A Tumult of Translations In “Bible Babel” (Public Square, May) Richard John Neuhaus argues, as he has before, for the superiority of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) over other English translations of the Bible. I would like to address a few comments made by him regarding his favorite translation. Not including the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the RSV itself can be found in three editions. There is the original, which finds its completed copyright in 1952, a revision that was copyrighted in 1971, and a Catholic edition that is based on the original copyright with certain revisions to conform to Catholic tradition and copyrighted in 1965 and 1966. Interestingly, all of these editions are more or less “felicitous” translations of the Greek text; however, in spite of Father Neuhaus’ assertions, none of them is exactly “above” all the others. For example, in translating the words malakoi and arsenokoitai in 1 Corinthians 6:9, the 1952 edition uses the word “homosexuals” with a footnote indicating that two Greek words have been rendered by the one English word. The New American Standard Bible (NASB), the modern translation that most “gatekeepers” regard as the most true to the Greek texts, renders the two words as “effeminate” and “homosexuals,” indicating the true meaning of what St. Paul is trying to convey. The 1971 edition of the RSV, however, renders the two words by the phrase “sexual perverts” and thereby removes any reference to homosexuality, leaving open to interpretation exactly what it is that St. Paul is condemning. What, one must ask, constitutes a sexual pervert? As a friend of mine has observed, “Sexual perversion is anything that goes one step beyond what I would do.” So much for language conveying meaning. Even the NRSV, the edition that Fr. Neuhaus charges with being gender-inclusive (true) with dumbed-down language (arguable), renders the two Greek terms by their English equivalents: “effeminate” and “homosexuals.” So much for the charge of this translation being “politically correct.” But all of this isn’t necessarily to pick a fight with the RSV. It’s just a point of indicating that there are, perhaps, better translations of the Scripture to be had. The updated NASB is an excellent translation, though I do wish that the word “bishop” had been retained for the Greek episkopos in 1 Timothy and Titus, and that “firepans” in the Old Testament had been left as “censers” (the latter being much less a theological nuance than the former, and even then both of these being much less so than the RSV-CE rendering of “brethren” for “brothers”). And the New International Version (NIV), another translation that receives Fr. Neuhaus’ nod of approval, reads so closely to the NRSV that with the exception of the gender-inclusive language I’m not sure how it can escape the same charge of being “dumbed-down.” Perhaps the New KJV is the closest thing to something that is both modern and “familiar to the ear,” but neither is it free from its problems. So in the end, I’m not sure that either the RSV in the 1952 edition, or the 1971 edition, or the RSV-CE of 1965 is substantially better or more “felicitous” in its translation of the Greek texts than are the others mentioned. All, it seems, have their faults; some more, some less. But I do sympathize with many of Fr. Neuhaus’ views. The proliferation of English translations has crippled Bible memorization and virtually eliminated a common biblical language (and by the way, while there are perhaps over two hundred study editions of the English Bible, there are only a handful of actual English translations). And the exclusion of the Apocrypha from many of these translations seems to brighten the divide not only between those used by Protestants and those used by Catholics, but also the divide between the groups themselves. So maybe in the end the real solution isn’t to be found in an English translation that is used by all of English-speaking Christendom (although that would be nice), but in one of the traditions carried on by our Jewish friends. Before young boys or girls are officially brought into the faith, they are taught the language of their fathers. Perhaps we would be better served to once more return to the Greek texts in order to find out what the Bible really says (at least the New Testament, and I’m ignoring textual variations here), and perhaps part of the Confirmation process should be translating the Gospel of John from Greek into English. But since this isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, perhaps all we can do is dream that one day we will all be “reading off the same page.” Until then, we’ll just have to make do with what best conveys the Word of God into our minds and into our hearts. (The Rev.) Michael L. Ward, SSA Rector St. Mark’s Church (Anglican) Vero Beach, Florida The “linguistic destabilization” of which Richard John Neuhaus complains not only deprives Catholics of a common biblical language, it severs one generation from another and, in so doing, debilitates the Church’s most powerful engine of evangelization. Since Vatican II, we have focused far too much attention upon “experts” and our ecclesial bureaucracy (both clerical and lay) as vehicles of evangelization and catechesis. We have paid far too little attention to the fact that the Catholic faith is, for the most part, lived in and passed on through families, through the “domestic churches.” Most of us do not become Catholic because we read a magazine article or attended a debate or had a striking conversion experience; most of us remain Catholic because we remember how our grandmother taught us the Rosary, or how the family always celebrated our grandfather’s saint’s day, or how our mother so naturally resorted to St. Anthony to find a lost household item, or how our father, never saying a word about it, took us to Mass every single Sunday. For us “cradle Catholics,” i.e., for most Catholics, these devotional family ties, so much and so foolishly denigrated by ecclesiastical intellectuals, are the ties that bind. They have powerfully inducted us into the family of God, into the very household of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. By introducing supernatural realities into the comprehensible earthly context of our everyday lives, they explain such realities, not on an intellectual, verbal level, but on a deep, emotional level. Here, on this deeper level, is where the faith resides. Within this living context, nourished by the grace of the sacraments and by prayer, such a faith acquires the strength to survive doubt, persecution, and sin. By destroying the continuity of biblical language over time, biblical translators deprive Catholic families of a scriptural idiom that resonates across generations and instead raise linguistic obstacles to the passing on of the faith within the domestic church. If one were to be cynical, one could say that it is in the experts’ own interests to do so. Were scriptural language entrusted to all the faithful, and were families allowed to continue as the main evangelizers of Catholic children, then the means of evangelization and catechesis would remain dispersed. But in order for experts to control a process, in order for them to be able to reshape traditional teachings to make them more relevant to the passing fashions of each successive generation, that process must be centralized. Joseph E. Rendini Medford, Massachusetts