The Holy Writ Kit
Hanser, Richard
"The Holy Writ Kit" I cannot share the conviction of the Italian Socialists, as expressed by Mr. Craxi, that the nature of Communism is changing. For instance, Professor Radice, in the interview broadcast...
...He puts it to them straight: "Can any of you live a little bit longer by worrying about it...
...Six of the seven translators have been overseas missionaries...
...The Authorized Version, on the other hand, does suggest to us something of the wonder and astonishment that the words of Jesus caused when they were first spoken, and this is one of its incomparable merits...
...Postscript: The son of my Italian friends, who had perished in last year's Friuli earthquake, chided me for my pessimism...
...I am here with good news for you...
...Isaiah, greatest of the Major Prophets, here uses language like: "Listen, now...
...While it is true that Jesus spoke to the common people in the everyday language of His time and place, it is folly to imagine that the equivalent effect can be achieved merely by transferring His words into the everyday language of our time and place...
...for His word was with power...
...Robert Galveston Bratcher, a Th.D...
...These three versions ofv...
...But the lovely cadence of the second l i n e - - " / s h a l l not want"--becomes a flat and platitudinous: "I have everything I need...
...But these are not insurmountable obstacles, if they are obstacles...
...In His Beatitudes the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, are no longer "blessed...
...The phrasing of it in English was chosen by the translators of the King James Bible, the Authorized Version, and the words themselves, placed in that order, seem both right and forcible...
...To many this did not seem like much of an improvement, clarifying no doctrinal point and improving the sentiment in no discernible way...
...For centuries the great mass of Christians of all conditions and denominations have been able to grasp the Bible's message, and respond to it, without first having it reduced to the level of a training manual...
...No religion could possibly have spread across the earth, and lasted 2,000 years, if the best it had to offer at its most exalted moment was a line like: "I am here with good news for you...
...When the New Testament was published separately in this translation in 1966, under the title of Good News for Modem Man, it promptly knocked off Dr...
...For "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, 0 prince's daughter" the GNB missionaries come up with: "What a magnificent girl you are...
...Where the Preacher (I/18) used to say, "For in much wisdom is much grief' and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow" the Philosopher now says: "The wiser you are, the more worries you have...
...When last heard from it had passed the 50,000,000 mark--a record Richard Hanser, of Mamaroneck, New York, wrote the NBC television specials The Coming of Christ, He is Risen, andThe Law and the Prophets, and is the author of Jesus: "What Manner of Man is This...
...But the makers of the Revised Standard Version, for reasons of their own, did not think that Job had chosen just those words...
...Don't be like my father," he said...
...The voice of the one crying in the wilderness" in Matthew is coverted into: "Someone is shouting in the desert...
...No opportunity to flatten out, bleach, or reduce is overlooked, and this becomes most glaring in those long-loved passages to which believers over the centuries have looked for comfort, assurance, or joy in the supreme moments of life...
...but: "Get the road ready...
...And why worry about clothes ? Look how the wild flowers grow...
...The utopian ideology remains, and the vision of a typical Communist apparat~hik --such as Professor Radice--of "socialism within democracy and freedom" remains sketchy, basically informed with unchanged Marxism-Leninism...
...For 30 years my father expected a Communist regime to take power in Italy...
...His background, we are told, includes a tour of duty as "professor of New Testament, South Brazil Theological Seminary...
...So the tinkering, doctoring, retouching, and general horsing around with the sacred texts will no doubt continue...
...The aim of the new translation is to put the Bible into "the natural English of everyday adult conversation" in order to reach those unable to cope with the bafflements and pitfalls of previous translations...
...Where, in Isaiah IV/1, it is said that "seven women shall take hold of one man," the GNB has the women "grab hold" of him...
...A book had been loosed on the public whose statistics make the most ardent brags of lay publishers look pathetic...
...Something more or less emphatic was still being said...
...and "Before the boy is old enough to say 'Mama' and ' D a d d y ' . . . . " The sayings and preaching of Jesus are also rendered, by this process of reverse alchemy, into greeting-card prose...
...Mencken spoke for most literate men when he called it "probably the most beautiful piece of writing in any language...stupendous...
...It can be said with confidence that no similar remark will ever be made about the Good News Bible...
...The infidel H.L...
...But perhaps the climax and crown of the GNB's dynamic equivalence comes in Luke II/10 where the Authorized Version has the glorious words: "Fear not:for, behold, I bring you good tidings ofgreatjoy....t,, This, incredibly, becomes: "Don't be afraid...
...The Christ child is "wrapped in cloths," whatever a cloth may be, and "the heavenly host" is now " a great army of heaven's angels...
...One generation passe th away, and another generation comet~s: but the earth abideth forever, " says the Preacher of Ecclesiastes in the AV...
...John Tyndale was burned at the stake in 1536 for his translation of the Bible, but no such danger hangs over the modern translator no matter how deplorable his efforts...
...It will not dawn on them that it has already been gotten right, and that they are wasting their time...
...As might be expected, the GNB has a dreadful time with the lush and lovely poetry of the Song of Songs, and what the reader gets here is not so much dynamic equivalents as Tin Pan Alley substitutions...
...Among their number was Lancelot Andrewes, Dean of Westminster and Bishop of Winchester, who, on no less an authority than T.S...
...The American Bible Society supervised everything...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 21...
...Great multitudes of people...from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon " came to hear Him speak, "and they were astonished at His doctrine...
...According to the RSV people, what he said was: "How Forceful are honest words...
...And one hesitates to reveal what they have done with : "Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love...
...And what the voice is crying is no longer "Prepare ye the way...
...A current advertisement in the book trade shouts: 15"0,000 Copies In Print...
...Now, with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, comes still another grope at what old Job was really saying back there in the land of Uz amid the sore afflictions the Lord was laying on him...
...Now they are "happy" instead...
...the more you know the more it hurts...
...This is a comment that the Bible Society would do better to suppress than to circulate...
...Something called the Good News Bible, the most recent overhaul of the traditional text, opts for: "Honest words are convincing...
...The realm of King James was combed for scholars "skilful in the tongues" at a time when the English language was reaching new, and still unsurpassed, heights of richness, variety, musicality, and beauty...
...What this group of scholars produced was a literary miracle...
...The opening line of the Twenty-Third Psalm is, gratefully, retained intact...
...A "team" of seven translators was organized under the Rev...
...It is the brag of the sponsors that their translation is "a Bible as readable as the daily newspaper...
...For more than three and a half centuries its language and its images have penetrated more deeply into the general culture of the English-speaking world, and been more dearly treasured, than anything else ever put on paper...
...25, Chapter VI, of the Book of Job can stand as a handy paradigm, a brief but indicative synopsis, of the untiring efforts of a succession of pious drudges over the years to make Holy Writ sound like something intended for use in a remedial reading class...
...A similar touch has been accorded the Christmas story...
...I am weak from passion...
...Were the earlier Bibles bad news...
...Succeeding generations of pious drudges will keep doing it until they get it right...
...It seems a modest f~orecast...
...It is, say the official announcements, "a common-language, dynamic-equivalent translation...
...But if "dynamic-equivalent" is supposed to mean vigorous and forceful, a few random comparisons of the style and phrasing of the Authorized Version with those of the Good News Bible will quickly establish which of the two has more vigor and force...
...of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary...
...How forcible are right words, t'' as Job was saying a few thousand years ago, and to this day most reasonable men would agree that it is a true saying well put...
...Let us dip 20 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1977 alternately into the Old Testament and the New for examples...
...Surely, no such effect could have been produced by the flat-footed phrases, the Kiwanis Club prose, of the Good News Bible...
...For the Authorized Version a different procedure was followed...
...I offer it as a suitable consolation...
...The hauntingly somber "valley of the shadow of death" becomes a piddling "deepest darkness...
...Nothing is left to exclaim over in this limp reduction of what began as a vigorous and perceptive remark...
...Spock as the all-time best seller...
...The argument, used repeatedly by the American Bible Society, that many people are too dull and ignorant to absorb any language more elevated than GNB's is both patronizing and specious...
...He continually feared the worst, a complete ruin, nationally and personally...
...without parallel in American publishing history...
...The Authorized Version has survived many previous attempts to water it down, flatten it out, and dull it up, and it will certainly outlast this one too...
...It is a vision that is not cornpatible with the Western concept of human liberty...
...Its own sponsors seem intent on clothing it in the drabbest and least fetching raiments possible...
...And a religion that imagines it can survive on that kind of fare is courting extinction...
...It is, indeed, obscure in parts and archaic throughout...
...Well, then...
...Like many another advertising catch-phrase, "dynamic-equivalent" has a contrived and flatulent sound and no precise meaning...
...What they have done is this: "Restore my strength with raisins and refresh me with apples...
...In the GNB the Preacher becomes a Philosopher, and what he now says is: "Generations come and generations go, but the world stays just the same...
...If we know anything about Him for sure it is that He originally spoke with a mysterious force, a power and beauty that still reverberate around the world...
...It is possible to clarify without vulgarizing, and to simplify without draining away all the poetry and mystery without which religion becomes merely rigmarole...
...Listen...
...Simon & Schuster...
...For instance, Professor Radice, in the interview broadcast over Radio Free Europe, could not envisage anybody voting against the Communists once they had assumed power in Italy and introduced a "superior civilization...
...Still, a kind of Gresham's Law operates here as everywhere else...
...attended Institute for Bible Translators in Thailand," and the like...
...What he did not foresee was that the ruin would not come from Communism, but from an earthquake...
...The retention of the exclamation point, however, seemed reasonable...
...He says, and "Believe me...
...His listeners "wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth...
...Laughable...
...Here "the wise men from the east" become "some men who studied the stars...
...The publishers of the Good News Bible anticipate a sale of 10,000,000 copies during the first year alone...
...Urging His followers not to worry about food and drink, He says: "After all, isn't life worth more than food...
...Richard Hanser The Holy Writ Kit I f you like to read training-manuals, you'lllove the Good News Bible...
...Eliot, ranks as one of the great masters of English prose...
...What is shoddy and inferior is always a threat to the excellence it competes with...
...Its very title strikes a huckstering note...
...Here the exclamation point has disappeared, and rightly...
...As a cultural event of our times, the Good News Bible has not attracted nearly the attention it so clearly deserves...
...The translators were steeped in a language inherited from Chaucer and Wycliffe, and were contemporaries of Shakespeare himself...
...Other members of the team rejoice in similar scholarly distinctions--" Assistant Professor, Taejon Presbyterian College, Korea...
...The chatty, small-talk tone is sometimes carried to lengths that make the reader snort, snicker, or gag, according to temperament...
Vol. 10 • August 1977 • No. 10
