Wordplay of Ruth

While pondering whether to blog here in 2010, I re-read the following towards the end of 2009. 

 וַתִּשֶּׂנָה קוֹלָן

וַתִּבְכֶּינָה עוֹד

וַתִּשַּׁק עָרְפָּה לַחֲמוֹתָהּ

  וְרוּת דָּבְקָה בָּהּ

It's from מגילת רות, the "Scroll of Ruth" (chapter 1, verse 14).   In the story, it's the second explicit mention of the names of the daughters-in-law of Naomi.  The first mention, of course, has the two women named in relation to their men, their husbands (in verse 4).  The men are Naomi's sons, who die and leave the two younger women alone as widows; Naomi cries that she cannot replace them because she's too old to bear more sons in her womb.  The significance of the women, and their names perhaps, seems implicit in their need to conceive and to produce male babies.  But in 14, the names have significance, feminine significances, beyond the men.  There is a literary significance, a wordplay, to get at other realities for the women.  It comes out also in the Hellene translation from the Hebrew, though the play is in different directions.

So let's come back to possible meanings of the names of the two younger women in Hebrew, and then look at how this plays in Greek (i.e., Hellene).  The name "Orpah" (עָרְפָּה) seems to have significance in physical appearance and means something like "bangs" or "forelock" or "mane" - perhaps as a female deer or gazelle might have.  The name "Ruth" (רוּת) seems to have significance physical appearance but  may also have significance in character or relationship; the name, ambiguously, means something like "beauty" or "good looking" and also "friend."  These are Hebrew words for foreign women, for non-Jews who are also females.  When "translated" by Jewish men into Hellene, the words are simply transliterated, so that the Hebrew sounds are retained when you read the Greek:  Ορφα and Ρουθ.  If you are not a Hebrew speaking Jew who is a male, then the significance of the words, even their sounds, is lost in transliteration.

Now, if you go back to re-read verses 4 and 14 with the names actually translated (and not just transliterated), then it goes something like this in English:

4 And they took them wives of the women of Moab: the name of the one was "Doe with Bangs," and the name of the other "Good-looking Friend"; and they dwelt there about ten years.

14 And they lifted up their voice, and wept again; and "Doe with Bangs" kissed her mother-in-law; but "Good-looking Friend" cleaved unto her.

The significances (or the wordplay) in the names seem to come out strongly in verse 14.  (By wordplay I mean not only playfulness but also interpretative play or wiggle room.)  Doe-with-Bangs ("Orpah") kisses her mother-in-law.  The kiss is reminiscent of what Naomi had already done to both young women in verse 9.  There, the mother-in-law is not only comforting them in their grief but she is also giving them a patriarchal blessing.  That is, Naomi is pronouncing God's kindness and rest on the widows provided they return to find men who will marry and impregnate them.  They are to be fruitful and to multiply by bearing male babies, by giving birth to sons.  When Doe-with-Bangs kisses her mother-in-law, she is signaling that she will return (perhaps as gracefully as a running deer to the young bucks at home).

But "Ruth," or Good-looking Friend, does something different, something unexpected.  She does what a young nuptial will do.  She leaves her home to cleave to a husband.  This is reminiscent of Genesis 2:24, a pronouncement of the pattern of a man and a woman cleaving (דָּבַק) together as one flesh.  The friendly thing this young woman does is to cleave to the mother of her dead husband.  There is much more here.  Much more is here theologically and racially and with respect to gender. 

And in the Greek translation there's much more too.  So let's leave the theology and the race question and the issues of sex to turn our focus to the translating.

The Hellene (i.e. Septuagint) rendering of verse 14 is as follows:

καὶ ἐπῆραν τὴν φωνὴν αὐτῶν
καὶ ἔκλαυσαν ἔτι

καὶ κατεφίλησεν Ορφα τὴν πενθερὰν αὐτῆς
καὶ ἐπέστρεψεν εἰς τὸν λαὸν αὐτῆς

Ρουθ δὲ ἠκολούθησεν αὐτῇ

Roughly, we could re-present that in English as follows:

And they raised up their voices
And they cried out continually

And Orpah like a friend kissed her mother-in-law
And returned to her people.


Ruth, however, followed after her

In Greek, the word used for "kissing" is a word that also signifies "friendship." 

But the word used for "following after" smacks (*post-Aristotle) of a social hierarchy of wife under and after a husband, a kind of submissiveness.  And the translators are using a very ironic Greek language to show how striking Ruth's decision in contrast to her sister's.  These are, by the way, foreign females.  The translators are also rendering the old Hebrew as very foreign (in Alexander-the-Great's city Alexandria).  They're nearly reversing which sister is "the friend" but are retaining the striking idea that this "Ruth" is following after (as if cleaving to) a mother-in-law the way Hebrew women would normally cleave to Jewish men (so that more male children could be born).

(The New Testament represents Ruth as a foreign fore-mother of the Messiah, Joshua of Nazareth, as the "son" of David, who is the "son" of Ruth.  The patrilineage to open Matthew's gospel is interrupted by Ruth.  At the end of the gospel of Matthew, the "kiss" is used to signify the betrayal of this Joshua by Judah, who won't follow after this Messiah.  In this way, the Greek translation of Ruth finds a parallel in the gospel of Matthew.  Of course, it's not likely that Matthew writing meant for the parallel.  What I'm noticing, nonetheless, and trying to suggest, is there are reversals and ironies and meanings made in the "Scrolls of Ruth" and its Hebrew-Hellene translation).

-----

*So, just to illustrate what Aristotle sets up as the "following after" hierarchy, here's a bit from his Politics (around 1035b, with H. Rackham translating into English) --

For a man's [or a husband's] acts can no longer be noble if he does not excel as greatly as a man excels a woman [or a husband excels a wife] or a father his children or a master his slaves, so that one who transgresses cannot afterwards achieve anything sufficient to rectify the lapse from virtue that he had already committed; because for equals the noble and just consists in their taking turns, since this is equal and alike, but for those that are equal to have an unequal share and those that are alike an unlike share is contrary to nature, and nothing contrary to nature is noble. Hence in case there is another person who is our superior in virtue and in practical capacity for the highest functions, him it is noble to follow [ἀκολουθεῖν] and him it is just to obey; though he must possess not only virtue but also capacity that will render him capable of action.

gender in Jeremiah: male mother(?)

Our daily reading today is Jeremiah 30 - 31, first in Hebrew, then Greek, then English. It's stuff I read as the kid of evangelical Christian missionary parents, as presumable discussion (J 31) by God of the Old Testament (to his disappointing and disappointed exiled people, i.e., the Jews) about the New Testament. In South Vietnam for one annual mission meeting, each adult and child was given the name of a Bible character - and I was given the name Jeremiah for a week. Don't ask me who came up with that or how. But suffice it to say, that got me interested, as a 9-year-old, in what the text said, and in who Jeremiah was. So I read it with different curiosity. The adult Christian reading of chapter 31, of course, has focused on Matthew's quotation when telling the story of the historical context of Jesus coming into the world (the "voice is heard in Ramah") and verse 31 of chapter 31 is prooftext enough for the New Covenant, which Jesus brings.

What jumps out this morning, to me, after all these years and after finding myself further outside these scriptures, are these things:

ONE:

The two chapters are an interplay between literacy and orality. God tells Jeremiah to write things down, and there's constant quotation, lots of speaking, which Greeks called rhetoric, recaptured graphically from the divine Voice by the hand of a Man. It's a transposition, and the reminders of how the new is going to be a continuation of the old, which is a returning to the old in new ways. God will speak, and humans will get it down. So the Jews, mainly Jeremiah, are writing, and then there's the Septuagint translating, where the Hebrew is made into Hellene, in Egypt of all places.

"31 [38]:32 οὐ κατὰ τὴν διαθήκην, ἣν διεθέμην τοῖς πατράσιν αὐτῶν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ἐπιλαβομένου μου τῆς χειρὸς αὐτῶν ἐξαγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου, ὅτι αὐτοὶ οὐκ ἐνέμειναν ἐν τῇ διαθήκῃ μου, καὶ ἐγὼ ἠμέλησα αὐτῶν, φησὶν κύριος·

"31:32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord."

The Jews in Egypt translating omit "though I was their husband" and replace it with "καὶ ἐγὼ ἠμέλησα αὐτῶν" ("and I disregarded them myself").

TWO:

There are all the gendered allusions. I'm talking, yes, about the "fathers" in the verse above, and the omitted reference to God as husband in the Greek. And also all the references to mothers and virgins and trying to get God's people to identify with being women and wives and such.

THREE:

In addition to the orality /literacy turns and framing, the old and the new cycles here, there's something else. The jump out verse is 30:6 (or in Greek 37:6). Look at it, and look at it as a sort of literary and rhetorical (new and old) frame for these two chapters. Here it is:

שַׁאֲלוּ־נָא וּרְאוּ אִם־יֹלֵד זָכָר מַדּוּעַ רָאִיתִי כָל־גֶּבֶר יָדָיו עַל־חֲלָצָיו כַּיֹּולֵדָה וְנֶהֶפְכוּ כָל־פָּנִים לְיֵרָקֹֽון׃

ἐρωτήσατε καὶ ἴδετε
εἰ ἔτεκεν ἄρσεν καὶ περὶ φόβου
ἐν ᾧ καθέξουσιν ὀσφὺν καὶ σωτηρίαν
διότι ἑώρακα πάντα ἄνθρωπον
καὶ αἱ χεῖρες αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς ὀσφύος αὐτοῦ
ἐστράφησαν πρόσωπα εἰς ἴκτερον

Clearly, the allusion is back to the previous verse, where God is announcing to Jeremiah that "HE" is saying something, starting with "WE," and it's about fearful things.

But this following verse talks (in Greek especially) about a male having children with hands on his loins. The Greek isn't asking a question about this as the Hebrew does. And the Greek doesn't compare the man explicitly to a woman in childbirth pain (ילד) as the Hebrew does. The Greek seems much more factual is the metaphor, in the identity of a male human doing things a male human usually cannot do. God is speaking, man is writing, the new and the old, the Hebrew to Hellene, a fatherless birthing man in translation.

---

I don't have more time for a 15 minute post. The readings could, I suppose, take a lifetime.

and to update this quickly. Here's the RSV English translation of the Hebrew then Brenton's English on the Greek (for that verse above):

"Ask now, and see, can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labour? Why has every face turned pale?"

"Enquire, and see
if a male has born a child? and [ask] concerning the fear,
wherein they shall hold their loins, and [look for] safety:
for I have seen every man,
and his hands are on his loins;
[their] faces are turned to paleness."

(womanly) wordplay in Genesis 38

I was blogging elsewhere today, re-read the Septuagint translation of Genesis 38:9 and 10, and saw wordplay I'd overlooked.  Here's how it plays in my English.

What do you think?  Notice the Greek plays on Knowing as Birthing as Woman as Earth?  I've bolded for comparisons:

9 γνοὺς δὲ Αυναν ὅτι οὐκ αὐτῷ ἔσται τὸ σπέρμα ἐγίνετο ὅταν εἰσήρχετο πρὸς τὴν γυναῖκα τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ ἐξέχεεν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν τοῦ μὴ δοῦναι σπέρμα τῷ ἀδελφῷ αὐτοῦ

9 But Onan had birthed knowledge that the sperm-semen seedwould not be born to him. So whenever he went in to his brother’sbirthing wombman he would waste it on the ground of birth, so as not to give the sperm-semen seed to his brother.

10 πονηρὸν δὲ ἐφάνη ἐναντίον τοῦ θεοῦ, ὅτι ἐποίησεν τοῦτο,
καὶ ἐθανάτωσεν καὶ τοῦτον

10 It was wicked, in fact, appearing in the face of God, this mess that was created,
and so he put him to death and so that was that.

Julia E. Smith's (outsider) translating

Here's some translating by Julia E. Smith:

PSALM CXXXI

SONG of ascensions to David. O Jehovah, my heart was not lifted up, and mine eyes were not exalted, and I went not in great things, and in wonders above me.
2 If I did not place and rest my soul as a child weaned of his mother: my soul as a weaned child.
3 Israel shall hope for Jehovah from now and even to forever.

She is translating all alone - not welcome on any Bible translation team of men of the late 19th century. Those men revising the KJV (without a woman or a Jew on their teams of American and British experts) differently-rendered the Hebrew psalm this way:

1 A Song of Ascents; of David. LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too wonderful for me.
2 Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother, my soul is with me like a weaned child.
3 O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and for evermore.

What fascinates me is how the Smith translating and the Revised Version compare with the Jews' own translating from their Hebrew into their Hellene back in Egypt, in Alexandria, that namesake city of Alexander the Great (student of Aristotle) so far from Jerusalem. Here's that Jewish-Hellene translation that defies Greek imperialism:

1 ᾠδὴ τῶν ἀναβαθμῶν τῷ Δαυιδ κύριε οὐχ ὑψώθη μου ἡ καρδία οὐδὲ ἐμετεωρίσθησαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου οὐδὲ ἐπορεύθην ἐν μεγάλοις οὐδὲ ἐν θαυμασίοις ὑπὲρ ἐμέ
2 εἰ μὴ ἐταπεινοφρόνουν ἀλλὰ ὕψωσα τὴν ψυχήν μου ὡς τὸ ἀπογεγαλακτισμένον ἐπὶ τὴν μητέρα αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀνταπόδοσις ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχήν μου
3 ἐλπισάτω Ισραηλ ἐπὶ τὸν κύριον ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν καὶ ἕως τοῦ αἰῶνος

While there might be some dispute whether the Hebrew that the Jews in Alexandria were translating from and the Hebrew that the nineteenth century Brits and Americans were translating from was the same, there can be no argument over something else.

Notice how the Septuagint translators and Smith start verse 2 with the conditional. She says, "If I did not..."; and they say "εἰ μὴ."

Notice how Smith's and the outsider-Jews' own translation is a big departure from most other translations, including the Revised Version translation.

What does a woman know that most men don't? What do Jews far from home under a king in Egypt no less see in a Psalm of David and of his mother that other and otherwise "independent" men won't or can't?

Don't we get how central the relationship of a psalmist, as a baby, to his mother must be?

Mother Eve, Anthropos

καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον,

κατ' εἰκόνα θεοῦ ἐποίησεν αὐτόν,

ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ ἐποίησεν αὐτούς

Αδαμ δὲ ἔγνω Ευαν τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ,

καὶ συλλαβοῦσα

ἔτεκεν τὸν Καιν

καὶ εἶπεν

Ἑκτησάμην ἄνθρωπον

διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ.

I don't know if you can hear the beauty of the poetry above.  We all, nonetheless, can see it.

In translation to English, it goes something like this.  We all know it goes nothing like this:

And he it created: the god made the mortal human

According to God's likeness, he it created: that person

boy and girl, he them created: those persons

So Adam knew Eve, that wombman of his

and taking it together she

birthed offspring, that Cain,

and said,

I've gotten out a mortal human

through that God

My point in translating into English is to show how foreign the familiar can sound.  And yet it's not really strange at all, to conceive of a mother as conceiving another mortal human being and giving it birth.  There's hardly anything less foreign, except the mystery of it all, than our human mothers giving us life.  It's a translation like no other!

----

The Jewish translators of their Hebrew scriptures chose their words carefully.  When back in Egypt around 250BC, their choice for which Hellene to use was pronounced.  They were living in the city Alexandria, set up as the great Greek metropolis of Alexander the Great.  Alexander had been tutored by Aristotle, and Aristotle by Plato, and Plato by Socrates who had been unjustly condemned.  Here was the new patriarchy.  The new Greek empire had arisen with the philosopher king to reign long, wide, and supreme.

The Hellene of the day in Alexandria was politically correct.  That is, it was the Hellene of philosophy, of science, of ethics, of politics.  It was not the Hellene of myth and muses, of rhetoric and sophistry, of epic poetry and fancy, of barbarism and dissoi logoi.  But the Jews chose the latter.

When we read the Torah in Jewish Greek, we get the idea.  When we read "Genesis" (the translation of the first Hebrew book of Moses into Hellene), we get the idea.  We feel like we're reading the ancient Homer, or Sappho, or Hesiod.  The first four chapters of Genesis reminds us much of Hesiod's "Theo-Gony."

We think of "the common conception and birth shared by immortals and mortals" (ὡς ὁμόθεν γεγάασι θεοὶ θνητοί τ ἄνθρωποι)

We think of the mother earth giving birth to the skies (the heavens) before the gods θεοὶ and humans ἄνθρωποι were born.

We think of Hecate, καὶ μουνογενὴς ἐκ μητρὸς (kai mouno-genes echs metros, "even the only-born of her mother").

We think of the end of Theo-Gony resembling the beginnings of Gen-Esis:

αὗται μὲν θνητοῖσι παρ' ἀνδράσιν εὐνηθεῖσαι
ἀθάναται γείναντο θεοῖς ἐπιείκελα τέκνα.
νῦν δὲ γυναικῶν φῦλον ἀείσατε, ἡδυέπειαι
Μοῦσαι Ὀλυμπιάδες, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο.

While Glenn W. Most reminds us how these very last two lines are also those first two of the Catalogue of Women, Richmond Lattimore translates these four final lines as follows:

__These went to bed with mortal men and,
themselves immortal,
bore to them children in the likeness
__of the immortals.

But now, O sweet-spoken Muses of Olympos,
__daughters
of Zeus of the aegis,
__sing out the generation of women.

Like her . . . or like her . . . or like her
__who . . .

Ancient (Divine & Gendered) Radical Translating

Too much is going on not to blog (and I have some time today, and today only perhaps).

There was this radical suggestion made at this blog, once upon a time, that the name "Moses" is not an original Hebrew name, even as Moses himself might have written it. Rather, a woman (unnamed herself) who is Egyptian gave him the name that makes us all think of our own Mamas.

Today, as we're trying not to bother with gender and other radical stuff in texts, I'm making a similar suggestion. That an Egyptian woman actually plays with the words that name the Hebrew God. It's my English translating (unless noted otherwise):

וְשָׂרַי אֵשֶׁת אַבְרָם לֹא יָלְדָה לֹו

. . . . וְלָהּ שִׁפְחָה מִצְרִית וּשְׁמָהּ הָגָר׃

וַתִּקְרָא שֵׁם־יְהוָה הַדֹּבֵר אֵלֶיהָ אַתָּה אֵל רֳאִי

כִּי אָמְרָה הֲגַם הֲלֹם רָאִיתִי אַחֲרֵי רֹאִי׃

And Princess, the wOmbman of Father Exalted, bore no babe.

And she had a slave-girl, an Egyptian, named Fly-Away. . . .

And she called the name of Yes-He-Was-Here (who spoke to her) “God sees.”

because she said “'I see him here following him seeing me.”

--------

"Genesis" 16.1 And Sarai, Abram's wife, brought not forth to him; and to her a maid servant, an Egyptian, and her name Нagar. . . . 16.13 And she will call the name of Jehovah, having spoken to her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Here also I looked after him seeing me.

(Julia E. Smith's translating).

-------

Σαρα δὲ ἡ γυνὴ Αβραμ οὐκ ἔτικτεν αὐτῷ.

ἦν δὲ αὐτῇ παιδίσκη Αἰγυπτία, ᾗ ὄνομα Αγαρ. . . .

καὶ ἐκάλεσεν Αγαρ τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου τοῦ λαλοῦντος πρὸς αὐτήν Σὺ ὁ θεὸς ὁ ἐπιδών με·

ὅτι εἶπεν Καὶ γὰρ ἐνώπιον εἶδον ὀφθέντα μοι.

(The Greek by Jews translating back in Egypt, where Egyptian women are all around. Imagine.)

Sara, however, the bride of Abram did not deliver for him.

There was, however, her girl-servant, with the name Hagar. . . .

And Hagar called called the name of Master (who is speaking to her) “You’re the God who Says things to me”

because she said, “And, in fact, in front of my eyes I have seen.”

--------

And Sara the wife of Abram bore him no children; and she had an Egyptian maid, whose name was Agar. . . . And she called the name of the Lord God who spoke to her, Thou art God who seest me; for she said, For I have openly seen him that appeared to me.

(Lancelot Brenton translating the Greek into English)


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JUST FOR GRINS, EARLIER IN "GENESIS," GOD GETS IN ON THE TRANSLATING HIMSELF (and isn't that just like a woman from Egypt?) Here's some of that:

וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאֹור יֹום

וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה

וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב

וַיְהִי־בֹקֶר

יֹום אֶחָד׃ ף

And the God-Divinities called the light Day

And the darkness he called Night.

And let there be evening,

And let there be morning,

One day.

---

1.5 And God will call to the light day, and to the darkness he called night: and the evening shall be, and the morning shall be one day.

(Julia E. Smith's translating)

----

καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ἡμέραν
καὶ τὸ σκότος ἐκάλεσεν νύκτα.
καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα

καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί,
ἡμέρα μία.

(The Greek by Jews translating back in Egypt, where Egyptian women are all around. Imagine.)

And the god called the light “day”.

And the darkness he called “night,”

and an evening was born,

and an early dawn was born.

One day.

--

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night, and there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

(Lancelot Brenton translating the Greek into English)

I'm Only Leaving the Posts Public: Not Blogging

"any way you can close comments but leave the posts public? That's a real bummer for people that are trying to access older posts. . . .

[T]he flesh and blood people we live and work with are more important than the online friendships and discussions. But. . . ."

--via email conversation, one of my online friends has persuaded me, but I'm only leaving the posts public (not blogging).

fyi

The blogs Aristotle's Feminist Subject
and The womBman's bible
will shut down tomorrow morning (June 20, 2009).

Please feel free to access any open posts or files there until then. Afterwards, you'll have to access things by emailing



Please also feel free to remove, if you're one of the few who have still them, any links in your blogrolls and such.

(Out) Here I Stand (with You): Profoundly Close

I don't know about for you, but for me one of my favorite lines of the Bible goes like this:

ודבר יהוה אל־משה פנים אל־פנים כאשר ידבר איש אל־רעהו ושב אל־המחנה ומשרתו יהושע בן־נון נער לא ימיש מתוך האהל׃ ס

We all know these words as "Exodus 33:11." They are amazing and wonderful words to me for far too many reasons to enumerate here. Let me discuss just one. And eventually narrow the discussion to just one word.

It is not that this particular Bible verse casts aspersions on all its translations. It's not, I'm suggesting, that this bit of text is glorious in some way that will, as my fellow blogger John Hobbins insists, absolutely "show you that you have no chance of understanding the fine grain of the biblical text unless you know the original languages, and know them well." Nor is there any hint of some categorical insistence, as is that insistence of John's, that "All extant translations of the Bible fall short of the glory of the original."

Rather, one reason these very words are incredible is that they themselves are a translating and an invitation to further translating.

Don't they render as rather rough "the fine grain" of "understanding" and of "knowing well"? Don't they point to distance for any "original" observer of Moses or of God? Don't they highlight the unobtained vantage of every "original" reader of anything Moses ostensibly ever wrote? Even more here and now, don't they point to the fact that John and I (and even you) stand outside those Hebrew scriptures of so long ago and far away as we read them (- as you MUST read them - John would have no trouble quickly adding, as a human might quickly command a sitting dog to "Sit!", though not necessarily intending the ironic ambiguity of his imperative command)?

An approximate insider to this verse will humbly add this kind of footnote:

"11. And the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his fellow. These two idioms for direct communication cannot be literally true because the burden of what follows in this chapter is that no man, not even Moses, can see God's face. The hyperbole is in all likelihood a continuation of the visual perspective of the people so clearly marked in verses 8-10; as it appears to the Israelites from their vantage point in front of their tents, Moses conversing with the pillar of cloud is speaking to God as a man speaks to his fellow.

Joshua son of Nun, a lad. . . . the Hebrew na'ar here reflects its not infrequent sense of someone in a subaltern position. . . ." (page 503)

The near insider who writes such a note is Robert Alter, a Jewish translator of and commenter on The Five Books of Moses. There are plenty of places where Alter finds a translation more compelling than the traditional (i.e., closest to the "original") text. For example, in one note, he adds:

"The [Hebrew] Masoretic Text is not really intelligible at this point, and this English version [i.e., the English of Alter] follows the Septuagint [Greek translation] for the first part of the verse, which has the double virtue of coherence and of resembling several similar parallel locutions elsewhere in biblical poetry." (page 289)

Now, I do recognize that many Jews have trouble with the Septuagint principally because it's a translation of the Hebrew. For instance, former blogger Iyov (whom some of us miss very much for, among other things, reminding us of our goyish perspectives on things Jewish) once started a post this way:

"Biblical translations are often a cause for great sorrow. Famously, the Rabbis compared the completion of the Septuagint to the making of the Golden Calf (see minor Talmudic tractates, Sefer Torah and Soferim. The Talmudic view speaks only of the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, since other books of Tanach in Greek are not considered to be the Septuagint, see the Letter of Aristeas, or Megilla 9A. The latter reference is particularly interesting since it enumerates many flaws in the Septuagint.) Soferim 1:5 explicitly declares, 'The Torah cannot be perfectly translated.'

Indeed, the Septuagint as we have it today goes to great length to point out that translations are not to be relied upon -- thus we read in the prologue to Sirachus (Ben Sira):

'What was originally expressed in Hebrew does not have exactly the same sense when translated into another language. Not only this book, but even the Law itself, the Prophecies, and the rest of the books differ not a little when read in the original.' (NRSV)"

I'm not really trying to go back and forth between disputing practices or views. However, I do want to get back to those Hebrew words at the top of this post. And, I'd like us to consider them and how they open up translating. Alter reads them as "hyperbole." And he rushes us readers (whoever we are) forward to Exodus 33:23, which he in part translates and comments on as follows:

"23. you will see My back, but My face will not be seen. Volumes of theology have been spun out of these enigmatic words. Imagining the deity in frankly physical terms was entirely natural for ancient monotheists: this God had, or at least could assume, a concrete manifestation which had front and rear, face and back, and that face man was forbidden to see. But such concreteness does not imply conceptual naïveté. Through it the Hebrew writer suggests and idea that makes good sense from later theological perspectives: that God's intrinsic nature is inaccessible, and perhaps also intolerable, to the finite mind of man, but that something of His attributes--His 'goodness,' the directional pitch of His ethical intentions, the afterglow of the effulgence of His presence--can be glimpsed by humankind."

Never mind that Alter can't seem to restrain himself from using words like "effulgence" or from the merely male sense of God and humanity made, male and female, in the divine likeness. Alter has to imagine not only the Hebrew words of Moses but also his translation - Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his fellow - as hyperbole. The original language, like its translation, must be hyperbole: "These two idioms for direct communication cannot be literally true because the burden of what follows in this chapter is that no man, not even Moses, can see God's face."

What the Hebrew words focus on is how יהוה spoke with משה. When Moses or his narrator wrote this in Hebrew, there was immediately a transposition. But more there was a rendering. What, really, is the original?

Once we allow that it's not just Joshua or the other Israelites watching who are getting these words in translation, then Pandora's box has opened. Why can't the Jews back in Egypt (Alexandria, Egypt, that is), why can't they translate as beautifully the fine grain of this speaking?

And they do. The original Jewish rendering of their Hebrew into their Greek as Exodus 33:11 goes something like this:

καὶ ἐλάλησεν κύριος
πρὸς Μωυσῆν ἐνώπιος ἐνωπίῳ
ὡς εἴ τις λαλήσει
πρὸς τὸν ἑαυτοῦ φίλον
καὶ ἀπελύετο
εἰς τὴν παρεμβολήν
ὁ δὲ θεράπων
Ἰησοῦς υἱὸς Ναυη
νέος
οὐκ ἐξεπορεύετο
ἐκ τῆς σκηνῆς

(Brenton makes that into English as this:

"And the Lord spoke
to Moses face to face,
as if one should speak
to his friend;
and he retired
into the camp:
but his servant
Joshua the son of Naue,
a young man,
departed not forth
from the tabernacle.")

What is incredibly important here in this Torah translating is that the translators aren't just rendering the unspeakable יהוה as κύριος but, rather, that neither the Hebrew nor the Jewish Greek fills in the silences. (Anne Carson won't fill in Homer's μῶλυ, his "language of the gods," either.) The outsiders, the lurkers and eavesdroppers, are left to do all that.

What is incredibly important here in this Torah translating is that the translators aren't just avoiding words with rhetorical erotical political correctness. (Although they do plenty of that).

What is incredibly important to me is the word φίλον instead of πλησίον. Suzanne McCarthy's already noted that the latter doesn't have to mean "neighbor" as in Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself. And she's added that it can mean "mate," "companion," and "fellow human."

The LXX translators rather consistently translate the Hebrew word רע (rea`) as πλησίον. Alter consistently translates the Hebrew word as "his fellow" and as "fellow man."

But here is φίλον. It's as familiar, as intimate, as a Greek kiss. And is equally as womanly as manly. Not suitable, in fact, only for "fellow men."

Listen to Plato's tenth muse, the lyric poet Sappho (as translated by Edwin Marion Cox):

she speaks of Helen's "dear parents"

[φίλ]ων το[κ]ήων

parents from whom Helen "was led astray
by love,"

παράγαγ᾽ αὔταν
πῆλε φίλει]σαν,

And to a man, perhaps a handsome man,
perhaps her dear brother, she says

"Face me, my dear one...
and unveil the grace in thine eyes."

Στᾶθι κἄντα φίλος,....
καὶ τὰν ἔπ᾽ ὄσσοις ἀμπέτασον χάριν.

She declares,
"Lato [the mother of Apollo and Artemis]
and Niobe [the Theban woman murdered by Apollo and Artemis]
were most dear friends."

Λάτω
καὶ Νιόβα
μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἦσαν ἔταιραι

And she wonders,
and offers:

"For if thou lovest us,
choose another and a younger spouse,
for I will not endure to live with thee,
old woman with young man."

᾽Αλλ᾽ ἔων φίλος ἄμμιν [ἄλλο]
λέχος ἄρνυσω νεώτερον
οὐ γὰρ τλάσομ᾽ ἔγω ξυνοίκην
νεῳ γ᾽ ἔσσα γεραιτερα.

She expresses longings:

"I love refinement and for me Love has the splendour and beauty of the sun."

Ἕγω δὲ φίλημ᾽ ἀβροσύναν, καὶ μοι τὸ λάμπρον
ἔρος ἀελίω καὶ τὸ κάλον λέλογχεν

She asks him, the beloved betrothed:

"To what may I liken thee, dear bridegroom?"

Τίῳ, σ᾽, ὦ φίλε γάμβρε, κάλως ἔικάσω;

And in her Hymn to Aphrodite, there are these three last(ing) stanzas, a reply from the goddess about another lover (with Anne Carson translating):

and what I want to happen most of all
in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again)
to lead you back into her love? Who, O
Sappho, is wronging you?

For if she flees, soon she will pursue.
If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them.
If she does not love, soon she will love
even unwilling.

Come to me now: loose me from hard
care and all my heart longs
to accomplish, accomplish. You
be my ally.

κὤττι μοι μάλιστα θέλω γένεσθαι
μαινόλᾳ θύμῳ, τίνα δηὖτε πείθω
μαῖς ἄγην ἐς σὰν φιλότατα τίς τ, ὦ
Πσάπφ᾽, ἀδίκηει;

καὶ γάρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέως διώξει,
αἰ δὲ δῶρα μὴ δέκετ ἀλλά δώσει,
αἰ δὲ μὴ φίλει ταχέως φιλήσει,
κωὐκ ἐθέλοισα.

ἔλθε μοι καὶ νῦν, χαλεπᾶν δὲ λῦσον
ἐκ μερίμναν ὄσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι
θῦμος ἰμμέρρει τέλεσον, σὐ δ᾽ αὔτα
σύμμαχος ἔσσο

So there's God speaking, the one with the unspeakable name, the invisible one appearing, to Moses. We overhear, eavesdropping. We look from a distance, lurking. The translation Moses leaves them is רע rea` - as an intimate familiar lover. The grain is not any less refined for the inexpert readers, hearing φίλον.

We might call this as much "interlation" as "translation." We might "know" it as much as an "untranslating," the way Ruth Behar's editor declares (in English only): "Ruth's classic ethnography, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story, has just been untranslated into Spanish as Cuéntame algo aunque sea una mentira: Las historias de la comadre Esperanza with Fondo de Cultura Económica in Mexico."

In either translating (whether Hebrew or Hellene), the "knowing" may not necessarily be "understanding" - but is nonetheless a profound and a profoundly close "knowing" of those who love.

Somebody Else's Reading: So Don't Panic

I hope to come back to the translated text called Septuagint soon. This post is just to reassure us that we're not alone, that other people actually read this stuff.

The "don't panic" logo above is from Kevutim, the writings of James R. Getz, Jr. and his Biblical Studies Carnival XLII. If you've stumbled upon this blog but not yet upon his, you might want to hear what the conversation about this blog has been. Here's more than you want to read (and you might find other responses at my other blog, which Getz ignores so I will too):

In Hebrew Bible, J. K. Gayle of The WOMBman’s Bible translated LXX Num 5.11-31 and compared the water ordeal of the sotah to waterboarding. John Hobbins responded that it is important for feminist interpreters “to respect the alterity of the texts” for those to whom the Bible is their “light, mirror, and compass,” if their interpretations are to gain an wider audience. Julia M. O’Brien’s post The F-word the P-word and bell hooks, though independent of the foregoing discussion might nonetheless be relevant. Steering clear of all such discussions, Douglass Mangum of Biblia Hebraic posted on the message of Malachi. Dr Claude Mariottini posted on the question of Who Was King Lemuel?

PS: and for the past few months here have been other, sometimes kinder, comments:

I’m dying for a translation of God’s fiery words that commits a violent work of art! I can’t even understand a blog like WombMan’s Bible (http://wombmansbible.blogspot.com/), but as I taste the issues in passing he makes me want to cry. I’ll gladly struggle through awkward phrasings and heavy-handed restructurings if someone will give me the passion.
--from codepoke

I have almost almost given up writing about translation because there has been little to stimulate new thoughts and approaches. Mostly rehashing the same old thing. But here is a new blog called The WOMBman's Bible. In this post, there are several very striking observations about worldplay in the Greek translation of the first few chapters of Genesis.
--from Suzanne's Bookshelf with a nice comment also from Jane Stranz.

Also returning is J.K. Gayle, on The WOMBman’s Bible (looking at those wacky Greek translations of the Jewish scriptures) and Aristotle’s Feminist Subject (looking at many things, but always looking at them a little askew).
--from those kind reporters of the Top Bibliobloggers
who had noticed when I'd returned to blogging (after a hiatus) for all kinds of wacky reasons.

Lest We Cared What She'd Say

Today the Sotah ritual is long gone. A spouse who suspects infidelity has different resources at her or his disposal. But I think this week's Torah portion hints at emotional truths that still resonate even so. Maybe the story of the Sotah can help us face jealousy's capacity to damage our relationships, and can give us insight into the necessary journey (both personal and partnered) between accusation and resolution.
--Rachel Barenblat, Velveteen Rabbi, "Bread and bitter water (Radical Torah repost)"

As men make and execute the laws, prescribe and administer the punishment, "trials by a jury or ordeal" for women though seemingly fair, are never based on principles of equity. The one remarkable fact in all these social transgressions in the early periods as well as in our modern civilization is that the penalties whether moral or material all fall on woman. Verily the darkest page in human history is the slavery of women!
--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective

Numbers 5: It is written, It's the law (but, Oh dear, what if that were something else?)

.
Here below, I've continued translating Numbers 5. And have gotten to The End.

When you go there, do notice the Greek "It is written, It is the Law" in verses 23, 29. See the formation of canon ספר cepher כתב kathab - the poetic antistrophe of γράψει [εἰς] βιβλίον grapsei eis Biblion - The justice of Scripture - with the poetic justice of translation. Hear תורה Torah as πάντα τὸν νόμον panta ton nomon - The comprehensive Rule of Law. Period.

And when you get there, you'll also see I've substituted Brenton's and Flint's fine English translations (of the Jews' Greek translating of the Hebrew) for more translating (from their Greek into my English) by me. Oh dear. Dear me, it's some flipped perspective, the Bible as mirror (or light or compass, my friends).

On your way there, would you please also do something else? Maybe something even more important than getting with finality to The End? Would you read of women who write differently?

Would you read Helene Cixous replying and Michelle Baliff asking something (in Baliff's "Re/Dressing Histories; Or, On Re/Covering Figures Who Have Been Laid Bare by Our Gaze," Rhetoric Society Quarterly, v22 n1 p91-98)? In part, she says:

According to Aristotle’s aesthetics, a narrative must be arranged according to some organizing principle.... Aristotle also offers us the classificatory system of binaries to help us order our stories, to order our experiences, to order ourselves.... But perhaps Woman can (un)speak in the unthought, not-yet-thought, non-spaces produced by alternative paradigms, by new idioms, by paralogical and paratactical and, thus, illegitimate discourses. What... if our narrative had no syllogistic, metonymic, linear or triangular structure? .... What if Truth were a Woman... what then? Cixous replies, Then all stories would have to be told differently....

And would you read Rachel Barenblat making women count before Numbers 5? Here's her poem:

HEAD BY HEAD (BAMIDBAR)

Take a census
family by family
listing the names
every female, head by head

record them in their groups
all those in the community
who can weave wool
and spin tales

do this with women
alongside you, each one
the recognized head
of her ancestral house

count each girl and woman
able to plant seed
and nurture new growth
to turn grain into bread

each one who can teach
the ways of her mothers
imagine if our Torah said this
how different our story would be

Now The End.

Numbers 5: Sexist Waterboarding

Below is my feminist rhetorical translating of a few paragraphs of the Jewish translation of Hebrew scriptures into Hellene. I'm trying to draw attention to several things:

1. that the Jews rendering their holy scriptures into Greek have been playful, have taken advantage of the Homeric paradigm (which contrasts greatly to Plato's idealism - which Noam Chomsky uses for "Language" and which Eugene Nida uses for "dynamic equivalence" translation; the Homer style of language also contrasts greatly with Aristotle's binary - which Chomsky uses for "language features" and which Ernst-August Gutt uses for "Relevance Theory")
2. that the Jewish Greek allows much play in English (and by word play I mean both interpretive wiggle room and playfulness).
3. that the text's painful sexism doesn't need either to marginalize the body of the woman (the wife suspected and accused by her husband of unfaithfulness) or to leave the Male roles in the passage un-marked, as if they were the central and default and natural roles.
4. that this is the Bible (the book that so many in Western culture appropriate so selectively when justifying the silencing of women and the kinds of things they must cover their bodies and their head with and when they can speak and when they must disrobe for men.)

You'll likely find other things in the translatings (both the Greek of the Hebrew and my English of the Greek). And do notice the Greek please, even if you think you don't "know" it. I've formatted and color coded and highlighted and bolded some of the Greek text. You should be able, then, to track the interlation - the translating back and forth - between Hellene and English. It's literary, it's oral-visual, it's sensory. And why wouldn't a text dealing with bodies and sex be?

For other things to notice, for more contrasts, I've included both Brenton's and Flint's translations again [Flint's with his footnotes right in the text for you].

I'd be absolutely thrilled if you'd like to make a comment or two. But then these sorts of sordid, torturous texts (about waterboarding-like sexism in the bible) are not always the things we talk about, are they?

Numbers 5: Men talk

I said in the previous post that I'd offer commentary on the translation of the first four verses of Numbers 5. What I started then and continue below is a rephrasing in English that shows some of the sexism in the Greek words in other contexts. It's word play on the order of Mary Daly's play with English, with gyn/ecology. Readers at first, especially reading Hebrew, may doubt that woman is put down in and by the text. After all, every culture, relative to itself, exists and thrives for reasons, for exigencies that sometimes make life difficult - more difficult especially for the outsider looking in. I'm not trying to pretend insiderness or objectivity, even with the Greek. So when the greek has a word for the idea of the camp of the sons and daughters of Israel in the desert outside of Egypt, then I'm interested in how that reads in Alexandria Egypt, back inside Egypt, when there's a military camp nearby by that same Greek name (men only in the army) - translated into English it can be something in rhetoric analogous to a parenthesis in writing. Parembole. But it's slightly phallic, isn't it this rigid insertion? Which makes us English and Western readers think of Freud and Oedipus and the like.

So when God speaks the second time to Moses, as below, he tells him to speak to the sons. Perhaps, this in Greek (and Hebrew) is inclusive, inclusive of the daughters as well. Perhaps. So I'm translating the Greek word usually translated "sins" as "messy misses" - in English - both to commit the classic meaning of a missed target in archery but also to enact a play on the words "mess" and "misses" and "Mrs." as in words that may easily collocate in a gynophobic society. There's more you may find there. I have color coded some of the words to show Greeky structure (and have taken away some of the accent marks and similar aids of punctuation). And you'll find Brenton's and Flint's translations also to compare (with my formatting of paragraphs as if to aid the comparisons). Hope it's more fun than tedious, more serious in a helpful way than pedantic.

Numbers 5 (translation): before it gets extremely sexist

Below are the first four verses of Numbers 5, as translated into the imperial linguafranca, Greek, in the kingdom of Egypt established by Alexander the Great - a translation by Jews from their Hebrew (written by Moses outside of Egypt, as received from God in some language, maybe Egyptian, maybe Hebrew).

And the verses are further translated into English by three of us: Sir Lancelot Brenton, Peter W. Flint (for the NETS Septuagint), and me. I'll give more commentary later and elsewhere (which I'll link to here); let me just say this:

Before Numbers 5 gets into the really sexist part, these first four verses are not necessarily as benign to women and girls as they might seem. There are interesting differences between the Hebrew and the Greek, the latter bringing to light perhaps the phallogocentrism of the empire. My English works within the play in the words to show the possibilities of sexist language and attitudes of the text. That's enough for now. Here it is:

Numbers 5: ORDER!

The first thing that Master says to Moses in Numbers 5 is this:

Πρόσταξον τοῖς υἱοῖς Ισραηλ

This is the Greek translation by Jews (in Egypt) of what Moses (once outside of Egypt) wrote that God (aka יהוה) told him. In Hebrew that's this:

צַו אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

As I'm re-viewing my first attempt at a word-play translating into English (of both the Greek and Hebrew), I'm struck by the first word of God. Does he really speak Hebrew to Moses? What if they're speaking Egyptian (Moses's "mother tongue") and Moses is just translating it צוה (tsavah) for the Jews in the desert?! What he must be getting exactly right -- as far as a literary or a dynamic equivalence goes -- is that this is God's command and his imperative to the sons (the offspring) of Isra El. So the sons of Israel in Alexandria Egypt render the word into Greek as an imperative command with a direct object (the sons of Isra El): Πρόσταξον.

Already there's wordplay. The word is reflexive. Its original audience becomes its speaker. Its original Speaker becomes an audience. Its original implied subject is a member of the direct audience. Its direct object becomes its subject. Its insiders become outsiders and vice versa. It's the stuff linguists spend hours on and sociolinguists speculate about and anthropologists fill ethnographies with and rhetoricians delight in. Theologians and lexicographers and etymologists and philologists pontificate about this stuff.

The thing that amazes me in the word is that it's tough to deny the wordplay. I don't care if you're Aristotle. I don't care if you have your orderly logic and your systematic syllogism well ordered. I don't care if you have written a scholarly treatise called Oieko-Nom-icks (Economics, or Household-Rules) in which masters and slaves and men and their womb-wives know their place. Just as soon as you try to lock down πρόσταξον, you find it escaping to all sorts of unintended places.

For example, πρόσταξον broadens out from the Hebrew word (meaning more "command") and ambiguously suggests a different kind of "order," an ordering of sorts. So, in Greek, it's hardly just "the giving of an order" but it's also "the very putting to order," or "arranging according to an order" that is suggested.

And alongside ὑποτάσσεσθε, another imperative, it reintroduces class and gender. When one reads Numbers 5 in Greek alongside Ephesians 5 in Greek, then one sees the ordering of social rank by social position and by sex. The sons of Isra El are ordered. Their women-wives have a different rank. And the now-free sons of Isra El, now free from slavery in Egypt, may actually enslave women and men. The social order must be explicit. Men over women-wives, and Masters over slaves. The lower are commanded, are ordered, by ὑποτάσσεσθε.

John Chrysostom, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, sees that both words (with his third one, σύστασιν) are important when passing through Ephesians 5 and coming to Ephesians 6. Otherwise, there is no order. Chrysostom writes (commenting on verses 5-8 of chapter 6) to give household rules (reminiscent of Aristotle's):

Ὥστε οὐκ ἀνὴρ μόνον, οὔτε γυνὴ, οὔτε παιδία, ἀλλὰ καὶ οἰκετῶν ἀρετὴ συντελεῖ εἰς σύστασιν καὶ πρόστασιν οἰκίας. Διὰ τοῦτο ὁ μακάριος Παῦλος οὐδὲ τούτου τοῦ μέρους ἠμέλησεν· ἀλλ’ ἔρχεται μὲν ἔσχατον ἐπ’ αὐτὸ, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἔσχατον κεῖται τῷ ἀξιώματι. . . .

"Οἱ δοῦλοι," φησὶν, "ὑπακούετε τοῖς κυρίοις κατὰ σάρκα."

Εὐθέως τὴν λελυπημένην ἀνέστησε ψυχὴν, εὐθέως παρεμυθήσατο. Μὴ ἄλγει,
φησὶν, ὅτι ἔλαττον ἔχεις καὶ τῆς γυναικὸς, καὶ τῶν παίδων· ὄνομα δουλείας ἐστὶ μόνον· κατὰ σάρκα ἐστὶν ἡ δεσποτεία, πρόσκαιρος καὶ βραχεῖα· ὅπερ γὰρ ἂν ἦ σαρκικὸν, ἐπίκηρόν ἐστι.

"Μετὰ φόβου," φησὶ, "καὶ τρόμου."

Ὁρᾷς ὅτι οὐ τὸν αὐτὸν ἀπαιτεῖ παρὰ γυναικὸς καὶ δούλων φόβον; Ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς εἶπεν·

"Ἡ δὲ γυνὴ, ἵνα φοβῆται τὸν ἄνδρα·"

ἐνταῦθα δὲ μετ’ ἐπιτάσεως,

"Μετὰ φόβου," φησὶ, "καὶ τρόμου. Ἐν ἁπλότητι τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν, ὡς τῷ Χριστῷ."

Συνεχῶς τοῦτό φησι. Τί λέγεις, ὦ μακάριε Παῦλε; ἀδελφός ἐστι, τῶν αὐτῶν ἀπέλαυσεν, εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ σῶμα τελεῖ· μᾶλλον δὲ ἀδελφὸς ἐγένετο οὐ τοῦ κυρίου τοῦ ἑαυτοῦ, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ, τῶν αὐτῶν ἀπολαύει πάντων, καὶ λέγεις,

"Ὑπακούετε τοῖς κατὰ σάρκα κυρίοις μετὰ φόβου καὶ τρόμου;"

Διὰ γὰρ τοῦτο, φησὶ, φημί. Εἰ γὰρ τοὺς ἐλευθέρους ἀλλήλοις ὑποτάσσεσθαι κελεύω διὰ τὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ φόβον, καθάπερ ἀνωτέρω ἔλεγεν·

"Ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις ἐν φόβῳ Θεοῦ·"

εἰ γὰρ τὴν γυναῖκα προστάσσω φοβεῖσθαι τὸν ἄνδρα, καίτοι αὕτη καὶ ὁμότιμός ἐστι· πολλῷ μᾶλλον τὸν οἰκέτην. Οὐ γὰρ δυσγένεια τὸ πρᾶγμά ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἡ πρώτη εὐγένεια, τὸ εἰδέναι ἐλαττοῦσθαι, καὶ μετριάζειν, καὶ εἴκειν τῷ πλησίον. Καὶ ἐλεύθεροι ἐλευθέροις μετὰ πολλοῦ φόβου καὶ τρόμου ἐδούλευον.

Thus then it is not husband only, nor wife, nor children, but virtuous [slave] servants also that contribute to the [ordered] organization and [ordered] protection of a house. Therefore the blessed Paul has not overlooked this department even. He comes to it, however, in the last place, because it is last in dignity and rank. . . .

“S[lave s]ervants,” saith he, “be obedient to them that, according to the flesh, are your masters.”

Thus at once he raises up, at once soothes the wounded soul. Be not grieved, he seems to say, that you are inferior to the wife and the children. Slavery is nothing but a name. The mastership is “according to the flesh,” brief and temporary; for whatever is of the flesh is the flesh, is transitory.

“With fear,” he adds, “and trembling.”

Thou seest that he does not require the same fear from slaves as from wives: for in that case he simply said,

“and let the wife see that she fear her husband”;

whereas in this case he heightens the expression,

“with fear,” he saith, “and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”

This is what he constantly says. What meanest thou, blessed Paul? He is a brother, or rather he has become a brother, he enjoys the same privileges, he belongs to the same body. Yea, more, he is the brother, not of his own master only, but also of the Son of God, he is partaker of all the same privileges; yet sayest thou,

“obey your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling”?

Yes, for this very reason, he would say, I say it. For if I charge free men to submit themselves one to another in the fear of God,—as he said above,

“submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ”;

—if I charge moreover the wife to fear and reverence her husband, although she is his equal; much more must I so speak to the [slave] servant. It is no sign of low birth, rather it is the truest nobility, to understand how to lower ourselves, to be modest and unassuming, and to give way to our neighbor. And the free have served the free with much fear and trembling.

[--Philip Schaff translating, with my bolding and formatting to show correspondences]

Now, just to summarize. Translation by insiders, such as the Jews in Egypt using the lingua franca of the Greek empire for the Hebrew of Jews outside of Egypt using Hebrew for the words of God and the Egyptians, can open things up. If Aristotle, or Paul, or John Chrysostom, or Moses, or God, or any of us, would suggest a word can Order in an invariable way one human over another, then think again. The fundamental structure of patriarchy is exploded by words. The "necessary" binary, the A and NOT A, the A is over B, the algebra -- all exploded by words, by translation, by the polysemous dimensions of rhetorics and feminisms. A word, a necessary translation, opens up meanings in freeing ways. Words, because of humans and their Creator, actually allow word play. This is playfulness and also wiggle room - wordplay, ambiguity. And this play allows an ordering, but a re-ordering, a Πρόσ-ταξον.

Numbers 5: first try at a wordplay for wordplay translation

Below, I think you can just click on the image of a page to enlarge and read it. It's my first try at a wordplay for wordplay translation of Numbers 5. I'm working from both a Hebrew (masoret) text and a Hellene (Greek Septuagint) text, following the latter primarily.

The goal is to have an English text I can work with as I comment on "Numbers 5" over at Aristotle's Feminist Subject (another blog of mine). I started a series of commentary there but need a more focused reference. (The first post just mentioned a one-word wordplay that I'll come back to now - the post? "Like Waterboarding for Chocolate"). I've been looking at Julia Smith's and Robert Alter's more literal translations of the Hebrew and Lancelot Brenton's and Peter Flint's more or less literal translations of the Greek.

The only thing by way of commentary here I should note is that I've [CAPPED AND PUT IN BRACKETS] any translation of the wordplay of Hebrew. The rest is my translating of the Septuagint translators' translating of some Hebrew (whether it's the masoretic text show or some other).

Mothers of Moses

First, read Suzanne's post. Now you know how what's she's saying there has prompted me to say something more here. (No, I'm not blogging any more; just today).

See how Suzanne gets to the importance of gendered language? The insertion of male-only metaphors closes down a text and the translation of that text. Pay attention to the ironic examples she gives from one text of Creation (aka Sefer Yetsira or ספר יצירה) and from another text of Creation (aka Sefer Ma'aseh Be-Réshit or בְּרֵאשִׁית and Genesis or Γένεσις). The examples are ironic when the "creation" text uses "tongue" only (but not "lips"), so un-creatively, so de-creatively. Allowing men only to translate (in masculinist ways, or by abstract phallogocentric methods alone) kills creation. Suzanne starts by showing the womanly translation of Julia Smith, who (she says in her next post) is one of "the heroes of transparency and word for word translation. . . [with] a sense of the sound and flow of the language. . . not just translating meaning, but metaphor and imagery, alliteration and assonance." (Notice how Smith is not the only one who so heroically translates. Suzanne names two men as such heroic translators as well).

Womanly translation, which is like the "écriture féminine" espoused by Hélène Cixious, is plural. And is inclusive, of not only male but also female genders. Nancy Mairs describes such as "feminine discourse," as "not the language of opposites but a babel of eroticism, attachment, and empathy." Just to be clear, Aristotle, the father of masculinist language (i.e., Greek male-only logic), observed females in nature as the opposite of males. Biologically, the procreative organs and genitals of females are, Aristotle says, both the counterpart to and the inverse of the male procreative genital. He adds that females are inferior to males, are actually opposite and botched mutilations of males. Thus, the very vocalized sounds of females are inferior to male voices. Females in opposition to males, according to Aristotle, are "directly translational." But Mairs shows that one example of feminine discourse (as translational and plural as such can be) actually "blows to smithereens" the dominant male-only example of a "cultural paradigm" in the West (i.e., the Baconian "essay" not the Montaignian "essais"); Mairs's speaks of the richness of Alice Walker's personal, bodily, inclusive translation or reworking of the essay.

I suppose the previous paragraph will run off all readers who have little tolerance for anything feminist. And yet, Suzanne's post moves me forward to talk about what the text we've come to know as Exodus includes.

There are two things I want to discuss here.

One, do you notice how the name Moses comes from a woman, an Egyptian female? How she bends down and pulls the little baby out of the Nile River? And she says, "Let's call him Pulled Out"? And how she's speaking Egyptian, of course!? But how the Hebrew translators of her words put them in, well, in Hebrew, of course!? Or is the ambiguous claim of the "original" Hebrew text that "she" is the "sister" of the one pulled out of the Nile by the Egyptian daughter? Look for yourself! Listen to the wordplay:

וַיִגְדַּל הַיֶּלֶד וַתְּבִאֵהוּ לְבַת־פַּרְעֹה וַיְהִי־לָהּ לְבֵן וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמֹו מֹשֶׁה וַתֹּאמֶר כִּי מִן־הַמַּיִם מְשִׁיתִהוּ׃

משה (Mosheh aka "Moses")
משה (mashah aka "draw out")
מים (mayim aka "[from] water(s)")

There are the bi-labial sounds of אם ('em), the universal cry for "ma" for "ma ma" for "mother." These are the first sounds on the lips of Moses, the baby, as his mother nurses him. Two lips are needed, for the nursing, for the creative, voiced name "Ma" and אם ('--m).

And the Egyptian daughter understands the sounds so well.

Two, I want to look at how Exodus 2 further disrupts the male-only line (i.e., the masculine genealogy, the patriarchy) of these Hebrews. Notice how the mother of Moses, the biological mother, is an unnamed daughter. This is significant. She is only named in reference to the "son" of Israel named Levi, and to one of the "sons" of this "son" named Levi. HE is איש ('iysh). But she is not named as his opposite, as coming from "man" (i.e., she's not called in this text אשה ['ishshah]). And she is not called a womb-man by the Jewish men translating the Hebrew into Greek (i.e., she is not translated as ἡ γυνὴ). Nonetheless, as we keep reading in both Hebrew and in Hellene, she is a mother, the mother who conceives and bears and hides the one to be called Moses [i.e., the One Pulled out by a mother who gives him back to his mother from whom he's pulled out, from whose breasts he nurses, whom he first and also calls אם ('--m, or "ma").

Remember how this same Moses later complains, in Hebrew, not only, "I being heavy of mouth, and heavy of tongue" but also "I of uncircumcised lips"?! (See Exodus 4:10 but then 6:12). Both the tongue and (for this man Moses) the lips are impediments to pulling the people out of slavery under a dominant man (i.e. Pharaoh) in Egypt.

This patriarchy of males cannot do without girls, without daughters, without mothers. And these girls and mothers and daughters are translational. They are equal with boys, with sons, with fathers, in the image of the god (i.e. of God) who created both genders. ("Let us create. . . boy and girl he created them"). I'm using "girl" and "sister" and "mother" as I write in English because they are gendered terms not dependent on some opposite. They are not like "female" which depends on "male" and "woman" which depends on "man." Equality, in originality, in creativity, in the Beginning, does not classify one sex as secondary to or as below the other sex. Don't misunderstand what I'm trying to say: female and woman are good English words--but they are terms that are marked as aberrant forms of their unmarked (i.e., default) male and man counterparts.

The story teller of what we know as Exodus 2 seems to get the disruption of the Hebrew patriarchy by girls, by mothers, by daughters not only of Hebrews but also of Egyptians. The translators translating in Egypt, using Homeric Hellene for their Hebrew, seem to get this too.

So let's focus now on just one "verse" of Exodus 2. We hear in verse 3 some of the most incredible echos of mothers desperate to protect and to preserve their progeny. Look and listen:

Here's the Hebrew.

וְלֹא־יָכְלָה עֹוד הַצְּפִינֹו וַתִּקַּח־לֹו תֵּבַת גֹּמֶא וַתַּחְמְרָה בַחֵמָר וּבַזָּפֶת וַתָּשֶׂם בָּהּ אֶת־הַיֶּלֶד וַתָּשֶׂם בַּסּוּף עַל־שְׂפַת הַיְאֹר׃

Now here's Julia Smith's English.

"And she will not be able any more to hide him, and she will take for him an ark of bulrush, and will pitch it with bitumen and with pitch, and she will put in it the child, and will put in the sedge by the lip of the river."

Do you see and hear? There's the return to Babel (i.e., "pitch it with bitumen and with pitch"), the repetition of "lip" (as is heard in the originally story of Babel). Now in Exodus, the Hebrew and the English, of the original story teller and of the translator, give this to readers. Why? What's so important about the re-collection of "bitumen" and "pitch"? It's what humans used to try to build a city state and a tower to get to the god (i.e., God). Now a mother is using the same materials to try to get her baby away from the man who would kill Hebrew males only. What's so important about the "lip" metaphor, instead of say a "bank" for the river? Some will say that a gendered reading of "lip" here as feminine discourse is "reading into the text." But why not another Hebrew metaphor, why not another English word? Don't these suggest other possibilities for a male only text? Don't they (allow us, boy and girl, to) disrupt the patriarchy? Isn't the disallowing of "lip" more than a "loss in translation"? Isn't the refusal to use "lip" (as an ambiguous, opened-up metaphor) an enactment of masculinist (i.e., phallogocentric) translation, in which the usually-male translator gets on his high horse and decides that "lip" is not "fit" for the nature of his "natural" English? Isn't "field-testing" (again in a "male" dominant select group of "native speakers") just a smoke screen for excluding the possibilities of alternative interpretations?

So let's turn to the Hellene translation by the Hebrews living in Egypt (and immediately then to Lancelot Brenton's and Larry Perkins's respective English "translations" of the Greek).

ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐκ ἠδύναντο αὐτὸ ἔτι κρύπτειν, ἔλαβεν αὐτῷ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ θῖβιν καὶ κατέχρισεν αὐτὴν ἀσφαλτοπίσσῃ καὶ ἐνέβαλεν τὸ παιδίον εἰς αὐτὴν καὶ ἔθηκεν αὐτὴν εἰς τὸ ἕλος παρὰ τὸν ποταμόν.

"And when they could no longer hide him, his mother took for him an ark, and besmeared it with bitumen, and cast the child into it, and put it in the ooze by the river." - Brenton

"But when they could hide it no longer, its mother took a basket and plastered it with a mixture of pitch and tar, and she put the child in it and placed it in the marsh beside the river." - Perkins

What do you see? Or, rather, what do you neither see nor hear in the Greek? No "lip" of the river where the one (Hebrew) mother of Moses hides him to be delivered out of the river by the other (Egyptian) mother of Moses. This "delivery" by the translators using Greek fails to convey all that it does by the story teller using Hebrew, using "lip."

Suzanne has already noted something similar earlier in the Greek-translated Hebrew text:

"But the Greeks [i.e., the males reading and translating in Greek] would have none of that. The translators of the Septuagint could not write that Moses was of 'uncircumcised lips.' They clearly found this kind of formal equivalence to be impossible and refused to accept such a foreign notion in this case. In Greek the ears could literally be 'uncircumcised' and the heart, as well. This leads me to believe that the Greek translators did, indeed, associate the 'lips' with the female pudenda, and deliberately rejected the possibility that 'lips' could be circumcised."

So the translators are translating in a way that robs the text of feminine gender with respect to the female body in metaphor (i.e., a conception of and a carrying of meanings to full term towards the birth of new meanings, as in the playful name of Moses). The Hebrew senses are lost in translation into Greek.

And yet, there is something found in the Greek that's not in Hebrew. What's found is found in the Hellene feminine again. Did you see it?

I'm talking about the verb, κατέχρισεν (kate-chris-en). Brenton only puts that in English as "besmeared"; and Perkins only as "plastered."

Perhaps the English translators of the Greek (i.e., Brenton and Perkins) are looking not at the Greek but at the Hebrew: חמר (chamar). Most English translators have made this Hebrew something like "daubed" or "covered." Most have, that is, in this context only. In every other context, the English translators of the Hebrew tend translate this Hebrew word negatively. For instance, in Job 16:16, weeping "fouled" [not "covered" or "daubed" or "plastered"] his face; in Lamentations 1:20 and 2:11, bowels are "troubled" [not "covered"]; in Psalms 46:3, it's water that is "troubled" and in Psalms 75:8, it's wine that is made "red" and bad.

Is such negativity what the Greek translators are after in Exodus 2:3 by rendering חמר (chamar) as κατέχρισεν (kate-chris-en)?

Yes, I think these translators in Egypt recognize how troubling the Hebrew word. And so they turn to a troubling context in Greek: the agency of women and their washings and anointings. Four times in Homer's Odus-ssey (the proto Ex-Odus) there are these lines:

τὰρ ἐπεὶ λοῦσέν τε καὶ ἔχρισεν λίπ’ ἐλαίῳ,
ἀμφὶ δέ μιν φᾶρος καλὸν βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνα,

First, beautiful Polycaste, the daughter of Nestor Neleides, is bathing Telemachus. "Then after she bathes him she slathers oil on him; and she wraps him in a well-formed coat and tunic" (in Book 3, lines 466-467). Second, Telemachus (again) and (this time) with Nestor's son get the exact same treatment from the slave women (in Book 10 lines 364). Third, Circe bathes and oils up and clothes the buddies of Odysseus (Book 10 continued).

Fourth, but earlier in the story, Helen herself, "born of Zeus," is the one speaking. She's borrowed helpful potions from an Egyptian woman, Thonus' wife Polydamna. And here she uses them. (See translator-scholar Suzanne Jill Lavine's comment on potions, on the pun of pharmakon.) Yes, here's a Greek heroine getting help from an Egyptian heroine. Helen then tells of bathing Odysseus, the one journeying on the Way, and it is he, this central Greek hero of the story, whom she ἔχρισεν has anointed with oil. (Book 4, lines 252-253)

The translators of Hebrew Ex-Odus into Greek are surely aware of Homer and the Odus-ssey. It seems the story of Moses being pulled out of the Egyptian river by an Egyptian daughter in some ways reminds them of the story of Odysseus and his Wayfaring. In particular, they remember the Greek verb ἔχρισεν (e-chris-en) as they look to translate the consistently troubling Hebrew verb חמר (chamar). No doubt they remember also the logic of female pollution, according to some Greek men; for example, Hesiod warns, "Let a man not clean his skin in water that a woman has washed in. For a hard penalty follows on that for a long time." (Op. 753-55). In Exodus 2:3, there's a group of daughters, Egyptians too, who bathe in the river and gather at it's lip. A daughter of Levi who couples with a son of Levi finds herself putting a circumcised Hebrew male baby down in this ooze (i.e., τὸ ἕλος, or helos).

Notice how ἕλος (or the troubled yucky female-polluted water for the Greek men) ambiguously plays on Hellene, on Helen. Notice how ἔχρισεν (e-chris-en) plays on Homer's women anointing men after their bathing them. Notice how apt this term for the Hebrew men translating their mother tongue without the lip into Hellene.

Notice how χρισ (Chris) is used later for משיח (mashiyach, aka Messiah aka "Christ"). The first "anointed" is the basket of Moses by the Hebrew mother in Egypt (translated in Egypt into Hellene). See and hear how meanings can be found (rather than lost) in translation.

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One last little playful note. David creates these "psalms" he calls cyber psalms. Others now have been singing them aloud. Yesterday, I so badly wanted to translate Cyber Psalm 29 from his English into a Zimbabwe woman's Fanagalo. Alas, I only found Brazilian Portuguese available for our play with words. I know my friend studied his Portuguese in Portugal, and uses it even to teach in Mozambique, so I figured the American version was distant enough. There is play I say. "They bilk the bank," sings the psalmist in his original. And he adds, "They snatch the bread," to the same line. So she sings back with added alliteration and idiomatic idiom: "Eles pilhar porquinho de poupança. Eles pegam o pão." She's not a "native speaker" so he does note that her grammar is non-native. No, her lips speak Fanagalo, and perhaps some non-native English and a little Portuguese. Look, listen. (And call me crazy for overhearing all that. Bon voyage, friend. We're glad you're going to be blogging again.)