The Word: On the Translation of the Bible

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They regarded the life of Christ as the great truth towards which the Hebrew prophets and scriptures pointed, and which superseded the old faith and its laws. Barton’s approach argues for compromise and equilibrium between ‘literal’ and ‘free’ approaches, and he argues it well.

Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. He brings some of the most recent opinions together and provide an important overview of the Bible's translation history, He successfully situates it in the discipline of Translation Studies. After their number, the translated Torah – and, by extension, the whole Greek Old Testament – is known as the Septuagint.The baptised Anglican, Nicholas Winton, rescued hundreds of Jewish children from the concentration camps. The precedent is in the text itself: Jesus of Nazareth spoke in Aramaic and his followers – eager to spread his message in the lingua franca – preserved his teachings in Greek. But that would be to miss a fine piece of scholarship (eminently approachable) that goes well beyond its apparent remit: touching on faith, the complex unfolding of the Biblical canon, Jewish-Christian relations, the role of The Book in the lives of believers, the importance of community to the Christian life, the challenges of translation in general, what textual criticism can achieve and so on. What is so crucial about this book is that it is not written in an excoriating style that seeks to define the 'perfect' translation (as Barton himself says), but rather than take a telescopic view of the enormous platter of translations meted out over 100s of years.

Photograph: Alamy View image in fullscreen The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man (1615) by Jan Brueghel and Rubens. He had been involved (with others) in a first English translation of the Bible that so angered both church and state that he was posthumously excommunicated, and his body exhumed, burnt and disposed of in a river. By one of the coincidences that intrigue me, he, like Peter Davidson whose poetry I reviewed last week, is a Fellow of Campion Hall in Oxford. The historical method of analysing layers of composition in the Bible even casts a faint shadow over the Ten Commandments.

This really did illuminate things for me when it came to the Bible (and somewhat shocked me as to my woeful knowledge of the Old Testament); I would highyl recommend it even for someone who is looking at linguistics, just to view translation philosophy more than anything else. Barton begins with a distinction which is both useful and problematic, that of the difference between functional translation and formal translation.

I know my understanding of the specifics of The Word was only partial, but I also found that partial understanding very worthwhile. In The Word , acclaimed Bible scholar John Barton explores how saints and scholars have negotiated the profound challenges of translating the Bible while remaining faithful to the original. Blended versions that aim for keeping the core message alongside a sense of the difference of the original are highly recommended, particularly those of Robert Alter. I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the published via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. Barton says this history is “the story of the interplay between religion and the book – neither mapping exactly onto the other”.

Barton opposes Dan Brown-style conspiracy theorists who think that some time in the fourth century a powerful church suppressed a range of heterodox scriptures and created the New Testament as we now know it. How, he explores, are translators to deal with Isaiah 28:10, which seems to be deliberately meaningless: “precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Scholarly conundrums concerning translators’ priorities are illustrated with interesting examples from the biblical texts.

For much of Jewish and almost all of Christian history, however, most believers have understood scripture not in the languages. Whilst Barton approaches the post-modern paradigm in this regard, he always shies away from it (perhaps pertaining to his own priesthood). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007 and is a Corresponding Fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. A quiz question, which is also a trick question: how many references to the doctrine of the Trinity are there in the Bible?We might conclude that “content” deals with important things and acts (nouns and verbs), but “form” with less important impressions and feelings (adjectives and adverbs). The product of a lifetime's study of scripture, The Word offers a rare and original perspective on the central book of our culture, as it was written and as we know it. There is a lot to admire in his patient diligence, working through issues using careful arguments and backed-up examples.