How large the debts?
At the heart of the parable Jesus tells in yesterday’s Gospel is the contrast between the immense debt owed by a king’s servant and freely forgiven him by the king and the relatively trivial debt owed to that same servant by one of his fellow-servants, which he refuses to forgive him (Mt 18:24, 28). In the Greek original the first debt is described as “ten thousand talents.” A talent was the largest unit in currency, and ten thousand was the highest figure used in ancient accounting. The combination results in such a huge debt that it would have been impossible for the servant ever to repay it. The comparatively trivial amount owed by the fellow-servant was “one hundred denarii,” a denarius being the common silver coin of the day, equivalent, we are told, to a day’s wages for a laborer.
I was struck while reading the parable at Mass that the New American Bible, which is the only translation authorized for liturgical use in the USA, departs from the literal text and offers instead an interpretive translation: The first servant is said to have owed the king “a huge amount”, while the other servant is said to owe the first servant “a mere fraction of what he had owed.” I did not like this translation at all. It turned the very concrete numbers offered into abstractions: “a huge amount,” “a mere fraction.” This in fact is the point of the two figures, but should interpretation or exegesis shunt aside the actual text?
Is this the sort of thing that is meant by “dynamic or functional equivalence”? If so, I don’t like it here. And it makes me wonder if that theory of translation had been used by the first translators of the Bible into English, whether our language would have been as enriched as it has been by such literal translations as the King James and Douai-Rheims versions. What is the dynamic equivalent of “the apple of his eye”?
I looked to see what other translations made of the two sums. Many of them retained the “ten thousand talents” and “one hundred denarii” (although both the KJV and Douai-Rheims give “an hundred pence”), but here are some other efforts: “ten thousand bags of gold” vs “a hundred silver coins”; “millions of dollars” vs “a few thousand dollars” (or hundreds of dollars”; “whose debt ran into millions” vs. “a few pounds”.
What think ye all?
Russians fairy tales have stories about “three times nine” zsardoms to be crossed. The translator could instead have written “twenty seven zsardoms” or even “a very long distance”, but those “three times nine” have stuck to my memory. When I was a little child, it seems like such a large amount, and the zsardom (not kingdom!) added to the exotic charm of the story.
Same for the “ten thousands talents” – not to mention the mystery of talking about “talents”, which for many years I did not know referred to Greek money. I am used to it, and it’s an expression that people might recognize and allude to in other contexts. It adds to the charm of the parabole, and why not? Why not keep a style of narration that is suited to fantastic stories?
We live in a time in which quick communication of adequate accuracy is the gold standard. I suppose the translation committees of the New American Bible opted to go for quick and clear. Reminds me of pablumized children’s books and Cliff Notes. We all have too much to read and learn to have to bother with time-consuming exegesis or even footnotes.
When you return to a text again and again, though, it must be boring to read the same flat prose every time. Or not. Perhaps most people wouldn’t care. That seems to have been the editorial attitude on this.
But I don’t like being condescended to. I’d prefer the unpablumized version with a footnote.
On the other hand, the reason I’ve read very little Shakespeare is the footnotes. Sigh.
I prefer a more direct translation.
A similar example is the current translation’s “twenty or thirty gallons” of water/wine in each of the jars at Cana in Galilee, instead of “two or three measures.” St. Augustine takes the “two or three measures” as a point of departure for the Trinity, all lost in the “twenty or thirty.” (Tractates on John, IX.2.20):
But what means this: “They contained two or three metretæ apiece”? This phrase certainly conveys to us a mysterious meaning. For by “metretæ” he means certain measures, as if he should say jars, flasks, or something of that sort. Metreta is the name of a measure, and takes its name from the word “measure.” For μέτρον is the Greek word for measure, whence the word “metretæ” is derived. “They contained,” then, “two or three metretæ apiece.” What are we to say, brethren? If He had simply said “three apiece,” our mind would at once have run to the mystery of the Trinity. And, perhaps, we ought not at once to reject this application of the meaning, because He said, “two or three apiece;” for when the Father and Son are named, the Holy Spirit must necessarily be understood. For the Holy Spirit is not that of the Father only, nor of the Son only, but the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. For it is written,” If any man love the world, the Spirit of the Father is not in him.” And again, “Whoso hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of His. The same, then, is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. Therefore, the Father and the Son being named, the Holy Spirit also is understood, because He is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. And when there is mention of the Father and Son, “two metretæ,” as it were, are mentioned; but since the Holy Spirit is understood in them, “three metretæ.” That is the reason why it is not said, “Some containing two metretæ apiece, others three apiece;” but the same six water-pots contained “two or three metretæ apiece.” It is as if he had said, When I say two apiece, I would have the Spirit of the Father and of the Son to be understood together with them; and when I say three apiece, I declare the same Trinity more plainly.
These are not amounts are not meant to be specific in the original, so translating them as specific is no more accurate than translating them suggestively. I would have preferred “a HUGE amount” or even “billions and billions.” Something that captures the immensity, and evokes the immensity of God’s majesty.
We live in a world where 10,000 Guinean Francs is worth about one Euro, and we can move easily from one figure to another without much thought about the difference. How many Americans know the difference between one million and one trillion, or grasp the difference when discussing economies? These are hard things to grasp, even if they were easier to express 2000 years ago.
And we can’t even use googolplex anymore because people will think we’re talking about search engines.
I would have preferred hearing the original numbers. During the homily, the priest could have then provided background information similar to that set forth by Fr. Komonchak in his post. I didn’t know, for example, that ten thousand was the highest figure used in ancient accounting. 10,000 talents takes on a whole new meaning in that light, and the Gospel lesson is made more forcefully than by use of the phrase “huge sum.”
Thank goodness no one fiddled with the alliterative and poetic numbers set forth in the opening passages of yesterday’s Gospel: “Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.’”
According to St. Thomas Aquinas’ Catena Aurea, both St. Augustine and Rabanus see the “10″ of the 10,000 as a figure for the 10 commandments.
Like I said in the discussion on Islam below, find a quality translation of the Bible (or the Koran).
I’m not a fan of the New American translation. It is more readable than something from the 16th century, to be sure, but some of the word choices leave much to be desired.
The nuances in the original texts seem to fly right over the heads of the translators (who did this work in the 1970s if I’m not mistaken). For example, the failure to understand the meaning of 10,000 — that is, 10 times 1000.
Another passage that really annoys me, and I did not even know of the significance until a few years ago, is the ending of the Gospel of John, where the New American version has Jesus asking Peter three times if he “loves” Him without making any distinctions between the different types of love that Jesus used in the original. Whoosh, right over the translators’ heads. And the explaining footnotes don’t help either.
Luckily though, given the many drawbacks in the NAB translations for fully understanding the texts (even though, again, it is good in terms of readability), is the extreme obsession that the USCCB has in enforcing its copyrights in that translation. (And how they could rightly claim a copyright, or why the bishops would want to assert a copyright in the first place that prohibited people from using it publicly, is beyond me.) As a result, people are technically legally barred from excerpting from the NAB unless they get prior permission to do so, which any blogger is never going to do.
I am sorry, but I don’t get this post. I think it is a non-post, a “stir-up” post. Who knows the value of a talent today? There is nothing wrong with saying a huge amount. It gets the idea across. What a waste of time to quibble. So Fr. Komonchak come clean. What hot button issue are you pushing today?
Ten tousand talents was a really large sum of money according to the Economic History Association:
Athens had an abundance of silver and we know much about its mining industry from surviving inscriptions of government mine leases to private entrepreneurs. The mines were extremely productive, providing Athens with an income of 200 talents per year for twelve years from 338 B.C. onward. One talent was the equivalent of around nine year’s worth of wages for single skilled laborer working five days a week, 52 weeks a year, according to the wage rates we know from 377 B.C. Though productive in silver, ancient Greece was not as rich in gold, which was found primarily in Thrace and on the islands of Thasos and Siphnos.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/engen.greece
Hmm. Perhaps the story is meant to be fancifully exaggerated. Like saying the servant owed the king a billion dollars and the servant’s debtor owed the servant ten cents. If that’s the case, the translation committees were tone deaf and are guilty of pure mistranslation.
Translation from one natural language to another is ultimately impossible.
Merely saying a “huge amount” does not really get the point across, neither does suggesting that it is merely a fanciful exaggeration. The number “10,000″ is quite specific and purposeful.
Numbers in the Bible have specific albeit symbolic meaning.
The number 10 signifies completeness of order. Ten fingers are a complete set, Ten Commandments encompass the complete Law, Ten Plagues signify Egypt being completely stricken, etc. See here also.
The number 7 is number that signifies perfection. So, 7 times 10 equals 70, or complete perfection, and Jesus tells us to forgive 70 times 7, or to be doubly perfect and complete in forgiveness.
The number 3 signifies holiness, e.g., the Trinity, and also perfection.
The number 1000 is 10 times 10 times 10, or again, perfect completeness, and is often used as a multiplier, e.g. 144,000 in Revelation (12 times 12 times 1000).
So, 10,000 would be 10 times 1000, or total perfect completeness. A debt of 10,000 whatever means total and complete indebtedness — the debtor owes EVERYTHING to his creditor, he owes the entirety of his existence. He does not owe merely “a lot” or a “huge” amount, he owes EVERYTHING, all that he has and is.
We are the first servant who owes 10,000 to the king, who is God. We owe everything to Him, we owe the entirety of our existence to Him. As an existential matter, without Him we would not even be. But we are also in debt to Him due to having caused injury and harm by sin — we have broken the window and it must be paid for. There too our debt is not merely “huge” or “a lot” or “exageratted,” rather, our debt is entire — the cost of sin is death.
Failure to understand the meaning of “10,000″ and thus to mistranslate it into “a huge amount” is to grasp only a tiny bit of what Jesus is intending to say to us here. We owe everything to Him, but God in His mercy has forgiven the debt that arises from sin and He allows us to keep the good that we have (life, love, truth, etc.).
Alan: the only thing wrong with it is that it removes the expression that stirs up the imagination, like the fanciful terms used in folk stories. It’s a source of wonder: How can one owe talents to a master? How can one be asked to return your talent for music or for running fast, say? Who do we owe it to? That’s what I used to spend time imagining during Mass as a kid.
The “ten thousand talents” have also become a cultural reference. If you happen to use that in conversation or in class, some people will recognize its biblical origin. It’s like a coded way of saying “I am a Christian, I know my bible.” Its distinctness is part of its charm, like the college slang that marks its user as part of the Yale elite (say). Its obscurity (the fact that people do not know what talents are) only helps us stand apart.
@Alan C. Mitchell (9/13, 12:19 am) Fr. Komonchak can speak for himself, but if there was a “hot button issue” in his original post, I missed it completely. (Of course, that may say more about me than anything else….)
@ Bender (9/13, 2:35 am) Thanks for the lesson in Biblical numerology. This kind of knowledge, which flows from deep and long engagement with Scripture and with what we know of the societies that produced it, helps bring these ancient texts to life.
“Jesus tells us to forgive 70 times 7″
This is my other numerical question about this passage. In the New American translation, he doesn’t tell us to forgive 70 times 7 – he tells us to forgive 77 times (70 + 7?). Which is it?
I believe Mark Twain wrote, “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”. From the point of view of proclaiming and hearing that passage, istm that “70 times 7″ is a bolt of lightning, whereas “77″ comes off a good deal flatter. But which is the more accurate rendering of the original?
John Ciardi wrote, in his introduction to his translation of the Divine Comedy, “Any theoretical remarks offered by a translator are bound to be an apology for his failures. Obviously no sane translator can allow himself to dream of success. He asks only for the best possible failure.” Is this true? Is there no “real” or “good” translation possible? This is a live question for me.
–Bender, thanks very much. 10 means “completeness of order”–that is very nice indeed. And “We owe everything to Him, we owe the entirety of our existence to Him” explains Anselmian justice better than Anselm did, I think.
The commentaries I consulted indicate that the Greek number could be either seventy-seven or seventy times seven; in either case it indicates that no limit can be put to one’s obligation to forgive. Several suggest also that the number might have been chosen as a counter-weight to the vengeful boast of Cain’s son Lamech in Gen 4:24: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my speech: I have killed a man for wounding me, a boy for bruising me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
In starting the thread I had nothing in mind except what I stated in it. I imagine that the first thing a professor of the Bible would do in explaining the parable to a class making use of the New American Bible would be to make it clear what the text actually says, which in this case would mean indicating that behind “a huge amount” was “ten thousand talents” and behind “mere fraction” was “a hundred denarii.”
If I had to choose among the alternate readings, I would prefer one that used actual figures, such as “billions of dollars” and “twenty-five dollars,” or some such thing. But I don’t know what’s wrong with keeping the original figures, which are easily explained either in classroom or in pulpit.
For Mt 18:24, it might be worth noting that the singular of murios has as its predominate meaning “countless” or “infinite” (LSJ), but that the plural usage (as in Mt 18) has the more definite meaning of 10,000. The NAB seems to translate it according to the singular meaning, but I also agree with those who have pointed out that the rhetorical significance is geared toward a huge amount. Personally, I prefer that the actual “stuff” of the world depicted in the text be preserved: talents instead of “bags of gold” or what have you.
Many of you are not old enough to remember President Dwight Eisenhower who was (how shall I put it?) rhetorically challenged. Someone produced a spoof of what Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would sound like if delivered by Eisenhower. (You can find it at: http://vhcook.com/etc/etceisen.htm) Lincoln’s “four score and seven years ago” was replaced by “eighty-seven years ago, I think it was.”
“eighty-seven years ago, I think it was.”
Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Sun, “translated” famous epigrams as if Mayor Daley I had said them. “I go but I shall return” became, “Let’s all come back here sometime.”
Translations are vexing, especially if one knows the original texts (and so I’m happy in my ignorant acceptance of the NAB, though the conversation here is interesting.)
However, I’ve never found a translation of “Beowulf” that didn’t bug me. The line “Thaet waes god cyning!” (sorry, I can’t make the character eth for the “th”) is my litmus test of the translation. Anything like “he was a good king,” or “that was a good king” gets heaved against the wall.
Seamus Heaney, whose original poetry I like, did a creditable job, though I had my doubts that an Irishman could employ enough self-restraint to handle the spare bluntness of Anglo-Saxon.
There is a forthcoming book that I have pre-ordered on Amazon called Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos that may be of interest to some people posting here.
Here’s the PW review:
I like the NAB (including the notes) the more I use it, and since it’s online, it is very handy. But I would not dream of limiting myself to one translation. For the Gospels, I always consult the Anchor Bible versions, the RSV, and my Pelican Gospel Commentaries, now long out of print. And for the “Old Testament,” I always consult Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, from the Jewish Publication Society of America.
Imagine if “Four score and seven years ago…” were replaced with “A huge amount of time ago…”
Ugh.
I think in the 70s and since, in a legitimate desire to make the liturgy and bible accessible and understandable, we’ve suffered from an overabundance of niceness and literalness that borders on kitsch. But I think we’re hopefully moving past that cultural hiccup (yes, even our beloved post-Vatican II era is a creature of its historical circumstance) and maybe now we can appreciate ancient texts for what they actually say. If we’d ever get around to ordaining women we’d worry a lot less about whether our language is, for example, gender-neutral.
The number “10,000″ is not specific. At the culmination of the ancient Greek counting system, they inserted a word that does not follow the earlier system, a word that mean “many manys.” It came to mean “10,000″ when formalized number systems developed and precision was useful.
All of the conjecture on “10″ is appropriate development of the concept, but in the parable it functions more like the distance of “a galaxy far, far away.” If somebody develops a distance scheme that includes “far = 10,000 lightyears” it will not be proper to translate “a galaxy 20,000 lightyears away.” “A huge amount” is the more literal translation.
Unfortunately, 10,000 no longer signifies as it did then. We would need to say the servant owed a billion bars of gold while he was owed 17 cents. That is the kind of contrast we would make today, but it is not a literal rendering of the passage.
John wrote the Book of Revelation is such a manner that much of it would be incomprehensible to an outsider, especially the Roman persecutors, but those Christians with an insider knowledge of Judeo-Christian imagery would understand it. (Same with much of the early art and graffiti that you will find in first and second century Rome.)
We should not try to emulate the Romans. Nor should we resign ourselves to the idea that we are incapable of being as sophisticated with literary concepts as were people from 2000-plus years ago.
At Mass last weekend, Father was at gteat pains to explain this and the “impossible” amount for the servant to pay.
If it was an icredible amount, then I’m not sure that the dramatization of an amount not familiar to a hearer is more exciting to the imagination.
(But the posts here seem to reflect more than just the one text and how one views where we going with the new liturgy – which in its slavish devotion to Latin(IMO) is a step backward -alon gwith many backward steps we seem to take.)
The Jerusalem Bible (still my favorite) preserves the word “talents” in Matthew’s version, but then a footnote conveniently converts it to “over $60,000,000; the amount is deliberately fantastic.” (I wonder who figured out the exchange rate, particularly since the French version’s footnote figures it at 60 million francs). Douai-Rheims (at least the version that pops up on the net) explains in a footnote that “talent was seven hundred and fifty ounces of silver, which at the rate of five shillings to the ounce is a hundred and eighty-seven pounds ten shillings sterling” in the days before the UK went to decimal coinage, presumably).
I would agree that I prefer “talents,” but that’s because I’m old fashioned perhaps. Why not “a gazillion dollars,” after all?
The number of times one must forgive a brother is given as 77 in the Jerusalem Bible, but 70 times 7 in Douai. I do remember warning my mother when I was about 9, that my 10 year old brother was getting perilously close to the 490 forgivenesses I owed him, and after that it would be a Scripturally authorized open season.
On modern translations: there was a splendid article in Commonweal way back in the 70s, I think, about some of the howlers in the English translation (was it the NAV back then?) where “no room at the inn” had been turned into “the place where travelers lodge,” and the article was called “No Room in the TraveLodge.”
Nicholas – re: “the place where travelers lodge” – I was walking around the house earlier today, searching unsuccessfully for an unrevised edition of the NAB to find that little passage. I hopped on the Internet to see if there were any floating around in the cloud, and ran across this little article that argues that “inn” is misleading. In spite of the force of this argument, the revised NAB has reverted back to ‘no room at the inn’.
http://blog.bibleplaces.com/2006/12/in-typical-christmas-pageant-one-of.html
Fr. K – have lectored for 30+ years and the NAB has typically created issues with poor phrasing; choice of certain words, etc.
On the other hand, it is easy to pick specific words and question how the translator made that choice. Translation experts usually frame this work as an “art” – difficult, time consuming, and open to various interpretations, opinions, etc.
OTOH, most experts would state that translation is about conveying “meaning” – they would not support “literal or formal” translation (that can lead to as many issues as a poor, loose, or ideological dynamic translation). Most experts do support a dynamic translation that struggles to capture the “original” meaning.
A couple of interesting stories that demonstrate the “art of translation”:
- L’Osservatore just ran a rememberance of Eugene Nida, expert translator, and dynamic equivalence supporter. Why interesting – Nida’s life’s work rejected the approach of Vox Clara and Liturgicam Authenticam
- Funny story that highlights this point – http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2010/11/12/gesundheit/
- Some reflectionhttp://www.praytellblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Ordo-Missae-Jeffrey-Rowthorn2.pdfs upon using a “formal or literal” approach such as LA and the New Missal –
Finally, if my memory is correct, the KJV was marked by groups of translators who followed “dynamic equivalence” – they started with the “original” bible translation in english from the Puritan Wyndam who had tried to use a formal/literal approach. Your phrase – apple of his eye – per newly found documentation was a result of these translators trying to capture the poetic beauty of the bible and its meaning which often is conveyed by both the word translation and also the structure translation – poetry, hymn, etc.
Sorry – missing a space between reflection and the second link.
Also, meant to type Tyndale – not Wyndam.
Next Sunday’s Gospel will include another test of how to translate a biblical text. In the parable of the generous householder who chooses to pay workers who labored for one hour the same denarius that he had contracted to give those who worked all day, he is said to have replied to a grumbling all-day worker: “Friend, I do you no injustice. You agreed on the usual wage, did you not? Take your pay and go home. I intend to give this man who was hired last the same pay as you. I am free to do as I please with my money, am I not? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Mt 20:13-15; NAB translation). A more literal translation would have “a denarius” for “the usual wage,” and “Is your eye evil because I am good?” for the last question, as in the KJV and Douai -Rheims.
More modern translations tend in the direction of the NAB: “Are you envious, jealous?” “Do you begrudge my generosity?” “Do you resent my generosity?” Etc.
“Evil eye” also occurs in Mk 7:21, where Jesus gives a list of evils that come from the heart and defile a person: “wicked designs, acts of fornication, theft, murder, adultery, greed maliciousness, deceit, sensuality, an evil eye, blasphemy, arrogance, obtuseness.” An “evil eye,” Vincent Taylor points out, may mean “envying, or possibly a malignant glance which casts a spell upon men, an idea found the world over … and not impossible here if vv. 20-23 is an interpretation of the teaching of Jesus.” D. E. Nineham’s commentary has this: “in a Jewish context ‘envy’ would probably be the correct translation, but if the list is of Gentile provenance, a reference to the malevolent glance which casts a spell cannot be ruled out.”
So should a translation settle such issues, or leave the literal text for interpreters to struggle over?
(In her memoir, my mother wrote that my Slovak grandmother thought that my oldest sister had been “overlooked”. When I questioned my mother about the verb, she said that’s what her mother-in-law had said, “overlooked,” meaning someone had put a curse on my sister. And don’t you know that one of the meanings of the verb “overlook” in Webster’s Third is: to give the evil eye to, to bewitch. In case you’re wondering, it was a case of colic–I think.)
I just checked The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips to see how the amounts of money were rendered in Matthew 18, and Phillips has “millions of pounds” and “a few shillings.”
And does the proverbial camel pass through the “eye of a needle” or a narrow gate? That’s would be a distinction that really matters.
Irene –
It is my understanding that “the Eye of the needle” was the name /metaphorical description of one of the gates of Jerusalem, a very narrow one. Without that understanding the phrase just seems to mean an imossible challenge for a camel/rich man.
Names of things and singular descriptions (e.g., Julius Caesar, the black cat) can pose articularly comPlex problems for translators. Modern logicians now realize that many words have two basically different semantic functions at the same time. – they both *refer* us to a thing or things and describe them (though there are some words that are purely referential e.g. It).
Anyway, it is very difficult to separate the referential meaning of a term psychologically from it’s sense/descriptive function. When, for instance, the poet says “Juliet is the Sun” or when someone says, “you are the pits”, we sometimes stumble a bit when hearing such a metaphor, and we often take it to mean an exaggeration.
The new language studies have shown it to be incredibly complex sometimes.
Ann: The three commentaries I have available to me all agree that “the eye of a needle” means what it says, that it does not refer to a narrow gate in Jerusalem. D.E. Nineham has this: “Sayings of other Jewish teachers have survived which speak of the impossibility of some vast object (e.g., an elephant) getting through the eye of a needle, so the comparison was clearly proverbial, and there is no substance in the suggestion that camel (camelos is a mistake for camilos (‘cable’), or the medieval fancy that there was a gate in Jerusalem, known as the needle, through which a camel might just squeeze. The fact that such minimizing interpretations have been thought up is itself an eloquent commentary on the passage!. The expression is of course a hyperbole meant to be memorable by reason of its own grotesqueness, but it would be a mistake on that account to ignore the utterly serious truth it expresses.”
The NAB translates it literally: “the eye of a needle,” as do all the other translations I am able to consult on-line.
Thank you, JAK. That does alter it’s significance greatly.