time). Translator Alter goes quite far in trying to write in a natural English style. Translator Lattimore arguably completely achieves a natural English style. While there are trade-offs in each of their approaches, I don’t think one can equate the literary approach with any particular degree of natural English style.

Several BBB contributors oppose Alter’s point of view — perhaps the most articulate opposition is given by Richard Rhodes. Another frequent opponent of the literary approach is the commenter Joel Hoffman. Rhodes and Hoffman view the Bible as having a plain meaning; they think we should use linguistic techniques to find that meaning and then write translations that transmit that meaning. Thus, the opponents to the literary approach believe (i) the Bible is almost never obscure: we can find its meaning; (ii) the meaning is the important part of the Bible, rather than the literary techniques that Bible uses.

Well, I can’t speak for Joel or Rich, but I can speak for myself. As I have insisted for years on the Bible translation email discussion list and here on BBB, careful attention to the literary qualities of the Bible is an essential component of good Bible translation. Also, I do not believe that the Bible is “almost never obscure.” There are clearly (!) obscure things written in the Bible. Concepts in the Bible are sometimes obscure. Sometimes we cannot determine with a reasonable degree of certainty what a biblical author intended his audience to understand by what he wrote. We should never make the Bible clearer than it originally was, when we translate. Nor should we make it more obscure than it originally was.

That said, I find little justification for making an English translation of the Bible, overall, sound like it was written by non-native speakers of English. Native speakers of English can write grammatical and natural sentences about obscure things and the result should be that people do not understand what is written very clearly. The reason for such lack of understanding should not, however, be due to using ungrammatical or unnatural English. We should only use unnatural English for limited literary effects, typically poetic. If we overdo the use of unnatural English in any document, including translations, we lose the power of the original literary effects we are attempting to retain. “Familiarity breeds contempt” is probably too strong for what happens when there is overuse of unnatural language, but it’s in the right ballpark.

(BTW, with Ph.D’s in descriptive linguistics, I’m guessing that Joel and Rich have similar ideas to mine about not making a translation clearer than its source text. An attempt to get at the plain meaning of texts does not mean that one does not recognize that there are obscure wordings in texts. But the number of such obscurities does not correlate well with the much higher percentage of unnatural, obscure language found in most “literary” translations of the Bible.)

Is it any less of a problem for you to read the following?

“Don’t write to Wayne in literary majesty!”

This sentence is less of a problem for me, Kurk, because it is semantically and pragmatically different from the sentence which has the “in” phrase that I do not understand. W.E. correctly notes that there is ambiguity when speaking of worshiping God “in holy majesty.” We don’t know in such a case whether the holy majesty refers to the quality of our worship or somehow to God’s quality. But if it is the latter, I have difficulty getting the sentence to parse syntactically.

Most people would only understand your second sentence about writing in literary majesty to refer only to the quality of the writing. Pragmatics is so very important for communication, since it often delimits possible syntactic readings. Chomsky was wrong, IMO, to keep syntax as an autonomous component of language. That’s not how language works. There is much more of an interplay among syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and professional translators understand that and so are able to translate well, without thinking of so many syntactic ambiguities which analysts might think of if they think of language as largely syntax divorced from aspects of language more closely connected to the real world speech situation. Once again, we need Ken Pike to help us be balanced, with his insistence on language being set within the context of human behavior. Language is much richer than mathematical type formulas.

Alter’s ongoing translation of the Bible (so far, he has translated the Pentateuch, Samuel, the Psalms, and Job/Proverbs/Ecclesiastes) have attracted wide attention in academic circles.

Alter’s views the Hebrew Bible as a literary document (in addition to its religious and legal roles). Other major translator who has taken this viewpoint include Everett Fox and the team of Martin Buber/Franz Rosenzweig. (New Testament translators with similar perspectives include Richard Lattimore and Willis Barnstone.) Major literary scholars supporting this point of view include Frank Kermode and Gerald Hammond.

(Note: by the literary approach, I mean translations that attempt to reproduce the literary features of the Bible in original languages. Some people call translations such as the REB “literary”, but these do not attempt to model the literary features of the Bible; rather the REB supporters claim that the REB is written in elegant English. I do not agree that REB is written in elegant English; but in any case, please understand how I am using literary approach in this comment.)

Several BBB contributors oppose Alter’s point of view — perhaps the most articulate opposition is given by Richard Rhodes. Another frequent opponent of the literary approach is the commenter Joel Hoffman. Rhodes and Hoffman view the Bible as having a plain meaning; they think we should use linguistic techniques to find that meaning and then write translations that transmit that meaning. Thus, the opponents to the literary approach believe (i) the Bible is almost never obscure: we can find its meaning; (ii) the meaning is the important part of the Bible, rather than the literary techniques that Bible uses.

My favorite defenses of the literary approach are:

* Gerald Hammond’s The Making of the English Bible

* Uri (Robert) Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative

* Everett Fox’s introduction to his Five Books of Moses

Also worth reading are

* Uri (Robert) Alter’s introduction to his Five Books of Moses (not to be confused with Fox’s book of the same name)

* Alter and Kermode’s Literary Guide to the Bible

Finally, a note: it appears to me that a disproportionate fraction of those supporting literary translations — I think this is a fundamental consequence of the fact that religious* Jewish worship and Bible reading is in Hebrew, and religious Jews typically study Hebrew from a young age. In contrast, few Protestants study Hebrew or Greek, Protestant worship among English-speakers in the US is exclusively in English, and when Protestants do study Hebrew or Greek, that study is almost always superficial (typically just a year or two in seminary) and almost always as adults. The more that one puts original language as primary, the more likely one is to recognize the aesthetic pleasures of the original languages.

*The use of “religious” in Jewish and Protestant contexts is different. “Religious” in Judaism usually means observant to the commandments — thus a religious Jew is likely to describe himself or herself as “Orthodox” and “Traditional” (rather than “Reform Judaism”). In Protestant circles, religious means someone who believes in God or who is active in church activities.

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