About
fifteen years ago, I was standing in a museum on the campus of Emory
University in Atlanta, looking at a small, 2,000-year-old limestone box, an
ossuary, which had once held the bones of someone from 1st Century
Palestine. Discovered in Jerusalem in 1990, the box bore an inscription
in Aramaic, “Yehosef bar Qayafa" - Joseph, son of Caiaphas. It is the
opinion of some scholars that this held the bones of Caiaphas, the high priest who conducted the trial of Jesus. This man, at one time, heard another man standing before him speak these words, "You'll see the son of mankind sitting to the right of the power and coming with the clouds of the sky."
Looking at that box, I realized I was quite possibly standing at one remove from a physical link to the story that has dictated and dominated my life. I am a Christian. I gave my life to Christ at the age of seven in a Southern Baptist church in Alabama. I have taught Sunday School at two churches for almost 20 years. I read the Gospels twice a year. But looking at this stone box was sobering and exhilarating - I am separated in so many ways from the story I have told so many times.
I was reminded of this reading Sarah Ruden’s new translation, “The Gospels.” Yeshua ben Yosef – otherwise known as Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, the Christ – spoke a different language than I do. He lived on another continent in another time. The Jesus I know through my church has passed down through two millennia worth of cultural and linguistic compromises – some would say distortions. The fellowship he enjoyed with his followers is utterly alien to my experience, and that of many in the 21st century church. Jesus didn’t go to covered dish suppers. He wasn’t taught with felt boards at Vacation Bible School, then offered a cookie and Kool-Aid. He took few recorded political stands and never needed to tell someone who to vote for. He told his followers they had to be willing to give up their mothers and fathers, and even hate themselves, to be his disciples.
Some people reject this outright. Others are fine with the spirit of the message but not at all at home among Jesus' professed followers. Some people try a compromise – and listen to the parts of the Gospels that make them feel better. Some are uneasy not just with the words, but how we received them and how they’ve been passed down. Others are OK with the idea of Jesus but made uneasy by the actual words on the page, regardless of how we got them.
What Ruden does is go back to the actual words on the page – the Greek manuscripts settled on by scholars from surviving copies, and translate them into a rough, readable English. The result is a reminder that the Gospels are undeniably the most successful persuasive texts in human history. It’s also a reminder that they succeed largely because of their subject matter, and not because of their authors’ particular gifts.
Ruden's translation is not for everybody. Her decision to render God in lowercase, to reflect the way the word appears in the original manuscript, may rub many as irreverent. Reviewers have also called attention to her decision to give us the names in the original Greek. Thus, Jesus is “Iēsous,” John the Baptist is “Iōannēs the Baptizer,” and so on. Instead of Apostles, they are “envoys.” Mostly, they are “students” instead of disciples, which I kind of prefer. Some readers will stumble over this. I found it slightly liberating. It renders the story as practically new, and no matter what name the Savior has, He is instantly recognizable.
Ruden states in her introduction that her aim is preserving the text’s style and content. Any translation is a negotiation, especially one over 2,000 years. Taking the actual words and transferring them into another language is a tricky business, especially in accurately capturing idioms that no longer exist. But she understands, on one level, what she’s working with. The point of the Gospels, she says, is Jesus.
“The Gospels are an inward-looking, self-confirming set of writings, containing some elements of conventional rhetoric and poetics but not constructed to make a logical or aesthetic case for themselves; the case is Jesus, so the words don’t stoop to argue or entice with any great effort, as if readers are supposed to have the choice to yawn or say “what?” or turn up their noses in the manner of an ordinary audience.”
As I said earlier, the Gospels success has not been largely because of how the message is conveyed, but the message itself, and the One giving it. There are moments of eloquence in the prose, but the memorable passages are almost solely the words of Jesus. But where the text itself is memorable, Ruden concerns herself with rendering the words as plainly and simply as possible. Accordingly, the opening of John’s Gospel, rendered in the King James as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God,” becomes, “At the inauguration was the true account, and this true account was with god, and god was the true account.” Instead of emphasizing Jesus as being one with God in speaking creation into existence, the sentence instead makes it clear that Jesus was also the ultimate truth of existence, and nothing exists without Him. The reader will have to decide if this is better, worse, or just different.
There are little moments throughout the Gospels where small details, usually glossed over in other translations, emerge. As when Jesus says to Judas in the Garden, "Do what you came for, pal." By taking what's usually rendered "friend" and converting it to "pal," it's possible to see a Jesus who is resigned, disappointed, and unwilling to countenance any deceptions about what is happening to Him. I kept thinking to myself that, if the language was made even more contemporary, Jesus would have said “bruh” instead of pal. Instead of "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" Ruden gives us "You have it coming, scholars and Farisaioi, play-actors!" which sounds less formal and more menacing.
Ruden presents the Gospels in the order that scholars now think they were written – Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. This allows you to see how the three Synoptic Gospels share episodes, and how they elaborate on them. I felt some of her footnotes were either unaware, or unwilling, to rely on the bulk of Biblical contextual thought to explain certain episodes, which leads her to cast doubt what is being recounted in relatively routine passages, such as the presence of troops when Judas betrays Jesus.
Reading the Gospels can be a frustrating experience because of what the text doesn't say. For example, I would like to know more about the dynamics among the Apostles. Which one was the jokester? We know that a few had nicknames (The Twin, Sons of Thunder, the Rock) but what about the others? What were their backgrounds? We know one was a tax collector, and another was a Zealot - representing the two political extremes of the time. Were there any other indications about Judas before the end? There are other mysteries, of course - what happened to Jesus during his childhood? From the time in the Temple to the beginning of his ministry? Why does Joseph disappear from view after Jesus' adolescent episode? What about the individual stories of the people He healed? Matthew tells us that, when Jesus died on the Cross, "many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." And that's it? No names? No details? The reason, though, is that the story is about Jesus. The story is always about Jesus. We are only told as much as we need to believe.
That’s why Ruden’s version of John - “The Good News According to Iōannēs” - is so welcome. She renders Jesus' grief at Lazarus' tomb in all of its pathos. For example, in a footnote, Ruden explains that the shortest verse, usually rendered as “Jesus wept,” employs a verb that depicts tears on the face. But in the surrounding verses dealing with his response to the death of Lazarus, Jesus “howled within, with his very life-breath.”
And the gentle kidding of Jesus in the 21st chapter of John when he asks the disciples from the seashore, "You don't have anything to nibble, youngsters?” This is the resurrected Jesus, playful, just before he needles Peter, while at the same time rehabilitating him after his denial, equipping him for the work ahead in leading the disciples.
I grew up in a church with several hundred members. I walked the halls and remember those musty smells and the faded print of Jesus as a shepherd hanging on the wall. I associate the Gospels with many things that don't have anything to do with Roman occupied Judea, such as old deacons fumbling the collection plates in the vestibule and grape juice in plastic communion cups and the old school bus that took us to summer camps. For others, their memories of Bible verses and the politics in the pews carry much darker, less divine associations. But the Gospels exist, and I read them regularly, to steer myself toward their subject. Too much time away, and the Jesus we create in our minds is either too forgiving or not forgiving enough. He either laughs too easily at our jokes or cocks a fist over our fallen spirits. That Jesus cheers us on to overturn the tables in our Temple without His help, or shuts the door to ignore our knocking. Opening up the Gospels, we are confronted with the true face - welcoming and challenging, forgiving and formidable.
From Craig Blomberg’s “Jesus and the Gospels,” which is one of the best one-volume resources on the Gospels in my opinion: “Jesus, like his earliest followers, was convinced that how one responded to him was the most important decision anyone could make in his or her life. On this response hinges one’s eternal destiny.” If Ruden’s work has done anything, it has brought us that much closer to the real figure who stole away to Jerusalem out of sight, only to shout to the crowd in the ancient capital, “You do know me and where I’m from!”
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