9. Werner Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation
The idea which provides the structure of this very useful book is that those two different approaches to Biblical translation which are represented by Erasmus and Luther can be traced through the history of Biblical translation as a whole. Thus at the outset we get opposed accounts of the origin of LXX from pseudo-Aristeas and Philo De Vita Mosis II. In pseudo-Aristeas the translators are chosen by examination and secure agreement by comparing their versions and discussing their differences. The result is approved by a larger assembly. In Philo the translators, apparently without communication among themselves, produce versions which were word for word the same. A new miracle had, in fact, been performed. The translation was as inspired as the original, so that LXX and the Hebrew text can be regarded, not as daughter and mother, but as ‘sisters.’ Here we have implicitly what Dr Schwarz calls the ‘philological’ and the ‘inspirational’ principles.
He finds them (pp. 28–44) exhibited once more by St Jerome and St Augustine. That St Jerome is ‘philological’ he very fully convinced me. But it might be doubted whether St Augustine is merely ‘inspirational’ in the same sense as Philo. He certainly holds an ‘inspirational’ theory; but is it an inspirational theory of translation? For he does not seem to me to be saying that LXX, by inspiration, always renders the Hebrew correctly, but that, whether it does or no, it is equally divine and oracular. His point is, not that it is always correct, but that when it is not, it is something quite as good, or better. If any rival (and correct) translation does not agree with it, this should only set us looking for the hidden sense peculiar to LXX: si non congruere videtur, altitudo ibi prophetica esse credenda est. Thus in Jonah iii, 4 there is no doubt, for St Augustine, that ‘forty days’ is what the prophet actually said; the seventy, longe posterius interpretati, are certainly (in the ordinary sense) wrong when they give ‘three days.’ But this mistranslation serves to raise the reader's mind from the history to seek those higher truths for whose sake the history was written. Thus all idea of translation disappears. The Holy Spirit unum per Ionam prophetam alterum per septuaginta interpretum prophetiam . . . dixit.’ This, in one way, out-Luthers Luther. LXX is not a revealed version but a new revelation.
Chapter III (‘The Traditional View’) exhibits, with just the right amount of quotation, that close interlocking of medieval exegesis with the text of the Vulgate, which brought it about that so much should hang on the matter of re-translation. All this part is really very well done.
After this I became a little doubtful whether the antithesis of ‘philological’ and ‘inspirational’ could fully contain the richness of Dr Schwarz's matter. In his scheme Reuchlin and Erasmus have to be lined up together as ‘Philological’ and contrasted to Luther as ‘inspirational.’ Colet does not fit in very comfortably. The Fifth Chapter deals at unexpected length with the history of Erasmus's thought before he became a Biblical translator; here, and here only in this book, I felt a certain longueur. I would gladly have bartered for some of these pages a little more detailed work (such as the author explicitly disclaims on p. 143) about the actual renderings of Reuchlin and Erasmus. I got the impression that the author was anxious to diminish the gulf which, in my opinion, divides Erasmus from Reuchlin and Colet no less than from Luther. One can see, of course, the sense in which the first three are all ‘philological.’ But is that the most significant grouping? Colet's pietism, his belief that Scripture can be understood ‘only by grace’, lines him up in one way with Luther, and indeed with Latomus, against Erasmus. And Reuchlin's feelings about the Hebrew, linking him with Pico and a whole movement which was mystical, syncretistic, and even magical in its tendency, seems to me a radically different thing from the literary, enlightened, aesthetic approach of Erasmus – all that side of the man which made Luther call him a prattler.
Some of the problems raised in this section seem to me to admit of a psychological solution. The friendship (across fundamental differences) of Erasmus and Colet can surely be explained by the hatreds they shared (see p. 115). All the opponents of an established order will at one stage make common cause. It is only victory that sets them belabouring one another. As for Erasmus's repeated statement that mere belles lettres had now lost all savour for him, is it any more mysterious than a man's repeated statements that he has finally given up smoking?
The most obvious defect of this book is, fortunately, one which will not much impair its utility; I mean, the imperfections of its English. On p. 15 ‘God's direct intercession’, though etymologically defensible, is very harsh according to modern English usage. Dr Schwarz means ‘intervention.’ On p. 19 ‘origin by God’ is not English. On p. 66 ‘transcriptions’ appears to mean ‘transliterations.’ On pp. 82, 154, and 165, ‘apexes’ is odd. Why not ‘tittles’ (κεραίαι)? On p. 156 ‘inspirational method’ ought surely to be ‘inspirational theory’; how can there be an inspirational method? On p. 168 (in the translated quotation) ‘virtue’ should be ‘power.’ On p. 196 ‘unlike Erasmus's view’ should be ‘unlike Erasmus.’ On p. 170 Luther's ich mich wohl bätte mügen . . . einen Knecht und Evangelisten rühmen und schreiben is rendered in words that do not really make any sense at all. What is more dangerous is the statement (p. 59) that ‘Sir Thomas More was opposed to all modern Bible translations.’ Dr Schwarz is far too well informed to be in error about the facts. He means that More was hostile to the vernacular versions actually made in his own day. I am afraid he will be taken to mean that More opposed the making of any version: which is of course false. A strange storm in a teacup – fluctus in simpulo – is stirred up about a not very extraordinary Latin sentence at the bottom of p. 147.
These are from one point of view trifles. The book is welcome. Despite its brevity it contains a great deal of information and will give many readers who are scholars without being specialists in this field pretty well what they want. If it reaches (as it deserves to do) a second edition, I hope the index will be fully revised. (Try looking up Vetus Latina.)
Though it does not concern Dr Schwarz more than a hundred modern writers, I venture to put in here a plea against the growing, and now almost universal, practice of mentioning Renaissance scholars by their vernacular names (e.g., Dorp for Dorpius). It is hard to see how this originated if not in a silly ostentation of irrelevant erudition, or how it has been continued except by fashion. Why should every beginner in these subjects have to learn a number of names by which the old authors were never known in Europe in their own day, and which he will not find in the text or index of even a nineteenth-century authority?