Thursday 16th March 11:15—12:45, Session 1
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| Overview of programme | ||||||
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Session: |
Translating Bible 4 |
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Place: |
Seminarraum 1 |
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Moderator: |
Michael Sargent |
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Paper 1: |
Gothic Texts: Translations, Audience and Readers |
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Paper 2: |
The Desert of the Marsh: Israelite Sailors and the Old English Exodus |
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Paper 3: |
Allegoresis in the Vernacular Translation: The Old English Poetic Judith and Exodus |
Gothic Texts: Translations, Audience and Readers
Alessandro Zironi
The paper will propose a socio-cultural approach to the translation of the Bible into Gothic. The translation was firstly conceived for liturgical purposes but in the following centuries it became more and more used for personal reading. This last approach was the unique form of its fruition during the Carolingian Age. I would like to reflect on the transforming role played by the community of readers and audience throughout the centuries and places in relation to the creation of the Gothic translated version of the Bible.
We know that saint John Chrysostom was in contact with Gothic-speaking communities in Constantinople, and the Archbishop was not contrary to the use of language other than Greek in liturgy. In the last decades of the fourth century, the Arian bishop Wulfila, together with a team of collaborators, translated the whole Bible (with the possible exception of the Books of Kings – as is asserted by contemporary sources). They translated from Greek into Visigothic, their own mother tongue.
From a socio-cultural point of view, the first reason for translating the Bible into Gothic depended on liturgical needs and consequently the primary use of that translation was intended for oral fruition. The result was a text in part syntactically responding to its Greek model, but with large usage of autochthonous lexicon also in semantic fields which did not possessed any specific word for concepts which were not part of a Germanic, barbarian culture. In that case, the role of the audience was essential for the translation activity: the goal was the easy comprehension of complex ideas, for instance of theological terms like ‘sin’ or ‘contrition’.
The relationship among translated text, audience and readers changed during the reign of the Ostrogoths in Italy (489-553 AD). When the Goths settled in Italy at the end of their migration, some Arian Gothic cultural centres developed in Ravenna, Verona and perhaps Brescia and Pavia. In those years the Holy Text was perused by Goths who took into consideration the previous translation and introduced some variants to the text. In Italy the Gothic translation became also an instrument for scholarship and private reading, a practice which is attested by some sources and survived till the Carolingian age.
The Desert of the Marsh: Israelite Sailors and the Old English Exodus
Sharon E. Rhodes
The Old English verse Exodus translates the surroundings of the Israelites into those which would be familiar to the lived experience of an Anglo-Saxon audience. Accordingly, the desert of the verse Exodus differs markedly from that of the Vulgate Exodus. In the Vulgate, God “circumduxit per viam deserti, quae est juxta mare Rubrum” (led them by way of the desert, which is near the Red Sea, Ex. 13.18). While the translator of the verse Exodus never entirely forgets that the Israelites are walking “per viam deserti” (by way of the desert), the Anglo-Saxon desert is “morheald” (marshy, 61). So too, the translator of Exodus alludes to Genesis A and refers to Noah as a “snottor sæleoda” (wise-sailor, 374). The physical and cultural environment of the Anglo-Saxon world demands that Israelite refugees become sailors and that the Old English translation of desertus manifests as a wasteland characterized by dampness rather than aridity. The Israelites of Exodus become sailors like their patriarch, Noah: the “sæmen [. . .] / foron flodwege” (sailors travelled the water-way, 118). Both Fabienne L. Michelet and Daniel Anlezark explore how Exodus’s desert and its allusions to the Genesis Flood, translate the landscape of Egypt into an Anglo-Saxon wasteland and portrays the Israelites as figures with which an Anglo-Saxon audience could identify: sailors.1 In this paper I will loos specifically at how Old English storytelling conventions dictated that the desert, of the Old English Exodus contain “westengryre” (wilderness terrors, 117) and “har hæð broga” (hoary heath horrors, 105-06). Much as the Anglo-Saxon audience must have associated the water’s edge with difficulty, strange creatures, and heroic intervention, the Old English Exodus supplies a boggy landscape in order to translate the hardship of the Israelites as they fled Egypt.
Allegoresis in the Vernacular Translation: The Old English Poetic Judith and Exodus
Tatyana Solomonik-Pankrashova
Medieval vernacular enarratio manifests itself as a rhetorical reinvention of the source text. Vernacular enarratio/translation is heavily influenced by exegesis and “can function in much the same way as exegesis, working to supplant the very source that it proposes to serve”.[1] Allegorical interpretation or allegoresis aims at unveiling the enigmatic meaning encoded within obscure images in the text. With reference to Exodus, the motif of the soul’s transformation from the darkness to illumination, “the soul’s straining towards the divine” – epektasis[2], in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s terms, – is manifested by the Israelites. This kind of transformation is made distinct by means of the allegorical psychomachia – the battle within the soul; likewise, by highlighting the need (and difficulty) of trusting Divine Providence, and the reward that comes to those who have firm faith in the Almighty and are loyal to Him. The motif of spiritual perfection – cf. Judith, Moses – appertains to the beauty/virginity of the soul, clinging to the Creator in love. This paper aims at deciphering medieval vernacular translation of the Old Testament Books – the Book of Exodus and the Book of Judith – as the modus interpretandi. My argument proceeds in the following way: (1) to compare the allegorical archetypes – historical person, pilgrimage, war, suffering, geographic locations, and places of buildings – in the Old English Judith and Exodus; (2) to trace the allegorical archetypes to the model/source texts; (3) to unveil the allegory of perfection in the Old English translations with reference to patristic exegesis.
[1] Copeland, R. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1995), p. 7. [2] from the Greek epi ‘at, towards’, and ek ‘out of’: the soul must go ‘out of itself‘, go beyond the stage it has reached (From Glory to Glory. Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings. Selected and with an Introduction by Jean Daniélou, S. J., trans. and ed. by Herbert Anthony Musurillo, S. J. London (1961), p. 59.