Review: âThe New Testament: A Translation â by David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart
Reviews The New Testament: A Translation By David Bentley Hart Yale University Press
In the beginning was â¦ well  what? A clap of the divine hands and a poetic shock wave? Or an itchy node of nothingness inconceivably scratching itself into somethingness? In the beginning was the Word  says the Gospel according to Johnâa lovely statement of the case  as itâs always seemed to me. A pre-temporal syllable swelling to utterance in the mouth of the universe  spoken once and heard forever: Godâs power chord  if you like. For  David Bentley Hart   however  whose mind-bending translation of the New Testament was published in October  the Wordâas a wordâdoes not suffice:  He  finds it to be âa curiously bland and impenetrable designationâ for the heady concept expressed in the original Greek of the Gospels as Logos. The Chinese word Tao might get at it   Hart  tells us  but English has nothing with quite the metaphysical flavor of Logos  the particular sense of a formative moral energy diffusing itself  without diminution  through space and time. So  he  throws up  his  hands and leaves it where it is: âIn the origin there was the Logos â¦â
Itâs significant  this act of lexical surrender  because if youâd bet on anyone to come up with a fancy English word for Logos  itâd be  David Bentley Hart . Vocabulary is not  his  problem  unless you think  he  has too much of it. A scholar  theologian  and cultural commentator   Hart  is also a stylist; or rather  the prickly and slightly preening polemical exhibition that is  his  style is indivisible from  his  role as a scholarly and theologically oriented cultural commentator. Like G. K. Chesterton  he has one essential argument: that God is the foundation of our being and that every human life therefore has its beginning and its end in eternity. He rehearses this argument in numberless witty variations against whichever non-God ideology happens to slouch beneath his pen: materialism  scientism  consumerism  pornographism â¦ And he can sound a Chestertonian note. âMy chief purpose â he wrote in 2013âs The Experience of God  âis not to advise atheists on what I think they should believe; I want merely to make sure that they have a clear concept of what it is they claim not to believe.â
Letâs zoom in on Mark  the roughest and tersest of the Gospels. (Hippolytus of Rome  in the third century  called Mark âstump fingeredââpossibly a physical descriptor but more likely  I think  a comment on his prose.) Hereâs how Monsignor Ronald Knox handled Mark 1:40â41 in his 1945 translation: âThen a leper came up to him  asking for his aid; he knelt at his feet and said  If it be thy will  thou hast power to make me clean. Jesus was moved with pity; he held out his hand and touched him  and said  It is my will; be thou made clean.â  Hart âs version: âAnd a leper comes to him  imploring him and falling to his knees  saying to him  âIf you wish it  you are able to cleanse me.â And  moved inwardly with compassion  he stretched out his hand and touched him  and says to him  âI wish it  be clean.â â Thereâs a stumbling  almost rustically blundering urgency to this  the verb tenses tripping over one another; beside it the Knox translation feels smoothed out  falsely archaized  too rhetorical. In  Hart  we can hear more clearly both the leperâs challengeâheal me!âand the quickness and intimacy of Jesusâs response.
Reviews The New Testament: A Translation By David Bentley Hart Yale University Press
In the beginning was â¦ well  what? A clap of the divine hands and a poetic shock wave? Or an itchy node of nothingness inconceivably scratching itself into somethingness? In the beginning was the Word  says the Gospel according to Johnâa lovely statement of the case  as itâs always seemed to me. A pre-temporal syllable swelling to utterance in the mouth of the universe  spoken once and heard forever: Godâs power chord  if you like. For   [TGT] however  whose mind-bending translation of the New Testament was published in October  the Wordâas a wordâdoes not suffice:  He  finds it to be âa curiously bland and impenetrable designationâ for the heady concept expressed in the original Greek of the Gospels as Logos. The Chinese word Tao might get at it    [TGT] tells us  but English has nothing with quite the metaphysical flavor of Logos  the particular sense of a formative moral energy diffusing itself  without diminution  through space and time. So  he  throws up  his  hands and leaves it where it is: âIn the origin there was the Logos â¦â
Itâs significant  this act of lexical surrender  because if youâd bet on anyone to come up with a fancy English word for Logos  itâd be   [TGT]  . Vocabulary is not   [TGT]   problem  unless you think   [TGT]   has too much of it. A scholar  theologian  and cultural commentator    [TGT] is also a stylist; or rather  the prickly and slightly preening polemical exhibition that is   [TGT]   style is indivisible from   [TGT]   role as a scholarly and theologically oriented cultural commentator. Like G. K. Chesterton  he has one essential argument: that God is the foundation of our being and that every human life therefore has its beginning and its end in eternity. He rehearses this argument in numberless witty variations against whichever non-God ideology happens to slouch beneath his pen: materialism  scientism  consumerism  pornographism â¦ And he can sound a Chestertonian note. âMy chief purpose â he wrote in 2013âs The Experience of God  âis not to advise atheists on what I think they should believe; I want merely to make sure that they have a clear concept of what it is they claim not to believe.â
Letâs zoom in on Mark  the roughest and tersest of the Gospels. (Hippolytus of Rome  in the third century  called Mark âstump fingeredââpossibly a physical descriptor but more likely  I think  a comment on his prose.) Hereâs how Monsignor Ronald Knox handled Mark 1:40â41 in his 1945 translation: âThen a leper came up to him  asking for his aid; he knelt at his feet and said  If it be thy will  thou hast power to make me clean. Jesus was moved with pity; he held out his hand and touched him  and said  It is my will; be thou made clean.â  Hart âs version: âAnd a leper comes to him  imploring him and falling to his knees  saying to him  âIf you wish it  you are able to cleanse me.â And  moved inwardly with compassion  he stretched out his hand and touched him  and says to him  âI wish it  be clean.â â Thereâs a stumbling  almost rustically blundering urgency to this  the verb tenses tripping over one another; beside it the Knox translation feels smoothed out  falsely archaized  too rhetorical. In  Hart  we can hear more clearly both the leperâs challengeâheal me!âand the quickness and intimacy of Jesusâs response.