Today I read a very interesting academic essay by Casey Cep titled, “What We Can and Can’t Learn From a New Translation of the Gospels.” This essay made me think about the discussions we’ve been having in class, and it also made me think about my own discomfort when it came to translating/paraphrasing scripture last week. The first couple of things that I want to point out from Cep’s essay is first that Jesus likely spoke Aramaic and some Hebrew (the Bible was written in Greek), and second that the Bible was written somewhere between three and seven decades after Jesus’ death. Therefore, the original translation of the Bible was both temporally and linguistically removed in the first place. We briefly discussed these ideas in class.
In Cep’s essay she talked a lot about a modern translation of the Gospels by Sarah Ruden simply titled “The Gospels: A New Translation.” In this translation Ruden aimed to use plain language and take a “straightforward” strategy at translation, whatever that means. I actually found some of Ruden’s translations quite humorous. For example, before the crucifixion when Pontius Palate says, “Behold the man,” Ruden translates this to, “Look at this guy.” Or instead of Jesus’ disciples addressing him as “master” they say “boss.” This language is so modern and plain, and it is not something that many of us associate with Biblical scripture. So for this language to show up in an actual translation of the text is very strange and somewhat amusing to me.