We had big old rain yesterday, as may have been covered on the news. It didn't go on for too long but was pretty hard while coming down. To give you an idea of how hard it was coming down; we have a locust clinging to our living room window that has been there since the initial downpour at dinner time yesterday. It's still there because it appears to have had a couple of its legs knocked off. There hasn't been any more flooding on campus that we know of.
I've really been getting into something that looks like it will be worthwhile but challenging and time consuming. In my discourse class, I have the option of doing either a term paper or a final exam. I originally thought that I might just do the final exam, for simplicity's sake. The term paper is more an option for those who are currently working with a language project and have immediate need for the discourse analysis skills that we're learning. I don't actually have a project that I'm working on but I do have something that I've been curious about for a while: The Message paraphrase of the Bible.
Here's how The Message promo describes it:
But more than that, it was meant to be understood. It was first written in the language of the people—of fishermen, shopkeepers, and carpenters. The Message gets back to that: You can read it and understand it. In The Message Remix, there are new verse-numbered paragraphs that will help you study and find favorite passages. Or, you can just read it like a book and let the narrative impact you. After all, it is God’s story, with its heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions. Either way, it’s God’s Word—the Truth—in a user-friendly form.
The promo states that it is useful for 2 things: studying favorite passages and being impacted through narrative reading. I have had bad vibes about relying on passages in The Message as accurate representations of the source text, in terms of either notional or surface. However, my vibes have been largely unsubstantiated. Suddenly, after reading Longacre's analysis of 1 John, I see a method for discerning whether this is actually the case. If it is a narrative, then it has peaks. The peaks, whether they are action or didactic, should correspond to those in the source text (Greek) but represented in the peak structures of the language of translation (English).
Finally, I may put to rest my itching suspicions, one way or another. Is it the conspiracy theorist in me that responds to this paraphrase or the global observationist? As long as the quest doesn't become overwhelming in its scope, this may be my season to answer that question.
Along those lines, I have done an initial clause-charting of Jude, in The Message form. I am stymied in my participant referent color-coding by verses 22-23: are the "they" in these verses the same "they" referred to in the entirety of the preceding text? Jude gives pretty scathing descriptions of the "some people" (v4) throughout the letter. He describes what their plan is (v4). He gives the historical examples of that type of person which precede this current type; the fallen angels (v6) and Sodom and Gomorrah (v7). He outlines their sin-systems (v8, 10, 12, 16, 18-19). He even paints a sad metaphorical picture of them (end of v12). Can it be that, at the end, Jude reorients the reader to these "some people" by instructing us in a Christian approach to "them", despite their aforementioned sins and character flaws? At this, my first look at Jude in The Message from a discourse perspective, it appears that the ba-dam-ching (it's a technical term, really) occurs after the phrase "but not soft on sin" (v23). All preceding text provides supporting evidence for that conclusion. Just a theory. I'm working on it.
I'd love to hear any perspectives on this.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
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4 comments:
Regarding "The Message":
I think it is a worthwhile project by a Bible scholar to do what the Bible (and especially the New Testament) originally meant to do: speak to the "common man". However, for all the hype that's made about its accessibility, I find it actually less readable than most modern translations of the Bible. It contains parenthetical explanations that have little literary merit and only limited theological usefulness. Its average sentence, analogy or pericope is LONGER, not shorter, than NIV or RSV (seems to me anyways, on an admittedly cursory look). And while translating ancient Hebrew poetry (found, say, in the Psalms) into today's English vernacular may be a difficult task in which one could do a lot worse than Peterson has done, it seems that the images are more frequently awkward than truly effective.
The Message is useful to be read alongside the Bible (as a re-telling from one particular angle) and also useful for those who are culturally too far from "regular" Bible translations to find them useful. But what disturbs me is that The Message seems to be increasingly used as a substitute for the Bible in churches, personal devotions, and Christian events.
my two cents.
I hear ya' on the unnecessarily complicated aspect of some passages. While MSG (the Message) retains some of the handy parallels and pairings of thought in Jude, for example, it cuts out what may be the most significant one: the tiny hortatory chiasm in v22-23:
have mercy on some
save some
have mercy on some
MSG has those same 3 ideas but represented by:
Go easy on
Go after
Be tender with sinners BUT not soft on sin
[The sin itself stinks to high heaven]
The sin focus in this rendering doesn't seem to be present in the source text. And chiasm is never (?) randomly or unknowingly used in Greek; it always is intended to call attention to something. While it may not have the same function in English, there should be some way of indicating the significance of this command section in the translation. While they may not be any English translations that give this tiny-chiastic command the attention it may merit, at least most of them retain the structure and keep the sin in a dependent clause as non-focused material. The MSG rendering has us looking at the idea of sin as a punchline, rather than at people.
A similar thing happens in v8:
MSG: This is exactly the same program of these latest infiltrators: dirty sex, rule and rulers thrown out, glory dragged in the mud.
NKJV: Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.
The nominalization of the actions diffuses the impact, obscuring the identity of the person(s) doing the actions. Suddenly, the problem is not what people are doing; it's a faulty program.
Like, you said; obscuring the thrust. Takes the edge off the assertion. If someone told my that there was something wrong with my program of prematurely death-induction of others, I would feel less evaluated than if they told me I shouldn't kill people.
I don't know about the chiasm thing (I'm not versed enough in verse and linguistics). I just know that many of the debated passages are interpreted in a highly subjective way. Consider the opening sentence of the sermon on the mount:
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." (KJV)
What does this mean? It's a revolutionary concept, even for those who are following Jesus 2000 years later and are being told to be "full of the spirit" and "rich in the spirit" and what not. It almost seems to contradict some of Jesus' other sayings. How does The Message put it?
"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule."
Say what? Sure, you're more likely to hear the guy on the street talk about being "at the end of his rope" than being "poor in spirit", but that's no excuse. If you say the same thing in a more intelligible and jargon-free vernacular, that's one thing. But if you say something completely different (or, at best, vaguely related) in an intelligible and jargon-free vernacular, you sure as heck shouldn't call yourself a translator. The jury is out on whether this even qualifies as paraphrase. I mean, "with less of you there is more of God and his rule" qualifying as being essentially a restatement of "yours is the Kingdom of Heaven"? Come on.
Marco
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