To the Editor:

Robert Alter’s article, “Beyond King James” [September 1996], struck home to me with a poignancy somewhat unusual for a typical COMMENTARY article. For I am a Catholic priest who must, per officium, preach each Sunday using one of those newfangled translations that Mr. Alter so effectively laments. Although he did not mention it by name, I am sure he would agree that his strictures abundantly apply to the aptly named New American Bible, a translation officially commissioned by the American Catholic bishops and supposedly representing the finest flower of American Catholic biblical scholarship. For not only does this translation seek to “disambiguate” every nuance from the Hebrew and Greek, but it does so with a relentlessness unusual even in our hipster times.

One of the most notorious passages of this translation (this time from the Greek New Testament and not the Hebrew Bible, Mr. Alter’s focus) has now become a byword for clichéridden obtuseness. Where the traditional phrase says “there was no room at the inn,” this rendition for some reason renders it: “there was no room at the place where travelers lodge,” a bizarre four-word circumlocution for the perfectly understandable one-syllable term “inn,” a translation that is, moreover, bound to conjure up, however subliminally, the motel chain TraveLodge with its tousled Teddy Bear enticing motorists with the billboard promise of “A Good Night’s Rest.”. . .

My observations only reinforce, from the Greek side of things, Mr. Alter’s observations on the Hebrew side. But I was puzzled that he never mentioned the merits of the Revised Standard Version (RSV). The puzzle arises because of his statement that

to this day, the Authorized Version of 1611 (the “King James Bible”), for all its inaccuracies, archaisms, and insistently Jacobean rhythm and tone, remains the closest we have yet come to the distinctive experience of the original.

This is true, but it was precisely the achievement of the RSV to have based its translation on the King James Version (KJV), and it did so mostly by simply removing the blemishes and archaisms Mr. Alter refers to. True, some of the Hebrew cadences are missing, as Mr. Alter notes, but that is probably something that can be picked up only by learning Hebrew, not an easy desideratum to fulfill among our increasingly monoglot seminarians. But still, the majesty of the King James, and behind it the Hebrew original, lives on in the RSV.

I had occasion last summer to reread Abraham Joshua Heschel’s two-volume work on the Hebrew prophets, approximately one-fifth of which consists of direct quotations from the prophets themselves. He used the RSV for his text, and I was once more struck by the unusual rhetorical power of the prophets as conveyed by Rabbi Heschel’s judicious selection of direct citations. . . .

Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
Regis University
Denver, Colorado

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To the Editor:

As any honest scholar regardless of his religious affiliation will admit, the history of the translation of the Bible into the English language is, for all intents and purposes, intrinsically connected to the zeal of the Protestant Reformers to get the Scriptures into the hands of the ordinary believer so that he might interpret the Word of God for himself. Thus it is rather ironic that Robert Alter, although he does not say so in as many words in his excellent article, presents a cogent argument that the reason so many readers and hearers find the entire range of contemporary English translations of the Bible so disappointing lies precisely in the condescension of the translators toward their audiences, whether these be in the classroom or the church pew.

Mr. Alter is quite correct in his assertion that most modern translators do not content themselves with representing the texts of the Hebrew—and, for Christians, the Greek (New Testament)—Scriptures in clear and understandable English so that readers and listeners who do not have the benefit of fluency in the ancient languages may nonetheless understand the biblical text and, if they are believers, appropriate its message in their individual and ecclesial lives. Rather, these translators engage in a double act of condescension to their audiences: first, the translated text must be at the lowest common linguistic level, regardless of the level at which the biblical authors themselves wrote; second, the English version must not only be a translation, but an explanation, lest the reader or listener miss the point which the translator views as the point of the Scripture in question.

My only disappointment with Mr. Alter’s article was its omission of the New American Bible from its list of influential modern English translations of the Bible which richly deserve criticism not only for their rhetorical poverty but also for what he termed “philological heresy.” Unfortunately, the NAB is among the most influential translations, as it is among the most widely used in official Catholic worship. . . .

I hope that Mr. Alter’s contribution to the current debate over the language of biblical translations will inspire other scholars to overcome the monopoly now exercised by translators who, in the name of making the sacred texts available to the masses, condescend to the very people whom they are called to serve. . . .

[Rev.] John-Peter Pham
Champaign, Illinois

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To the Editor:

In his fascinating article, Robert Alter points out that the Torah illustrates the diligence of Rebekah toward Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, through its constant repetition of the humble letter vav, which signifies “and.”

There is another way in which the Torah illustrates Rebekah’s diligence, using a word that has two letters, gam, meaning also. In Genesis 24:19, Rebekah says to Eliezer: “I will also give to your camels,” using the word gam. In verse 25, she says: “There is also a place [for you] to lodge,” again using gam.

In the Torah, the word gam always indicates the completely unexpected. Eve not only takes the forbidden fruit, which is bad enough, but also gives it to Adam (Genesis 3:6). Since Adam was audacious enough to eat the fruit of one forbidden tree, God fears that he may also be audacious enough to eat the fruit of the tree of life (Genesis 3:22).

To take another example: God tells Noah to gather into the ark all the animals of the world, including also those which he is least likely to be able to collect, the birds of the sky (Genesis 7:3). . . .

Thus, the word gam, which Rebekah uses twice to Eliezer, indicates that she is doing much more than she might reasonably have been expected to do.

Like the repetition of vav, which Mr. Alter has ably pointed out, the repetition of gam is lost in the translation. Indeed, each gam is significant in the Torah, but fades into oblivion in the pen of the translator, however able he might be.

Gershon Hepner
Los Angeles, California

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Robert Alter writes:

As Father Oakes and Reverend Pham justly observe, my strictures against contemporary Bible translations also apply to the New American Bible, a text I no doubt should have included in my footnote about recent English versions. I see the point of Father Oakes’s argument for the Revised Standard Version. It does correct the more egregious misconstruals of the Hebrew in the King James Version as well as winnowing out the more conspicuously archaic elements. I must add, however, that the revisers had a less sure sense of English style than their 1611 predecessors, so that in terms of rhythm and diction, the RSV is often flatter than the 17th-century original, just a little less grand. In any case, even if one imagines a KJV with all the errors corrected and the archaisms updated, the RSV remains a translation that in many pervasive ways does not grasp the distinctive stylistic features of the Hebrew or attempt to replicate them in English. That is what I have tried to do, as a kind of experiment in the possibilities of Bible translation, in my new English version of Genesis.

Reverend Pham’s notion of condescension to the reader is a wonderfully apt way of putting precisely the sort of thing to which I objected in my article. No serious work of literature, and no translation worth its salt, has ever managed to work by condescending to the reader.

Gershon Hepner’s comments on gam illustrate how tricky translation can be. Despite his confidence on this matter, the term by no means always indicates “the completely unexpected.” (The best way to check the validity of such claims is to make one’s way, guided by a Hebrew concordance, through all the occurrences of the word in the biblical corpus.) But at times it does in fact clearly designate something quite unexpected, and in these instances it has a stronger force than “also.” Thus, when the adolescent Joseph reports his first dream, he says, in my version, “and, look, my sheaf arose and actually stood up” (Genesis 37:7). This was one of those moments when I felt obliged to put aside my principle of not translating according to context because the gam before “stood up” required a less inert adverb than the simple additive “also.”

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