Translation for Performance: Biblical Performance Criticism in Bible Translation

Abstract

Biblical Scholars working with ancient texts are engaged in the daily task of Bible translation. A commitment to Biblical Performance Criticism (BPC) can be transformative in the task of translation. It is argued in this paper that responsible translation will work towards replicating the artistry of original transmitters of texts in order to draw out traces of the original orality embedded in the texts. Examples of performance-sensitive translations of texts predominantly from the Hebrew Bible are provided. This e-paper also demonstrates that translations that draw out performative elements contribute to interpretation, especially when such scripts are staged before audiences. Subsequent analysis of the performance including audience response contributes to such interpretation. Performance-sensitive translation and actual performance thus become tools for embodiment and the interpretation of biblical texts in our own time.

1. Introduction

Translation is a crucial occupation of Biblical Scholars who work with ancient texts. Elliot and Boer refer to translation as ‘our bread and butter, our daily task,’ underscoring its importance in their claim: ‘in the act of translation, we create the texts that create us’ (Elliot and Boer 2012, p. 1). Such a foundational task, then, should come under scrutiny and should be informed by scholarly principles. Bible translation has a long history and many others have considered the scholarly aspects of the task. Volumes in Cascade’s Biblical Performance Criticism (BPC) series have addressed translation alongside other aspects of BPC (e.g., Maxey 2009; Maxey and Wendland 2012). The Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting includes the research group Ideology, Culture, and Translation and a new group is currently under consideration with a focus on Global Bible Translation Studies. These volumes and conference papers address implications for translators, but none have overtly spelled out the benefits of BPC for translators.

This paper contributes to such scholarly discussions by arguing that a BPC-informed approach to Bible translation is a transformative approach that will bring out new dimensions of meaning by highlighting and replicating the oral and performative foundation and transmission of those texts. It will be argued that dynamic and performative elements embedded within these biblical texts can be effectively elicited by translation that is sensitive to the artistry of the underlying text, including the embedded paralinguistic and extralinguistic features. In addition, fresh translations that draw out these performative elements can be performed as a means of contributing to interpretation in our own contexts.

Commencing with a discussion of the difference between oral and print media, the paper will go on to suggest implications for translation, with attention to artistry, formatting, and power dynamics in translation. Principles for performance-sensitive translations will be described before concrete examples are given demonstrating the impact of performance-sensitive translations in assisting us to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ what an original audience might have heard and seen. Going beyond an interest in the cultural traditions of ancient biblical audiences, this paper concludes by suggesting how BPC-inspired translations can help us reimagine biblical texts as scripts for contemporary performances. Such performances can bring new insights while breathing new life into these ancient texts.

2. Paradigm Shifts Between Oral and Print Media

Those who walk past my partially closed office door each day rarely hear voices coming from behind it, unless it is a Monday lunchtime when a Hebrew reading group meets to read aloud and translate passages from the Hebrew Bible together. Over the decades in which I have studied and taught in the field of Biblical Studies, the dominant paradigm has been to treat the Bible as a text. We read and study and translate texts, using our visual senses, and we frequently do this silently and in isolation from others. Terms that are commonly used in the field of Biblical Studies include ‘texts’, ‘authors’, and ‘readers’. Exegesis of texts draws on written commentaries, journal papers, and monographs. Written texts such as these are highly valued in the academic setting in which we work.

Scholars in the field of Biblical Performance Criticism point out that the world of antiquity that gave rise to our biblical scriptures was governed by a media culture far removed from our silent text mentality (see Kelber 1983; Boomershine 1988; Niditch 1996; Doan and Giles 2005; Rhoads 2006a; Rhoads 2006b). While literature was available in the ancient world, communication was dominated by ‘a sensory world of sound’ rather than sight (Boomershine 2018, p. 216). Biblical Performance critics take this context of orality in the Bible’s origins seriously. Debates over levels of functional literacy in the ancient world are evident in contemporary scholarship, but there is a general consensus that widespread literacy is unsupported by evidence.1 In relation to audiences of biblical traditions, Harris has argued there was no ‘mass literacy’ in the ancient Greek and Roman world (Harris 1989, p. 12). Similarly, Rollston asserts on the basis of epigraphic and biblical data that whilst there is evidence for literate elites in ancient Israel, there is no evidence for wide-spread literacy among the general population (Rollston 2010, p. 134). This is not to say the general population in the ancient world had no access to literature, but rather that literary works were owned by a minority of the population and would have been read aloud to predominantly illiterate or semi-literate audiences in communal settings. It is probable that even when an individual read alone in the ancient world, they did not do so silently but sounded the words aloud, an assumption discerned from St Augustine’s Confessions where he comments on the unusual behaviour of his mentor Ambrose: ‘But when he was reading, his eye glided over the pages, and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest’ (St Augustine n.d., Confessions 6.3). C.S. Lewis refers to this passage from Augustine’s writing as ‘the birth of a new world’ in which the reader was able to turn inward to the ‘silent society of mental images evoked by written characters’. (Lewis 1936, pp. 64–65). In his discussion, Lewis captures the monumental paradigm shift that took place when orality gave way to textuality. Arguably, the next paradigm shift arrived with the advent of the printing press in the Middle Ages, enabling a wider dissemination of written documents. Until this time, conceptions of orality and literacy in the ancient world are relatively uniform, despite the wide time scale in focus when considering the production of biblical texts.

The predominantly oral paradigm influenced not only access to literature in the ancient world, but also the composition, transmission, memorisation, and performance of literary works. New Testament epistles, for example, were first spoken aloud by Paul and other leaders of the Early Church and then transcribed, circulated, and read aloud to different church communities. Much work has been conducted on the Gospel of Mark in BPC, and many argue that this new genre of gospel was also composed and transmitted orally before being written down (Shiner 2003; Rhoads et al. 2012; Boomershine 2015; Wire 2011). The Hebrew Bible also contains materials that undoubtedly were circulated orally before being transcribed, including the Psalms and prophetic oracles (Person 1998; Doan and Giles 2005). Person (1998) notes that even written compositions based on written sources were ‘nevertheless influenced by an oral mind-set’ (p. 602). As implied above, the ancient world, in contrast to our own, was characterised by a paucity of written documents along with low levels of literacy. Those documents that did exist were handwritten compositions or copies thereof, and preparation of the material aspects of writing such as vellum scrolls or papyrus sheets was laborious and expensive. Pertinent also to this discussion is that handwritten scrolls and codices preserving these scripture traditions had no verse numbers, no breaks between words, no punctuation, or accents. We now assume that lectors in the ancient world memorised and rehearsed their material, using manuscripts merely as an aide to memory. In other words, oral composition and transmission in communal settings was the normative mode of engaging with literature during the period that our biblical traditions were created. The Synoptic Gospels themselves hint at this with the repeated phrase ‘let those who have ears hear’ (Matt 13:9; Mark 4:9, 23; 7:16; Luke 8:8; 14:35).

BPC also studies the paralinguistic and extralinguistic dimensions that are added to communication in oral, communal settings, including tone, pace, rhythm, inflection, silence, gestures, postures, and movement. These dimensions can only exist at the level of imagination in silent, individualised reading. Rhetorical handbooks from ancient Greece show that reading aloud was an art to be learned and perfected (see Keener 2017). Such handbooks were probably written for use by the upper classes, but no doubt reflected commonly understood and practiced gestures and techniques.

Contemporary scholars of BPC think of the biblical traditions as communication events which comprise four dimensions: a speaker, a text or tradition, an audience, and a setting (Perry 2016, p. 1). Each component interacts with the others to create meaning. Biblical scholars have traditionally spoken of author, text, and reader but the renewed emphasis on the oral nature of communication has given rise to a greater focus on the audience as a communal entity and the importance of the context in the transmission of biblical texts. Recognizing the speaker and audience as integral to communication events emphasizes embodiment—a key factor in performance. James Maxey provides a simple definition for BPC by stating that performance is the ‘embodiment of communication’ (Maxey 2009, p. 2). An analogy of a musical score is helpful in considering the relationship between text and performance. A score contains the notation and instructions for how a musical piece is to be played, but the composition is not fully realised and appreciated until the music is actually performed before an audience (see Rhoads 2012, p. 27).

One of the contributions BPC is making is to draw out traces of the original orality embedded in the texts that we have received. Walter Ong calls this a text’s ‘residual orality’ (Ong 1982) and Susan Niditch speaks of biblical texts belonging within an ‘oral register’ (Niditch 1996, p. 24). Werner Kelber uses a similar term: the ‘imprint of orality’ (Kelber 2013).

3. Implications for Bible Translation

Until recently, translators have been influenced by the same bias toward print culture that has been present in Biblical Studies scholarship (Maxey 2009, p. 1). Translation has been dominated by a communication model which aims to find the meaning in the original and replicate that meaning in the receptor language. Typically, the goal of Bible translation has been to produce a written text that could be used to teach literacy and used for evangelism. Dominant models of translation, even when taking into account reader response, function as if the text has a ‘single’ meaning.

One of the critiques of this assumption is from a postmodern stance that claims meaning is multivalent. BPC’s characterizing of biblical texts as communication events likewise introduces dynamism in meaning-making. Meaning must be negotiated because variations in performance, audience, and setting can all affect the meaning of a text. Moreover, re-enactment of the same text on different occasions will always result in a different performance.

David Rhoads discusses the implications for translation when there is a bias toward print culture:

The emphasis falls more on a single meaning of a text than on the meaning potential that might be brought out in different ways in performance; more on faithfulness to the original than creativity in the oral register of the receptor language; more on the intention of the author or text than on the potential impacts on an audience; more on the effect on an individual reader than on the collective experience of a gathered community; more on the cognitive sense made by a reader than on the emotional experience of the listeners.

(Rhoads 2012, p. 24)

A further critique of traditional Bible translation is from a postcolonial perspective. Proponents point out the power dynamic at work in the assumption that printed texts are superior to oral tradition. Translators must take seriously the maxim that all translation is interpretation, and recognise the dynamics at play between the original source, the context of the translator or translators, and the context of the target audience.

As the shift from text to orality is gaining influence among Bible translators, there is a concomitant shift from a ‘communication model’ to an ‘engagement model’ with more emphasis on the audience’s context and the social and power impacts of translation. Questions of ethics, ideology, and identity are being seriously considered by translators (Elliot 2012, p. 39). Translators recognise that many of the target communities are oral cultures with a communal mentality, which is closer to the original context of biblical traditions than that of the dominant Western culture. As James Maxey notes, engaging in translation that is sensitive to the underlying performative nature of communication will recognise auditory reception not as a ‘pre-literate’ stage, but as integral to the process of translation. Maxey comments on the fundamentally communal nature of audiences of biblical performances, where he ruefully notes: ‘[in my training] I do not remember anybody indicating to me that the Bible was intended primarily to be heard in community and that this fact should shape the way we do translation’ (Maxey 2009, p. 9). Maxey’s own translation work among the Vuté people of the Cameroon is a good example of an engagement model of translation. He has worked with this predominantly oral culture to translate portions of the Gospel of Mark by way of performance. Some principles that guide these translations include the selection of vocabulary to evoke emotion; a preference for direct speech; the use of shorter clauses, ideophones (words that express what is perceived by the emotions such as ‘whoosh’ or ‘snap’), and gestures; enhanced interaction with the audience; pace and silence; and the use of costumes and props.

BPC’s emphasis on embodiment is also becoming influential in translation work on the Bible. If the received texts serve as ‘witness[es] to oral performances in the ancient world’ (Rhoads 2012, p. 25), then translators should be looking for vestiges of that embodied performance inherent in the text, including aspects of literacy that contribute to memorisation and re-enactment (discussed further below). Stage directions can also be identified where the words indicate instruction for gestures and movement, pauses and silence, vocal volume and inflection, props, and emotions.

Linguistic features such as humour and wordplay are increasingly becoming recognised as elements that would have engaged communal audiences in their original settings (see Perry 2023). While wordplay can be difficult and sometimes impossible to replicate in translation, humour is often well recognised. Performances before audiences that include emphasis, gestures, and tone of voice elicit reactions which are heightened as audiences mimic each other’s responses.

Ernst Wendland (2008) uses sound mapping in his Oratorical-Performative Translations of New Testament texts in order to discern the rhetorical impact for the original audience and replicate it for a contemporary audience.2 Repetition, onomatopoeia, and ideophones can, with care, be replicated. Philip Noss (1985), who has translated the Bible into the Gbaya language, notes a large number of ideophones in that language, and believes the power of the biblical message is enhanced when such emotive words are employed in translation. Two examples of ideophones in Biblical Hebrew are הַס (has) which can be translated with ‘hush’ due to its similar sound and meaning; and the particle הֲלוֹא (hălôᵓ), often translated ‘now’, which can almost always be translated ‘hallo?!’ replicating a contemporary questioning particle. An example of the use of this particle is from the Elijah cycle where a band of prophets ask Elisha if they should go and look for Elijah after he disappears in a fiery chariot. Elisha tells them not to, but then permits them to do so when pressured. When they return three days later reporting that they could not find him, Elisha’s answer is ‘Hello?! Did not I say to you do not go?’ (2 Kgs 2:18).

David Rhoads (2012, pp. 38–43) highlights three important issues that arise when translating for performance. The first is a desire to capture the artistry of the original material in the translation, the second is how written translations should be formatted to enhance their oral performance, and the third relates to power dynamics in translation. Each of these aspects are expanded in the discussion below.

3.1. Artistry in Translation

As noted earlier, the presence of rhetorical handbooks in the ancient world demonstrate an interest in the artistry of spoken communication, in order to captivate, entertain, and transform listeners. With attention to this, the use of figurative speech as well as phonological dimensions such as sound patterns and wordplay need not be lost in translation. Robert Alter’s influential volume The Art of Bible Translation (Alter 2019) does not directly consider performance of the Bible, but much of his discussion overlaps with principles that can be followed when translating for performance. Early in the volume, he lauds the King James Version and laments what has been lost in more recent English translations. Notwithstanding some ‘egregious translation errors’ in the KJV, Alter argues that the power and evocative beauty of the underlying Hebrew has often been well captured in that translation (p. 2). He also comments positively on its literalism (p. 3), based on the theological conviction that God’s words were revealed and should not be altered. Words that are not actually in the Hebrew but are implied are written in italics in the KJV, and the same Hebrew word is consistently translated with the same English word. Alter laments, however, the verbose nature of the KJV translation of poetic material that misses the ‘terrific compactness’ of biblical poetry (p. 9). Alter reveals an inherent need for performance to enhance translation when he comments:

The underlying problem, I suspect, is that the King James translators, though they had an impressive feel for English, approached biblical Hebrew as a language to be deciphered from the printed page, and they often did not seem to hear it.

(Alter 2019, p. 9, italics original)

In the very literal translation of narrative texts, the KJV maintains the typical characteristics of parataxis (where a series of parallel clauses are linked with ‘and’). Alter claims parataxis is ‘an artful vehicle, generating imposing cadenced sequences of parallel clauses’ (Alter 2019, p. 4). The art of parataxis can be seen in the following verse from Genesis: ‘And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him’ (Gen 22:3, KJV). The juxtaposition of clauses joined by the repeated conjunction gives the hearer a sense of Abraham’s mechanical and emotionless obedience to God’s command. In addition, Hebrew narrative is characterized by a limited vocabulary with frequent repetition of words. Again, Alter refers to ‘the beautiful dignity of the Hebrew with its adherence to a purposefully simple lexicon of primary terms’ (Alter 2019, p. 6). When translators remove these repetitive aspects, often motivated by aesthetic concerns, we are no longer hearing what original audiences heard.

Alter comments at length on the possibility of replicating the artistry of sound play and word play in Hebrew texts (Alter 2019, pp. 65–81). He offers a number of examples of his own translations, stating:

I share this … with the reader in order to make it clear that this is what translation is all about: you see an important effect in the original; you balance different possibilities for conveying it in translation; sometimes you feel you’ve gotten it just right; sometimes you adopt a solution that is far from perfect but that is nevertheless preferable to not communicating the effect of the original at all.

(Alter 2019, p. 79)

In his discussion of the art of translation, Alter points out the strong connection between artistry and meaning in Hebrew texts, encouraging translators to strive to retain the connection. Alter (2019, p. 36) gives the example of Psalm 18:49 (v. 50 in the MT). The NRSV translation of this short affirmation is ‘For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name’. Parallelism, typical in Hebrew poetry, can be seen in the NRSV translation with the verbs ‘extol’ and ‘praise’ in parallel, and ‘Lord’ and ‘your name’ also parallel terms. In the Hebrew text, however, the structure is chiastic, so it more literally reads ‘for this I will extol you among the nations, O Lord, and to your name will I sing praises’. Faithful replication of the underlying Hebrew is more than just semantics; there are theological implications in the arrangement. By following the chiastic structure in translation, the Psalmist’s praise surrounds the name of the Lord.

3.2. Formatting in Translation

Rhoads raises the issue of how written translations should be formatted to enhance their oral performance. Bearing in mind the lack of structure and punctuation in original biblical texts, there is nothing sacrosanct in our modern translations. Traditional formatting of verses, chapters, and section headings are all features that were imposed on the biblical traditions at a later stage of transmission and they can be misleading. A simple example of this is the difference in versification between the Masoretic Text (MT) of the Psalms and most modern English translations, due to placing superscriptions as separate subheadings in psalms before commencing versification.

Translators who translate for performance are experimenting with font, typeface, spacing, and so on, to enable directions for performance. In Hebrew Bible texts, such formatting would highlight features such as parallelism, chiasms, link words, and other patterns of repetition. Although such an approach cannot help but be interpretive, it highlights embedded performance features in the underlying text.

When translations are formatted to reflect features of underlying oral performance, new interpretive light can be shed on the texts. Tom Boomershine (2018) replicates colon segmentation in portions of Mark’s gospel on the model of classical Greek, and argues that this contains the key to the puzzling shorter ending of Mark (p. 232). He divides the last verse of Mark into four cola with clearly marked boundaries, mapping the lines as spoken by a narrator who intersperses description of surprising action with audience asides explaining the action:

And they went out and fled from the tomb

For terror and amazement had seized them.

And they said nothing to anyone

For they were afraid. (Mk 16:8)

One can imagine an audience being hooked into asking the questions ‘why?’ or ‘what?’ as they hear the statement, inviting the performer to lean in with the explanation. Boomershine’s faithful translation of καὶ (kai) and γάρ (gar) highlights their rhetorical impact in contrast to a common modern translation: ‘Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid’ (Mk 16:8, NIV). Consistent translation of the repeated conjunctions give greater insight into the underlying orality of the text.

A significant example of formatting that attests to the underlying orality of Hebrew texts can be found in the Masoretic Text (MT). The ‘ketiv-qere’ formulations that occur thousands of times in the MT attest to a difference between what is written (ketiv) and what should be said in recitation (qere). Similarly, the accents in the MT, whether conjunctive or disjunctive, were added on the basis of traditional recitation. These diacritics demonstrate the authority of the spoken tradition despite the careful preservation of the texts themselves (see Weingreen 1959, pp. 22–23).

3.3. Power Dynamics in Translation

A third issue raised by Rhoads is to acknowledge and respond to inherent power dynamics between translators and target audiences. An engagement model of translation as described above is one way of responding to this issue. Another response is to recognize the diversity inherent in translation and interpretation that leads to a variety of performances. The book of Habakkuk, for example, ends with a poem that is appended with the notation ‘to the Director, בִּנְגִינוֹתָי (bin^egînotāy),’ a lexeme that is a hapax legomena similar to others found in the psalms but not identical elsewhere. Determining the translation is not straightforward due to connotations of both praise and lament in the root word (Mathews 2012b, pp. 133–34). The potential range of meanings underlying the term, therefore, offers the possibility of the psalm-like verses of Habakkuk 3 being performed in different ways.

4. My Approach to Bible Translation via Biblical Performance Criticism

The remainder of this essay will offer some examples from my own translations of texts from the Hebrew Bible. I have been influenced by BPC in two significant ways. First, by acknowledging the underlying oral nature of transmission for these texts, I want to draw out remnants of the original performance to enhance these performance features in contemporary languages and media. I hope that contemporary audiences might better ‘hear’ what original audiences heard, or at least something relative to that. Replication of the original artistry and highlighting of extralinguistic features are two areas where the ‘oral register’ can be located. Second, when we accept that biblical traditions circulated in some form of performance, this implies that performance itself is a form of interpretation. There is a freedom to experiment with different performances of the same text and use those performances to bring new meanings to texts as we have received them.

4.1. Translation of Intrinsic Orality: Artistry

Translation informed by BPC encourages attentiveness to the oral artistry of the text, including wordplay, repetition of words and sounds (paronomasia), word order, rhythm, parallelisms and chiasms, and rare examples of rhyme. In order to hear repetition of words and sounds, it is helpful to hear the text spoken out loud. Incorporating a practice of reading texts in their original language or seeking out renditions on websites where texts are recited will alert the translator to these elements.

When spoken aloud, the repetition of the ‘sh’ sound is evident in Ps 122:6:

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם יִשְׁלָיוּ אֹהֲבָיִךְ (šaᵓălû š^elôm y^erûšālāim, yišlāyû ᵓohăbāyik).

The NRSV translation reads ‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: may they prosper who love you’. The link between the name Jerusalem and shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, is surely intended to be heard in this verse. And for English speakers, of course, a ‘sh’ sound is a peaceful sound so the very sound of the Hebrew is underscoring the message of the psalm. Moreover, the verb שׁאל (šᵓl) is not the usual verb for pray, and can be translated with the semantic range ‘ask, inquire, demand’. A translation that picks up on those repeated ‘sh’ sounds without losing the meaning could therefore be:

Shout shalom for Yerushalayim, surely safety for those who love you.3

Rhyme is not a common form of soundplay in Hebrew poetry, so when it occurs it is worth replicating. On the first page of the Hebrew Bible, we find a rhyming phrase תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohû w^ebohû), translated in the KJV as ‘without form and void’. The first of these words is well-attested but the second is likely ‘a nonce word invented by the Priestly writer to rhyme with tohû’ (Alter 2019, p. 71). A potential translation that retains the rhyme as well as incorporating a little-used word for a chaotic reality could therefore be ‘formless and gormless’. Two similar rhyming phrases in the Elijah narratives are intriguing: in 1 Kings 18:27, Elijah challenges the priests of Baal to cry out with קוֹל־גָּדוֹל (qôl gādôl, a great voice) and later, in 1 Kgs 19:12, Elijah finds himself listening to קוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה (qôl d^emāmāh daqqāh, a still small voice). A translation that picks up the rhyming effect is ‘surround sound’ and ‘a sound unfound’, respectively (Mathews 2020, p. 112).

The Song of Songs with its beautiful dialogue of poetry between lovers lost in their own world of delight has a striking series of rhyming words in chapter 2:15:

אֶחֱזוּ־לָנוּ שׁוּעָלִים שׁוּעָלִים קְטַנִּים מְחַבְּלִים כְּרָמִים (ᵓeḥezû lānû šûᶜālîm šûᶜālîm q^eṭanîm m^eḥab^elîm k^erāmîm).

The NRSV translates the lines this way:

Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards.

The plural verbs and pronouns suggest it is spoken by the lovers together, with the line sounding like a nonsense-nursery-rhyme phrase with its five rhyming words in sequence. One can imagine lovers recollecting a familiar childish rhyme when contemplating a minor irritation before returning to their usual blissful awareness of each other. The phrases could accordingly be translated thus:

Catch for us foxes, foxes in soxes, poxes in our rootstockses.

(Mathews 2023a, p. 36)

Ecclesiastes 7:6 has a series of similar sounding words in one line: הַסִּירִים (hasîrîm), הַסִּיר (hassîr), הַכְּסִיל (hak^esîl). NRSV translates ‘like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools.’ Michael Fox’s 2004 translation picks up this wordplay in his translation:

The levity of the fool is like the crackling of nettles under a kettle.

(Fox 2004, p. 45)4

These two examples from The Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes demonstrate a connection between artistry and message: the amusing rhythm and rhyme of the words correspond to the childish prattle in the former and in the latter likening the harsh repeated sounds to foolish laughter.

Repetition can be a form of word play that is simple to imitate in translation. The phrase פָשׁוּ פָּרָשָׁיו וּפָרָשָׁיו (pāšû pārāšāv ûpārāšāv) in Habakkuk 1:8 is a verb followed by a repeated noun with very similar roots and is translated in NRSV ‘their horses charge, their horsemen come’. It is quite simple to draw out the onomatopoeia in the Hebrew and maintain the grammatic order of verb followed by a repeated noun linked by a conjunction in the following translation:

They gallop, his gallopers and his gallopers.

(Mathews 2012a, pp. 211–12)

Replication of the acrostic form in Hebrew is worth the effort in order to hear more faithfully what early audiences of the biblical tradition heard. The book of Lamentations can be particularly challenging, and in order to remain faithful to the vocabulary while finding an appropriate equivalent in the correct letter of the English alphabet, it may be necessary to resort to a type of ‘Yoda Speak’5—for example, ‘Crying out I am, and calling for help’ (Lam 3:8). It is worth noting that a translation that retains the ‘otherness’ of the Hebrew is not necessarily a bad thing. Modern translators are, after all, working with material that is far removed from their own time, place, and cultural norms. The acrostic undoubtedly served as a mnemonic device for performance in original contexts and can also have an impact on audiences. During a performance of Lamentations based on a modern acrostic translation, more than one member of the audience noticed and inquired about the inversion of two letters in the acrostic in two of the poems. I have not found other translators who follow this reversal in their own acrostic translation, yet:

It seems to me to be significant to replicate this imperfection in a performance of the poetry. For an audience following the acrostic this reversal will be surprising and elicit reflection on the intention of the original author … there may have been an intention to throw an audience off-kilter, reminding them that even with the tight structure of the acrostic, the world of the poet is still in turmoil.

(Mathews 2023a, p. 153)

A final example of noticing the artistry in texts comes from Lamentations 3:7-9. Even translators who have attempted to replicate the acrostic seem reluctant to repeat the same Hebrew word with the same English word, yet this is an important principle to follow in translation in order to better hear what original audiences heard. Perhaps translators select different English words in an attempt to improve the aesthetic of the translated material in English. Yet, the original poetry was so carefully constructed that is seems churlish to not repeat a word considered significant for repetition in the original. All three verses in question begin with the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, gimel, and the word beginning verses seven and nine is the same: גָּדַר (gādar, ‘he built a wall’). In the case of my own translation, the acrostic demanded the letter c for these three verses, and ‘closed’ was selected for the translation:

Closed in around me, I cannot escape, heavy he made my chains.

Crying out loud, and calling for help, he has shut out my prayer.

Closed in my road with well-cut stone, my paths he likes to twist.

(Mathews 2023a, p. 136)

The Tanakh Hebrew translation that does not attempt an English acrostic did, however, use ‘he walled’ for verses seven and nine (Berlin and Brettler 2004, p. 1596), unlike other English translations. As in many Hebrew verses where form and vocabulary contributes to meaning, there is a significant link here: the repetition of ‘closed’ in the first and third verses of the triad effectively creates a chiasm that draws attention to the middle verse where the sufferer is crying out precisely because he feels trapped on either side! The effect is not as striking when different words are used to translate the same Hebrew verb.

4.2. Translation of Intrinsic Orality: Paralinguistic and Extralinguistic Features

Translations informed by BPC will draw out the paralinguistic and extralinguistic features that are intrinsic to the text, such as plural verbs that imply a communal audience, verb shifts, gestures, pauses, and silence. In addition, it is worth being alerted to the pausal diacritics in the Masoretic Text. Admittedly, these are later additions in the history of text transmission, yet, like the ‘ketiv-qere’ formulations, they reflect the received oral tradition.

The shifts from third person to second person in the ‘woe oracles’ that make up the majority of the second chapter in the book of Habakkuk are striking. The prophet gives a general statement about the wicked actions of others, but then turns to his audience and directs the accusation towards them in second-person speech. Here is an example:

Woe to him who piles up what is not his own, or loads himself with goods taken in pledge … will not your own creditors suddenly arise, and those who make you tremble awake? And you will be booty for them.

(Mathews 2012a, p. 125)

The book begins with a lament by the prophet who is asking YHWH for answers, but when there is a response, the verbs are in second person plural. The answers that come are not for the prophet alone, but for a gathered audience. With these verb changes, which are often disguised in English by the use of the same word and verbal forms for second person singular and plural pronouns, one can imagine a performer turning to the audience to look them in the eye. There is no fourth wall in biblical performance.

Gestures are often embedded in texts. In 2 Kings 2:8, part of the Elijah cycle, the prophet takes his mantle to strike the river Jordan so that the waters were divided הֵנָּה וָהֵנָּה (hēnnāh vāhēnnāh). Although it is the same word that is repeated and joined with the conjunction, translations usually use different words: ‘to the one side to the other’ (NRSV) or ‘to the right and left’ (Tanakh). It would be appropriate to translate ‘from here to here’ if we infer an accompanying gesture making sense of the phrase. From a New Testament perspective, Rhoads points out the obvious stage directions for volume, tone, gestures, emotions, and so on in phrases like ‘he cried in a loud cry’/‘they were astonished’/‘he stretched out his hand and touched him’/‘it tasted bitter’/‘he sighed deeply in his spirit’ (Rhoads 2012, p. 29).

Performance or reading that is audible to others has more opportunity to bring out any emphasis, surprise, or suspense that is present in the text. When Abraham reaches out his hand to take the knife to kill his son in Gen 22:10, it is worth noting the disjunctive accents in the Hebrew that suggest the following pauses: ‘And Abraham reached out his hand … and took the knife … to slay his son’. At the very least, Abraham is giving the angel of God plenty of opportunity to intervene!

4.3. Performance as Interpretation

Practitioners of BPC are committed to using performance itself as a means of interpreting biblical material. My own work has included the preparation of fresh translations as scripts that draw out performative elements. Reflections on new insights elicited by the performance of such scripts contributes to scholarship on the relevant biblical traditions (Mathews 2020, 2023a, 2023b). The script, the experience of the actors, and the responses of the audience together contribute to new interpretations of the biblical tradition. The script of Ecclesiastes as a television panel show, for example, explores whether the contradictory statements in that book make more sense if different voices are expressing the different views in conversation. The Song of Songs, a book that is intrinsically dramatic yet lacks a clear plot line, lends itself to a script likened to a Greek play with two protagonists and two choruses. One of the woman’s speeches in The Song of Songs, when translated to highlight the chiastic parallelism of the lines, enables an audience to view the woman as surrounded and hemmed in by watchmen so that she is unable to escape their violence:

They found me—the watchmen—

the ones going round in the city.

They struck me, they bruised me,

They lifted my veil from over me,

The watchmen of the walls. (5:7)

The only two speeches attributed to the chorus of men are ‘turn, turn Shulammite, turn and let us gaze on you’ (6:13) and the boast that they plan to ‘close in’ their sister (8:8-9). One imagines that a performance of this script in our contemporary world, where violence against women is a seemingly unresolvable and shameful society issue, would make an impact on an audience and thereby draw out new ways of understanding this book.

The polyphonous nature of the poems of Lamentations suggests ascription to four different voices: three individuals and a chorus. When performed thus, audiences are invited to experience the disaster of Jerusalem’s fall from multiple perspectives and will readily experience the contrast between the individual voices of the first four poems and the communal voice of the final poem. Plot-driven narratives such as the books of Ruth, Judges, and story cycles in Samuel and Kings can be envisaged as mini-series with discrete episodes populated by casts of major and minor characters, tapping into a contemporary appetite for binge-consumerism of media. The exaggerated characterisation and ironic plot twists in the book of Esther also lends itself to performance, perhaps even to melodrama or pantomime! There is great scope in reimagining prophetic literature through performance. It is unmistakably dramatic with its focus on a prophetic persona addressing an audience and inviting reflection and participation. Moreover, prophets frequently use performances to convey their messages, with Ezekiel’s prophetic sign-acts resembling as performance art installations (see Sherwood 1998, p. 195 and Mathews 2020, pp. 165–70).

One benefit of being guided by principles of BPC in translation is that it encourages a move away from understanding scripture as a single voice in an authoritative ur-text to hearing the texts as traditions compiled by many voices and hands and faithfully passed on in new contexts and with new audiences. Translators that are alert to performative elements of these traditions, and translations that better reflect the artistry of the ancient traditions, are contributing to this diversity of the Judeo-Christian heritage. By performing these traditions with different performers, audiences, settings, and socio-political contexts, they become embodied afresh and continue to inspire and motivate contemporary communities of faith.

5. Conclusions

Approaching the task of translation of biblical texts with a commitment to BPC highlights the underlying orality of the original traditions as texts that were composed to be heard as units of sound rather than units of text. Hearing texts spoken in the original language, then, will alert the translator to the repetition of words and sounds, rhyme, rhythm, implied gestures, implied tone of voice, and implied pauses or silence. Remnants of original performances can thus be replicated in translations that are formatted to enhance their oral performance. Translators can thus be alert to the imprint of orality and replicate remnants of the original performance for contemporary audiences. The creativity of these traditions is an encouragement for creativity in the work of current-day translators. Allowing the shape of the original tradition to inspire transposition into contemporary performative genres, these scripts can then be performed before audiences. The interplay between script, the experience of the actors, and the responses of the audiences can elicit new insights into these ancient texts, and allow them to be embodied afresh in individual lives and community identities.