Salomon Malka is a journalist and writer.
He has just published
Elena Ferrante, In Search of the Prodigious Friend
, with Script editions.
A few years ago, Frédéric Boyer offered us a very original translation of the Bible.
47 authors – 20 writers and 27 biblical scholars grouped in pairs – had been brought together by him to propose a new approach which consisted in bringing the Bible through the breath of literature.
The result could be skeptical.
In any case, it was very uneven, with happy finds here and disconcerting ease there.
The author has just done it again, and this time he set himself to the task alone, with the same objective: to combine Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic to arrive at a renewed translation of the Gospel texts.
A new translation of the Gospels?
The thing is rather rare, enough in any case to deserve to be greeted.
Especially since the particularity of this translation is to further anchor the texts in their primary source and to give them new vigour.
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To translate faithfully to the original substrate is to act as if behind the Greek word, we were trying to make the oral background of the language heard.
The ancient Greek, which was in use, is to be compared according to the author with the so-called Septuagint translation.
This is obviously later, but all the novelty of Boyer's work would like to show how much these texts are immersed in the written and oral tradition of Judaism, how much they recall in many aspects the teachings and discussions in that tradition, how much they borrow from stories, parables, metaphors specific to this universe, how much they also keep track of shifts from one language to another, from Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek.
Boyer sketches, in an introductory remark, a beautiful personal reflection on the resurrection, on the amazement of the women of the Gospels before the empty tomb, the sudden reference of the author to his own sorrows and to what he calls “the impossible mourning”, to the certainty or the consolation which aims to persuade that “what happened is necessarily still alive”.
Solomon Malka
Among the illustrations given in passing, John the Baptist becomes John the Baptist.
“
Convert
” becomes “
change
”.
For the holy spirit we have substituted “
spirit breath
”.
Instead of “
I did not come to abolish but to accomplish
”, we preferred “
I did not come to destroy but to abound
” (Matthew 5I17).
Instead of Mary Magdalene, Mary the “
Magdalene
”.
Jesus of Nazareth sometimes becomes “
the Nazorenian
”, and most often is qualified as “
Rabbi
” (which is in conformity with the initial text).
Boyer, on the other hand, prefers to translate the word “
Gospel
” by “
testimony
rather than "
announcement
".
As if these texts were also valid as testimony to the intellectual and spiritual ferment in force around the 1st century, as if to understand them it was necessary to situate them in the geography of the time, Judea and Galilee crossed by currents and thoughts diverse and often contradictory.
The author also prefers to speak of the “
son of humanity
” (Bar Nasha in Aramaic) rather than the “
son of man
”.
In the verse (Matthew 1/21) "
it is he who will save his people from their sins
", sins are replaced by "
lacks
", based on the word "
Hett
", from the verb "
Hatt
" in Hebrew which means "to
miss
" or " to
miss its target
" (I have already heard this exegesis in the mouth of Jean-Luc Marion).
Boyer sketches, in an introductory remark, a beautiful personal reflection on the resurrection, on the amazement of the women of the Gospels before the empty tomb, the sudden reference of the author to his own sorrows and to what he calls “
the impossible mourning
”, to the certainty or the consolation which aims to persuade that “
what happened is necessarily still alive
”.
We realize the constants that were already present in the initial version but that the new translation emphasizes more.
The phrase of Isaiah comes back: “
Prepare the way
”.
We find the genealogy that goes back to Abraham and crosses all generations.
As return from one Gospel to another these "
large crowds
" who followed the Galilean preacher.
These crowds which are almost a character in their own right in the Gospels.
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That said, it is true that the translator has managed to bring out, by slightly modifying a few words here and there, by rediscovering the rabbinical twist of this or that parable drawn from the peasant and rural world, by evoking grains, seeds, sheep, fig trees, bread, wine… A whole imagery, a whole physical landscape and a whole poetic fund of the Bible that suddenly come alive before our eyes.
To admit the action of literature on men is perhaps the ultimate wisdom of the West in which the people of the Bible will recognize themselves.
Levinas
Is this impregnation present in the same way in the four canonical Gospels, of which the author does not omit to recall that they were spread over time at least until the end of the 1st century?
Not really.
It would be necessary to be able to compare the two versions foot by foot.
But what is certain, and what makes the strength of this work, is to have revitalized these texts through a few impulses by placing them in their natural background and underlining their literary inspiration.
Because it is about literature, in the Bible as in the Gospels, it is the message or the announcement or the testimony of Frédéric Boyer.
What pushed the author into this titanic and somewhat crazy enterprise?
He quotes Lévinas to explain his approach.
“
Admitting the action of literature on men is perhaps the ultimate wisdom of the West in which the people of the Bible will recognize themselves
”.