THE REAL BIBLE:

The king of the bibles: As the Queen prepares to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, Peter Mullen pours scorn on some of its modern rivals. (Peter Mullen, 14 Nov 2011, The Telegraph)

There is no such thing as noble truth expressed in ignoble words. The choice of words determines what is being said. Therefore, we should choose the best.

"Strips of cloth" is no substitute for "swaddling clothes". And Mary was "with child" - we think of the Madonna and Child - and she had not "fallen pregnant" as it says in one of the modern versions. You cannot satisfactorily replace "through a glass darkly" with the crass literalism "puzzling reflections in a mirror" or "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal" with "noisy gong and clanging cymbal". The King James Bible was designed to be read aloud in churches. All the modern versions sound as if they have been written by tone-deaf people with tin ears and no rhythm.

What level of vacuity is reached when "Son of Belial" (i.e. the devil himself) is rendered by the New English Bible (NEB) as "a good-for-nothing"? As if the son of the devil is only a truant from the fourth form who has been stealing from the housemaster's orchard.

The real Bible says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The NEB gives us instead, "The first step to find wisdom." But that is only the way in which babyish primary school teachers speak to their charges. The first step to find wisdom - and then, if you are ever so good little children, I'll show you the second step. This is infantilisation. Sometimes the New Jerusalem Bible's (NJB) pedantry, this pseudo-scholarly fascination with all that is merely foreign and obscure, is just silly, as in "You, Yahweh examine me." But occasionally it is mindlessly un-poetic and banal, as in the substitution of "Acclaim Yahweh" for the mesmerisingly beautiful and timelessly familiar "make a joyful noise unto the Lord". But in one example of supreme idiocy the meaning becomes impenetrable: The King James Version says, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord ..." In the New Jerusalem Bible this degenerates into tasteless obscurantism: "If you live in the shelter of Elyon and make your home in the shadow of Shaddai, you can say to Yahweh ..." The Revised Standard Version (RSV) loves to parade the translators' acquaintance with the slightest nuances in the ancient languages but their utter ignorance of what will go into ordinary English. It renders the "giants" of Genesis as "nephilim" - to the confusion, one supposes, of elderly ladies everywhere. And the "two pence" that the Good Samaritan gave to the innkeeper as "two denarii" - lest we should imagine that the currency of the Roman Empire was the same as that of England, pre-decimalisation.

The RSV makes a habit of iconoclasm, as for instance in its destruction of that very familiar phrase: "Arise, take up thy bed and walk." The RSV says, "Take up your pallet and go home." Because we must on no account be allowed to imagine that the poor paralytic slunk off carrying his four-poster, we have forced upon us the literalism pallet: and the result sounds like instructions to a sloppy painter.

The NEB also cannot tell the difference between speech that is poetic and metaphorical and speech that is literal and descriptive. That is why for "wolves in sheep's clothing" we are given instead the pantomime howler "men dressed up as sheep". We recall perhaps Ulysses' escape from the Cyclops or that pejorative expression "mutton dressed up as lamb". In the KJV men are "at meat" or they "sup"; but the RSV mentions a Pharisee who "asked Jesus to dine" - where, at The Garrick or White's? Likewise, his rebuke to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, "O fools and slow of heart" is emasculated to become "How dull you are!" How dull indeed. Can you imagine for one minute Our Lord Jesus Christ on the evening of his day of resurrection using such language? "How dull!"

The KJV's "pearl of great price" is exhibited in more of that infantilised Blue Peter language as "a pearl of very special value". And then the end of the world itself is described as if it were only an exceptionally hot afternoon at Goodwood: "My dear friends..." (that is the voice of the NEB's urbane, housetrained St Peter) "...do not be bewildered by the fiery ordeal that is coming upon you, as though it were something extraordinary." The end of the world not extraordinary? 

Posted by oj at November 14, 2011 4:12 PM
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