Biblical Translation in Context (Frederick W. Knobloch, ed., Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture 10, Bethesda: University of Maryland Press, 2002)

Abstract

This article is an extended review on Frederick W. Knobloch, ed., Biblical Translation in Context. Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture 10 (Bethesda: University of Maryland Press, 2002). The book under review consists of thirteen essays that were originally delivered on the conference, Biblical Translation in Context, held at the University of Maryland, USA in 1998. Contributors were actively involved in various translation projects such as the New English Translation of the Septuagint, the New American Bible revision, the Chicago Bible Translation, the New Living Translation, the New Century Version, and so forth. Although the essays in the book vary in their subject matters, they all have in common the commitment to examining the nature and practice of Bible translation. Readers will understand that Bible translators are no neutral and scientific mediums, but all translators work out of their theological, denominational, political, cultural ‘prejudices.’ This is intimated by the fact that Bible translations have been planned and executed along particular confessional and denominational lines, be it Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or Evangelical. Reading the Bible in translation is, one may say, nothing other than reading translators’ interpretation of the Bible. The thirteen essays in this book will help us to appreciate various influences that went into the making of Greek, Aramaic, German, Mongolian, and English Bibles.BR This book is divided into three parts. Part 1 “Precedent: The Bible in the Ancient World” contains two essays on the first ever translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. Part 2 “Scripture and Community: Jewish Bibles, Christian Bibles” constitutes the meat of the book: the eight essays contained therein deal with individual translation projects in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Although the contributors all try to shed light on the ways in which prejudices of Bible translators influence the work of translating the Bible, Gillman takes the matter into another level: the two German Bibles discussed in Gillman’s article (Chapter 5) show that Bible translators may incorporate their visions for a religious community into their versions of the Bible. Mendelssohn, for instance, used his German Bible to take Yiddish speaking Jewish-Germans out of their ghetto life into the high German culture in early 18SUPth/SUP century whereas Buber and Rosenzweig used their version of the Bible to restore the spirituality in their Jewish community of the early 20SUPth/SUP century. Finally, Part 3 “The Bible in the Classroom: Mimetic Translation and the Literary Approach” consists of three essays on bible translation designed specifically for an academic setting. Three scholars share their experience as a Bible teacher in a university or seminary setting, and propose various translations that may help students to appreciate the literary artifice crafted in the Biblical literature.