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Many BR readers will by now have a copy of the Contemporary English Version of the Bible (CEV), published last year by the American Bible Society. They may even be using it for teaching or preaching. It is being actively sponsored by the American Interfaith Institute and is recommended by the chairman of the institute, Irvin J. Borowsky, as the first Bible to contain no anti-Judaism.
The claim is presumably based on the retranslating, or in some cases the paraphrasing or simply omitting, of certain prejudicial allusions to Jews in the New Testament, especially, of course, in the Fourth Gospel. So, for example, “hoi ioudaioi” (the Jews) in the original becomes “the people,” “the Jewish leaders” or simply “the leaders.” “A great crowd of the Jews” becomes “a lot of people” (John 12:9). In the chapters dealing with Jesus’ execution, it is simply “the crowd” that calls for his death.
In view of the tragically distorted view of Judaism many Christians have picked up from the Gospels and other New Testament writings, especially from the account of the death of Jesus, the intention behind the CEV is fully understandable, even if some of the translations are questionable. But can the New Testament be purged of anti-Judaic sentiment simply by changing “Jews” to “some Jews” and expedients of this kind? What about the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel excoriating his hearers as children of the devil (John 8:44), as not belonging to God (John 8:47), as liars (John 8:55)?
What about the Jesus of the First Gospel hurling woes on the Pharisees as hypocrites who only lead their disciples to hell (Matthew 23:15)? The translators, in their anxiety to soften the impact, make Jesus sound like a grade-school teacher annoyed with his class. Instead of the Revised Standard Version’s “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,” the CEV has “You Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses are in for trouble! You’re nothing but show-offs” (Matthew 23:13 et al.)—a rap on the knuckles, not an out-and-out condemnation.
Even after a fairly cursory reading, I have come across many instances in which the task of translator is confused with that of commentator. To translate the “I am” (the RSV has “it is I”) of Jesus as “I am Jesus” (John 6:20 and 18:6), for example, is not only to mistranslate, but to miss the point the writer is making: In Jesus’ mouth, he places a formula of divine identity and presence, like the “I am” of the revelation to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3:14).
And one wonders why the translators took such pains to avoid mentioning synagogues, even when they are left with awkward circumlocutions (for example, John 9:22: “The leaders already agreed that no one was to have anything to do with anyone who said Jesus was the Messiah”).
The task of translation is to render the text as faithfully as possible, not to massage or coerce it into saying what we want it to say, however praiseworthy our intentions may be.
Negative attitudes expressed in early Christian texts about contemporaneous Judaism can not and should not be sanitized, but they can and should be explained. It was a tragic but understandable historical circumstance that the Gospels were written at the time when the Jesus movement was severing its links with the parent body. These points of disjuncture are inevitably painful and apt to generate the kind of language that the CEV wants to eliminate. Take, for example, the harsh language of the sectarian writings among the Dead Sea Scrolls; or the even more vitriolic language in prophetic-sectarian texts from much earli 051derogatory discourse generated by sects throughout Christian history. In all of these cases, the derogatory language is generated by a stressful separation of the subgroup in question from the parent institution.
I am under no illusion that explanation by itself will prevent people from abusive appeal to these early Christian texts in support of positions on which they have already made up their minds. But we do not remedy the situation by retranslating the texts to make them say what their authors had no intention of saying—and in fact did not say
Many BR readers will by now have a copy of the Contemporary English Version of the Bible (CEV), published last year by the American Bible Society. They may even be using it for teaching or preaching. It is being actively sponsored by the American Interfaith Institute and is recommended by the chairman of the institute, Irvin J. Borowsky, as the first Bible to contain no anti-Judaism. The claim is presumably based on the retranslating, or in some cases the paraphrasing or simply omitting, of certain prejudicial allusions to Jews in the New Testament, especially, of course, in the Fourth […]
