Greek Scholars Rule?

He is a very amiable good fellow, but he is a Greek scholar and naturally a little eccentric.

– George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

Greek Scholars Rule!

Greek scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable.

– George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

Bible Translation Quotes

I came across some good quotes on the nature of Bible translation as I was preparing to lecture on the subject for my Bible Interpretation classes:

“If one translates a verse literally, he is a liar; if he adds thereto, he is a blasphemer, and a slanderer!” (Rabbi Judah, b. Kiddushin 49a, quoted in HTPAT, Fee and Strauss)

“Let them not drag me into court if the text does not agree with the original word for word, for, try as you may, it cannot be done.” (Erasmus, Apologia 170:20-1)

"You are urged therefore to read with good will and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where, despite our diligent labor in translating, we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly. For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language. Not only this work, but even the law itself, the prophecies, and the rest of the books differ not a little as originally expressed." (Preface to Sirach, ca. 200 BC)

“I must let the literal words go and try to learn how the German says that which the Hebrew expresses… Whoever would speak German must not use Hebrew style. Rather he must see to it – once he understands the Hebrew author – that he concentrates on the sense of the text, asking himself, “Pray tell, what do the Germans say in such a situation?” … Let him drop the Hebrew words and express the meaning freely in the German he knows. (Martin Luther, commenting on translating the Old Testament into German, quoted in HTPAT, Fee and Strauss)

And we can't omit the Italian proverb "Traduttore traditore" ("the translator is a traitor.")

The picture: Acts 15:22-24 in Codex Laudanius, a parallel Greek/Latin manuscript, 6th century. Note the scribal correction in the line fourth from the bottom: the original says etaran, but the corrector changed it to etaraxan (they troubled). Also note the faint lettering in the background, which is probably text on the other side of the page that has bled through.

Come on in, you wounded Greeklings

For all my Greek students, here's a post I read over at Dave Black Online (originally from Laudator Temporis Acti):

After the first three weeks of the beginning Greek class, 20 percent of the students are unfortunately conked, casualties of the masculine nouns of the first declension. Others are DOA thanks to the pronoun autos. They find that the autos monster can mean three altogether different things ("him/her/it/them," "-self," or "same"), depending on both its case and its position in a sentence. Students do withdraw from an introductory Greek class before they taste Plato or the Gospels, these bored, annoyed, and exhausted ninteen-year-olds, those very prospects who you once hoped would go on to Thucydides—and perhaps be one of the 600 each year in America who still major in Classics. They slide now across the hall to squeeze into the university's over-enrolled Theory of Walking, Rope Climbing, and Star Trek and the Humanities, which will assuage and assure them that they are, all in all, pretty nice kids, classes that will offer the veneer of self-esteem but will guarantee that they will probably lose what little sense of real accomplishment they had carried within to begin with. You can nearly hear those doctors of therapy, those professors of recuperation at the lecture-hall door: "Come on in, you wounded Greeklings. It's not your fault. They had no business subjecting you to all that rote; we do things a lot differently here. Relax, sit back, breathe deeply, and tell us how you feel."

The picture: First column of the Gospel of Luke, from codex Sinaiticus (ca. AD 350).

Augustine on Greek

Last in my series of quotes about learning Greek:

"But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. . . ." "Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments..."

-Augustine, Confessions, 1.12.19-1.14.23

The picture: title page of Erasmus' Lucubrationes, 1516; Augustine is at middle right.

Bad Interpretation and Erasmus

For a wonderful example of the nonsense that one can spout if one knows only a little bit of Greek and Hebrew, take a look at this video at Boulders 2 Bits. It's a bit long, but painfully and unintentionally funny. By the way, the author of Boulders 2 Bits is not promoting the views in the video!

It reminded me of a story that Erasmus told about some linguistic analysis that he heard that was almost as creative and tortured. You'll make the most sense of Erasmus' story if you know just a little bit of Latin.

"I met... another, some eighty years of age, and such a divine that you'd have sworn Scotus himself was revived in him. He... with wonderful subtlety demonstrate[d] that there lay hidden in [the letters found in the name of Jesus] whatever could be said of him; for that it was only declined with three cases, he said, it was a manifest token of the Divine Trinity; and then, that the first ended in S, the second in M, the third in U... those three letters declaring to us that he was the beginning, middle, and end (summum, medium, et ultimum) of all. Nay, the mystery was yet more abstruse; for he... split the word Jesus into two equal parts [and] left the middle letter by itself, and then told us that that letter in Hebrew was schin or sin, and that sin in the Scotch tongue, as he remembered, signified as much as sin; from whence he gathered that it was Jesus that took away the sins of the world. At which new exposition the audience were so wonderfully intent and struck with admiration, especially the theologians… ”

-Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, 1515 (and the picture is from that work)

Erasmus on Greek

Miscellaneous leftover quotes from Erasmus on learning Greek:

“And, my dear Batt, I am very anxious that you should know Greek…”
-Letter to Jacob Batt, September 1500

“We can use Greek words when we wish our meaning not to be understood by all and sundry.”

“… I am paying scant regard to my very health as I help my friends; I compose for some, read to some, correct for others, and meanwhile read, compile, emend, and compose on my own account, and practise my Greek which in any case is very difficult.”
-Letter to Jacob Batt, 1500

In Epistle 23 (I am unsure of the date), Erasmus signed his name on a letter in Greek rather than Latin - a practice just about every Greek student does at some point.

The picture: Title page of the Complutensian Polyglot, 1522. Erasmus' printer heard that the Polyglot was about to go to press, and so Erasmus rushed to finish his first edition of the Greek New Testament. As a result, Erasmus' first edition is one of the few print Bibles riddled with typographical errors.

Erasmus on Greek

“I knew in my time... a Grecian, a Latinist... who... perplexed and tormented himself for above twenty years in the study of grammar, fully reckoning himself a prince if he might but live so long till he could certainly determine how the eight parts of speech were to be distinguished, which none of the Greeks or Latins had yet fully cleared: as if it were a matter to be decided by the sword if a man made an adverb of a conjunction. And for this cause is it that we have as many grammars as grammarians; nay more, forasmuch as my friend Aldus has given us above five, not passing by any kind of grammar, how barbarously or tediously soever compiled, which he has not turned over and examined; envying every man's attempts in this kind, rather to be pitied than happy, as persons that are ever tormenting themselves; adding, changing, putting in, blotting out, revising, reprinting, showing it to friends, and nine years in correcting, yet never fully satisfied; at so great a rate do they purchase this vain reward, to wit, praise, and that too of a very few, with so many watchings, so much sweat, so much vexation and loss of sleep, the most precious of all things. Add to this the waste of health, spoil of complexion, weakness of eyes or rather blindness, poverty, envy, abstinence from pleasure, over-hasty old age, untimely death, and the like; so highly does this wise man value the approbation of one or two blear-eyed fellows.”

-Erasmus, In Praise of Folly, 1515.

The picture: Folly Mounting the Pulpit, by Hans Holbein the Younger, in In Praise of Folly.

Rowley on Biblical Languages

"One who made it his life's work to interpret French literature, but who could only read it in an English translation, would not be taken seriously; yet it is remarkable how many ministers of religion week by week expound a literature that they are unable to read save in translation!"

- H. H. Rowley, Expository Times, LXXIV, 12, September, 1963, p. 383

Thanks to Anumma, who drew my attention to this quote on the Pyromaniacs website.

Wesley on Greek

“Do I understand Greek and Hebrew? Otherwise, how can I undertake, as every Minister does, not only to explain books which are written therein but to defend them against all opponents? Am I not at the mercy of everyone who does understand, or even pretends to understand, the original? For which way can I confute his pretense? Do I understand the language of the Old Testament? critically? at all? Can I read into English one of David’s Psalms, or even the first chapter of Genesis? Do I understand the language of the New Testament? Am I a critical master of it? Have I enough of it even to read into English the first chapter of St. Luke? If not, how many years did I spend at school? How many at the University? And what was I doing all those years? Ought not shame to cover my face?”

— John Wesley, “An Address to the Clergy,” in Works X:491.

When students finish taking Greek from me, I always appeal to their budget: if you stop reading Greek and using it for exegesis, you just wasted $2500 (the cost at our school for 12 credits of Greek/exegesis) and countless hours in class and studying. Don't lose your investment!

Martin Luther on Greek

"Insofar as we love the gospel, to that same extent, let us study the ancient tongues. And let us notice that without the knowledge of languages we can scarcely preserve the gospel. Languages are the sheath which hides the sword of the Spirit, they are the chest in which this jewel is enclosed, the goblet holding this draught. Where the languages are studied, the proclamation will be fresh and powerful, the scriptures will be searched, and the faith will be constantly rediscovered through ever new words and deeds.

-Martin Luther

The picture: Portrait of Martin Luther, Cranach the Elder, 1535.

Erasmus on Greek

Erasmus, commenting on the efforts of theologians to interfere with his publication of an edition of Jerome:

“Certain… distinguished theologians… adjured the printer by all that is holy not to allow any admixture of Greek or Hebrew; these two languages, they said, are fraught with peril and there is no good to be got out of them; they were designed solely to satisfy idle curiosity.”

-Erasmus, Letter to Maarten van Dorp, 1515.

The picture: Erasmus, by Quentin Matsys, 1517.

Erasmus on Greek

“…still I must scrape together from each and every source a small sum of money to clothe myself and to buy the complete works of Jerome… and a Plato, and to get together some Greek books, and also to pay for the services of a Greek tutor. My mind is burning with indescribable eagerness… to acquire a certain limited competence in the use of Greek, and thereby go on to devote myself entirely to sacred literature…”

-Erasmus, letter to Jacob Batt, December 11, 1499

The picture: Erasmus' self portrait, in his commentary on the works of Jerome, 1516.

ben Sirach on Translation

"You are urged therefore to read with good will and attention, and to be indulgent in cases where, despite our diligent labor in translating, we may seem to have rendered some phrases imperfectly. For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language. Not only this work, but even the law itself, the prophecies, and the rest of the books differ not a little as originally expressed."

-Sirach Preface

This could well be the plea of all Greek and Hebrew students for mercy from their profs as they grade translations on tests.

Erasmus on Greek

“[Theologians] are dogged everywhere by the nemesis that waits for those who despise Greek; here too they are subject to delusions, half asleep, blear-eyed, blundering, producing more monstrosities.”

-Erasmus, Letter to Maarten van Dorp, 1515.

The picture: Folly, marginal drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger, in Erasmus' In Praise of Folly, edition of 1515. Although Erasmus did not join the Reformers, this work satirized (among other things) abuses of the Catholic church. Its popularity may have even contributed to the Reformation.

Erasmus on Greek

"I can see what utter madness it is even to put a finger on that part of theology which is specially concerned with the mysteries of the faith unless one is furnished with the equipment of Greek as well, since the translators of Scripture, in their scrupulous manner of construing the text, offer such literal versions of Greek idioms that no one ignorant of that language could grasp even the primary, or, as our own theologians call it, literal, meaning."

-Erasmus, Epistle 149

The picture: Title page of Erasmus' Ecclesiastae (on preaching), 1535.

Erasmus on Greek

Erasmus' response to Jacob Latomus' De tribus linguis (Whether a knowledge of the three languages is necessary for a theologian).

“I have never said that anyone with linguistic skills will right away understand the mysteries of sacred literature, I said that it is a great help in arriving at an understanding of Scripture; and I have said that this can be achieved through many means, and not only through the help of linguistics. But just as the philologist does not instantly attain an understanding of the innermost mysteries, so – all other things being even – the man who is ignorant of languages is rather far away from understanding them.”

-Erasmus, LB IX 82A-B

The picture: Medallion of Erasmus, Quentin Matsys, 1519

Erasmus on Greek

Erasmus talks about what he will do with grant money that he hopes to receive from a benefactor. Reminds me of my financial situation during seminary!

“If there is a chance, I shall set out for Italy in the autumn with the intention of obtaining a doctor’s degree… I have turned my attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.”

-Erasmus, letter to Jacob Batt, April 12, 1500.

The picture: Title page of a German translation of Erasmus' Enchiridion, 1520. Erasmus first published it in Latin in 1503.

Erasmus on Greek

On Erasmus' Latin translation of the Greek New Testament:

“Let them not drag me into court if the text does not agree with the original word for word, for, try as you may, it cannot be done.”

-Erasmus, Apologia 170:20-1

The picture: Dedication (to Pope Leo X) of Erasmus' New Testament, 1516.

Erasmus on Greek

“It is a fairly troublesome business to learn to recognize the shapes of letters at sight, to pronounce readily, to decline and conjugate. Do you think a man has achieved nothing who has digested all this tedious stuff?… And maybe he is content with that, for the only reason he wishes to learn Greek is to be able to spend his time with more profit and more sure judgment on the Scriptures.”

-Erasmus, Letter to William Latimer, February 1517

The picture: Erasmus, by Hendrik Bary, 1671.