What’s the Best Bible to Read?

So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is no one so discerning and wise as you.”  Genesis 41:39  NRSVA

God – English doesn’t quite reveal what is happening in this story.  Why?  Because the English translation “God” can cover both elohim and YHVH.  And in this case, it’s important to know the difference.  Bob Stallman makes the point:

“Before Pharaoh, Joseph did not use the covenant name of God exclusive to his own people. Instead, he consistently referred to God with the more general term elohim. In so doing, Joseph avoided making any unnecessary offense, a point supported by the fact that Pharaoh credited God with revealing to Joseph the meaning of Pharaoh’s dreams.”[1]

Our translation obscures this important distinction.  That raises a question; a much larger question than simply what’s happening in this particular verse.  It raises the question about any translation and the relationship between the actual encounter and the record of that encounter.  Consider the following:

The axiom of faith is encounter.  That’s the only thing that can’t be doubted.  Something happened to you.  How you interpret that encounter is subject to language, culture, history, and paradigm, but that it happened is not.  If your faith depends on language, culture, history, and paradigm, then it will always be subject to doubt.  The biblical text is not a teaching text per se.  It is a reflection on experiencing God—and from that perspective it describes what God intends for men and women.  But it is the experience that underlies the text.  As such, the Bible is not a theological book or an ethics manual.  Nor is it a history of events or a compilation of ancient religious literature.  It is first and foremost stories of encounters with the divine, and how those encounters are interpreted in the time, place, and language of the original audience.  In this regard, it’s worth considering the analogy offered by John Ciardi:

When the violin repeats what the piano has just played, it cannot make the same sounds and it can only approximate the same chords.  It can, however, make recognizably the same “music,” the same air.  But it can do so only when it is as faithful to the self-logic of the violin as it is to the self-logic of the piano.

Language too is an instrument, and each language has its own logic.  I believe that the process of rendering from language to language is better conceived as a “transposition” than as a “translation,” for “translation” implies a series of word-for-word equivalences that do not exist across language boundaries any more than piano sounds exist in the violin.

The notion of word-for-word equivalents also strikes me as false to the nature of poetry.  Poetry is not made of words but of word-complexes, elaborate structures involving, among other things, denotations, connotations, rhythms, puns, juxtapositions, and echoes of the tradition in which the poet is writing.  It is difficult in prose and impossible in poetry to juggle such a complex intact across the barrier of language.[2]

We might restructure Ciardi’s insight along biblical lines by suggesting that the encounter with God is the equivalent of the piano sonata.  The text, that is, the words used to describe the encounter, is the equivalent of the violin’s aria.  We who were not among those who experienced the event can appreciate, and perhaps understand, the music of the piano-event, but we don’t experience it directly.  We have a rendition of the event in another medium, an important medium for faith, for sure, but nevertheless not the original.  Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg offers another insight into the transmission process:

I am also persuaded that no matter how good any given translation is and no matter by what group of people or individual/s it is accomplished, it is still an interpretation of the original text we call the Word of God and not the Word of God itself. Most people think that because the majority of Bible translators are committed to God [as] individuals, they would never introduce anything of “their own” into the text of translation. But the truth be told that it is impossible to do, no matter who does it. Translation is in some way an act of interpretation of the original Scriptures, because knowing original languages doesn’t give you the ability to know exactly what the original words and sentences mean, instead they give the ability to determine the range of possible meanings.  My point is simple: Everyone involved in translation of the Bible has to make translation decisions every time when various meaning possibilities present themselves in the text. That happens more often then you realize.[3]

You and I have a choice.  We can open our favorite translation of the Bible and imagine that we are transported to the time, place, and culture of the original audience.  We can attempt to feel what they felt, to hear what they heard, to see what they saw, and then try to make sense of it.  Or we can pretend that these words printed on the page in front of us are God’s words.  We can insist that God oversaw their translation and transmission, that the Spirit made sure we have exactly what God intended us to have.  We can imagine that we have the certainty of God’s communication in this translated text.  The two options involve major theological implications and doctrinal positions, but they cannot both be true.  You will have to decide, not simply on the basis of what draws you closer to God but also on the basis of rational, historical analysis.

Then you can choose which Bible to read.

Topical Index: transmission, translation, interpretation, event, experience, Genesis 41:39

[1] https://www.theologyofwork.org/old-testament/genesis-12-50-and-work/joseph-genesis-372-5026/josephs-promotion-by-pharaoh-genesis-411-45

[2] Translator’s note in Dante Alighieri , The Inferno, translated by John Ciardi (Signet Classics, 2001), p. ix.

[3] Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg