Year: 2019

Found in translation

Lost in translation has become an all too familiar trope at once simplistic and naive. It contributes to the idea of translation as betrayal, literally a traducing of the text, the idea that what is expressed in one language simply cannot be expressed in another. This implies a kind of intellectual despair which runs counter to the ideals and principles of education. That there are difficulties and questions about translation is one thing; but that translation is impossible is an entirely different matter. And so perhaps, just perhaps, there is also the idea of things being found in translation.

Cultural literacy is a feature of Chapel, it seems to me, along with the effort to provide at least a limited kind of biblical literacy. In a School where there are more than two dozen different nationalities and a multitude of languages, cultures, and religious and non-religious identities, whatever that means, translation is not only a pressing concern on a day-to-day basis but is assumed as being in principle possible, indeed necessary. Translation is about more than language; it is also about the intersection of ideas in the cross-overs of culture. In short, translation is an essential quality of education. It requires a capacity to engage with one another respectfully and with a willingness to learn from one another. In this sense, translation counters the disquieting tendencies towards cultural arrogance or national superiority, to the tunnel-visions of narcissism, solipsism, or even racism.

The lesson from Ecclesiasticus read this week is partly about the question and problem of translation. One of the books of the Apocrypha, books written in the period between the setting down of the Hebrew Scriptures and the emergence of the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament, it belongs to a category of writing known as ‘wisdom literature’. It is the only apocryphal text whose author we know. Ecclesiasticus is the Latin term literally meaning ‘church book’ for what in Hebrew and Greek is The Wisdom of Jesus, The Son of Sirach, frequently abbreviated to Sirach. The work is in praise of sophia, wisdom, which already reflects something of the confluence of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy and Jewish thought; itself a kind of translation, we might say. Written in Hebrew in the early second century BC, it was translated into Greek some fifty years later by the grandson of the author as indicated in the Prologue which he added.

There we see explicitly the question of translation with respect to language. “For what was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language.” But Sirach’s grandson also notes the desire on the part of his grandfather to communicate the wisdom of the Jewish world to others as part of an universal and ethical desire to live wisely. Thus there is a kind of congruence of cultures, a translation of ideas and principles through the love of learning that in turn governs our living.

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Talitha Cumi

An Aramaic phrase, it means, “little girl, I say unto you, arise”. It is part of an intriguing scene in which Jesus heals and raises to life, a kind of double miracle, as it were, which helps us to understand the radical nature of the Resurrection. A ruler of the Jews, Jairus by name, comes to Jesus seeking the healing of his daughter who is “at the point of death.” Jesus goes with him and “a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.”

Jesus is in the midst. A woman in the crowd who had suffered “a flow of blood for twelve years” and “who had suffered much under many physicians” thinks that “if I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” She touches his garment and immediately is healed. But the greater interest is in what follows. Jesus wants to know who touched him, even more he wants the woman who was healed to be embraced in his knowing love of our humanity rather than presuming to steal a cure unawares. She comes to him “in fear and trembling and and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.” His response shows us what God seeks for us: our being healed in his knowing love for us. “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Only then does he continue on his way to the house of Jairus.

On the way, he is told that she is dead but he comes any way. In the face of the mockery and laughter of the household, he bids her in Aramaic to arise. She is raised up. It is one of three powerful stories where Jesus meets us as mourners and restores to life the dead. Such scenes prepare us and show us something of the radical nature of the Resurrection. It is the only scene, though, which shows our disdain and cynical mockery of the possibility of new life. We laugh and are dead, as it were, to the power of God. This story is meant to counter such behaviour and to awaken us to the wonder of God and to the nature of his will for us.

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