Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Exodus 34 (Translate Amounts: Part 1 of 5)

PREFACE


When it comes to translators, I have my personal favorites.  This is because I was able to meet the majority of them personally to further answer my questions and because they have written some of the most effective pieces of writing on the topic nationally and internationally.  They are:

1) William A.(Allen) Smalley
2) Donald N.(Nelson) Larson
3) Lois Malcolm Smith
4) Kenneth L.(Lee) Pike
5) Noam Chomsky
6) R. Daniel Shaw
7) Betty Sue Brewster
8) Catherine Rountree
9) Mildred L. Larson
10) Bruce Pearson
11) John Beekman & John Callow
12) Kathleen Callow
13) Katherine Barnwell
14) Eugene A.(Albert) Nida

The most significant of these people in terms of world impact in the field of translation would have to go to ether Nida or to Chomsky.  There is little debate there.  Nida's influence on bible translation is very significant and you could argue that following his lead, many of the Bible translations today are heavily influenced by his dynamic equivalence perspective.  (I am not here making an argument pro or con for his view, but stating a reality of his level of influence.)  Noam Chomsky also has had an enormous impact on broader linguistic theory.  (I am not here evaluating his theories either, but stating the impact his work had on linguistics generally.) 

Each of the names above is listed in a chronological order of what translators have had an influence on me personally to some degree - some of them I spent a great deal of time with and others very little.  It is only the last four that I never have had the opportunity to at least speak with them over the phone. 

Lois Malcolm, who was also a linguistics teacher of mine, under both Smalley's and Larson's tutelage, is one of the few I am not sure had field experience like the great majority of them.  Noam Chomsky is the only one that I do not know at all, if he had field experience.  The rest I believe did. 

I have for years been re-reading the materials of Smalley and Larson and only with the passage of time have I begun to really grasp their genius.  In my view, they were largely overlooked and undervalued only because they themselves did not really explain openly their course names and format to others.  I have tried for years to find colleagues of theirs who grasped their course layout.  I did not really find a single one who could explain their logic directly.  I then turned my eyes to anthropology for an explanation and there found some explanation.  I think they may have been influenced some by Spradley and McCurdy, but they certainly did some thinking of their own on top of their work.  Another direction I looked was that of M. A. K. Halliday, another linguist of renown that highly influenced Dr. Smalley.  Using Nida's classes of things, with revisions: 1) amounts, 2) relationships, 3) wholes, 4) actions, and 5) things, I came up with these main course titles (among a longer list) that they offered at Bethel College (now University).  The courses that I am speaking of are these:

1) Continuity and Change
2) Bond and Barrier
3) [unknown]
4) Rule and Freedom
5) Sense and Nonsense

Sometimes I am shocked by how much genius these two professors of mine possessed and also by my own lack of ability to see their genius.  The first thing that I had to do to their class titles was clean up them a little to make them more consistent with each other.  The first thing I noticed that did not fit so well with the rest was Bond and Barrier.  Bond fit just fine, but barrier did not function in the way that change, theories, and freedom functioned.  So I finally changed that part to Bond and Break (in the sense of liberate).  

1) Continuity and Change
2) Bond and Break (Liberation)
3) Culture and Revolution [name created by myself]
4) Rule and Freedom
5) Sense and Nonsense

It was not until very recently that I realized that Sense and Nonsense does not work like the others either.  Nonsense is not the corrective to the first, but like barrier is rather the problem.  It was then that I replaced their Sense and Nonsense with Sense and Education.   

1) Continuity and Change
2) Bond and Break
3) Culture and Revolution
4) Rule and Freedom
5) Sense and Education

Still I had not realized something else.

I originally come up with Sense and Education, but I was looking for a pattern like the majority of Smalley's and Larson's course titles, so I came up with Sense and Schooling since both begin with "S".  Education and schooling may also conjure up feelings of nonsense, but if you remember correctly; not all of your schooling was nonsense, but only some measure of it.   

1) Continuity and Change
2) Bond and Break
3) [unknown]
4) Rule and Freedom
5) Sense and Education

But also this was not the end to what I realized.

It was not until today that I realized that what Smalley and Larson had done was lay out a set of amounts that we call values whether in a cultural context or in a language context.  I don't why it didn't dawn on me sooner that translator's focus a great deal on values in translation work, but also in a culture there are values that determine people's judgments.  Words like 1) change, 2) break [liberate], 3) freedom, and 4) education. 

It was then that I realized that Luke 4:18, has much the same values that we find in Dr. Smalley's and Dr. Larson's scheme:

Luke 4:18

New King James Version (NKJV)
 

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,^[a]
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

Footnotes:

1. Luke 4:18 NU-Text omits to heal the brokenhearted.

The way I break down the values of this passage, in an order to parallel the Smalley and Larson scheme, is like this:

1) gospel to empty-handed (literal meaning from Hebrew behind Greek)
2) liberty to captives
3) heal the broken-hearted
4) freedom to oppressed
5) sight to blinded (changed to show that blindness is inflicted like oppression)


[It is from this point forward that I need to continue writing up this preface before going onto to the specific translation issues of Exodus.  But this preface is extremely important, because the values of Christians currently are very confused both to insiders and outsiders, when viewing the church.  This piece in the end will clarify the values that are really present in Christianity and in the American political system.  Please stop back.  I would say the end of the week, but it could be done as early as tomorrow.  Thank you for your patience.]


it was not until then I realized that judgments

values based on readiness or situation of amount

too much

too little  - hardness of your heart

just right





It was not until my sitting down to write today (5/7/14) that I realized that while I had all the major documents (only the Bill of Rights does not have its own separate existence) as a set figured out, still two were out of order.  I originally had the most famous American political documents listed in this order:

1) Bill of Rights (attached to Constitution usually)
2) Declaration of Independence
3) Constitution
4) Federalist Papers
5) Common Sense

As of today, I think the order should instead be:

1) Federalist Papers
2) Declaration of Independence
3) Constitution
4) Bill of Rights
5) Common Sense



It was not until my sitting down to write that I realized


models and theories




I draw a line between the continuation of classical studies and the continuation of traditional studies where the past is not preserve and there is not light but darkness. 


It is now that I realize that the genius of Smalley and Larson was in their judgments based on values that Christians and most Americans have learned all their lives.  It is when we lose these values that we lose our judgment.  Unfortunately, without the guidance of all these values, our judgment is very empty and that is why I believe that many are left empty-handed.  We have lost our values.


In Christ,

Jon



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Blessed and Holy: Understanding them both Better Through Leviticus 19 (Teach Things - Part 5 of 5)

Sometimes trying to convince people, who hold onto nonsense to see what makes sense, is a lot like Anthony Hecht describes it: "A lot of fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the state of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice."

The Bible does not possess a lot of nonsense in my experience, but in its interpretation there is a plenty.  Picture sense and nonsense this way: One sees (sense) and the other doesn't see (nonsense).  Too often the average person is excluded in their average reading of the Bible from being able to see what makes perfect sense. 

[This too was interrupted by the Badger game this evening, or I could have gotten much more written.]


In Christ,

Jon

Holy: Understanding it Better Through Spelling Things Out

We often assume that our cultural principles are equally valued by everyone.  We speak of the "American Revolution" or of Thomas Kuhn's "Scientific Revolutions".  We also hear calls for "freedom" or calls for "change".  We also hear the words of another Thomas, Thomas Paine, kicked around in pop culture.  We hear the never-ending call for "Common Sense".  But does the church have an organized way to understand its connections to others in the larger society of the church?  And how does this apply to how we understand the meaning of holy?  Our principles for how we connect to others can also determine what definition of holy we are willing to support.  That is why I want to talk about these cultural matters here.   

One of the most brilliant things that I learned as an undergrad was the basic principles of culture and revolution.  People speak often of freedom and revolution, but often without an organized picture of how culture comes or holds together as well as breaks apart into separate communities.  One of the keys to understanding any human society or individual is to understand their principles spelled out in five areas.   The church as a community is also effected by the principles of culture:

1) continuity and change - the amount of these must each be spelled out for people to feel affection for the culture of a society or person

2) bond and barrier - the relationship of these must each be spelled out for people to relate to the culture of a society or person

3) culture and revolution - the whole of these must each be spelled out for people to become part of the culture of a society or person  (these are the overall whole umbrella terms for relations)

4) rule and freedom - the action of rule and freedom must be spelled out for people to get involved with the culture of a society or person

5) sense and nonsense - the thing of sense and nonsense must be spelled out for people to understand the culture of society or person.

NOT one of these can be left out when people are trying to consider how they fit into a culture or how well they fit with another person.   Likewise they can effect how what responds to my comments on the definition or meaing of holy. 

I wish right now I had the time to complete some of my earlier entries, but they require fairly large chunks of uninterrupted time.  This entry is meant to help people see a little better where I am coming from culturally as a part of the larger Christian church and as an individual Christian. It is looking at my work on the meaning of holy from a relational point of view, but also broken into the different dimensions of a relationship. 

Each one of the five combinations above are for me relational or cultural.  A church has a culture as a society and the individual carries with them their cutural principles.  I value all five of the pairs above.  So how then do I see my relationships within the larger church? 

Let's begin with continuity and change. For me, I am concerned about both the lack of continuity and the lack of change in the church.  Recently, I received an email from a major Evangelical writer and he downplayed the place for a list of past heroes of the faith.  I think that individual is in danger of losing their continuity with the past.  My first inkling for the meaning of holy meaning being something other than "set apart" was in the context of the translation of the KJV.  If it were not for a commitment to continuity with past believers, I may have overlooked or under valued the past.  But I also cringe at how many are not able to change their hearts from the current consensus on what holy means as "set apart".  Why is it not possible to change one's position?  Are there not places and times to value change over continuity?   I think there are! 

Next, bond and barrier.  This really gets to the naked simplicity of what culture is all about.  It is about the bonds within a society and the bonds that society members have formed with each other. 

[under construction - please see earlier complete entries]

Jon