A New Look at the Good Book

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 951, 1 November 1957, Page 24

A New Look at the Good Book

HE Bible, some statisticians are fond of telling us, stands’ among the world’s best-sellers. What they don’t tell us is that it’s often one of the world’s best dust gatherers, standing in its black léathér afd gold léaf on so many bookshelvés, unopétiéd éxcépt for the occasional crossword puzzle réfererice, and évén thén hatidled with the same deferisive émbatrassrient as one handles a meeting with a weéll-wisher who is uncomfortably awaré of one’s shortcomings. The idea of taking the book down and feadiig it with an open mind i$ altiost a& foreign as the idea of fatnily prayers. Part-of this; of course, is because we haven’t outgtown ouf Sunday-school ideas about religion. We either can’t, or don’t want to, admit that faith can be something for adults with adult minds. But part of it, perhaps the greater part, is because. the language inside that beautiful binding is as outmoded and strange to us as the original Greek and Hebrew were to the first translators. And this is no small barrier to comprehension, particularly in these days when we afte spoonfed literature "written so we can understand it." We need something else besides an open mind. We neéd an open Comméntary. The idea behind the Readings from the Bible now being broadcast daily fromm the YAs, YZs and X stations was to dispense with the Commentary and yet make the impact of the Bible as Strong and a8 fresh as the original ideas were when they were first written down. And while the easiest way of doing this -would havé been to take one or all of the many new translations of the Bible currently in the bookshops and to broadcast them, it would have been to overlook oné intangible though important factor; the authority of the Authorised ersion. Thé authority of language acceptéd, quoted and argued over for nearly three centuries. This, then, was the principal problem that I started to face over a year ago, when I gathéred four translations of the whole Bible, fivé séparate books

of Gospels and epistles, 4 commentafy and a concordance oii my desk and began to select a batch of passages. I say "started to face" because, unlike the business of picking theme music, choosing readers, and finding the least laborious method of putting theme, reading and back Aafinoutcement together, the problem of sélection is still goitig on, and will 6 on until thé last of the 900 readings is recorded. : The simplest way of tackling it, I found, was to start with the betterknown passages in the Authoriséd Version: If a passage could be read in such a way that the listener’s mind, instead of slipping easily over the well-polished surface of the familiar words, was tripped and sent crashing through into the meaning beneath, it was selected, But, on the other hand, if it seemed that a néwer translation could untie a knotty point of sweeten a corrupt phfase, of erase a misconception arising frotm thé (continued an néet nbete)

changed use. of a word, the Authorised | Version was put aside. Though in effect , every passage was read in every version before the final choice was made. In addition to the Authorised Version, I used Moffatt (which demands a Scottish voicé to read it), the American translation put out by the National Council of the Churches of Christ called the Revised Standard Version, and the Bible translated by Monsignor Ronald Knox. The Revised Version was rejected because of the occasional woodenness of its prose. These translations are also used for readings from the New Testament, with the addition of J. B. Phillips’s three paraphrases--The Gospels, The Young Church in Action, and his brilliant Letters to Young Churches. I also made use of Weymouth’s translation, and E. V. Rieu’s The Four Gospels. ‘ But even the best of translations can be turned into nonsense by misreading. And, alternatively, the most obscure passages in St. Paul’s epistles can be made clear, even in archaic prose, provided that the voice reading it can accept and trafismit an interpretation: can, in other words, be produced. The four voices regularly heard in Readings from .the Bible are those of William Austin, Basi] Clarke, Roy Leywood and Bernard Kearns, all of whom are professional radio actors and readers, and on whom the final excellence of the finished product depends. However, between the selection of a reading and the attainment of that excellence, a lot of hard work has to be done. Every name has to be checked and rehearsed; every inflexion, change of pace, pause and stress carefully mapped out, We try to reach the writer or the speaker behind the written word, and reproduce his mood. St. Paul, for instance, in his letters:

where does he plead, where does he reason, where is there quiet conviction and where impassioned argument? We discuss every passage, its context, its historical background and theological significance, and count ourselves lucky if we spend only 20 minutes on a reading that will last for two. It is, though, immensely creative work, not only because we are bringing to life again ideas which have been so long buried under the dead weight of language, but also because we can transmit them in their resurrected form, evening after evening, to people who have in the past regarded them as dead as the language they were buried under,