Let in the Light

Product Information

The director of communications for Southwark diocese, Sophia Jones, finds that the Bible “comes alive” when she listens to the Bible Society’s Jamaican Patois audio version. Launched in 2012 ( News, 28 September 2012), the Jamaican New Testament is the result of 20 years’ work by translators at the Bible Society of the West Indies, with a team from the Department of Linguistics at the University of the West Indies translating from the Greek.

The contemporary debates around care were also being dissected and scrutinised to go beyond the usual ableist approaches which are either patronising and paternalistic or feats of virtue signalling. James developed a conversation of the aesthetics of care and safety which are crucial for working with vulnerable young people that challenged and catalysed Chisenhale Gallery’s praxis of ‘radical commissioning’: “to their credit, they rose to that challenge although not without problems on both sides. But like, you know, they took a punt on something”. I think everything you can see in the Gospels is that Jesus wants us to think for ourselves,” she tells me. “He would be sad at somebody saying ‘Tell me what it actually means.’ He would say ‘no, no do some thinking. . .’”One can do some work toward equipping ordinands to inhabit the world of principalities and powers, of angels and demons, of spirit and soul and flesh, without acquainting oneself with the languages in which the people of God began to articulate their and our relation to that world; but one can travel more rapidly, deeper, more readily into that world by learning those languages, than by standing outwith those worlds and interacting only through the mediation of translators.” CREATIVE COMMONS/CHESTER BEATTY A folio from Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews from a codex containing the Pauline epistles (P46), written in Greek with ink on papyrus; made in Egypt and dated c.200. One of 11 Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri codices IN HER introduction, Dr Ruden explains that she has “often turned to a word’s basic imagery as a defence against anachronism, obfuscation, and lethargy, which drain communications of their primordial electricity”. Reading her translation during Advent I enjoyed reading that the baby " capered" in Elizabeth's womb. The rendering of "crucified" as "hung on the stakes" is a powerfully vivid. Her choices undoubtedly have the ability to unnerve. A philologist who has translated classical texts, including The Aeneid (described by Ursula Le Guin as “the best translation yet”) and St Augustine’s Confessions, Dr Ruden is unafraid of ruffling feathers with her approach. In her introduction to The Gospels (Vintage, 2021), she argues that, when it comes to the New Testament, “the self-expressing text has fallen under the muffling, alien weight of later Christian institutions and had the life nearly smothered out of it.”

She speaks of their “very disturbing” anti-Semitism, and the Gnosticism in John (“This is Gnostics getting in there and claiming a very privileged authority to say what the truth is, to shut other people up, and to be the ‘we say so’ corporation”). In the summer of 2021, James was invited to submit a proposal to run The Mayor of London’s cultural response to the mental health crisis. This enabled them to start to formulate the shape of an arts led intervention that was tailored to young people and spoke about mental health. This led to a chance to work with the culture team at the GLA (Greater London Authority) and James turned to Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, to see if they could collaborate and extend the scope of this process. Their proposal was accepted and James, together with Chisenhale Gallery and Bernie Grants Art Centre has embarked on a long term process that builds on For They Let In The Light . She doesn’t produce these objections from an “anti-religious” position, she emphasises. “In fact, I don’t think there is anything more dangerous to our morals, our politics, our spiritual health than the prevailing malleability of sacred literature and translation. If you read these documents in the original languages, nothing will come across more strongly than their vivid realities. To the authors, and to those who inspired the authors, what we call the unseen world was not only real: it was seen. There was no division between the natural and supernature. There is just one universe to enjoy or to try to destroy.” I was just really glad to hear that from people because they participate, as they ought to. They are part of this enterprise; so they can see why I did this, and they are still not buying it, and that’s good. I want them to be that interested and that active.” I had long long talks with my editor about how I could possibly handle this word, and she was very much for the consideration that the translators generally call dignity,” she recalls. “They make this judgement, this decree, about what’s appropriate for the author to have said. I’m sure they wouldn’t want anybody handling their work that way. But they feel justified in doing it when they translate sacred literature.Most of us would find Christians “truly cast in the New Testament mould fairly obnoxious”, he argues, and draws attention to the “reassuring gloss” applied to the “raw rhetoric” of the New Testament’s strictures on wealth, for example, and its “relentless torrents of exorbitance and extremism”. In the New Testament, “everything is cast in the harsh light of a final judgement that is both absolute and terrifyingly imminent. In regard to all these texts, the qualified, moderate, common-sense interpretation is always false.” I've spent fifty years translating Sanskrit texts, but only now has this book taught me how to read a text in a foreign language and how to read (and write) a translation. It is also a brilliant book about Latin, Augustine, God, and the meaning of life. Wendy Doniger, author of The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth Translation is both “essential” and “never quite satisfactory”, he concludes. He gives the example of the “notorious” phrase “Son of Man”. In Greek, it’s “the son of the human”, and in Daniel it’s “a son of a human”. Yet, “we say ‘Son of Man’ and may well always say ‘Son of Man’, even though that’s plainly not what the Greek or Aramaic says. It’s what we’re used to; it’s punchy; it makes a metric rhyme with ‘Son of God’.” THE effect of encountering biblical languages and exploring various translations should not be underestimated, suggests Dr Cressida Ryan, who teaches New Testament Greek at the University of Oxford. James and the team at Chisenhale decided not to focus on counting creative outputs or forcing a benchmark of ‘quality’, as these are extractive approaches to engagement. Instead, confidence, belief and creating a safe space were prioritised. Many of these young people had never heard of Chisenhale Gallery and had limited exposure to the arts.