ARCHAISMS IN TRANSLATIONS

Rabbi Raymond Apple

Q. Do you believe in using modern language in Bible and Siddur translations?

A. My mind has changed on this subject. There was a time when I couldn’t work fast enough to remove the archaisms from the sacred texts.

Now, thought I, everyone will become a religious believer! All we need to do is to eliminate the “thous” and “wasts” from the translations, adopt user-friendly language, and religion will no longer be effete and obscurantist!

I hardly need to tell you that it didn’t work. Religion did eventually enjoy a modest comeback, but linguistic modernisms probably weren’t the reason.

The English translations of the Biblical terminology certainly needed adapting to the findings of archaeology and linguistic research, including the Dead Sea Scrolls; the unjustified christological distortions which made every Book of the Bible foreshadow Jesus needed to be eliminated; and the irritating use of “and” at the beginning of almost every sentence needed a fresh look.

However, turning the majestic cadences of the King James Version into the colloquialisms of the street and the television serials made a joke of the whole enterprise.

I often think of one of my aunts, who objected to the disrespectful way I addressed her in my childhood. “I’m not one of your mates from the school playground!” she told me, and she was right. God isn’t my mate either, at least not in that sense. The Bible is a classical text and there is no need to drag it down to the language of the school playground.

So these days I tend to prefer the rolling classical language of poetical literature (“The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall not want”) whilst still avoiding “thou”, “thee” and “thine”.

L’havdil, imagine turning Shakespeare into totally modern idiom – dropping “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears”, in favour of “Come on mates, listen up!”

THE WILL TO GOOD

The last month has been full of pain. We have suffered grievously at the hands of those who assert religiosity but have no feelings for religion.

Herzl says that God is the Will to Good which always prevails in the end. In the meantime, the Bible assures us that in time of calamity God suffers with us. Suffering extends to God too, and we expect Him to proclaim morality and to protect the people of Israel… and Himself.

Primo Levi said, “If I were God I would spit” (“Survival in Auschwitz”, 1961). There are times when God has no choice but to spit at those who claim to act in His name.

Herzl was no paragon of orthodoxy but believed that people should be true to God. His idea of God is far from traditional but despite what it leaves out he is right that no-one can talk of God without the doing of good.

Strangely, evilly, some of our enemies pretend that only they have the right to promote their religion but no one else (Jews, Christians, whatever) has a similar right and must be stripped of their humanness and humanity. We insist that all faiths have a right to be.

People sometimes say that we are not being faced by “the real Islam” which presumably has a streak of tolerance.

Hopefully, God will exercise His omnipotence by weakening and overpowering the enemy and preventing them from getting away with their gross inhumanity.

Rabbi Raymond Apple served for 32 years as the chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australia’s oldest and most prestigious congregation. He is now retired and lives in Jerusalem where he answers interesting questions.