Undusted Texts

Christ is risen! A translation is always a balancing act between an ungrammatical, too-strict word-for-word replacement and a new work merely "inspired by" the original text.  I've always loved the way John Dryden describes the issue in his essay "Ovid and the Art of Translation."   Dryden defines three distinct styles of translation: "metaphrase, or turning an author word by word, and line by line, from one language into another"—about which he later says, "'Tis much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs: a man may shun a fall by using caution; but the gracefulness of motion is not to be expected"—"paraphrase, or translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; and that too is admitted to be amplified, but not altered," and finally "imitation, where the translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the ...

I am nearing completion of a translation of some 7th-century Greek questions-and-answers, falsely ascribed to St. Athanasius.  Most of these answers are short, dedicated to tightly-focused questions: "Some say that infants often die for their parents' sins.  Is it so?"  "Why was God seen by Moses in a bush, and not in another plant?"  "Why, since Christ was circumcised, do we not circumcise ourselves too, like Him?"  There is one set of questions included in my translation, though, that covers Trinitarian theology writ large, with careful metaphysical and theological precision. In translating this last set of questions, I noticed how a grammatical distinction in Latin and Greek changes the understanding of the Holy Spirit's procession.  In the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (as the "Nicene Creed" is more precisely known, since it incorporates additions made at the First Council of Constantinople), the Holy Spirit is described via a chain...

  "Not such a fast I have chosen, says the Lord, but loose all bonds of iniquity, separate knots of violent covenants, send forth the shattered in release and all wicked contracts tear asunder."--Is 58:6 When we fast, we are not to merely refrain from food, though it is praiseworthy to do so to control our passions and offer our sacrifices to God; we are also to do good to our neighbor, as the Spirit spoke through the prophet Isaiah.  We are to fast from wickedness and fast for good, for the more exact fast, the true fast, is to abstain from sin, as St. John Chrysostom remind us, and while we abstain from sin we should also actively do good; thus the Lord directs us to do good for our neighbor during our fasts, expanding the normal definition of almsgiving, calling us to all of the corporal works of mercy.  Yet, are there not other ways we can assist our neighbor during the Fast, in addition to the physical assistance?  If we do not have a brother bound in wic...

A vice that was oft-discussed in olden times seems to have become eradicated today...at least in the popular mind.  I have heard and read very little in contemporary Christianity that discusses the vice of curiosity .  Yes, it is a vice when taken to an extreme (which it easily tends to): it is an excessive love of novelty that includes a disdain for what is older, more common, more traditional.  (Another meaning would be the curiosity of a busybody who is eager for gossip, but that form of curiosity seems more commonly condemned than this one.)  It may manifest as simply an overwhelming preference for living spiritual writers than sainted ones or for modern ideas over ancient ones; it may also manifest in an obsessive drive to be always learning more by learning broadly.  This latter form, I fear, is the least recognized and least condemned, and it is incredibly easy to fall into, especially with our current "Information Age."  In addition to the disdain ...