"Tales of the Earliest World"

I'm engaged in a long term personal project of reading "again for the first time" Genesis 1–11. As a major part of that project, I'm reading translations that come from the minds of scholars who are not, consciously or unconsciously, wanting to support a particular theological worldview. Rather, these scholars are experts in the ancient Hebrew language and are attempting to translate Genesis as an ancient Hebrew literary text.

To that end I have already found Robert Alter's translation to be enjoyable to read/listen to (I have at the audio book as well as the printed text), as well as informative. I've also benefitted from reading Richard Elliott Friedman's translation of the Torah.

Today, I began reading Edwin M. Good's translation of Genesis 1–11. As he states in his Preface and Introduction, I can so identify with his purpose in reexamining this text in the latter years of his life. He died on Sept. 12, 2014 at the age of 86, while his book, Tales of the Earliest World, was published in 2011, when he was 83! So far I've only read his translation of Genesis 1:1–2:4, yet it has been so helpful in both challenging and confirming my own translation attempts.

The posting about his death by his Stanford University (where he was on the faculty of the Religious Studies department and the Classics department from 1956–1991) included the following comments (emphasis is mine): "Known for his translations of and literary commentary on the Hebrew Bible, Good approached the text as a collection of ancient stories. He traced their origins in the oral tradition and their connections with one another."

Let me draw now on a few quotes from Good's preface and introduction which explain very clearly a perspective regarding this amazing literary text with which I wholeheartedly identify and/or agree.

1. "My point is not to set forth the Final Truth about these chapters. I am pretty well convinced that there is no Final Truth to them, which is not to say that they have no truth in them...One of my aims is to assist people to read with care and to make up their own minds more clearly."

My complaint with regard to many popular and scholarly books and articles about the portions of the biblical text is that they often present their conclusions as the right or the "most right" truth. With the popular books there is little effort to show how the author arrived at his/her conclusions, and they often skip the step of what the text may have meant to its author and the intended original leaders. In many scholarly efforts, there is so much detail that only experts in the original language, history and archaeology can possible follow their argumentation. Surely, there has to be a happy middle ground, with the goal of presenting the author's perspective in a such way that it encourages the readers to seek out their own.

2. "Not that I will be shy about saying what I think. But I deeply desire readers to understand that my intention is not to provide them with a pre-digested “true perception” of these stories, but to show what in my own ways I have perceived. I have no difficulty with the idea that one outcome of that reading may be a level of disagreement with me. Fine. Use your own eyes and mind with all their capabilities and qualities, and see what you see."

The key to me, here, is what we call "humility." This allows one to come to new and fresh conclusions and to hold to them without the defensiveness that comes from arrogance. It is a challenge, but one that can be achieved, to hold to one's conviction with humility.

3. "In fact, one of the surprises in pushing my way through the thickets of these chapters was how my perceptions have changed since I wrote earlier on the same material. There are some statements here that I could not have made twenty or thirty years ago. On the present trip through these texts I saw a good many things that I simply never noticed before, and I think some of them were for me at those times unthinkable thoughts. Other things I thought back then prevented my seeing some of what I see now. I am grateful to whatever elements of life and experience have made possible such change."

I can so relate to this, almost word for word. I, too, am grateful for the people and experiences that have encouraged me to stop being defensive (i.e., arrogant and/or insecure about my faith) and thus to approach the text with renewed humility and curiosity. The result was that the scales fell from my eyes.

4. "As the Old Testament, it is the first volume of a two-volume Christian book, and a great many people suppose they are very comfortable with reading Christian books. The New Testament, however, is also the product of an ancient culture, or a combination of them, Jewish, Greek, and Roman, of the first centuries of the Common Era. As products of their times, both volumes think in unfamiliar ways. Many are quick to gloss over this strangeness, partly because there is a long theological tradition of a doctrine of divine inspiration, which says that God made the book so it would bring us truth."

The first step in interpreting the biblical texts is to do so in ways that are consistent with their original contexts. To hold to a view of inspiration that necessitates biblical inerrancy is to put twenty-first century knowledge and understanding into the minds of both the authors and their intended audience. No where is this more true than in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. To quote another of my newly favourite translators, that is simply an absurd approach. These texts had to make sense to the ancients who wrote them, read them and believed them.

5. It seems to me that recent decades have newly seen the Bible, whether Hebrew or Christian, as an artifact in the public and secular possession rather than as the exclusive property of the pious. My issue in any case is not the search for contemporary relevance. As a longtime student of antiquity, I am most impressed by the fact that the Hebrew Bible, and therefore the book of Genesis, was not written for us. I suspect the thought that their work might ever be translated into any other language never came to the storytellers’ minds." 

The texts that make up the entirety of the Christian Bible are truly ancient, written a long time ago, in a culture far away and radically different from virtually anything that we modern-day readers have experienced or even observed. Words did not mean to them what those same words mean to us, even if one is trained to read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. There are numerous examples of words, phrases, grammatical structures and idioms that we can only guess at what they meant because we have so few examples of their usage in other contexts. Translators must interpret to translate, but that doesn't mean there are alternative translations that would be justified.

As I continue with this long term project, I will, no doubt, glean many important and often challenging insights from the likes of Good, as well as Altar, Friedman and others, whose expertise and attempts to be as objective as possible, I trust.