Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western Ziev. In today's Bonus Author interview,
Speaker 1: I sit down with historian Bruce Gordon and we talk
Speaker 1: about his most recent book, The Bible A Global History. Now,
Speaker 1: for Christians everywhere, the Bible is a source of veneration.
Speaker 2: It is the word of.
Speaker 1: God the Gospels at least, but it's also a historical
Speaker 1: document and a document that has changed significantly over the centuries.
Speaker 1: Gordon's book looks at this phenomenon and the way in
Speaker 1: which the Bible has adapted itself to different cultures and
Speaker 1: throughout numerous different translations, some of them more successful than others.
Speaker 1: Today we talk about the book, which is available today
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this. As always, the link is
Speaker 1: in the show notes. And so, without further ado, here
Speaker 1: is historian Bruce Gordon with The Bible A Global History.
Speaker 1: All Right, welcome back. As I mentioned moments ago, sitting
Speaker 1: down with historian Bruce Gordon. Here we're talking about his
Speaker 1: most recent book, The Bible a Global History. It's a
Speaker 1: really interesting book that I really enjoyed reading, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of start with the introduction because in
Speaker 1: the reduction, you write, the Bible is constantly becoming itself
Speaker 1: eternal and perfect. But each version or edition reflects what
Speaker 1: it cannot be, because it is the work of humans.
Speaker 1: And I thought that that was such a such a
Speaker 1: wonderful sentence and introduction, and I thought we could dig
Speaker 1: into it a little bit, like how should we see
Speaker 1: the Bible? Is it a historic document? Is it something else?
Speaker 2: Well? I think it's it's many things. It's it is
Speaker 2: a historical document. It evolves over a long period of time.
Speaker 2: It has a history. It is a book with a history.
Speaker 2: It's a book that it was that. You know, the
Speaker 2: Bible is a book of books, and therefore though each
Speaker 2: of those books has a history, just as each of
Speaker 2: those books is different forms of literature. We have poetry,
Speaker 2: we have historical narrative, we have letters, we have the Gospels,
Speaker 2: we have you know, proverbs. You know, many different types
Speaker 2: of genres of literature are in this book, and each
Speaker 2: has their own very distinctive history. And in some cases
Speaker 2: we have some idea who may have written them, and
Speaker 2: other cases we have less idea of of who wrote
Speaker 2: them or from what historical period they come from. You know,
Speaker 2: there are many mysteries about that background. But we do
Speaker 2: know that both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament
Speaker 2: evolve over time, and that that that they emerged as
Speaker 2: the book that we know over a period of time,
Speaker 2: because there was considerable development and disagreement over particularly with
Speaker 2: the New Testament, which you know, which not so much
Speaker 2: in which gospels, but you know, but also the gospels,
Speaker 2: but letters and were to be included in which were
Speaker 2: not to be included. That that took centuries to emerge,
Speaker 2: and even today, the you know, the canon of the
Speaker 2: Bible varies in you know, across different denominations of Christianity.
Speaker 2: So it's it's a book that's had a historical development
Speaker 2: that continues that in a sense that historical development continues
Speaker 2: to this day. It's extraordinarily dynamic.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think one of the things that I find
Speaker 1: really interesting about the Bible, and that a lot of
Speaker 1: individuals that I talked to about it don't realize, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we had to make a series of decisions
Speaker 1: as humans throughout history in terms of what was going
Speaker 1: to be included. It wasn't sort of passed down in
Speaker 1: its complete and existing form as it is. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's something that I'd like to get into
Speaker 1: in a little bit about that. But first, I'm really
Speaker 1: fascinated with sort of the early Church and the earliest
Speaker 1: versions of the Bible and what those might have looked like.
Speaker 1: And I'm always surprised when I talked to Historicrians who
Speaker 1: study the early Church who tell me that we don't
Speaker 1: know as much as maybe we'd like to know. And
Speaker 1: so I guess I'm interested in knowing, like what what
Speaker 1: do we know about the earliest versions of the Bible?
Speaker 1: You know, when were these documents put together for the
Speaker 1: first time, and what did that look like? What was
Speaker 1: that process like? Like what what can we understand? You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about you know, obviously first century here, like
Speaker 1: the the beginnings of the church.
Speaker 2: How did that look? Yeah, it's well, it's it's just
Speaker 2: as you say. There there are a lot of different
Speaker 2: views on this because the evidence is is difficult. There
Speaker 2: is consensus about a number of it, but there's there's
Speaker 2: a lot that we don't We don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: what we do know is that, you know, Jesus never
Speaker 2: wrote a book. You know, Jesus didn't write anything. What
Speaker 2: we have, of course, are reports, your memories, reports versions
Speaker 2: of of what Jesus said. These these become the Gospels,
Speaker 2: but it's you know, biblical scholars will tell us that
Speaker 2: those gospels probably circulated to some degree independently, but then
Speaker 2: over a period of time, particularly the Synoptic Gospels of
Speaker 2: Uh you know, Mark, Matthew, and and and Luke were
Speaker 2: interacting with each other and evolve over a period of
Speaker 2: time in the first and into the second into the
Speaker 2: second centuries. We know that these texts circulated amongst different communities.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously only small numbers of people could actually
Speaker 2: read them, so they had a vivid oral tradition. They
Speaker 2: were heard, the sayings of Jesus were repeated. So it's
Speaker 2: it's the early versions of scripture were very much within
Speaker 2: communities that were bread increasingly across the Mediterranean world and
Speaker 2: east in towards you know what is modern day Iran
Speaker 2: and and and further, so that these texts are in circulation,
Speaker 2: but there's no clear you know, you know, canonical form
Speaker 2: of them. They're texts that are evolving over a period
Speaker 2: of time. If we take also the letters of Paul,
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're circulating, but we you know, we
Speaker 2: now know that some of those letters that were thought
Speaker 2: to be by Paul may not be by Paul. They
Speaker 2: may not be. They may be by you know, a
Speaker 2: disciple of Paul, they may be by someone else. We
Speaker 2: have names for a number of the letters, but we
Speaker 2: don't really know for certain whether these are the these
Speaker 2: are the actual authors of them. But in a way
Speaker 2: that didn't matter hugely because they they were greatly treasured
Speaker 2: as accounts and teachings of the church that were in circulation.
Speaker 2: But they were in circulation with a much broader literature
Speaker 2: of other letters, other gospels that are, that were being
Speaker 2: used by different communities. I think it's important to remember
Speaker 2: that a lot of these texts really existed at the
Speaker 2: local level in communities, some of which were in contact
Speaker 2: with each other. Others they were they were isolated from.
Speaker 2: So the the emergence of the of the Bible is
Speaker 2: not a kind of easy trajectory. It's it's about a
Speaker 2: lot of different areas using different versions of of of
Speaker 2: scripture we know from you know when, which is where
Speaker 2: you know, my book really picks up with the emergence
Speaker 2: of the Codex, which is the Bible and in a
Speaker 2: book form which emerges really from the second century onwards.
Speaker 2: That those collections of the Hebrew Bible and of the
Speaker 2: New Testament were made up of many different versions that
Speaker 2: may have been compiled together. So there there are many
Speaker 2: versions of the Gospels and many versions of the Letters
Speaker 2: which are lost to us, where we might only have
Speaker 2: the smallest of them. So exactly as you say that
Speaker 2: our knowledge of them is is is very partial. But
Speaker 2: we know that they were circulating amongst Christian communities, they
Speaker 2: were being read, they were there was preaching, but there
Speaker 2: was also enormous variety, and so that the the kind
Speaker 2: of text that we have now only comes together over
Speaker 2: a period of centuries. It's not set at an early
Speaker 2: at an early stage. There are many different versions that
Speaker 2: were in circulation at the same time, and these versions
Speaker 2: were then sometimes brought together and compiled, or they existed
Speaker 2: quite independent of each other. So it's a we talked
Speaker 2: about this idea of the Bible having a history from
Speaker 2: its earliest stage. It's it's it's it's a book that
Speaker 2: is coming together in different ways over over a long
Speaker 2: period of time.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's something that I wanted to ask about,
Speaker 1: and that is kind of the uniqueness of the idea
Speaker 1: of the codex. Is is Christianity, especially that early Christianity
Speaker 1: where they're starting to compile in the second century, the
Speaker 1: the what is going to become the Bible.
Speaker 2: Is there something unique about that?
Speaker 1: It's something unique about the idea that we'll have all
Speaker 1: of our sacred texts in one codex.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, you know. It is a remarkably distinctive aspect
Speaker 2: of of you know, the Christian Bible. And I use
Speaker 2: that term very very clearly. Which is which holds together
Speaker 2: the Hebrew Bible or what's you know, often referred to
Speaker 2: as the Old Testament and the New Testament writings, bringing
Speaker 2: those together in a book form. That's what the codex is.
Speaker 2: It's the creation of what we would identify as a
Speaker 2: book in which leaves of of of you know, what
Speaker 2: we have now with paper, but you know, emerges from
Speaker 2: papyrus into into vellum. The skin of animals is put together,
Speaker 2: bound together as in the form of pages in a
Speaker 2: book that can be carried around. The earliest forms of
Speaker 2: the Christian codecs were probably quite rough forms, rather loosely bound,
Speaker 2: stitched together, so that they could be used for transportation,
Speaker 2: They could be used in put into people's pockets, they
Speaker 2: could be moved from community to community, and this was
Speaker 2: particularly important because you know, Christians are being persecuted these communities.
Speaker 2: They needed to be able to have access to their
Speaker 2: sacred texts in a way that was easily transportable. Of course,
Speaker 2: the Jewish tradition is of roles, of the sacred roles
Speaker 2: of the Torah. These roles were kept in specific locations.
Speaker 2: They were not generally meant for rapid dissemination through through transportation.
Speaker 2: The Christian idea is somewhat different. These these texts are
Speaker 2: really going to be for the people. They are not
Speaker 2: for simply an elite clergy. But the idea right from
Speaker 2: the beginning of the of the New Testament writings is
Speaker 2: they are for the people. It is a text that
Speaker 2: should be highly accessible. This is why, you know, very
Speaker 2: quickly it is translated into the languages of people across
Speaker 2: you know, the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern world, as they say,
Speaker 2: from from from the Euphrates to North Africa and into
Speaker 2: what is modern day Turkey Anatolia. These these texts are
Speaker 2: being translated, and they're being carried in a way that
Speaker 2: is distinctive from the Jewish tradition, and and they're being
Speaker 2: bound together very much in a practical way that that
Speaker 2: allows the people to transport these. But it also has
Speaker 2: another significant aspect to it. When we look at a
Speaker 2: book as opposed to a scroll, which is the traditional
Speaker 2: form of writing both in the Hebrew tradition but also
Speaker 2: in the Roman Greek world, a book it allows us
Speaker 2: to do something quite different. Whereas you might have to
Speaker 2: consult different roles or roles in to get to a text,
Speaker 2: a book allows rather easy access between or a codex
Speaker 2: allows easy access for you to move through the whole
Speaker 2: text from beginning to end, to the middle, backwards and forwards.
Speaker 2: It allows you to cross read texts. It introduces different
Speaker 2: ways of reading of a sacred text that had not
Speaker 2: existed before, and this becomes a distinctive aspect of the
Speaker 2: Christian communities from the second century onwards towards the fourth
Speaker 2: and fifth century, where you get the creation of these extraordinary,
Speaker 2: large and complex codices which bring together divergent traditions of
Speaker 2: the manuscripts. But the first forms of the codex are
Speaker 2: really quite rough and ready texts that were being carried
Speaker 2: through communities. They were very practical, and they demonstrate that
Speaker 2: the text itself is not a kind of sacred thing
Speaker 2: which is separate from the people, but it's something that's
Speaker 2: to be brought into the communities that people have that
Speaker 2: have access to it. The Christians do not invent the Codex.
Speaker 2: It's there in the Roman world, but they make it
Speaker 2: a very distinctive part of their sacred writings from a
Speaker 2: fairly early stage.
Speaker 1: And so I guess given that, given what you just
Speaker 1: mentioned in terms of how the book was the Codex
Speaker 1: was put together, what can we glean about some of
Speaker 1: maybe the practices of the early Church as we get
Speaker 1: into the second century, that the early Bible, that the
Speaker 1: early Codex can give us an indication of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what we get to send of is as
Speaker 2: I was mentioning before, is of a text that doesn't
Speaker 2: exist as a whole Bible. We don't have what we
Speaker 2: would think of as a whole Bible till much much later.
Speaker 2: We have to think about letters and Gospels and other writings,
Speaker 2: you know, circulating in probably quite small and individual texts
Speaker 2: being carried between communities, being copied. We can we should
Speaker 2: think of lay people, in many of them women, having
Speaker 2: copies of sacred texts that they use for personal reading,
Speaker 2: or reading in the family, or reading in communities. What
Speaker 2: we really see is that you know, what will become
Speaker 2: the Bible is a text that's circulating in parts, very
Speaker 2: widely across a large territory of of you know, both
Speaker 2: the Roman Greco world, but also east into the Syriac
Speaker 2: and Persian worlds. So of a text that's constantly in motion,
Speaker 2: is being read by local communities, is being part of worship,
Speaker 2: but it's not existing as a Bibles we would think
Speaker 2: of it now, but as many different parts that are
Speaker 2: being transported. And sometimes we can know from these early
Speaker 2: codexes that different parts of it were being stitched together,
Speaker 2: so it always it had many you know, depending on
Speaker 2: the location and depending on owners, it could have very many,
Speaker 2: many different forms where different books of the texts are
Speaker 2: stitched together in different orders. The idea that it has
Speaker 2: a form like we know it now doesn't emerge till
Speaker 2: till much later. So there's extraordinary fluidity of these texts
Speaker 2: in their numerous localities.
Speaker 1: And as you were talking, I couldn't help but wonder
Speaker 1: the fact that this is a codex influence in any
Speaker 1: way the spread of Christianity, because it strikes me that
Speaker 1: it would be much easier to transport the sacred text
Speaker 1: of a religion if they if they are together and
Speaker 1: also easier to move around them, let's say a box
Speaker 1: of scrolls or something like that. Is there anything to
Speaker 1: that notion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a lot to that notion. It's
Speaker 2: it's as I've mentioned before, it's a text that's meant
Speaker 2: to be on the move. And you know, one of
Speaker 2: the things I refer to in the in the book
Speaker 2: is that in a sense, the Bible has always been
Speaker 2: a book in exile. It emerges out of the Palestinian world,
Speaker 2: of out of ancient Israel, but it's from its earliest stages,
Speaker 2: as Jesus commands in the Gospels to go forth into
Speaker 2: the world. It's a missionary religion. It means it's a
Speaker 2: it's a religion of travel, so that these sacred texts,
Speaker 2: right from the beginning are on the move, which means
Speaker 2: they are going into different communities widespread in the in
Speaker 2: the first and second centuries. It's a media being translated
Speaker 2: into those communities. Every time you have a translation, you
Speaker 2: have a new version of the text. We don't in
Speaker 2: a sense the Christian Bible or the Biblical text er
Speaker 2: so there's no sense of a strong sacred language. There's Greek,
Speaker 2: and of course there's the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible
Speaker 2: Old Testament, but very quickly it seemed that it's essential
Speaker 2: to the missionary nature of Christianity that it's translated into
Speaker 2: other languages. So therefore, very early on we get Syriac,
Speaker 2: we get Coptic. It will move ultimately towards the Caucusus
Speaker 2: and we'll get Armenian and Georgian. It will you know,
Speaker 2: in Latin in the West.
Speaker 3: So it's a book that's in excel in that it's
Speaker 3: very quickly going into lands quite distant from where it
Speaker 3: comes from, and in those lands it has its own life,
Speaker 3: very different lives, based on different forms of the text,
Speaker 3: through textual traditions, based on language, based on the order
Speaker 3: in which.
Speaker 2: People put these these books of the Bible together. So
Speaker 2: it's you have no one form of the Bible, but
Speaker 2: extraordinary range of versions of it. And that's always been
Speaker 2: the life of the Bible. It's it's existed in its
Speaker 2: in localities through language and textual forms, and later this
Speaker 2: will take on traditions of illustration and binding, so that
Speaker 2: you get unique cultures of the Bible from the earliest
Speaker 2: stages in the many different lands that it goes to
Speaker 2: but the codex, as you say, gives it that ability
Speaker 2: to travel, and it also gives you the ability, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned before, to read the text whether you know,
Speaker 2: it's unlikely in the early centuries that they had complete Bibles,
Speaker 2: but it allows you to read whatever texts that you
Speaker 2: have sort of with, you know, together, to read them
Speaker 2: as as a whole, to refer back and forth between them.
Speaker 2: This is something that's quite unique in the Christian formation
Speaker 2: of its Bible.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about translation, because I think that that's
Speaker 1: something that's really crucial to understanding the life and the
Speaker 1: story of the Bible. Because the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is is that, as you mentioned, it is translated, and
Speaker 1: is translated in many languages over a long period of time,
Speaker 1: has a very famous translation into Latin, and some of
Speaker 1: those translations over the centuries are maybe less than ideal.
Speaker 1: So how do all these various translations influence the life
Speaker 1: of the Bible?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a translation, you know, the whole idea right
Speaker 2: back to the root of the word, you know, suggests
Speaker 2: movement of transportation. And here it's the you know, it's translation.
Speaker 2: I think you have to understand, is not just you know,
Speaker 2: dealing with words. How do you get the words from
Speaker 2: one language into another language. It's, you know, as it
Speaker 2: is for us today. Our our language is very much
Speaker 2: our culture, it's ourselves, it's it's everything about us. And
Speaker 2: so translation is the shifting up the Bible from culture
Speaker 2: to culture, not simply from one language to another, but
Speaker 2: right from the beginning, as I've said before, the Bible
Speaker 2: is a book that is being translated very quickly from
Speaker 2: you know, we go back to the earliest languages of Hebrew, Aramaic,
Speaker 2: and the Semitic languages Syriac, and then of course the
Speaker 2: Greek of the of the New Testament is translated into
Speaker 2: into Latin, it's translated into Coptic of Egypt. Later it
Speaker 2: will go into the Ethiopic of Geeze, of the egypt
Speaker 2: Ethiopian Church. It's it's spreading very very quickly, because language
Speaker 2: is at the heart of the dissemination of the Bible.
Speaker 2: But as I say, not just in terms of words,
Speaker 2: but in terms terms of the whole shifting of the
Speaker 2: culture of the Bible, as it's spreading very quickly geographically.
Speaker 2: But translation exactly as you say, is at the heart
Speaker 2: of this because in its origins, of course, we have
Speaker 2: the Hebrew and then the Greek in which most of
Speaker 2: the New Testament writers wrote, but also we have Aramaic,
Speaker 2: and we know, for instance, the septuagen which is the
Speaker 2: Greek translation of the of the of the Hebrew Bible,
Speaker 2: which was created in Alexandria in Egypt for a for
Speaker 2: for Jews who were living in a kind of Greco
Speaker 2: Roman world who no longer knew Hebrew. So that there
Speaker 2: was the question of of you know, what is the
Speaker 2: exactly authentic language that that one should go back to
Speaker 2: in in in Christianity sate before, there's no sense of
Speaker 2: a sacred language. The language is always of the of
Speaker 2: the scriptures, has always been the language of the people.
Speaker 2: But you know, anyone who is engaged with translation knows
Speaker 2: that it's extremely challenging to move the concepts that are
Speaker 2: formed in one language into another. How do you accommodate
Speaker 2: one language with another? How do you And this will
Speaker 2: become a major issue later as I talk about when
Speaker 2: you go into Asia and you have translated and India
Speaker 2: where you have translations into Chinese into a range of
Speaker 2: Indian languages, in Tibet or in Southeast in the Pacific world,
Speaker 2: where languages that do not have exact translations for Christian
Speaker 2: ideas such as as the Trinity, or even for the
Speaker 2: Christian notion of a monotheistic God, so that it becomes
Speaker 2: very controversial. But how do you find the right words
Speaker 2: in this other language to express the original idea? So
Speaker 2: so translation is an extremely fraught endeavors and which exists
Speaker 2: right from the beginning. How do you how do you
Speaker 2: shift these ideas across cultures, across languages and in translation.
Speaker 2: The Scripture has a number of remarkable effects in an
Speaker 2: early stage. So you can use the example of Armenian
Speaker 2: where Christianity, which is the first Christian kingdom, when when
Speaker 2: the Greek writings of the of the both the Old
Speaker 2: and New Testament arrive in Armenia, there there they want
Speaker 2: to convert the people. But Armenian that point is not
Speaker 2: a written language. It's it's a spoken language. And this
Speaker 2: happens again and again. This will happen later in the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century with colonialism is how do you take how
Speaker 2: do you bring the Bible into a language that is
Speaker 2: primarily oral. And in the case of Armenia that I
Speaker 2: mentioned before, the Bible actually plays a crucial role in
Speaker 2: the creation of a written language, So the Bible becomes
Speaker 2: this instrument of language creation. So it's not just being translated,
Speaker 2: but it's also creating languages, and it creates forms of languages.
Speaker 2: So there's always this dynamic relationship with language. But then
Speaker 2: you raise the question of the Latin famously translated by
Speaker 2: Jerome in the fourth and fifth centuries from the Greek
Speaker 2: and Hebrew into Latin. There had already been many, many
Speaker 2: Latin versions of Scripture known as the as the Old
Speaker 2: Latin versions, circulating in innumerable forms around the Mediterranean world.
Speaker 2: But Jerome is famous because he has to decide how
Speaker 2: do you translate Hebrew and Greek into Latin. Jerome was
Speaker 2: an extraordinary well educated person, a great class educator, a
Speaker 2: great writer, a great literary figure. And he believed that
Speaker 2: you should translate the Hebrew and the Greek into the
Speaker 2: best possible Latin, and so that the poetry of the
Speaker 2: Psalms or of the Hebrew Bible should be poetry in Latin,
Speaker 2: and that the writing of the New Testament should be
Speaker 2: brought into elegant Latin. Because in the classical world, the
Speaker 2: Christian writings were generally regarded as an inferior form of literature.
Speaker 2: But how do you do that? He said, of course,
Speaker 2: you can't go immediately with a literal translation from these
Speaker 2: languages into Latin. You have to do it where the
Speaker 2: sense of the original language is conveyed in the Latin form.
Speaker 2: So he creates society of sense for sense rather than
Speaker 2: a literal translation. Well, this is decisions that will go
Speaker 2: on for centuries and centuries afterwards. What is the correct
Speaker 2: approach to bringing, you know, from original languages into a
Speaker 2: contemporary language, which is a very different form of language.
Speaker 2: So it's there right from the beginning. And of course
Speaker 2: the worry is that in translation you're going to corrupt
Speaker 2: or distort or change the original and that's why their
Speaker 2: constant translations are created. And then there's retranslations and retranslation
Speaker 2: because there is an anxiety that surrounds translation right from
Speaker 2: the beginning of Christianity.
Speaker 1: I mean, you make a great point that, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about translating an instruction manual here. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just translating words to words. It's
Speaker 1: translating senses, it's translating ideas, it's translating purpose. All of
Speaker 1: those things are so much more complicated than just simply
Speaker 1: taking an Ikea manual and putting it into fifty different languages.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're talking about here. And you make
Speaker 1: a point in the book that I didn't think very
Speaker 1: much about, but I think we probably should, which is
Speaker 1: translators will leave notes or explanations as to how they
Speaker 1: approached their translation, and that's really interesting. What do we
Speaker 1: gain from those notes? Because I never thought about it before,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's really important.
Speaker 2: I think we gain a lot from I mean, I
Speaker 2: come back to the figure of Jerome. We know quite
Speaker 2: a lot about what Jerome thought about translating the Bible
Speaker 2: from Hebrew and Greek into Latin. He went to Palestine,
Speaker 2: he studied under Jewish teachers, He went to the greatest
Speaker 2: lengths to learn the Biblical languages as well as possible.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of discussion about how good actually Jerome's
Speaker 2: Hebrew was. But I think one of the lessons we
Speaker 2: learned from Jerome and his reflections on translation, which we
Speaker 2: can pick up from others, is you know, I use
Speaker 2: the word anxiety, but I think what any good translator
Speaker 2: realized is the contingency of their work that they they
Speaker 2: are never able to convey completely from you know the
Speaker 2: original languages of the Hebrew and Greek. They're very aware
Speaker 2: that they're doing their best, but it's never going to
Speaker 2: be an exact version of the original language. And then
Speaker 2: others and there, you know, the good translator, traders, translators
Speaker 2: always make clear that somebody else will come along and
Speaker 2: do a better job of this. Jerome was, you know,
Speaker 2: Jerome was very proud. He was a very Some people
Speaker 2: thought he was arrogant, but he was, you know, he
Speaker 2: was an extraordinarily proud and highly educated person. He believed
Speaker 2: he had done, you know, the best that he could,
Speaker 2: but there was still an acceptance that the translation would
Speaker 2: would would develop. He never believed that his translation would
Speaker 2: be for forever. And we get that, whether we go
Speaker 2: through to Martin Luther or translations of a later day,
Speaker 2: they realize they're doing the best they can, but they
Speaker 2: will never be able to provide a definitive translation. You know,
Speaker 2: the King James is constantly you know, it's created in
Speaker 2: sixteen eleven, but it's constantly revised right through to our
Speaker 2: own time. People are changing it. They find ways of
Speaker 2: improving the Greek or improving the Hebrew. So translation is
Speaker 2: a dynamic thing. There's never a sense that one translation
Speaker 2: completely captures the essence of one language into another. And
Speaker 2: of course there's a recognition that language itself is changing.
Speaker 2: Language is dynamic, so that translations are created, but within
Speaker 2: a generation the language becomes archaic and less accessible to people.
Speaker 2: So there's a need for translations into a version of
Speaker 2: a language which is more accessible. And I found this
Speaker 2: right from the start, this concern that language, you know, dates,
Speaker 2: language changes, and therefore translations of the Bible have to
Speaker 2: be have to be changed. There is there is sometimes
Speaker 2: and you see this. I saw this, you know, with
Speaker 2: with Bibles in Russian and some of the other Slavic languages,
Speaker 2: but also to a certain extent, King James is an
Speaker 2: example of this. The old as the language became archaic,
Speaker 2: as the language of the people developed and changed, that
Speaker 2: archaic nature of the language sometimes conveyed a kind of sacredness,
Speaker 2: a holiness to it that people very much appreciate. So
Speaker 2: you get the creation of a kind of biblical language
Speaker 2: which is separate from the language that people speak, so
Speaker 2: that that dynamic emerges. You know, many people love the
Speaker 2: King James because of its older form of English, and
Speaker 2: they believe that that conveys a sense of holiness, a solemnity,
Speaker 2: a beauty, a transcendence that perhaps our modern English lacks
Speaker 2: for them. So there's there's a kind of sense in
Speaker 2: which translations can are both constantly being changed, but there's
Speaker 2: also in many ways they're they're valued when they become
Speaker 2: sort of linguistically linguistically dated. So there's there's so many
Speaker 2: aspects of to this, but it induces a kind of
Speaker 2: sense of humility. You know that your translation will be
Speaker 2: eventually replaced by another translation, and and that's just the
Speaker 2: way it goes. And that's part of the you know,
Speaker 2: the overall argument of the book is that the Bible
Speaker 2: in a sense is always becoming itself. It's constantly being retranslated,
Speaker 2: it's constantly being you know, re edited. No form of
Speaker 2: the Bible is forever because it's always trying to capture
Speaker 2: that the best possible sense of the Word of God.
Speaker 1: And I think you kind of you started to talk
Speaker 1: about this a little bit, and I wanted to press
Speaker 1: on it a little bit more because I'm interested in
Speaker 1: how the Bible itself is a physical as a physical
Speaker 1: codex starts to become an object of veneration in and
Speaker 1: of itself, and I'm interested in terms of how that happened,
Speaker 1: and also like, is there anything that is when we
Speaker 1: think about Christianity in general, is there anything that's slightly
Speaker 1: problematic about that in some way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is part of such a such
Speaker 2: an interesting aspect of the life of the Bible. As
Speaker 2: I say, in its early form of the Codex, it
Speaker 2: was a very practical way in which, you know, parts
Speaker 2: of of of the New Testament and Hebrew Bible could
Speaker 2: be could be transported and used in worship and preaching
Speaker 2: and reading and prayer across many different communities. It was
Speaker 2: a very practical creation. But by the you know, the
Speaker 2: moving into the fourth and fifth centuries, where you know,
Speaker 2: we have developments towards perhaps more agreement on which books
Speaker 2: constitute the canon or the actual body of the Bible
Speaker 2: that's starting to emerge. We have the decree of Athanasius,
Speaker 2: his Festal Letter, which sets out these are the books
Speaker 2: of the New Testament. Now that's often seen as the
Speaker 2: moment of the creation of the canon. That's a problematic
Speaker 2: story because he was in North Africa, in Egypt. That
Speaker 2: letter probably had little influence on other parts of Christianity,
Speaker 2: but there is a kind of growing sense over time
Speaker 2: of you know, which are the gospels, which are the letters,
Speaker 2: and which are the ones that will be left outside
Speaker 2: the door. There's not complete agreement by any means, but
Speaker 2: they're starting to move towards a consensus, which means that
Speaker 2: the codex form becomes an embodiment of what is the Bible.
Speaker 2: And this is something we see fourth fifth centuries and
Speaker 2: that is exactly as you say, means that there's a
Speaker 2: new veneration of the physicality of the Bible, and that
Speaker 2: takes place through a variety of ways. One way is
Speaker 2: the growth of illustration, where the you know, one of
Speaker 2: the first you know to extraordinarily one of the first
Speaker 2: uh illustrated gospels that we now have are the Garima
Speaker 2: Gospels from the Ethiopian Church. We have the creation of
Speaker 2: what are called the Eusebian canon tables, maybe going back
Speaker 2: to Eusebius himself, but nobody knows exactly, which are beautifully
Speaker 2: illustrated that you know, what we would think of as
Speaker 2: a kind of comparison of the gospels, the cross references
Speaker 2: of the of the gospels, but they're arranged in this
Speaker 2: beautifully illustrated, often illuminated architecture, so columns and often depending
Speaker 2: you know, in various traditions in the in the in
Speaker 2: the African ones you find native wildlife, birds, different you know,
Speaker 2: you see cons that are reflected of Byzantine architecture. So
Speaker 2: that that as we get into the fourth, fifth, sixth century,
Speaker 2: the Bible becomes an object of beauty, whereas if we
Speaker 2: think of the Codex before it was a very practical thing,
Speaker 2: but it becomes an object of beauty that really from
Speaker 2: the fifth century has a physical the physicality of it
Speaker 2: has a sacredness. You have at early councils from the
Speaker 2: fifth century, this idea that the presence of the Bible
Speaker 2: at the council conveyed the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2: So the physicality of the book becomes an embodiment of
Speaker 2: the presence of of of the Divine in this meeting,
Speaker 2: conveying authority. That's that's developing. Also, as I say, in
Speaker 2: the in the in the illustration, which makes you know,
Speaker 2: you get in these in these beautiful Risantal Gospels, for instance,
Speaker 2: you have this tradition where the the the the parchment
Speaker 2: is is dyed purple, reflecting not only the royalty of Christ,
Speaker 2: but the royalty of the aristocratic or royal owners of
Speaker 2: the text. So the text itself becomes you know, I
Speaker 2: think the way in which I like to think about
Speaker 2: it and do in the book, it becomes iconic. It
Speaker 2: becomes itself like an icon of the Church that mirrors
Speaker 2: the divine in its physicality. That and there's a long
Speaker 2: tradition of referring to books as being like icons. And
Speaker 2: this is something that develops as Christianity becomes more established,
Speaker 2: not only in the Mediterranean world, but in Asia and
Speaker 2: then of course spreading through Europe, that the Bible itself
Speaker 2: becomes a physical symbol of what it is, the Word
Speaker 2: of God, the presence of God, and that is taken
Speaker 2: in extraordinary artistic developments. Is that a problem? Yes, in
Speaker 2: some ways it is because you get these great debates
Speaker 2: that Christians inherit from from their Jewish tradition, of a
Speaker 2: kind of ambiguity about the role of images. Can you,
Speaker 2: going back to the Ten Commandments, can you actually convey
Speaker 2: images of God? Is that? Is that not a terrible sin?
Speaker 2: And so though there is a kind of ambivalent relationship
Speaker 2: between images and you know, and the text of the Bible,
Speaker 2: there is a huge debate that will rage through the
Speaker 2: Greek world, the Byzantine world about this issue of images
Speaker 2: ultimately is resolved in favor of images, and that becomes
Speaker 2: the tradition also in the West. But the Bible becomes
Speaker 2: a sacred object. And the other way that this is
Speaker 2: this is conveyed is in the growth of liturgy, the
Speaker 2: very complex and beautiful forms of worship. We see them
Speaker 2: emerging out of in the Orthodox tradition. We see it
Speaker 2: in the Coptic tradition in Egypt, we see it in
Speaker 2: the Ethiopian tradition, where the Bible is a physical object
Speaker 2: at the center of this liturgical world that connects the
Speaker 2: divine and the human. In this biblical drama, the Bible
Speaker 2: is processed, it's carried, it becomes people know what its
Speaker 2: presence means. It means the presence of Christ himself. It
Speaker 2: becomes like a sacrament, like the body and blood of Christ,
Speaker 2: where the bread is the body of Christ. Well, the
Speaker 2: Bible acquires this sort of sacramental nature. It is the
Speaker 2: physical presence of God that will very much inform the
Speaker 2: medieval world as well, where the physical text has a
Speaker 2: holiness to it. The Protestant reformers will reject that and say,
Speaker 2: you know, with their emphasis very much on the written word.
Speaker 2: But even within Protestantism, and you see this in Puritanism,
Speaker 2: and you see it in modern day Pentecostalism, the physical
Speaker 2: object of the book is often used as a sign
Speaker 2: of holiness in worship. Think of Protestant churches where the
Speaker 2: Bible is displayed at the front. It has a physicality
Speaker 2: and a as a creator of sacred space that although
Speaker 2: Protestants will generally not think of it in that way,
Speaker 2: they're very much continuing a long tradition that emerges from
Speaker 2: the fifth and sixth century. So it's problematic for many
Speaker 2: people in this relationship between images and materiality and the
Speaker 2: spirit and the word, but it has been very much
Speaker 2: at the heart of the emergence of the Bible right
Speaker 2: through today, where you will see in services where Bibles
Speaker 2: are held up to both curse and to bless people
Speaker 2: by the actual holding of the Bible in either an
Speaker 2: individual or in communal worship.
Speaker 1: I think that's very true. And today you see the
Speaker 1: Bible is part of any sort of service that you attend,
Speaker 1: almost to regardless as to what denomination you happen to
Speaker 1: be in. So it's really interesting to think of how
Speaker 1: that happens. And of course listeners of the show will
Speaker 1: remember all the episodes we did about iconoclasm and how
Speaker 1: much that did grip what we call the Byzantine world
Speaker 1: for such a long and protracted period of time, and
Speaker 1: how intertwined it was with some of the other issues
Speaker 1: that were ongoing. I'm interested about another portion of the
Speaker 1: book where you write about how, and I think this
Speaker 1: is absolutely true, how the Bible has typically reflected and
Speaker 1: then also just shapes the world and the time period
Speaker 1: that it occupies. I'm fascinated by the Middle Ages myself,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about early High late whatever, but
Speaker 1: I'm interested as to how that worked in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean one of the you know,
Speaker 2: I had a good protest ended upbringing and you know,
Speaker 2: one of the ideas that you hear again and again
Speaker 2: is the medieval world didn't have the Bible. That the
Speaker 2: Protestant Reformation brought the Bible back to the center of
Speaker 2: the church. And you know, there are aspects of that
Speaker 2: story that you can totally pick up on, but it
Speaker 2: is absolutely wrong to say the medieval world didn't have
Speaker 2: the Bible. The medieval world had the Bible in so
Speaker 2: many different ways. Most people, you know, the vast majority
Speaker 2: of people in the medieval world would certainly not have
Speaker 2: possessed a Bible, and they would only have seen it,
Speaker 2: probably in worship, where it was, you know, part of
Speaker 2: liturgical processions held up the Gospels were held up to
Speaker 2: then and then read, so they knew it in a
Speaker 2: kind of liturgical sense. Very few people would have, you know,
Speaker 2: except the privileged few would have had access to a Bible.
Speaker 2: But that's not to say that that the medieval world
Speaker 2: wasn't highly biblically literate. So the Bible is. And one
Speaker 2: of the points I want to make is that the
Speaker 2: Bible has always never or always been more than a book.
Speaker 2: It has been a presence that you have to be
Speaker 2: open to in many different respects. You know, the churches,
Speaker 2: even the most humblest, even the humblest parish churches they
Speaker 2: went into, would have wall paintings depicting scenes of the Bible. There,
Speaker 2: they would have listened to preachers who would be recounting
Speaker 2: Biblical stories. They would have, particularly in the late Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: there were traveling troops that would perform Biblical plays. There
Speaker 2: were innumerable ways in which people had access to the
Speaker 2: Bible and were very familiar with the stories of the Bible.
Speaker 2: Who would not be able to read, who would not
Speaker 2: be able to to to be able to afford or have,
Speaker 2: you know, either any part of the Bible. And generally
Speaker 2: the Bible existed in parts such as you know, the
Speaker 2: Psalms or the Pentateook, or the Gospels or the letters. Again,
Speaker 2: really until late in the Middle Ages, it was very
Speaker 2: rare for the complete Bible to exist. But what I
Speaker 2: really want to make the point is is that the
Speaker 2: Bible was a compelling and pervasive presence in medieval society.
Speaker 2: But you have to see it as not just existing
Speaker 2: for those who have the book in front of them,
Speaker 2: but it informs the geography of the world in which
Speaker 2: people lived. They lived in sacred landscapes that were defined
Speaker 2: by stories of the Bible. They would see, you know,
Speaker 2: the last judgment, often in public places where they lived,
Speaker 2: certainly over often the entrances of churches. They the Bible
Speaker 2: was was was you know, I think we have to
Speaker 2: get away from the Protestant idea that it's simply a
Speaker 2: book to be read. The Bible was you know, I
Speaker 2: like to think of in the medieval world. It wasn't
Speaker 2: it was a phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was it was an it was an omnipresent entity.
Speaker 2: And one of the pictures I have in the book
Speaker 2: is from the from the Middle Ages are the Romanian,
Speaker 2: those beautiful Romanian painted monasteries, and so anybody which would
Speaker 2: be you know, the humblest of people going into these
Speaker 2: monasteries for worship would be surrounded by, you know, the
Speaker 2: story of David, the story of Salvation, the story of creation.
Speaker 2: These monasteries themselves, in their glorious paintings, are a biblical
Speaker 2: world that they would have entered into. And then they
Speaker 2: would have encountered the liturgy, which is centered on the stealth,
Speaker 2: the telling of the sacred story in which the Bible
Speaker 2: is read. They would hear the both, you know, from
Speaker 2: from the from the Old and New Testaments. So there's
Speaker 2: a biblical world that these people existed in that that
Speaker 2: moves far beyond the book. And that's why I want
Speaker 2: to say that the Middle Ages was very much an
Speaker 2: age of the Bible.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we have time for one more question here,
Speaker 1: and I kind of want to go off that previous
Speaker 1: question because we we do we think of the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages as the Age of Faith. I remember growing up
Speaker 1: and reading some textbooks that bluntly described it as such.
Speaker 2: That's how it was defined.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting in that the Church we think is
Speaker 1: probably all powerful during this age, and of course I'm
Speaker 1: talking about really the Roman Catholic Church at this point.
Speaker 1: But you write that the church repeatedly denounced the use
Speaker 1: of the Bible for divination as superstition, but to little effect.
Speaker 1: So there's two interesting things going on there in that
Speaker 1: part that I want to ask about. One is how
Speaker 1: did that happen, Like why were people using the Bible
Speaker 1: for a divination? And two, if that's the case, and
Speaker 1: if we are in the age of Faith, when the
Speaker 1: Church is supposed to be all powerful, why were efforts
Speaker 1: to clamp down in that behavior so ineffectual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, you know, divination, of course is
Speaker 2: a very negative word within the Christian context. That's right,
Speaker 2: But you know, the church, the Church denounced what it's
Speaker 2: saw as superstitious uses of the Bible, but the truth
Speaker 2: was that virtually everybody was doing it, that that the
Speaker 2: Bible had multiple uses, you know, as often as a
Speaker 2: kind of talismatic object that could be used to ward
Speaker 2: off evil, but in many other ways. For instance, it
Speaker 2: was very common throughout the medieval world that particular versus,
Speaker 2: whether from the Psalms or perhaps from the Gospels, were
Speaker 2: used to ward off demons, to ward off the evil
Speaker 2: in many forms, terrible weather. So there's there's a sense
Speaker 2: in which the Bible has always and you know, we
Speaker 2: have many stories of very holy people or of kings,
Speaker 2: you know, placing the Biblical text under their pillow to
Speaker 2: to as not not only as protection, but as also
Speaker 2: a way of you know, learning of the learning of
Speaker 2: the future. The Bible is used as a physical object
Speaker 2: in judicial cases, and it was you know, it played
Speaker 2: a role in that people would consult open the Bible
Speaker 2: and consult different texts to determine the meaning of the case.
Speaker 2: We have the story of Francis of Assisi, which is
Speaker 2: you know, a longstanding sort of trope in the medieval
Speaker 2: world and going back into the ancient world where he
Speaker 2: talks about going well. His biographer describes him as going
Speaker 2: away from the crowds into a kind of cave where
Speaker 2: he opened, you know, he swears that he will open
Speaker 2: the gospels and wherever he opens the Gospels to that
Speaker 2: will determine what his calling will be, and he opens
Speaker 2: it to the passion of Christ and he determines from
Speaker 2: this that this will be, you know, his his future
Speaker 2: is to follow the sufferings of Christ. And he does
Speaker 2: this multiple times where he can flips open the Bible
Speaker 2: and puts his finger on it and says, this is
Speaker 2: going to This is God speaking to me, telling me
Speaker 2: it's not just a random thing. This is the Holy
Speaker 2: Spirit acting has opened the page the Bible to this page,
Speaker 2: or the Gospel to this page with a specific instruction.
Speaker 2: That belief that the Bible had this immediate and powerful
Speaker 2: effect was widespread, you know, and sometimes it takes forms
Speaker 2: that we might find amusing, but it was this belief
Speaker 2: that the Bible itself was a book of power, it
Speaker 2: was a text of power, and that the words of
Speaker 2: the Bible, and this is something that exists, you know,
Speaker 2: very much within the global Christian world today. The words
Speaker 2: of the Bible have power, and they can have power
Speaker 2: against evil, and they can be used to denounce evil.
Speaker 2: This is, you know, as I say, it's you know,
Speaker 2: the the you know what the Church has suspected as
Speaker 2: being superstitious used it's very difficult to determine the line
Speaker 2: between that and a belief that the materiality and oral
Speaker 2: quality of the Bible actually has power to affect the
Speaker 2: world around us, which is an idea that's still quite
Speaker 2: widespread in many Christian communities across the world. That so,
Speaker 2: the official condemnations of this really kind of don't reflect
Speaker 2: what was the reality that within the Church and within
Speaker 2: the lay world, the Bible was regarded, or the Biblical
Speaker 2: texts were regarded as ways in which God speaks and acts.
Speaker 1: And you see that repeatedly throughout history, as you point out,
Speaker 1: and you know, people remember even in the early modern period,
Speaker 1: happens all the time where people are talking about how
Speaker 1: this is a direct reference, this is God speaking directly
Speaker 1: to us. Well, there's a lot more in the book.
Speaker 1: Obviously we've just gotten to the Middle Ages. But I
Speaker 1: really think it's fantastic, and I think it does a
Speaker 1: great job of laying out the evolution of the Bible
Speaker 1: and how important that is to understanding how it functions
Speaker 1: still in our society today. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on the show. This was amazing,
Speaker 1: and I know that the book is going to do
Speaker 1: tremendously well.
Speaker 2: It's it is.
Speaker 1: It is a nice, thick read, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be a wonderful addition to anyone's bookshelf or a gift
Speaker 1: if you're thinking it's so inclined. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much again for coming on Push.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for inviting me.