Law & Liberty‘s editor Brian A. Smith welcomes philosopher and pastor James Bruce to the podcast to discuss Robert Alter’s magisterial translation of the Hebrew Bible and Bruce’s research on Christian faith, justice, and equality.
Brian Smith:
Hello and welcome to Liberty Law Talk. My name is Brian Smith, the editor of Law & Liberty. With me today is my friend Jay Bruce. He is a professor of philosophy at John Brown University, where he directs the University Center for Faith and Flourishing. He is also associate pastor of Covenant Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the author of Rights in the Law, an exploration of the thought of Francis Turretin. He’s currently working on a second book on the links between Christianity, justice, and equality, which we’ll talk about a bit later. Jay, thanks for joining us.
James Bruce:
Thank you, Brian. Longtime listener, first-time caller.
Brian Smith:
Jay’s most recent piece for us, “The Godless Bible,” is an exploration of Robert Alter’s complete translation of the Hebrew Bible. Jay spent a long time on this piece for us, and this led me to wonder about his mental state. Many times during the project, he tells me he took about 20,000 words of notes, among other things. It also made me think about Alter’s general approach. People talk a lot about translation styles, literal versus more poetic and the like. Jay, how would you describe Alter’s approach to translating the Bible? Does he have a well-developed philosophy regarding biblical translation?
James Bruce:
In a phrase, it’s very good, commendable and, I think, ultimately, extremely persuasive. He wants the translation to sound like the lofty Hebrew prose and poetry it is. In each of the volumes, it’s three volumes, and in each volume, he actually recapitulates the themes of his translation philosophy. A major handle for me, in terms of understanding Alter, is that, to make a translation overly accessible, is actually to dumb it down and to step away from the text as it was written. For example, word choice. Rare words in Hebrew get rare English words in his translation. “Song of Songs,” chapter three, verse nine says, in the Alter translation, “A palanquin, did King Solomon make, from Lebanon wood.” I, of course, being so learned, had to look up. I had no idea what a palanquin was. Hopefully, his commentary does have the definition that a palanquin is what rabbinic literature understood the Hebrew word to mean. He says, “Or, perhaps less grandly, a sedan chair.” The point being that, if you try to make it too accessible, you actually don’t arrest people with the technical vocabulary that’s being used. We want an exalted style, it’s not Time magazine. Also, as I think you mentioned, it’s literal. This fits nicely with his desire to make the translation style be lofty.
The word-for-word literal translation actually requires something of a reader. The Hebrew word for seed is often translated as a seed like you throw on the ground, or even descendants, or it can also mean semen. What Alter does though is he always keeps it seed, trusting that the reader has the requisite knowledge and expertise in order to discern the word’s use in its different context, just like in the Hebrew. I also can’t help but think that this makes the scriptures loftier, as they should be treated. That there’s a respect, a curiosity that interests us when we confront things that we don’t know. One last example on the word choice. In Ruth chapter four, Boaz has to confer with Ruth’s kinsman redeemer, who chooses not to redeem her. Of course, he’s a deplorable character. I love how Alter playfully translates Ruth chapter four, verse one, as, “Turn aside. Sit down here, so and so.” Translating the Hebrew that way to make you say, “This guy is not even worthy of recognition in the text.” He’s also very sensitive to syntax and in the way that the Hebrew is playful. In Job, he is just a master of artful translation. Job chapter eight, one of Job’s friends says, “For we are but yesterday unknowing, for our days are a shadow on Earth.” In the same passage, he’s deploring people who aren’t trusting in the Lord. He said that, “Whose faith is mere cobweb, a spider’s house his trust.”
He is really sensitive to the rhythm and the internal rhyming structure of the Hebrew. His sensitivity to dialogue, Brian, absolutely is just a work of genius. Even when he’s commenting on various passages, he’s so careful to help you realize this is what you’d expect with Hebrew, this is what you get, and you’re supposed to feel the difference. He repeatedly says, throughout the Hebrew Bible, the first phrase or phrases that someone speaks is supposed to cause you to anticipate who that person is. It frames the person in a way I don’t think it does for me as an English reader. It means that, when he’s commenting on 2 Samuel, Chapter 11, when Bathsheba says to David, “I am pregnant,” Alter writes, “Astonishingly, these are the only words that Bathsheba speaks in this story.” Her big statement is, “I am pregnant.” Really arresting. I could keep on going, but that’s a flavor, I hope, for your audience, of just how magisterial and sensitive Alter is as a translator.
Brian Smith:
It sounds like he’s almost created the feeling one has when one enters a truly majestic piece of religious architecture. Your eyes are cast up to the Most High as you enter a cathedral or a really magnificent church. It sounds like something like that has been accomplished in this translation.
James Bruce:
That’s right. I can say that he goes for extremes, that when the language is lofty, it really is the cathedral. In Job, when Job’s adversary has a second dialogue with God, whereas before he talks about, “Hey, the Lord says, ‘Have you seen my servant Job? Et cetera, et cetera,'” in the second dialogue, the adversary picks up the pace and just says, “Skin for skin.” Alter is really good at the lofty, but he can also do the pungent as well, so it’s really impressive.
Brian Smith:
It’s really interesting. What did you find least compelling about this translation though?
James Bruce:
I do mention it in my review, the published review, that I think he’s right to translate the Tetragrammaton as LORD, in all capitals. Then, having made that move, he wants to make the reader feel the antiquity of the text, and so he says things like, “For hand upon Yah’s throne,” or “El, the God Lord.” I think that Yah, God, would abide. I don’t think that, when I said I’ll assume that the speaker’s intoxicated in my review, I was actually thinking, and I’m not trying to be blasphemous, but El Yah, sounds a lot like a cockney person saying, “Hell, yes.” His defense is that he wants to say, “I’m getting the antiquity of the text. I’m exposing the strangeness of it.” Having already made the decision not to try to transliterate the Tetragrammaton, and just keep it as Lord, I think that he shouldn’t have done that. That was clunky. Then, of course, I have my whole ABJ, anybody but Jesus, shtick. Which somebody, and probably it’s my fault if I didn’t make this efficiently clear, but I didn’t expect his translation to be Christian.
What struck me about the translation, Brian, was the fact that there were passages like Ezekiel chapter two, verse one, where the text says, “Son of man, stand on your feet and I shall speak with you.” Alter translates it, “Man, stand on your feet.” He says that he avoids the translation, because the term son of man has Christological Jesus connotations. I actually think that he should have stuck to his guns and his methodology and done word for word, trusted the reader. From my perspective, he should have said, “I’m going to trust the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about the text as it stands, as opposed to glossing over that.” There is one instance where… I’ll finish here. I don’t mean to ramble on, but I do it well. There are instances where, very few, where he just, I think, contradicts himself. Perhaps for polemical purposes, but I wouldn’t want to impune a motive to him. In Ruth chapter one, when Ruth says to Naomi, “Your people is my people and your God is my God,” Alter places God in lowercase. He says that one shouldn’t imagine that Ruth has become a theological monotheist. That’s his commentary on Ruth chapter one. Then in his introduction to Ezra and Nehemiah, he actually talks about Ruth, who naturally accepts the God of her new home, capital G, God of her new home. There, I think, he just has a different polemical purpose. There are instances where you’ve got to decide if it’s volume three, page 804, and you’re a run-up to Ezra and Nehemiah, it sounds like she believes in capital G God and is a monotheist. Then let that reflect in Ruth chapter one, or vice versa.
Brian Smith:
Is this just a confusion that comes from what you call his, at one point in the review, the embrace of the God of Baruch Spinoza?
James Bruce:
Yeah. It could be. I’d hate to have me read me for consistency. I think it would be a horrible experience. Multi-decade life adventure, this grand achievement. I, of course, am consuming it all at once. Well, over three years. Not all at once, but over three years. I think that there could be instances of getting to a new book and looking at Ezra and Nehemiah and having Ruth in your rearview mirror. I do think that it was most helpful to me to understand him as thinking that the water could ripple with spirituality, but not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Brian Smith:
There’s also this sense that, I think, is coming through with what you’re saying, and certainly, what you wrote in the review, that Alter seems to approach each individual book of the Hebrew Bible as a separate text, which is quite different, I think, than both any rabbinical commentators and the way, of course, Christians would undertake a reading of this.
James Bruce:
Yes. That actually exactly correct. It almost became comical. Because, if the author or authors leaned in a Spinozistic direction, then Alter’s heart strangely warmed to the text. I knew that the Job poet was just going to be a genius, before I even began reading anything that he wrote about Job. Then there are other books that, like Ezekiel. He hates Ezekiel. The animus is on the page. I do think that’s an issue. Yet, there are times when Alter is incredibly sensitive, even though I don’t think that he would be sympathetic. He’s nevertheless sensitive. It took me so long to review the books, that my title ended up being different. My initial working title, I don’t think I’ve told you this, Brian, was “Reading the Bible in the Time of the Coronavirus.” Because, Alter offers this comment on a passage in Leviticus. I think I teared up, because he said, “This passage, it’s hard to understand what exactly is going on, but I think that this is… It’s, ‘Cover his mustache,’ or something.” He says, “I think that people are draping cloths and creating, basically, these face masks.” He’s so sensitive. I got a little teary-eyed. Because, of course, we’ve been in face masks forever. Just the beauty of it, that some things don’t change. Some guy has got a crazy cough, don’t let him cough on people. There were definite instances. Then also Proverbs, which he doesn’t particularly like. He’s really good at translating the Proverbs, so I have to give him a lot of credit there.
Brian Smith:
Tell me more about this he doesn’t like the Proverbs bit, because this is interesting. In that, I feel like, if you ask a random person, what is my go-to passage when I need to grapple with human concerns, a lot of people, Christian and Jew, are going to open up to Proverbs. What is his animus there?
James Bruce:
This is too glib, but what’s comforting to many people is exacerbating to Alter. What’s comforting to many people is the message of do good and the Lord will bless you. Times are tough, but soldier on and trust in the Lord. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will guide your path. He’ll make your path straight. This is very comforting to people. I think, for Alter, it’s cheap, moral platitudes that gloss over the harsh realities of life. For that reason, so I think the very reason why it’s comforting to many is to him disingenuous.
Brian Smith:
That’s a nice segue though into… Let me stop you, because I think this will lead well into what I definitely wanted to bring us to talk about. Which is, you mentioned Proverbs 29:2, “When the righteous are many, a people rejoices, but when the wicked man rules, a people groans.” You say that he ignores this passage, that he thinks it simply platitudinous. As you mentioned, this was a really important passage for the American founders. You mentioned that Dreisbach has an entire chapter in his book on this. Is it just another case of this is a platitudinous proverb, or does he have some additional explanation of that point?
James Bruce:
Not really. He just said, “This proverb, like the next one and several others in this chapter, is no more than a formulation and verse of a platitude.” I think that Dreisbach, in Reading the Bible With the Founding Fathers, he devotes a whole chapter to it. I think that people need to be reminded that there’s a character of a nation that can bring happiness. That individual liberty and individual virtue brought together in community can cause a people to flourish. Oliver O’Donovan talks about Augustine’s redefinition of a Republic, from the Ciceronian definition, that Augustine and O’Donovan’s words says that a Res Publica, a Republic, is defined by their common objects of love. I think Proverbs 29:2 says, “If your common objects are love of love, are the good, the true and the beautiful, then life is going to be, in the midst of all sorts of hardships, the people will rejoice.” It also is an important caveat to that, which is that a wicked man can really ruin a nation. That wickedness can… Just a handful of wicked people. I think that on the cusp of the American Revolution, with the founding fathers thinking about, in their mind, being delivered from a tyrant, that they were groaning under the tyrant. Then also, at the same time, the people don’t get off the hook by repelling the wicked man ruling over them. They have to do the hard work of living a righteous and holy life, so that there can be true flourishing for the community.
Brian Smith:
This makes me wonder if this is partly a product of Alter’s treating each individual text completely separately. Because, if you think about, God, make us other people, give us kings, versus judges, who are often likened to Republican magistrates, there’s a lesson there for why a passage like this one from Proverbs is so important. I’m a little surprised at incongruousness of these two things.
James Bruce:
Yeah. Alter has the best, let’s see if I can quote it verbatim, the ad hoc military leader is his definition of a judge. I think that’s the best definition of a judge that I can come up with. Yeah. I think that in for Samuel get this concern about kings and that they’re going to do all these horrible things. What we see is, they do all these horrible things. The people… I just like it, because Proverbs 29:2, you’ve got somebody to blame the wicked man, but that doesn’t get you off the hook for being unhappy.
Brian Smith:
Or having a lack of virtue.
James Bruce:
Yeah, exactly. No, that’s right. Again, I just to emphasize that two quick points. Number one, you’re right, that he is going to see Proverbs as this collection of moralizing things will work out sentences, over and against what, I think, he would say is the really interesting stuff of Job and Koheleth, which is Ecclesiastes, and that sort of thing. Then number two, just to emphasize, again, that though he doesn’t seem to have a lot of emotional or mental energy for the substance of the Proverbs, he’s a masterful translator of Proverbs. Because, he really, again, to go back to the first question about translation style, he wants to get the pithiness of the Hebrew. It’s beautiful to read.
Brian Smith:
It’s such a fascinating dichotomy though. I think you’ve partially answered this. I want to go to the line that you wrote about the passage from Proverbs. You say, “The single verse may easily contain a cure to the contagion that is contemporary American political life.” I wanted you to just elaborate more on that, because it’s left hanging as a piece of food for thought in the essay. It strikes me that there is a political teaching here. I just want to hear it elaborated.
James Bruce:
Sure. Everybody thinks that everybody else is the problem. Their little group, their little tribe, they’re the true Americans, Brian. Everybody else is just, they’re the enemy of the people. When the wicked man rules, a people groans. If your wicked man is Biden, or if your wicked man is Trump, or if your wicked man is somebody else, your governor, and if your wicked man is a woman, well, sure, the people groan. That doesn’t give you the road ahead. The road ahead has to be when the many are righteous. I think that we need to do a lot more critical self-examination of the people in our camp. It is incredibly difficult, because I think that people are always testing whether or not you’re part of the tribe, it is incredibly difficult to create any kind of room for self-reflection. We need to be courageous. We need to be willing to say, “No, of course that person aligns with me politically, but I don’t like what she said,” or, “That’s not how we should… I don’t like what he said.” Then work on personal virtue. People are rewarded for all sorts of wickedness. To recognize that this has not been a new phenomenon, it is something that every generation must fight against.
Brian Smith:
That’s good. I suspect it has something to do with your book project. You’ve never actually told me very much about this, so I would like to hear more about this forthcoming book of yours. What’s your current thinking about its relation to our present political disasters?
James Bruce:
Thank you for asking me about it. I really appreciate it. At Casa Bruce, I would joke about my never-ending Hebrew Bible book review. I also joke about my never-ending book project. It was conceived as a University Press book. Richard, your predecessor, he actually encouraged me, “No, this is a book that’s worth reading.” My hope is that… I’ve been going through all these different drafts. My hope is that eventually, I’ll get a serviceable draft that I can shop for a literary agent and try to get a big publisher. If you work for a big publisher listening to this contact, please feel free to reach out. Basically, the thesis of the book is that there’s certain understandings of the relationship between justice and equality that undermine the Christian faith.
People adopt an understanding of justice, and its relationship to equality, without realizing how it could affect their Christian faith, until really it’s too late. I think that the parallel could work with Judaism. I’m too ignorant of Islam to comment on whether or not it would work with Islam. I stick to Christianity, which I am a Christian, but also it’s an important religion, especially in American political life. The example that I give, which the most, I think, straightforward is, if you think that justice always requires equality, then you have to give up on hell. Because, it’s strict to quality of outcome, you have to give up on hell. Then I like to joke that, if everybody goes to hell, why go to church? There really is a big framing question. I try to handle three pairs of ideas and work through those. The biggest obstacle to, and I think I’ve turned a corner, of asking questions like, “What’s wrong with the world?”
My thought is that people choose either nature or choice to describe the wrongness of something. It’s a violation of nature or I broke my agreement. Then how does God respond to what’s wrong with the world? If I think that sin is related to, is not connected to nature, the nature of the thing that God has made, i.e. me as a person, but is instead connected to what I’m choosing, a violation of choice, then I’m going to see sin not as law-breaking, as is consistent with the Christian tradition, but instead as some kind of brokenness. How does God respond to that choice? With healing or with judgment. I try to work the reader through. Basically, somebody pointed this out to me a couple months ago, that it’s a hundredth anniversary, I think, next year, of J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism.
In some sense, what I’m trying to do is an updated… The Machen book is magisterial. I love it. Perhaps more technical. I’m trying to make it really accessible. Because, one of the things that I do is I work with the philosophers and all their different theories, and then show how it permeates to all the different theologians. I do have some kind of smoking guns where, well, everybody has to have an equal opportunity for salvation, because God is just. It would violate distributive justice if God didn’t give everybody an equal opportunity for salvation. This is basically John Rawls smooshed into New Testament language. That would be an example of where you start believing things that aren’t in the Bible, but they’re consonant with your political beliefs.
Brian Smith:
That reminds me a bit of the end of The Screwtape Letters. The addition I have has something called “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” where Lewis has his character, the Devil, Screwtape, talk about how equality has been this great Soporific elixir of modern man and corrupted their thinking in many different areas, but particularly with respect to their faith.
James Bruce:
Your audience will know, if my book ever comes out, that when I reference Screwtape, if I don’t have a little footnote saying that I owe this to you, then shame on me, because that’s a great quote.
Brian Smith:
It is. I have loved that book for a long time. Thank you for joining me on the podcast.
James Bruce:
It was my pleasure, Brian.
Brian Smith:
Thank you all for listening to Liberty Law Talk, which is a production of Law and Liberty at Liberty and Liberty Fund. You can visit us at lawliberty.org and libertyfund.org. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you for listening to another episode of Liberty Law Talk. Be sure to follow us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please visit our journal at lawliberty.org.