Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Heart and Soul

The longer title of this post is
“καρδα κα ψυχ κα νεφρς κα κεφαλ
(or “Heart and Soul and Kidney, and Heady Abstractions”)

Rhetoricians have refused to translate ἐν-θύμημα (one of Aristotle’s key terms of the Rhetoric) but rather, following Cicero, have abstracted it through transliteration as something like enthymeme. Classicists and Bible translators, nevertheless, have wonderfully translated the term into English as “heart” and “soul” and “mind” and “desire” and “purpose” and “[mental] conception” and “consideration” and “a bearing in mind” and “imaginations” and “devices” and “a doting” and “thought” and “a thinking.”

I think and believe, in my heart and soul, that the translators, not the transliterators, get this right.

But now we see that Bible translators are not all in agreement about the translation of other key terms in Greek literatures: καρδα and νεφρς and κεφαλ. The disputes revolve around whether a man (i.e., a husband) should be head over a woman (i.e., a wife) around the world today because that is what New Testament letter writers seem to have written to some early Christians around Europe around twenty centuries ago.

And the Bible translation disagreements revolve mainly around κεφαλ. Should it be translated “heady authority” only? Can’t it mean “fountain head” or “source”? And should it be translated “intellect” when the word νεφρς is much more clearly used for “mind” in the LXX and the NT as in apparent contrast with καρδα (or “heart”)?

Some of us have offered evidence that κεφαλ is not always a metaphor for “heady authority” and that κεφαλ is often a literal and sometimes a figural “source.” The funniest, most painful example is of the head (i.e., the part of the body with face, eyes, ears, mouth, and chin attached to the neck) for male humans as being the source of semen. This evidence is offered by Susanne McCarthy, who writes:

“We would, however, have to end up analysing the Greek belief that the physical head of a man contained semen, and that impotence was thought to be relieved by making an incision behind the ears to let it flow more easily.”

So let’s analyse. Lo and behold, we find Aristotle, and his teacher, again. Francis E. Peters writes:

Plato . . . in the Timaeus, locates the rational part (logistikon) of the human soul in the head (44d) and makes the brain [i.e., ἐν- κεφαλ] the source of the reproductive powers (73c-d . . . ). But even though the question continued to be debated (see SVF II, 885; Cicero, Tusc. 1, 9, 19), it was the view of Aristotle that prevailed. Aristotle knew, to be sure, the medical assertions of the connection of the senses with the brain, but he was not convinced by the evidence (Hist. anim. 514a). What he finds more persuasive is that there is no sensation in the brain itself (De part. anim. 656a).

I’ll give a fuller quotation by Peters below, but first I want to say it’s not all Greek men who were as logical as Aristotle.

Now let’s turn quickly to that other question. Should κεφαλ be translated “intellect” when the word νεφρς is much more clearly used for “mind” in the LXX and the NT as in apparent contrast with καρδα (or “heart”)? The careful answer Michael Kruse is giving so far is “No.”

I really think Michael’s on to something, but I also suspect that καρδα and νεφρς were connected together by the ancient Hebrews first (before they were ever contrasted by Hellenes). Michael Kruse rightly turns us to “Hebrew anthropology” as he shows us “Jesus” talking in Rev 2:23. But “John,” who authors Revelation, I would venture, is there alluding to Psalms (7:9 & 26:2 & 139:1) and to the prophet Jeremiah (11:20 & 17:10). There the writers use “lib(bah)” together with “kilyah”: יבלו יתוילכ (or “reins” [i.e., “kidneys”] and “heart”). They sing and write with elegant Hebrew poetic parallelism. “Kidney” and “heart” are parallel organs, or are the inner being to be searched by God. But when the LXX translators and John (and the Holy Spirit and Jesus) translate the two parallel Hebrew words into Greek, then Hellenistic readers, perhaps accustomed to contrast, read καρδα κα νεφρς not as closely related metaphors of the various internal parts of the psalmist (and Jeremiah) but as distinctive physical organs representing separate abstractions. In our century, in the West, we tend to follow the Greeks too. What will Michael say next? I’m looking forward to his future blogging on this topic!

Let me stop for now just to add the longer quotation promised. And in adding the longer quotation, I’d like to add this: that the Hellene conceptions of body parts, and what they represent, evolved substantially. Despite Aristotle’s attempts at locking down the concepts by his either-or method, there remained much wiggle room, much playfulness, in the language. For all of us translators – rhetoricians and Bible scholars – there remains such word play. We neither have to believe all of Aristotle's conclusions nor use his methodology blindly. The consequences of Aristotelianism to women (as simply "botched males") may be severe; and to men (as male humans with heads full) may be painful.

from Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon by Francis E. Peters
pages 96 – 97, 167:

psyche: soul

2. . . . In contrast there is the thymos, the spirit, located in the midriff (phrenes) whereby a man thinks and feels (see kardia [pages 96 – 97]).

3. The Homeric psyche was closely associated with motion in that its departure turned the aggregate of churning limbs that was the hero’s “body” into a soma or motionless corpse. The thymos too is connected with motion in a sense later explored by Aristotle; it is the promptings of thymos that impel the hero to activity.

kardía: heart

1. Behind the long-standing debate on the seat of the soul that was conducted in philosophical circles there stands a prephilosophical physiology that had, in effect, decided the question and that, supported by the massive authority of Homer, tended to dominate even the accummulating medical evidence to the contrary. The Homeric hero both feels (Il. IX, 186, XIII, 493; etc.) and thinks (Il. IX, 600, XIII, 296) with the phrenes or midriff, whence the later prhonesis, thought or wisdom.

2. A great number of thinkers went along the same path, encouraged no doubt by medical theories of vital heat carried through the system by blood. The thermal theory of thought finds its chief propagator in Heraclitus who identified the soul with fire (fr. 36) and connected it with consciousness (Diels 22A16). In Empedocles the blood appears a factor linked with perception, and the seat of perception is located in the heart (fr. 105). . . Aristotle calls the heart the arche of life, movement, and sensation (De part. anim. 666a-b), and though the Eupicureans dispersed the sould all over the body (see psyche [pages 166-167]), the rational faculty (Lucretius: animus) was in the breast (Lucretius III, 141-142), as it was for the Stoics (SVF II, 879).

3. The other school of thought, which located the seat of perception in the brain (enkephalos), had its origin in Pythagorean medical circles, specifically with Alcmaeon of Crotona (Theophrastus, De sens. 26; . . . ) who maintained that there were passages (poroi) connecting the senses to the brain, a position he was said to have arrived at by actual dissections on the optic nerve (Diels 24A11) and that reappears among the philosophers with Diogenes of Apollonia. Here the phisiological reasoning is crossed with more philosophical considerations, i.e., that air (aer, q..v.) is the divine arche of all things, the source of life, soul, and intelligence (frs. 4, 5). How perception occurs we are told by Theophrastus (De sens. 39-44). Man inhales air that travels, via the various senses, to the brain. If the air is pure and dry, thought (phronesis) takes place (. . . and compare the similar Hippocratic text in Diels 64C3).

4. Socrates had heard of the brain theory as a young man and was interested in it (Phaedo 96b). He must have passed his interest on to Plato who, in the Timaeus, locates the rational part (logistikon) of the human soul in the head (44d) and makes the brain [i.e., en-kephalos] the source of the reproductive powers (73c-d . . . ).


6. Plotinus, however, following the Platonic tradition, continues to locate the arche of sensation in the brain, or as he carefully puts it, “the point of departure [arche] of the operation [energeia] of the faculty [dynamis], since it is the arche of the kinesis of the instrument [oragon]” (Enn. IV, 3, 23).

Monday, September 17, 2007

feminism(s) & rhetoric(s) & translations(s), oh my!

In a single sentence [the reviewer] reimposed the very dichotomies I had constructed the book in order to call into question, putting electrified fences around the categories “academy,” “criticism,” and “writing” to keep the various critters from intermingling, maybe interbreeding to create some nameless monster very like the one I aspire to be.
-- Nancy Mairs, Voice Lessons: On Becoming A (Woman) Writer

Gorgias undertakes to excuse [Helen] by arguing that if she followed Paris, she could only have done so for one of these four reasons: (1) she obeyed the gods' commands; (2) she was carried off by force; (3) she was persuaded by speech; (4) she succumbed to love.
-- Laurent Pernot, Rhetoric in Antiquity
as translated by WE Higgins

and so he stated this to them,
“Haven’t you figured out this story thrown beside you?
And so how about all the other stories thrown beside you?
How are you going to know them?”
καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς
οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην
καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς
-- יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (or Ἰησοῦς or Joshua, aka Jesus, the great feminist & rhetor)
as monstrously translated into the Hellene alphabet (or Mark 4:13)
מָרְדֳּכַי (or Μᾶρκος or Marduka, aka Mark, a great translator)
as monstrously translated into English-ish text

by me (aka J. K. Gayle)
I intend 3 things with this blog post:
1) to give a nod to the co-bloggers, who are Bible translators (readers, interpreters), who grapple with many fun and serious things (many rhetorical and feministic things).
a blogroll: Ancient Hebrew Poetry, Better Bibles Blog, Suzanne's BookshelfVoice of Iyov, Lingamish, Voice of Stefan.
2) to offer a shameless plug for the upcoming 6th Biennial Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s) Conference. Several of my colleagues (and I) are making presentations there.
3) to talk some here about the pluralitieS, the positionS we feministS and rhetoricianS and translatorS may take. I know I won’t be the only man presenting at the conference, but as far as I know I’ll be the sole man taking the position of feminist, rhetorician, translator. We are about as excited as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, in the Land of Oz, approaching the (Cowardly) Lion and exclaiming “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
As for positionS, let me talk about 4. Why 4? Well, why does Jesus talk about 4 kinds of positions that thrown seed finds itself in?
(where making one's point is everything, and its falling by the wayside is disaster)
a proposition is the position feminists will take when they abandon their bodies for heady abstraction. some notable feminists, for example, have written an academic article (published by a usually-fine journal) entitled, “Beyond the Personal.”
a proposition is the position rhetoricians will take when making pronouncements and prescriptions about how one must speak or write. this is the “telling” strategy (according to Robert E. Quinn in his incredibly insightful book, Change the World.)
a proposition is the position translators will take when they say we must be most careful with what is literal, or what is original, or what is explicit, or what the author intends, or what the text says, or what is concordant between the source and target languages. this position assumes something epiphenomenal or a meaning that is contingent on, say, a lexicon or dictionary or some other root(ed) authority. (i’m getting the terms from literary critic George Steiner in his essay entitled “On Difficulty” in his book entitled On Difficulty where he notes that poetry readers often have the one-in-4 difficulty that is an epiphenomenal or contingency difficult. the solution? look up the words in the dictionary.)
(where making my point is not enough so I force it on you, so that your view gets sunburned and stone stunted and dies)
an imposition is the position feminists will take when shouting about the noise shrilly. this position is why it’s called the f-word.
an imposition is the position rhetoricians will take when arguing continually about the meaning of Aristotle’s enthymeme or anyone’s different meaning of rhetoric and/or when forcing all philosophers to concede that they really don’t argue syllogistically but rather enthymematically. Quinn calls this the “forcing strategy.”
an imposition is the position translators will take when insisting that the preferred translations not read into the text subjectively (unless it violates something personal for me which I will not admit to you or perhaps even myself). Steiner says that poetry writers may often create tactical difficulties for readers, making reader speed bumps if you will; and I say translators often impose similar kinds of things on readers of their translations.
(where my mode as my mode counts most especially when mine chokes yours out, unless I can make your mode mine)
a transposition is the position feminists will take when co-opting male-ness. phallogocentrism becomes vaginocentrism but both centrisms, both as arrogant. or i may just use blatant logic against Aristotle and his blatant misogyny.
a transposition is the position rhetoricians will take when disputing about whether (or when controlling just how) the other rhetoricians, or the classicists, or the compositionists, or the lit crits, may appropriate rhetoric. Quinn calls this strategy “the negotiating, or win-win” strategy.
a transposition is the position translators will take when putting a verse to music or to rhyming limerick. Steiner says that poetry readers face a modal difficulty when reading something figural as literal, for instance. Of course, translators may do some zany things when turning a Beatles song into muzak for the elevator (or, as the Brits say, for the lift). (And I may just add that C.S. Lewis has a fine essay called "Transposition," getting at some of the problems. Remember when he expounds, "Let us construct a fable. Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. . . . "?)
(where who I am falls into the ground, dies, and becomes something and somebodies much more and much more alive)
an a(p)position is the position feminists will take when denying themselves for the equality of men, of men and women and children, of black and white and color.
an a(p)position is the position rhetoricians will take when finding themselves in various fields comfortably, whether comp studies, or feminism, or communication studies, or classics studies, or literature, or history. Quinn calls this strategy the “transformation” strategy.
an a(p)position is the position translators will take as translinguals, as scholars and experts who realize, with Lydia H. Liu, that “host language” and “guest language” are much better metaphors for translation than the propositional, or impositional, or transpositional metaphors of “source language” and “target language.” Personal and subjective positions confessed become much more signficant than cold objectivity. Steiner notes how a poem may be ontologically difficult, and then the reader and the poet are changed together.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Reflections Around an Embroidered Psalm

First, an acknowledgment of Bob’s, David’s, Iyov’s, John’s, Stephan’s, Suzanne’s blogs, posts, and comments on Psalm 68.

Second, a question inspired by Suzanne’s post, “Ps. 68: Part 7: Reflections,” and some of her wonderful comments around her rhetorical questions:

“Was Psalm 68 written by a woman? Does it matter?

Are men less musical, are men less interested in expressing themselves through music and language than women? In some way, yes, but in others, not at all.

Is my interpretation of the psalm actually feminine, or is something else going on?”

My question is this:

Does a woman writing make a difference?

No and Yes.

No: Women and men write equally.

We all can observe that women and men may write equally. That is, women and men are inherently equal in their capacity, in their ability, to write. We can see the equality immediately without having to turn to the academy or to anyone’s interpretations of any religious scripture. A man can write like a woman (if there’s a woman’s way of writing). And a woman can write like a man (if there’s a man’s way of writing). In this sense, therefore, it makes no difference in writing whether the writer is a man or a woman.

Despite the equality between men and women, some men such as Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, and perhaps Lawrence Summers have declared inequality between men and women (and, presumably, their writing). These men have written that women are different and presumably are therefore lesser than men physically and psychologically and perhaps in the society of the academy. The inference from Aristotle, Freud, and maybe Summers is that a woman’s writing is somehow fundamentally different-and-deficient when compared with men’s. These three men employ (an attempt at) logic, science, and cold unbiased observation to make such a conclusion.

Why can’t French postmodern feminists reason, then, that “phallologocentric” writers (such as Aristotle) will only pretend that there is no gendered writing when, really, “misogynistic” writers seem just to mark “womanly” writing as altogether different and leave all other [manly] writing as unmarked? In her Voice Lessons: On Becoming a [Woman] Writer (on page 4), we really can listen to Nancy Mairs saying in protest to her critic: “I am not a ‘real writer.’ I am a writer. Without modification.” So why can’t we also hear that writers are equal, male and female? Why can’t we see that male and female difference does not make for inequality? How can we not perceive this: that what de-scribes another’s writing as lesser are the imposed marks, the adjectives, the labels, and the modifications that a writer refuses to apply down on himself?

If we’re still having trouble seeing the sexism here, then analogies from racism may help. Let’s ask this: “Is African American literature lesser than other (American) literature?” Of course not! But the modification can “other,” can “marginalize,” and can “essentialize.” And a writer such as Jacqueline Jones Royster may respond, writing about what happens when others apply labels to her but not themselves; her responsive article is entitled,“When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own.”

If we’re still having trouble seeing the sexism, then analogies from ethnocentrism may also help. Let’s ask this: “Is ancient Chinese written instruction in communication a real ‘rhetoric’ on par with our (western european) rhetoric”? Of course we’d better at least imagine that Chinese rhetoric might be equal to ours. But look how we readers of rhetorical history tend to pass over the labels, unnoticed, when reading a book like Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction by a reputable scholar such as George A. Kennedy. I pass over the ethnocentric modifications until coming upon something penciled in the margins of page 143 of my university’s library copy of the book. There, next to the author’s English (and the publisher’s transcribed pinyin) labels for Chinese terms, someone has unmarked the Chinese by marking the western writing with the following:

So by page 162, I really start wondering at Kennedy’s non-equal comparisons. There he writes: “The author of a Chinese work that most approximates a rhetorical handbook was Han Fei-tzu, probably born about 280BCE, ‘the Machiavelli of ancient China’.” And I ask now: “Might not a Chinese comparative rhetorician venture that Niccolo Machiavelli, perhaps born around the late to mid 1400sCE, is the Han Fei-tzu of sixteenth-century Europe”?

(It is absolutely no surprise to me that some readers reading my blog have not immediately been able to mark whether I’m a man or a woman. See the comments on Lingamish’s blog. Our gender and our race for that matter do not have to identify or to determine our writing. But won’t we do well first to acknowledge the differences our writing, our gender, and our race make before we start marking others as different and as different-and-therefore-lesser?)

Yes. A woman writing does make a difference.

Going beyond Aristotle’s mistaken observation that women are lesser than men, we can read writers who make a difference. They make a difference (though marked in the world of men as “women”). They make a difference by showing that men in history (especially men writing history) have not marked men and women equally. They show that, in the history of men written by men, usually the ones that count are men.

But women writing history have another history. And some write that history differently, more inclusively, with women equal to men. These writers include Laura Certa (writing to “Bibolo Semproni”); Cristine de Pizan (writing “The Book of the City of Ladies”); Elizabeth Cady Stanton (writing and reading “The Declaration of Sentiments” and The Women’s Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective); Cheryl Glenn (writing Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance); Susan Jarratt (writing “Sappho's Memory” and, with Rory Ong, “Apsasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology”); and C. Jan Swearingen (writing “Plato’s Feminine: Appropriation, Impersonation, and Metaphorical Polemic”).

Such women’s writing is inclusive, not just of women with men, but is inclusive of methods and rhetorics that are not male only. Patricia Bizzell, for example, has written a wonderful article, which embraces traditional research methods (i.e., unmarked methods of men) but which also valorizes what get marked in our societies as less common methods (i.e., often suspect and marked-as-womanly methods). The article is "Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do They Make?"

For men reading women writers, there is an encouragement is not to settle for man writing that excludes women. There is the encouragement to men and women equally to use more inclusive methods (i.e., feminist methods) in writing. Let’s recall just a few. In contrast with Francis Bacon’s modernistic Essays, there’s Michel de Montaigne’s Essais with the self as the subject and method instead of mere logic. In contrast with Noam Chomsky’s and Morris Halle’s T-G linguistic theory of binary features, there’s Kenneth Pike’s, Evelyn Pike’s, and Eunice Pike’s Tagmemics, which places person above logic and which insists on acknowledging a language unit in a hierarchical perspective within its chosen context. In contrast with Aristotle’s logic, there are many other rhetorics and namely Jim W. Corder’s (which Keith D. Miller calls “Jim Corder’s Radical, Feminist Rhetoric”) which, perhaps, could be summed up fairly by one of Corder’s sentences (i.e., “On some days I’m pretty sure that there are five rhetorics, as intellect teaches me to speak in one way, while emotions tell another, and will insists on a third, and what’s left of soul whispers a fourth, and body comes with a fifth to dominate the others”) except just one sentence doesn’t quite include all the intellect, emotion, will, soul, or body of Corder or his works.

But I’ve gotten all academic in this blog again. I think a lot about the world in which my son and daughters live, the kind of writing they must write and read. As adults, they should be equal (as men and women) in their education, in their ability to write. And wonderfully different. I look forward to reading how they read, equally but differently, Psalm 68.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

How Aristotle Writes Psalm 68

:םיהלאל וידי ץירת שוכ םירצמ ינמ םינמשח ויתאי

ἥξουσιν πρέσβεις ἐξ Αἰγύπτου Αἰθιοπία προφθάσει χεῖρα αὐτῆς τῷ θεῷ

-verse 32

For readers keeping up with the commentary on Psalm 68, Suzanne McCarthy has written her Part 6: The heavens dripped (where she also kindly references the latest posts of others). I want to return to her Part 5: The barren woman, where Suzanne writes that “the psalmist” is a “she.”

We’re raising the question of authoring, of authority. Who wrote and who can (best) read Psalm 68? Let’s hear the Psalm: “the righteous / the just” – of course: “the fatherless,” “the widows,” “the prisoners,” “the women”: “back from Bashon” with “Benjamin, the youngest” in “Judah,” in “Zebulan,” in “Naphatali,” now “at the temple in Jerusalem” and “out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall hasten to stretch out her hands toward God.” (Aside questions: Where are the men? Why are women often classed in the societal margins? See: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals?)

Now let me suggest how Aristotle wrote the Psalm.

It’s certainly not as he and other men intended. But acknowledge Aristotle’s authorial impact. Aristotle takes the lessons of Plato, who rails against the Hellene poets and their “so called rhetoric.” Aristotle formalizes such, with his unique cold objectivity. Aristotle teaches Alexander. Alexander conquers the world, setting up centers of learning and notably Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria is a crossroads, rhetorically, linguistically, culturally, ethnically, religiously. Polytheistic Egypt hosts polytheistic Hellenes and monotheistic Arabs and monotheistic Jews. For the Israelites living there in this land of former slavery, this is a fantastic place at an incredible moment in history. As Sylvie Honigman suggests, it becomes a second Jerusalem, one in which there is “innovation.” The innovation has the most profound implications for the Greek and the Jew. For the Greek, there are the developments of the Hellenistic movement, away from Aristotle (a kind of post-Aristotelianism if you will). For the Jew, “the form is Greek, but the thematic material is Jewish” (Honigman, p. 16).

Now Aristotle writes Psalm 68 in this way. We track his hand (through Alexander) and those (Greeks-and-Jews) re-forming Aristotle(-with-Moses-back-in-Egypt). In Alexandria, Ptolemy Philadelphus commissions seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. How these post-Aristotelians read verse 32! How Aristotle writes. Had he forgotten Helen? No matter: “out of Egypt” they refuse to include his “eros” and his “rhetoric” translating instead with “agape” and “rhema” and “eulogos.” They (women and men) remember Helen and Hellenism and pave the way for Jew-and-Greek “fatherless” and “widows” to read (to read even more and more of one coming for Jews and Greeks out of “Judah,” “Zebulan,” “Naphatali”). It’s certainly not as Aristotle intended.


1) for Aristotelianism (and likely for Aristotle himself):
- woman is a "botched" man
- rhetoric is "botched" logic
- translation is "botched" authority

but Aristotle cannot get around the rhetorical Helen, Hellenistic rhetoric, or their translation.

2) Is this too much of a stretch?

a) Why do the LXX translators begin Psalm 68 "with the finish" as with the final utterance (by the disciples' Hellenistic translation) on the cross?

b) Why do the LXX translators begin verse 2 with "νασττω" an imperative form of a verb used by Μωυσς (the alleged author of the book of ησος in Joshua 1 verse 2) for Moses and much more often for Joshua (i.e., ησος)? And why do the following disciples writing the New Testament use ναστς of ησος (i.e., resurrection of Jesus)?

c) Why do the LXX translators in Exodus 6:20 reference Miriam the sister of Moses and Aaron, when the Masoretic Text omits her altogether? Could that name Μαριαμ hold significance for the later disciples translating into Hellenism the Aramaic Hebrew words of their master and the names of the women he was around, even the one he came from?

Thursday, September 6, 2007

How Aristotle Reads Psalm 68














Joseph Priestly and Martin Luther would definitely say that.




































Saturday, September 1, 2007

Bible beginner's questions

I’m back just briefly. Blame it on Madame Guyon’s advice, to us beginners, to meet with Jesus Christ by “praying the scripture.”

The text I met this morning is Mark’s (chapter 13, 28-29; which sends me over to Matthew’s 24:32-33 and to Luke’s 21:29-31). Now, please remember I’m a beginner here. But how can we readers and we translators miss the word play?

I’ve copied/pasted the texts (from playful Mark and Matthew) below. Now I want to ask us readers and translators a few questions:

How can we readers and translators miss the word play?

Isn’t Jesus Christ having fun with his learners, telling them then and us now to “learn” from what a tree throws across at us (aka from a feminine-“she” tree’s “parable”)?

And aren’t Mark and Matthew having fun with translating the words of Jesus into Greek?

Isn’t there “room for discussion” that Peter Kirk calls for in his comment on my comment (on Suzanne McCarthy’s blog post)? Is the Greek we read from the disciples more authoritative than the Aramaic they heard from Jesus? (And I’m not suggesting we play the games of the “Jesus” Seminar, who doubt at all Jesus really said what Mark, Matthew, and Luke say he said. N.T. Wright responds to that silliness.)

Do we see their rhymes, the alliterations? And hear the differences in plays on words, in the responses to one another, of Mark and Matthew? (Could we have a word-play-to-word-play translation into English?)

ὅταν ἤδη and ὅταν ἴδητε

γένηται and γινόμενα and γινώσκετε – for this is a feminine tree with feminine branches giving birth

the turn of punchlines in
τὸ θέρος [ἐστίν] and ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις)


28 ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς συκῆς μάθετε τὴν παραβολήν

ὅταν ἤδη ὁ κλάδος αὐτῆς ἁπαλὸς γένηται

καὶ ἐκφύῃ τὰ φύλλα

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγὺς τὸ θέρος ἐστίν

29 οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς

ὅταν ἴδητε ταῦτα γινόμενα

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις


32 ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς συκῆς μάθετε τὴν παραβολήν

ὅταν ἤδη ὁ κλάδος αὐτῆς γένηται ἁπαλὸς

καὶ τὰ φύλλα ἐκφύῃ

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγὺς τὸ θέρος

33 οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς

ὅταν ἴδητε πάντα ταῦτα

γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐγγύς ἐστιν ἐπὶ θύραις