The Atlantic Monthly has published a new review of David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament.
I like his use of “blissful” over “blessed” in the Beatitudes, but for Mark 1.40-41 (the cleansing of the leper), Hart’s rendering is still too elevated and does nothing to capture Mark’s style. In fact it’s not really very different from Knox’s (quoted in the article). As Hart has it,
“A leper comes to him, imploring him and falling to his knees, saying to him, ‘If you wish it, you are able to cleanse me.’ And, moved inwardly with compassion, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and says to him, ‘I wish it, be clean.’ ”
I’d put it rather,
“40 And there came to him a leper
begging him [and kneeling]
and saying to him that
If you want, you can clean me.
41 And Jesus, moved with wrath*
having stretched out his hand, touched him
and says to him,
I want! Be cleaned!”
*[or: ‘moved with pity in his guts’, but i think there are reasons for preferring ‘moved with wrath’, which appears in some manuscripts.]
Mark himself wrote,
40 Καὶ ἔρχεται πρὸς αὐτὸν λεπρὸς
παρακαλῶν αὐτὸν [καὶ γονυπετῶν]
καὶ λέγων αὐτῷ ὅτι
ἐὰν θέλῃς δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι.
41 καὶ ὀργισθεῖς*
ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα αὐτοῦ ἥψατο
καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ·
θέλω, καθαρίσθητι.
[or: σπλαγχνισθεὶς.]
I also still think that the proper translation of “Logos” into English is “meaning”—
“In the beginning was the meaning,
and the meaning was with God,
and God was the meaning” (Jn 1.1).
I’m still waiting for Hart’s book to come out in paperback, so I haven’t read it yet. But what i’ve read so far really hasn’t impressed me as much as i’d expected. At this point i find myself questioning whether Hart can really leave behind his redoubtable and capaciously witty style as a “decidedly overcooked highbrow” and actually convey the feel of the original.
And I do most certainly and strenuously object to any assertion that the NT is “a grab bag of reportage, rumor, folk memory, and on-the-hoof mysticism produced by regular people, everyday babblers and clunkers”— though it may look that way at first— not because i think the NT “must have” been written by refined artists to be “worthy” of God or some such— but simply because I’ve studied Mark and Romans for the past ten years and am still astonished by the subtlety, complexity, and sheer pyrotechnical force of their structures and arguments!