Lost in Translation

When I took Hebrew at Regent a few years ago, I absolutely fell in love. It was beautiful. It was the language of my beloved Old Testament. I was certain this must be the language of choice in heaven :) But when I started my courses at U of Toronto this semester, Hebrew felt more like a thorn in the flesh than an encounter with heaven. I was surprised how much one could forget!

I finally had a breakthrough with my Hebrew studies a few weeks ago. My head was clear enough to sit down and read back through some of the basics. I even made cards with tables and reminders to tape on my desk shelves, and I only made them once the information made sense. I'm now beginning to experience a resurgence of my admiration of Hebrew, and other things about the language that didn't make sense or that I didn't have a firm grasp on before are becoming more clear.

Upon reflection, I realized that I had not simply been frustrated by the difficulty I experience with Hebrew, it was deeper than that. I felt let down, or even worse, offended, because the language I remembered understanding, enjoying, and professing to love was all of a sudden an inaccessible source of frustration. That hurt. Adding insult to injury, I was having far less trouble with Greek - a language for which I've quite vocally claimed to have less than affectionate feelings - than I was experiencing with my darling Hebrew. Slighted, confused, certainly frustrated, and not in control - that is how I felt about the whole language thing.

But perhaps this unexpected turn of events is really by the grace of God. Having already noted my general dislike for studying Greek, I can say that I was more than a little apprehensive about taking a class entirely devoted to translating and reading it (I'm taking an Advanced Hellenistic Greek course this semester in which we're working with passages from the Greek Old Testament/Septuagint). Yet the relative ease of working with Septuagint Greek thus far as compared to the Hebrew we're translating for my class on Deuteronomy allowed me to see Greek from a different perspective. I'm beginning to appreciate it as well. Had I been able to soar through the Hebrew from the beginning, perhaps I would have retained my aversion to Greek. All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

One final note - I happened to look up as I was writing the words above and saw a verse which I have framed and placed in my room. Seeing this treasured verse reminded me of my Deuteronomy professor's exhortation to memorize the verses we like in Hebrew. My thought was that a verse that carries so much depth, memory, and meaning for me in English would have far less significance for me in Hebrew. But in that moment I had two small revelations (appropriate for this season of Epiphany, eh?):

1. The Hebrew verse would lack significance only because I'm not yet intimately knowledgeable of the Hebrew language, and 
2. I get to become intimately knowledgeable of the Hebrew language!

This second realization delivered a quite surprising sense of joy. Of course, the same applies to Greek as well. How incredible it is to be doing something that I know I enjoy and to be even more abundantly blessed with an expectation of greater things to come!

"The Witness of His Spirit in My Heart"

This is a slightly revised version of my journal entry from January 11th.

I'm reading Peter Craigie's introduction to Deuteronomy in his commentary for the NICOT series. In this introduction, he gives part of an explanation of his theological approach to Scripture in writing this commentary. He calls it a "theological-historical, or theological scientific" approach, explaining that "it is not assumed at the outset that the biblical text . . . is a purely human work, the product of man's imagination," defined as "the interpretation of ordinary events as the acts of God." He goes on to say, "The assumption (or belief) that the source of the work is God, though its mediation is human, means that scientific method is employed with certain limitations" (p 77).

I understand this approach and I agree with it to a certain extent. Somehow this book (the Bible) is the word of God. Somehow humans wrote it down and spoke it and digested it. Somehow it seems perfect and somehow imperfect all at the same time. It is ultimately perfect, I believe, but it is so in a way I can never fully understand or explain because in human terms it simply cannot be perfect. There are 'errors', which try as one may to explain, justify, correct, or dispute, still they remain and cannot be destroyed . . . at least not aside from a measure of faith in that which, by definition, is not human.

The thought of engaging this predicament is overwhelming - or would be if I did not hold a measure of that faith which I mentioned above. Nevertheless, I still feel that I'm faced with the vast world of theological and biblical academia and, I'm sure, with scholars like those described by Craigie who would see this approach to Scripture as one ridden with "theological prejudice" (p76).

I see this obstacle and I stop. No fight or flight for me. I freeze. Questions run through my head. These are not new questions, but the same ones that likely come up again and again for many people, and especially for those who are studying Scripture. Where do I even begin to dialogue with someone who approaches Scripture in an entirely opposite manner - one devoid of inspiration and reliance on faith. Even more pressing on my mind now is this question: How do I get through school and survive in a field with professors and colleagues who may have a similarly opposite approach? How do I talk to people who always seem so interested in what I'm doing or what I believe when I say I'm in school to study the Bible?

I know that this is only the beginning of these questions, so I come out of the freeze and move on with my reading. But not without first, almost subconsciously 'uttering' in my head a silent, but sincere, prayer for help. A few sentences later, Craigie concludes a paragraph on maintaining balance between theological and scientific approaches with this exhortation: "it is always important to remember that there are those in our modern world who have, without the aid of scientific scholarship, grasped the meaning of the Bible in a manner that may evade scholars" (p 78).

Curious, and perhaps a little desperate, my eyes follow the page to a footnote below. Here, Craigie recounts the following story from the Hamilton, Ontario Spectator from April 2, 1973: Lloyd Oppel, who has recently been released from captivity in Indochina as a prisoner of war, cites God as the reason he made it home and quotes a verse he read the very night before he was captured (p 78). The verse, Deuteronomy 31:6, reads (as quoted by Oppel)

Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them:

For the Lord thy God, He it is that goeth with thee;

He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

And there, in the middle of my questions and 'dread', was God. God, who always knows exactly how and when to speak to me so that I'll hear. God, who isn't surprised by the questions. God, who alone can say to me, "Be strong, fear not, nor be afraid of them." God, who answers my questions not with words to speak to impress professors, colleagues, or inquisitors, but with a direct answer of the promise that I am not in this alone - that He is on this journey with me.

So, now I think back again to another scholar quoted in Craigie's book, Robertson Smith. Smith, though he proposed a late date for the writing of Deuteronomy - a very unorthodox view for his time (19th century Scotland) - nevertheless affirmed his belief in the inspiration of Scripture with this reasoning: ". . . because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God; because in the Bible alone I find God drawing nigh to [humankind] in Jesus Christ and declaring his will for our salvation. And the record I know to be true by the witness of his Spirit in my heart . . ." (p 74-75; quoted by Craigie from Smith's 1881 "preface to the 1st edition of The OT in the Jewish Church").