The Role of Culture in Translation (2000-TTW)

Sometimes it is interesting to see where ideas came from originally, and how differently they come out later. This paper was the beginning of what later was the chapter in the book Bible Translation: Frames of Reference. https://map.bloomfire.com/posts/568641-the-role-of-culture-in-translation

This version was presented at the 2000 UBS TTW meetings in Málaga, Spain.

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Extracted text from Bascom.pdf:

Bascom TTW 2000

The Role of Culture in Translation1 It was simple, but one had to be Osage to think of it. (Sperber:1975)

Introduction: In his book Mans Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor and Austrian professor of psychiatry Victor Frankl has proposed that what makes humans human is not the will to power, nor their ability to play, or use tools, or any other proposal so far put forth, but rather their desire and quest for meaning (Frankl:1965). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, French existentialist philosopher, had already gone even further. Merleau-Ponty suggested that as humans we are not condemned to despair as his contemporary Jean-Paul Sartre had claimed, but rather that we are condemned to meaning (Merleau-Ponty:1964). Merleau-Ponty is difficult to understand at many points, but what he seems to mean is that humans cannot help but continually try to make sense of their experience, to organize and structure it. Of course both Frankl and Merleau-Ponty are talking about meaning in the larger philosophical sense, but their observations may serve us well when approaching the subject of meaning in the every-day sense in which a translator encounters it. Translation consultants will not have failed to notice this tendency to make meaning. Translators are constantly in danger of under or over-translating. When we explain too much (over-translate), we distort the textual effects of the original and produce a commentary. When we under-translate, we can get either of two results, or more usually a mix of the two. The first result is that only partial meaning is preserved, sometimes only a very little bit. Give the average European or North American the book of Leviticus to read and see how much he or she really understands. The second (and this happens to some extent every time something is translated) result is that a new meaning is given to the text based on what the new readers bring to the text. A fine example of this is from Africa, where Jesus having been circumcised on the eighth day was originally (mis)understood in one area as being proof of his divinity. This was because circumcision in that part of Africa was a rite of passage into puberty. Jesus having reached this state in eight days was therefore undeniably miraculous and a sign of his special status2 Here new (and wrong) meaning was made where there was quite a different--but inaccessible--meaning in the original cultural context. In the 1950s Edward T. Hall (reprint:1990) popularized the image of the iceberg in describing the relation of cultural frameworks for understanding in communication. He maintained that what was expressed explicitly (which itself was far more than was actually said) was only the tip of the iceberg in relation to the totality of what was understood in a communication interaction. Thus he already put forth the idea that meaning is not limited to the words spoken, nor to the explicit expression in whatever form, but includes such imponderables as masses of cultural information shared by the persons involved in the interaction. Others have followed Halls lead (cf. Katan:1999), distinguishing those aspects of communication which are likely to be made explicit from those which are usually hidden, out-of-awareness, even from those who are using the system of shared understanding.3 There are various sets of terms and various ways of visually representing the issue (iceberg, 1

This paper concentrates on the major contributions the author believes anthropology and cultural studies have made to translation (mostly from a cognitive perspective). For a more general and complete overview of the field, please see Krijn van der Jagt, Anthropological Approaches to the Bible, forthcoming. 2 From Phil Stine, in oral communication. 3 Of course these cultural values and conceptual systems are hidden in different ways for those who use them unconsciously as opposed to those who are not a part of the cultural system.

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pyramid, etc.). What these socio-cultural theorists all seem to agree on is that meaning is out there in the continuum of language and culture. Theo Hermans (1995) has summed up the impact of this kind of thinking on recent trends in translation theory well: Translation used to be regarded primarily in terms of relations between texts or between language systems. Today it is increasingly seen as a complex transaction taking place in a communicative, socio-cultural context.

The cartoon above can be used to illustrate the point. While blazin catfish could be replaced by another exclamation of surprise in any language, the form of the expression makes a specific reference to the culture of the southern part of the United States.4 This might be explained, but it is hard to see how it could be translated. Penance in a complex idea involving self-inflicted suffering to pay back a wrong that was done, in this case not to a person, but to God. The idea of curling ones hair makes sense only in a culture where such things are done (and hair is often straight, and so on). The idea of a divine plan refers to a specific cultural history of religion, with ideas of a monotheistic, personal God who is involved in the minute details of everyday life. Finally, the forty days and forty nights (even in the form, not TEV/CEVs forty days and nights, for example) is a specific reference not only to a specific version of a biblical text, but also to a specific cultural understanding of that text (God does things in forties). The amount of shared cultural information being referred to in this cartoon is massive. In part this is due to what it is trying to accomplish (multiple reference is integral to the humor). Yet most biblical texts (and nearly all non-technical texts, for that matter) are also making massive reference to cultural information. And this information simply too cumbersome to be included in the text of translations. David Katan (1999:74) notes that Bronislaw Malinowski felt obliged to include a cultural/environmental commentary on his reports of what the Trobrianders (whose culture he was trying to document) were saying and doing. He felt that both the immediate communication frame as well as the background cultural frame were

4

It may also be that a particularly out-of-awareness aspect of the meaning of blazin catfish relates to minced oaths. Thus for Petes sake, for example, almost certainly refers indirectly to St. Peter, just as for goodness sake, et. al. refer to attributes of God. They (and other examples like them) are derived from for Gods sake. Thus blazin may well refer in the same indirect way to hell. The catfish add local color.

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needed for the texts he transcribed from the Trobrianders as well as those he himself produced about them to be considered to have meaning. Katan (1999:183ff) also cites David Victor for having developed Halls helpful distinction between High Context Cultures (HCC), and Low Context Cultures (LCC). Using the iceberg image, the HCC would have most of the ice showing on the surface of the water (giving the metaphor license). Explicitness in such cultures is highly valued. LCCs, on the other hand, would have as little of the ice on the surface of the water as possible. In such cultures, unexpressed shared knowledge is a strong cultural value. This kind of thinking about cultures fits with Mary Douglas (1996b) grid/group categorization of cultures as well. In her scheme, HCC cultures would be those with high freedom and low solidarity, while LCC cultures would be those with low freedom and high solidarity. A more detailed typology is really needed to avoid oversimplification and stereotyping (cf. Katan:1999: 161ff). Still, cultures falling into these two general categories obviously would approach communication very differently. And these very different kinds of cultures are often the very ones working together in Bible translation. The case of cultural change: A consultant for a Bible translation agency working in Latin America has recently complained: "My problem now is that I am working with young people of another generation who have no ideas of the background meanings of the key words in their translation. Their culture has changed. They have lost their base and are walking in a culture that is in limbo or in rapid change. Culture change for me has made it harder to communicate and translate. The old Mayan sacrificial system had a lot in common with the sacrifices of the OT Hebrews." The consultant is absolutely right. But how did this cultural change happen? By these traditional cultures coming in contact with modern western civilization, a mixture of Judeo-Christian ideas and ethics, Greek and modern western philosophy, and (more recently) modern science. First the Spanish and Portuguese Catholics, and later the European and North American Protestant missionaries, systematically weeded out what they considered to be "pagan" aspects of the indigenous cultures. In so doing, these well-meaning Christians often robbed native cultures of their poetry, art, music, dance, and sometimes even their writings. In short, by not understanding the distance between their own cultures and the ancient texts, these mediators of the (biblical) word tried to bring traditional cultures already situated immeasurably closer to the world of the biblical text than they themselves were toward their own (non-traditional culture) understandings of the Bible. All this the newcomers did in order to help the native cultures understand the text in the terms the missionaries themselves had come to understand the Bible, an understanding they innocently enough considered to be "biblical." How ironic. The native cultures are often (or at least were?) already in a better position than the missionaries to understand much of scripture. But these native needed and still need the outsiders, at least until they have the technology (knowledge of biblical languages and cultures, linguistics, anthropology, etc.) to do Bible translation themselves. The Case of Euphemisms (from Bascom:1994) Euphemism has often been described as the avoidance of direct reference to certain activities of objects within certain domains, such as sex, death, bodily functions, etc. More precisely, however, euphemism is the

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replacement of specific terms of reference within these domains in certain social contexts with other terms of a different (usually considered to be more polite?) register. Thus euphemisms in translation should not be unclear, but should be clear replacement terms for others not being used in those contexts. But the contexts as well as the domains are culture-specific. There are multiple cultures at work in any translation. And in some cases the overlap of cultures involved in Bible translation function as a set of filters, obscuring the meaning of the text. There are often three or four cultures at work in any translation of Scripture. First there is the culture of the text, different in different parts of the Bible, but more or less definable for any specific passage. Second, there is the culture of the missionary and/or translation consultant, usually European or North American. Even as the Bible Societies recruit more translation consultants from different countries throughout the world, their attitudes toward the text of Scripture have usually been filtered through western academic experience and training. Third, there is often a common cultural medium which we use to communicate with native translators. In Latin America, for example, it is the Hispanic culture of the country being worked in at the time. Fourth, there is the culture of the translator(s). One point is important here. It is the principle of the veto. That is, if any of the three or four cultures avoids the use of specific terms in specific contexts, the likelihood is that the offending term will be replaced in translation. The actual receptor language should by all means have the right to do this, but the other two or three should have no bearing in such a case. With regard to euphemisms, even the original cultures should not be able to enforce their replacement terms. Unless a separate theological justification for maintaining the euphemism in translation can be found, or the receptor culture demands it, the euphemism is not justified. Some examples of the tendency to over-euphemize are Gen 18.12, where "pleasure" is apparently sexual, not in having another child, and in Gen 24.2,9; 47:29, where what appears to be already a euphemism is often further altered due to discomfort over possible homosexual overtones. A particularly glaring example of a kind of theological or sub-cultural euphemism occurs in Gen 43.34, where TEV alone of the major translations in English clearly states that Joseph and his brothers got drunk. There are many others, in the Old Testament often having to do with covering the feet.

Cultural Frames and Semantic Networks The idea of frames and framing in communication has been popular among a number of writers for some time. When applied to texts, it generally means the same thing as context. The advantage of using the metaphor of a frame is that it carries with it the idea of the action involved, and as such can capture much better the processes involved in creating, negotiating, maintaining, transforming, and breaking frames. Similarly, the concept of the organization of experience (Gofmann:1986) will be used in what follows in place of the term world-view, as the latter is now too closely aligned in the minds of many with a specific set of concepts such as cosmology, mythology, religion, and so on. Recent trends in a number of different fields has contributed to current thinking about frames and the organization of experience as it relates to translation. Relevance theory contributed the useful concept of the shared cognitive environment (SCE) to the discussion of translation. But George Lakoff (1987) had already made an advance on the concept even before it was

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popularized. Lakoff points out (while not using the terminology of relevance theory) that SCEs as such would be frames like the weather or the physical surroundings during a communication event. These are frames any perceptive human being could be expected to take into account at some level. For him, far more interesting are the conceptual structures which people create together in order to communicate, and which he calls idealized cognitive models (ICMs). An ICM is more obviously a social construction than a SCE. In fact, many ICMs are completely arbitrary, and quite open to challenge from another perspective. But within the scope of the communication, they are often what is taken for granted by speaker/writer and hearer/reader. They are what Katan (1999:32) quoting Hall and others calls the out-of awareness part of communication. Below we will deal with major conflicts between biblical ICMs of social hierarchy and structures of obligation versus modern ICMs of egalitarianism and personal freedom. Meaning within the communicative continuum: The idea of SCEs and ICMs brings us to the point where we must reconsider the traditional text-context model of communication. Meaning is not just a text plus a context. Meaning is distributed across the communicative continuum of language and culture, of utterance, natural SCEs and culturally constructed ICMs. One cannot predict where exactly meaning will reside in the continuum. Thus sarcasm in English can be lexicalized (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, or <grin>, etc.), communicated by intonation, or simply left to context (the sheer improbability that what is being said is serious based on what is known about the speaker). Some languages (e.g. Mayan) demand that sarcasm be lexicalized, at least in writing. A special morpheme exists to cue the reader that what is being said is not the true opinion of the author or the character in the text in question. Further, this text/context, token/frame or explicit/implicit relation is constantly being negotiated by the participants in the communication (Goffman:1986, et. al). Of course for a written text, the negotiation takes a different form. The reader or hearer simply checks the understanding of the text he or she is hearing against his or her frames of understanding (cultural ICMs for the most part) and chooses the best fit. When the cultures are close, the result is not so bad. But when the cultures are very different, as in the case of Hebrew and most modern world languages, the results can be disastrous. In some cases, as noted in the introduction, the result will be no good fit at all into the mental maps of the receptor culture audience. Then the likely interpretation of the text will be that it is odd, exotic, full of references to strange customs. Many modern readers feel this way about most of the Pentateuch, and in particular about those texts having to do with sacrifice or ritual. Other times there will be an apparent fit (like the circumcision example), but it will be a bad one. In some ways this is worse that the near-zero meaning that the no good fit produces. This mental mapping takes place all across the communicative continuum. It is immediately noticeable when dealing with key terms and semantic domains.5

5

While key terms as such will not be dealt with in this paper, it is interesting to note that the lists of key terms so far produced tend to be NT-Paul-Abstract nouns or complex concepts. Thus justification, repentance, redeem, etc. This is all the more interesting given the fact that though the NT writers wrote in Greek, they often seem to be thinking in Hebrew.

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Semantic Networks/Domains: As Reinier de Blois has stated in his paper for TTW 2000, before we can write a dictionary of a particular language we need to start with a set of semantic domains. The next question that comes to mind, then, is the following: From where do we get those semantic domains? Is there a universal set of semantic domains that can be applied to every individual language? Unfortunately, things are not as simple as that. If the meaning of a word were only a relation to a particular entity in the practical world we would probably be able to come up with an universal set of domains. This is not the case, however. As Nida (1975b:14) observes, the meaning of a word relates to a concept or a set of concepts that people have about an entity or a set of entities in the world around them . And these concepts may vary from one language or culture to another. (Blois:2000). But the situation is not simply that of semantic shift between languages. It is a problem of the organization of experience as such, even within a language. Lakoff points out that there are many ways that a given language can organize and categorize meaning. Radial structures (center with gradations--e.g. mother is biological mother first and afterwards many other kinds), family resemblance (no one individual trait is central), and biological relations (an organic continuum--my example: pleat-plait-plat)6 are several of the organizational structures he describes. Furthermore, these organizational structures interact and overlap, according to Lakoff. If this is so, it is hard to imagine how a semantic domain dictionary could be organized. It would require many different kinds of organization at once. And it would be difficult to know where to begin.7 De Blois recognizes some of this complexity as well when he states of his project: Another complication is the fact that we will be using two different levels of classification: one according to lexical criteria and the other along contextual lines. This will make it difficult to follow the way Louw and Nida organized their lexicon, because we will have to make a choice: Are we going to organize the dictionary according to lexical domains or according to contextual domains? (Blois:2000). Yet this very binary distinction between text and context may be what is getting in the way. As previously noted with regard to sarcasm, the implicit and explicit framing of an utterance (an utterance which has its own implicit and explicit aspects) is part of a communicative continuum. Meaning is distributed along this continuum, and cannot be isolated so easily or clearly as one would like. But de Blois makes a valid point: should a dictionary of semantic domains start with word domains or with abstracted domains as such? And one might add, are the abstracted domains sufficiently derived from the specific language and culture in question?8 6 7

To pleat is to fold cloth, to plat is to braid hair. Plait means either. Both Dan Sperber (1975:28) and Lakoff (without citing one another) speak of motivation without prediction. That is, semantic or symbolic patterns can be seen to have organizing principles only after the fact. The patterns themselves are culture-specific and do not lend themselves to be used to reliably predict new cases. Further, both Sperber (33) and Goffman (again independently?!) speak of the organization of experience. 8 Norm Mundhenk, among others, has raised this concern with regard to semantic domain dictionaries (in private communication). At the highest level, objects, events, abstractions, and relationals are used as universal semantic classes for the creation of semantic domain dictionaries. Even this level of universal abstraction must be seriously questioned in light of the findings of Lakoff and other cognitive researchers. It is true that many consultants have used OEAR successfully to unpack complex terms such as "apostle." When we are done, we unfortunately often have a nearlyuntranslatable sentence: "someone who has been appointed by someone else to take a message to or carry out a task on

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As we can see from the case of night below, even the central denotative meaning of a common word can be hard to pin down with resorting to frames. And as we shall see with the following case of key, starting with a word or with a concept we can abstract from a study of that word leads to very different results. The case of Night. The word night in English would at first glance appear to be good candidate for a kind of straightforward object / label kind of semantics--what Lakoff calls part of the objectivist paradigm. But a closer look at sentences such as the following reveal a different picture: 1. She couldnt see a thing--it was night. 2. The meeting will be tomorrow night at eight. 3. The ringing of the phone woke me up in the middle of the night. The first sentence above has dark / light in focus. The second sentence focuses on time of day. And the focus of the third sentence is awake / asleep. Any of these three foci could theoretically be listed as meaning number one in the dictionary, though usually the focus of sentence one is taken as representing the central meaning and the other meanings are taken as radial or secondary. But one only has to live or work in a place such as Barrow, Alaska, to recognize the limits of this approach. In fact the whole idea of semantics simply being a matter of a central meaning with radial offshoots runs into serious limits when one confronts actual usage. Many words can be mapped this way, but not all, and not even as many as we would like.9 Yet it is not that we are not really sure what we are talking about (darkness, or time of day, or being asleep). But we must create (and subsequently interpret) frames to determine what the focus (or actually, the meaning) will be (see, eight, woke). Just how strong these frames are can be shown by a rewrite of sentence 3.: 4. The ringing of the phone woke me up in the middle of the night. In fact, it was two oclock in the morning! The simultaneous use of the a.m./p.m. system with night results in a morning which is still night.10 The dictionary (futilely) tries to deal with this by the following definition of morning: The first or early part of the day, lasting from midnight to noon or from sunrise to noon.11 behalf of some other person or group." Usually we end up borrowing the term and either footnoting the meaning or else hoping that the religious leaders will explain the term. In Tzotzil Chamula in Mexico (a language without abstract nouns) "faith" is translated "taking seriously what God has obligated himself to do for you." That is very often a very good description of what faith is. And in this language, it may be the only accurate translation for many contexts. But it seems cumbersome at best. 9 Ron Ross has suggested to me from his readings that words perhaps should not be considered to have specific meanings (but rather at best general senses ) outside of context --which certainly seems to be supported by this example. In this regard see also The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity (Brown and Gliman:1960). 10 This would doubtless seem as strange to someone unfamiliar with these systems as is the ancient Israelite notion that a day begins in the evening to those outside that cultural framework. Further, the entire set of usages associated with time of day would have to be seriously reworked in cultures unacquainted with timepieces.

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Going beyond denotation, night can and often does connote the other major meanings. Thus the meeting tomorrow night at eight may not be in the dark, but somehow the darkness is still in the background. Even in Barrow, night always has a bit of darkness in the background of its meaning (they speak of the long night of winter and the long day of summer, for example). And nighttime is usually for sleeping. And even when it is light at 3am in Barrow and some people work 11pm -7am, they would recognize that they work at night (though one wonders whether some of these associations are recent adaptations to the outside world). Further, night can and does evoke a far wider set of meanings, though these are likely to be even more culture-specific than the more basic systems of organization outlined above. Thus feelings of loneliness or fear, or a spooky or ominous atmosphere can be evoked by the word night.12 Yet nights can also be balmy, tranquil, cool, quiet, peaceful, etc. And for other cultures, the night may be when spirits or animals are about, for good or for evil, and may evoke feelings and associations of which those outside that culture cannot even dream. 13 The Case of Key in English and Spanish The word key will doubtless bring to mind for a vast majority of English speakers the image of a key to a lock or door. This is due to prototype effects, or the fact that for many words there is in the minds of the speakers of the language a best representative of that word (Lakoff, et. al). But here are many other kinds of keys--to pianos, computers, maps, codes, music, even to problems. If one were to try to map a domain for the word in English, there would emerge some idea about access, maybe from small to large. Going back to the prototype, the key to the house is small, and gives access to the larger house, or locked box or whatever. But we get into trouble as soon as we try to map this domain over into Spanish. Key to a house or lock in Spanish is llave. But llave also means the handle to a faucet, or even a wrench! So the domain of llave is something like something you handle to open and shut things, or get them on and off. Worse, keyboard keys (computer, piano) are teclas, or buttons you push. There is a domain is Spanish having to do with access as such, but here the word is clave (related historically to llave, but now independent). The table below illustrates the problem. The place where the mental maps match up well is the area for which key in English is least prototypical, and may be considered to be actually metaphorical. As Lakoff would point out, that is because the English center for the word still has a somatic component (like llave and tecla) in that it is something you turn or push with the fingers or hands, and the other (clave) meanings are seen to be derived. Spanish has separated the somatic (into two--turn and push) and the purely access aspects and has come up with an arguably finer-grained distinction in this area. It also reveals that English itself may also have 11 The

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. 12 TOs present for Ernst-August Gutts meditation n d nx at the Victoria Falls TTW, or those familiar with the infamously bad first line to a novel It was a dark and stormy night, or with the expression to work the graveyard shift will recognize these evocations immediately. 13 Even orthography can play a role in the connotations and evocations of words. Spelling night as nite, nait, nayt or ni#t, etc., create different frames of interpretation, and depending on the rest of the context, can be used to mark various communication situations such as informal speech, dialect, idiosyncratic speech, or an academic paper.

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manipulation for access as its core. But the internal and cross-linguistic mappings are both quite complex. And English and Spanish are fairly closely related at the lexical level. Spanish Llave (turn handle, open/shut, on/off) 1 2 3 Tecla (push-button) Clave (access) Clave Clave Clave English Key (access / manipulation for access) House (prototype) Hose Bib/Faucet Wrench Keyboard Map Code Musical Score Problem, Center/Important

The case of Like in Tzotzil In the Tzotzil language of southern Mexico, there is a default term which translates the comparative/equivalence term like in English or como in Spanish. This term was used throughout the Bible translation in the first draft. Sometime near the end of the project, someone noticed that Tzotzil had a more complex system. A set of nine different terms with a far finer grid needed to be applied, and the default term really meant something like surface similarity (see 1-B below). The following table lays this system out: Equivalence like (A) 1- A 2- A 3- A Similarity does not seem like but is like (C) 1- C 2- C 3- C

Human (1) Animal (2) Inanimate (3)

seems like but is not like (B) 1- B 2- B 3- B

Thus a statement like wisdom is like gold would require the term in box 3-C above. When comparing across animacy categories, the higher level always is used over the lower level. This kind of complex system would be hard to capture in any other way but a table such as this one. While most people are not used to thinking of these kinds of semantic examples as having anything directly to do with culture, many others have recently seen this kind of activity as the culture-specific organization of experience (Lakoff:1987, Katan:1999, Wierzbicka:1992).14 Hebrew examples The case of Hebrew is understandably quite a bit worse than the above example in relation to non-Semitic languages. Hans Walter Wolff (1974) has documented the fact that leb/lebab (often translated heart) is not the seat of emotion in Hebrew as it is in English, but of intentionality. It reflects human thoughts directed

14

As Sperber (1975:26-27), says elsewhere of a North American Native symbol system: It was simple, but one had to be Osage to think of it.

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towards the future, in planning, willing or wishing.15 What Wolff does not go on to say, in what is surely an important expansion of his explication, is that leb may well never be literal (meaning the organ of the body) in the Hebrew Bible. A possible exception is the case of Nabal in 1 Samuel 25.37, where his heart is said to have died within him, referring perhaps to a stroke or a heart attack. Yet even here there is doubt, since the next verse says that ten days later Yahweh smote Nabal, and he died. Thus the first instance could just as easily be describing deep discouragement or depression. There is another text in 2 Samuel 18.14, where Joab stabs Absalom in his heart, which obviously refers to the chest area in general (cf. REB/TEV/CEV), but these cases are probably as close as the Hebrew biblical text comes to referring to heart in any literal sense. Leb in Hebrew then is arguably not only rarely if ever literal, but is not essentially about emotions either. Rather it is about things speakers of English usually do with their minds. In Deuteronomy alone people consider in their hearts (4.39, 8.5), say/speak/congratulate in their hearts (7.17, 8.17, 9.4, 29.19), are deceived in their hearts (11.16), ponder/memorize in their hearts (11.18), think in their hearts (15.9), and perceive in their hearts (29.4) (adapted from Bascom:1996). The following columns show a preliminary mapping of metaphoric themes used with the Hebrew term leb and the English term heart. Thus the terms listed are the metaphors used in each language with leb on the one hand and heart on the other to convey an emotion of some kind. The blank places in the columns are where no corresponding metaphor could be found in that language to go with leb or heart respectively.

15

Wolff lays out a preliminary map of the use of the parts of the body in Hebrew to convey different aspects of the person (e.g. heart, soul, flesh, blood, head, etc.) These can be expanded to include bone, face, and other inward and outward parts of the body. To be useful in translation, a similar map must be made in the receptor culture. For example, in the Mixe language of southern Mexico, the liver is the central organ, and virtually every aspect of the person relates to that image (e.g. wind + liver = spirit).

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Hebrew (leb) hot lifted up cast down astonish hard strong, stout die sing grieve faint/melt melt ravish all/whole

English (heart) hard soft, tender throb break brave heavy leap sick freeze/stand still/stop sink steal half/whole

used to convey anger pride discouragement shock stubbornness meanness, stinginess compassion, tenderness romantic love relational love bravery worry, discouragement joy relational sadness fear/shock discouragement infatuation commitment

It is clear that there are four categories: present in Hebrew and absent in English, present in English and absent in Hebrew, present in both but using different metaphors, and present in both using same or similar metaphors (one clear case, but an interesting one, of whole-hearted). It is difficult without much further study to know how much the biblical text itself has influenced the English use of heart (sing, stout, etc.), but the maps are quite different. One only needs to search heart and mind in the RSV text, and note that the Hebrew text will say at times leb and kidneys or leb and inward parts, or leb and soul. In such cases the RSV translators wisely render Hebrew leb as mind and the other terms as heart.16 Yet when it comes to heart and soul, in Deu 6.5, heart is left as heart, when arguably the corresponding terms would be leb-mind and nepheshheart, as is done in 1Sa 2.35, 1Ki 8.48, et. al.. Thus in English the use of heart in such a case takes on a sentimental or emotional flavor. This is tendency is especially strong when heart is combined with love, as in Deuteronomy 6.5. Yet love in such a context probably meant loyalty, or commitment, and not love in an emotional or sentimental sense. That the NT writers already knew this is shown by the fact that they all add some form of mind to the list when they quote Deuteronomy, even when they are willing to drop another term. Further, this was more than a simple adjustment from heart in Hebrew to heart and mind in Greek. Perhaps Luke understood this best when he chose to include the story of the Good Samaritan to explain the nature of the love of neighbor. The table below shows the Synoptic traditions use of Deuteronomy 6.5 (adapted from Bascom:1996):

16

In Exo 36.2, leb occurs twice, once translated by RSV as mind, and the other time as heart.

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Deut . 6.5

Mark 12.30

Mark 12.33 ...and to love him

Luke 10.27 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart

Matt. 22.37 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart

...and you shall love ...and you shall love the LORD your the Lord your God God with all your heart and with all your soul with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your might and with all your strength

with all the heart

and with all your soul and with all your soul and with all the understanding and with all the strength and with all your strength* and with all your mind* and with all your mind

*out of order with the rest

Reciprocity When someone utters the greeting "hi," in English, within a couple of seconds almost invariably he or she will receive "hi," "hello," or another of a fairly limited and fairly predictable set of responses back from the person addressed. If the speaker says "good day, sir/madam," the response will very likely also include "good day," or at least contain signals indicating an attempt to match the social register. This is an everyday example of reciprocity. But the principle of reciprocity is larger, and includes all economic and political activity, as well as virtually all other areas of public and private communal life. For some anthropologists, the idea of reciprocity goes to the heart of the definition of culture. Many anthropologists would maintain that culture is to be defined first of all as the sum of all human interactions within a given (demographic, geographical, social, etc.) context. And some of these anthropologists have seen the principle of reciprocity as the fundamental principle of underlying all of human interaction (Malinowski, cited in Leach:1922:6). Examples of Reciprocal Relations in Biblical Terminology: The general structure of a given society will of course greatly affect the actual forms the principle of reciprocity takes in any specific instance. The existence of idealized models of what the structure of a society or aspect of a society is introduces a level of complexity which at times makes it difficult to think or speak clearly about these matters (Lakoff). Idealized in this context does not necessarily mean ideal, but rather ideological. Thus in modern (mostly western) cultures, the idealized general structure is usually considered to be egalitarian, in spite of the recognition of many (remaining) inequalities at many levels. Contrasting with this view of modern cultures is another somewhat idealized view of both modern traditional cultures and the cultures of the Bible as hierarchical, and specifically patriarchal in form. This background is important for the analysis which follows. Tsedeq/tsedaqah: Most readers of Bibles in modern translations would take it for granted they knew what "righteousness" means in most of its contexts in scripture. If queried, they would likely give something like the following explanation: 12/26

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Doing the right thing or being the right kind of person (as judged against established moral principle, custom, or law). At first this definition seems to work in the vast majority of biblical examples. It has dynamic aspects (doing, being), but also static aspects (judged against an established norm). But one key text calls the whole interpretive framework (that is, looking to a static norm by which to judge what "doing/being right" is) into question. That text is Genesis 38. In this text, Judah is seduced by his daughter-in-law Tamar, after refusing to give her his third son in marriage (as he was obligated to do in that cultural context). Tamar dresses up like a prostitute, and after seducing her father-in-law, makes off with his staff, cord, and ring. Tamar becomes pregnant from the encounter (her intention from the beginning). When she is brought out to be stoned, Tamar shows everyone the items Judah had left her as surety for payment when he thought she was a prostitute. When he realizes what has happened, Judah declares, "she is more righteous than I am." In other words, Tamar had fulfilled her obligation to Judah better than he had to her. In fact, she had done both things at once, as the point of their reciprocal relationship was to produce an heir in the lineage of Judah. The fact that Tamar finally felt forced to carry out these obligations in a manner inconsistent with modern views of righteousness should not keep the biblical interpreter from understanding the term in its original contexts (cf. Hays:1992). In Tzotzil of southern Mexico, translators struggled with the two terms in Spanish which had been used to translate tsedaqah. and tsedeq. Neither rectitud (rightness, righteousness) nor justicia (justice) existed as semantico-cultural categories as such in this language. One could talk of being or doing good, but the idea of an abstract norm which rightness and justice bring to mind (even in Spanish) were simply not a part of the conceptual system of this language. What they did have was a term for someone who fulfilled his or her social obligations faithfully. This turned out to be a better match than any terms we could provide from major languages.17 This understanding of righteousness as moral obligation within a (hierarchically structured) cultural context of mutuality and reciprocity works extremely well in other biblical contexts also. And it interfaces with another important biblical concept: faith, trust, or belief. Emunah: In Genesis 15.6, Abram believes or trusts in God, and God counts it to him as righteousness. Again belief can be understood as a static belief about something. Trust of course is much better in this context, and has the reciprocal relation built in. God obligates himself to do something on Abram's behalf (i.e., to give him a huge number of descendants). Abram's part in the relationship is to trust that God will do what he says. In other places faith is more like faithfulness, or loyalty, which simply the reciprocal side of trust. Thus Abram trusts God (and implicitly is loyal to him), and God recognizes Abram as having fulfilled his part of the reciprocal relationship in trusting (and being loyal). That loyalty is not merely obedience can be seen from the examples of Saul and David. David is by far the worse example in terms of obedience, (at least in what we know about 17

Cf. Stephen Voths paper for TTW 2000, Justice vs. Righteousness, which develops the socio-cultural aspects of the terms in depth.

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him) yet he is favored by God and the people alike. Perhaps his continued and apparently genuine repentance after wrong-doing is what made the difference. Of course God is seen as always faithful or loyal. In this case it is not a matter of trust, since the more powerful one in the relationship does not trust the less powerful one, but rather lives up to his own commitments. This usage is at times little more than a different focus (personal rather than social) on the same idea as tsedaqah. Goel: This term is well understood by commentators but translated in various mostly less than satisfactory ways in major translations as near kinsman or close relative. Not only is a close relative indicated, but a relationship of power and responsibility is also implied. Thus a goel at times will rescue the individual, or avenge him or her, or take restitution for a wrong done to someone under his protection (in a patriarchy, a goel would certainly be a male). A goel owed tsedaqah to the one under his protection, and one owed emunah to as well as hoped for emunah from his goel. But if a goel showed hesed, (translated as kindness in some languages) then one was truly fortunate. Hesed: This term has been variously translated and explained as covenant love, relational faithfulness, commitment, as well as many other terms and phrases. Yet its basic meaning is possibly simply constancy, or steadfastness, as shown by its use in Isaiah 40.6 with reference to a flower of the field. Here there are two possible interpretations. The word either means something like commitment in a relationship, and there is a sort of backwards metaphorical use in relation to its being applied to a flower. The other possibility, which fits with the idea of cultural frames and a communicative continuum, is that the basic lexical meaning is constancy everywhere, but that the default cultural frame is human relationships. Thus Isaiah 40.6 merely sheds the default frame for a moment and lets the word be what it is at bottom--firmness or constancy. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld has outlined the meaning of hesed (within the cultural default frame) in a way which challenges any translator (adapted from Sakenfeld:1985:131): 1. Personal loyalty, not loyalty to a cause or idea. 2. Attitude manifested in action. 3. Offered to a person in need from someone able to fill the need. 4. No law against not showing loyalty of this sort, no coercion to show it. Once the parameters of such terms are explained, it may be impossible to do justice to them in translation without various kinds of notes and helps. These terms, used often of God's special commitment to his people and of theirs to him, should be nearly always understood in the framework of reciprocal obligations, usually with the added component of hierarchy. They refers to just how loyal, faithful, and constant the participants might be in holding up their respective parts of the social bargain. They presume, as do many other biblical terms, contexts of social inequality. A person using a modern ICM of egalitarianism and personal freedom would have a hard time processing the network of meanings the terms above originally can be presumed to have encompassed in a society of hierarchy and social reciprocity. Hierarchical systems of mutual obligation are not what modern interpreters are used to, at least at an idealized or theoretical level. Recognizing mutual and reciprocal obligations where

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modern cultures are used to looking for and finding (only) rights takes practice. Experience with modern traditional cultures can help the interpreter of the Bible see various aspects of the biblical text which have tended heretofore to be overlooked. Mary Douglas (1996b) has outlined a typology of cultures which would place most modern non-traditional cultures at a far remove from both modern-day traditional cultures and those of the Bible. And yet the traditional cultures of the Bible are also quite different than most modern traditional cultures as well. The next section attempts to take a biblical symbolic system and outline it. This section is an edited form of a paper presented elsewhere (Bascom:1995). It may well be in the case of such an extended system, that it can be explained through notes, but probably cannot be translated adequately in another language.

Frames and Boundaries in Ancient Israelite Society: Holiness and Pollution in their Social and Religious Contexts Anthropological Models for Biblical Interpretation18 While linguists and biblical scholars have made important contributions to the task of translating the Bible, little in the way of systematic anthropological analysis has been brought to bear on this work. This may sound surprising to anyone acquainted with the field. Anthropological insights are not lacking in the literature. Specific cultural analyses (especially of receptor languages) can be found in many articles and books. Furthermore, biblical scholars have mined much of Scripture for exotic cultural artifacts which must be understood before the texts can be properly interpreted. Moreover, sociological analysis of biblical materials has been accepted as important methodologically within biblical studies for some time, so that cultural contexts for Scripture texts have not been ignored (if not always agreed upon). What is meant then by the claim that anthropological analysis has been slighted is that fundamental ethnological insights gained from experience with traditional cultures in recent times have not been applied as yet in a comprehensive way to the biblical material. Especially missing is a comparative approach which would be of help to those who would translate the Bible into present-day traditional cultural contexts.19 Thus we are likely to know better the way kinship systems work in the culture into which we are translating than how kinship worked in the various biblical periods. The same holds for systems of sacrifice (anthropologically as opposed to strictly theologically understood) and taboo, or various forms of social, political, and economic organization. This may be in part due to the fact that the Bible gives us access to not one, but many different cultural patterns, both synchronically and diachronically. An even greater barrier to productive ethnological analysis is the nature of the source material. In place of the anthropologists notepad 18

The ideas in this section are based in general on Mary Douglas Purity and Danger and In the Wilderness as well as Erving Goffmans Frame Analysis . They are also indirectly based on Victor Turners The Ritual Process and Arnold Van Genneps The Rites of Passage. Other important precursors to recent work in the area of sociological/anthropological interpretation of the biblical world(s) are of course Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, and subsequently, Edmund Leach. A very helpful overview of some of these ideas specifically related to biblical texts is contained in the book Raising Up a Faithful Priest, by Richard D. Nelson. A broader study of the history of the anthropological approach to religion can be found in Brian Morris Anthropological Studies of Religion. 19 Mention should be made here of the important publication Practical Anthropology and its contribution to understanding cultural frameworks. But the emphasis there was almost exclusively limited to receptor language cultures.

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(or database) derived directly from face-to-face contact with the culture in question (and thus verifiable to some degree at least) we are confronted with ancient texts. We should know the relevant ethnological data in order to interpret these texts rightly, and yet it is the texts themselves which provide us with our only access to that very data. In spite of such problems (which after all are not so different than those confronting any interpreter of any ancient text) some attempts have been made to use the biblical text as both source and object of analysis. Mary Douglas has been in the forefront of such attempts, and her insights will be drawn upon in what follows. She has set forth the fundamental nature of the investigation, but she has barely opened the lines of inquiry. This study will not extend these lines much further, but will attempt to map in a preliminary way the structure of social and religious organization which the writers of Scripture took for granted. Eventually these types of models would have to be compared with related mappings of receptor language cultures in order to be truly productive for Bible translation. The conceptual models and mappings referred to above comprise the socio-cultural dimension of the frameworks of communication. Erving Goffman has distinguished two kinds of primary frameworks: natural and social (Goffman:1986:22). While an example of a natural framework is the division of time into day and night (and thus more or less universal), a social framework is the product of human convention. A social framework carries with it sets of meanings understood fully only by members of the particular culture or subculture involved, or by what Goffman calls ratified participants.20 Any social frameworks in Scripture must be at least partially linguistically realized, or we would not have access to them at all. They are usually found in the realms of political, economic, or social organization. What follows deals with the social framework of pollution, largely ritually distributed. The model presented here draws heavily on the work of Mary Douglas, especially in her book Purity and Danger. The direction she takes in interpreting the biblical texts from an anthropological perspective, however, is to identify class membership as the underlying key to the social and ritual understanding of clean and unclean, holy and unholy. What follows will take a slightly different approach in that insights from Goffman, Victor Turner (The Ritual Process) and Arnold Van Gennep (Rites of Passage) will be used to examine pollution (whether ritual or moral) as a largely symbolic structure based on the concepts of frames and boundaries. As a means of entry into the problem, the idea of holiness can be considered. When one tries to map the meanings of the concept holy (and unholy) in Scripture, two things become immediately clear: the underlying idea (of separation) is quite simple, but the surface realizations (in the ritual, moral, and religious

20

It seems obvious at this point that there is an overlap between what Goffman calls frameworks and what Relevance Theorists have called the shared cognitive environment. Lakoff s idealized cognitive models, while set forth at an earlier stage, are actually a further refinement. It also seems clear that the matter of bandwith (how many channels of information are open at once) is a crucial consideration for these issues, especially in considering the original presentational contexts or for that matter, modern ones.

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spheres) are many and seemingly varied.21 This leads one directly to the related semantic domain of clean and unclean. Most commentators have attempted to treat these as related but neatly categorized spheres of holy-profaneunclean, with rituals guiding the crossings between the different (contiguous) spheres. The holy and unclean, in this interpretation, could never come in contact without disastrous results (e.g. Nelson:1976:19). Although this kind of scheme seems to hold for much of the biblical material, it fails to account for such things as the biblical texts at Qumran being referred to as those which defile the hands. One would think it would be the other way around. Even in biblical material, there seems to be a general category of taboo which encompasses both the holy and the unclean, depending of the context. Thus for the purposes of this analysis, these various spheres will be treated together under the category of the preservation or violation of agreed-upon frames and boundaries, whether these frames and boundaries are considered symbolic or ontological. Life in ancient Israel was understood as a strictly bounded existence, and these boundaries, which were considered real (whether at a social or religious level), were represented symbolically in a great number of different ways. In particular, the concept of pollution, of clean and unclean, or of holy and unholy (in all of their meanings) were thus symbolically represented. The central thrust of these representations was the ritual preservation and restoration (if and when a violation, or transgression, occurred) of the underlying cultural/religious frames and boundaries.22 A list of these symbolic representations is given below by category, following the general outline of the system as I understand it.23 Examples: Time: The concepts of Primordial time and Eschatological time as opposed to history, or cyclical versus linear time, form a boundary between the sacred and the profane. Some recent commentators have gone so far as to claim that in a significant sense Gods time (whether at the creation of the world or at its restoration/recreation) is cyclical, human time is linear (Knierim:1986:171-224; Nelson:1976). Meanwhile, in the realm of human history Sacred time was manifested in the rhythmic cycles of holy Sabbath, new moons, the three annual festivals, and the ritual beginning of the new year... (Nelson:1976:29). A good example of this conceptual duality with regard to time can be found in Genesis 1:14: "And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years." As I have noted elsewhere, the system of thought is astrological / religious / kairos-timing of important events (1. signs=portents, as in the Star of Bethlehem, 2. religious festivals), and only secondarily 21

One of the most obvious examples is that cult prostitutes (or perhaps pagan temple workers) can be called holy ones, as occurs in Deu 23:17,17; 1Ki 14:24; 15:12; 22:46; 2Ki 23:7; Hos 4:14. More importantly, the subtle differences and underlying unity of such concepts of sanctification, consecration, and purification point in the direction of a common mapping for these ideas at some level. 22 Yet at times the boundaries are intentionally violated. Van Gennep and Turner were the ones who popularized the idea that it was in the transitional states that both danger and the potential for gaining a new identity existed. Thus Jewish purification rites were to restore the old state/identity, but Christian baptism was a true rite of passage into a new state/identity (more analogous to the crossing of the Red Sea or the Jordan River). 23 The list is by no means comprehensive, and under each category more could doubtless be added. Also, some elements overlap categories. The list should consistently follow the model and support it, however.

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chronological marking of the passage of time (3. years, 4. days) (Bascom:1994). A final example of sacred time is the concept of olam in many if not most of its contexts. What is behind this term is unbroken continuity into the indeterminate future, which is a different focus than eternity (cf. 2Sa 7 for this usage). Space: Horizontal boundaries such as River and Sea figure prominently in the biblical text. The boundaries of the tribes also are also considered to be of great importance, as are the boundaries of Israel as a whole. Vertical boundaries such high places or Sinai (or even Zion) are repeated within the structure of the sanctuaries themselves, with altars and levels. Sanctuaries represent the fundamental bounded space in religious terms. The fact that geographical landmarks (trees, rocks, mountains, etc.) are behind all the permanent sanctuaries reinforces the idea of a fixed boundary. The Temple in Jerusalem was the idealized representation of the sanctuary.24 The Tabernacle, on the other hand, did not have the same spatial boundedness, yet was constructed so as to keep all areas carefully distinguished, and was ratified by the pillar of fire and the cloud. All these local representations were selfconsciously referencing the distinction between heaven, or Gods dwelling, and earth, or humanitys dwelling (cf. Exodus 15.17). Creation: The idea of creation as the initial setting up of boundaries is pre-eminent in Genesis chapter 1. Chaos is the absence (Gen. 1.2) or destruction (e.g. the Flood) of order, or boundaries. These boundaries are not only physical (e.g. between water and land), but apply at every level. Thus the problem in Genesis 6.1-4 is probably to be interpreted as the result of the unnatural mixture (or boundary-crossing) between spirit beings and human beings. Symbolic Numbers: The entire realm of symbolic numbers can be seen as a supporting our proposed bounded system. A brief outline of this system shows that for the most part it represents the conservation of the frame, though at times it also deals with its violation.

24

A particularly striking example of the cultural distance of the biblical text from most receptor cultures is Deuteronomys insistence in the worship of Yahweh in one place--Jerusalem. This is a major theme in Deuteronomy, but makes little sense outside the context of the symbolic use of space in ancient Israel. I owe the basis of this observation to Roger Omanson, in private communication.

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Number 40 / 400

12 / 144,000 7 (6) / 70 10 / 100 / 1000 3 3,4 / 7,8

Meaning Either a generation (or generations) or a time of testing and trial (rite of passage) . The number 40 (whether days or years) often represents what Victor Turner refers to as liminality--that space (or time) between bounded existence (Turner:1977:94ff). Some examples are Noah in the ark, Moses on Sinai, the people of Israel in the wilderness, and Jesus in the desert. It is interesting to note that these are all rites of passage involving some change in identity. In such cases the boundaries are crossed intentionally, and the rituals do not restore the old boundaries, as in they do in cases of purification. The ideal number of the people of God (tribes, disciples, apostles, saints). Wholeness / completeness (or incompleteness) in a religious sense. Wholeness / completeness (or incompleteness) in a secular sense. Simple superlative, as in holy, holy, holy = holy of holies = holiest. In parallel structures, the passing over certain boundaries. The idea expressed in these structures is usually that Israel has not only sinned fully (3/7), but exceeded all bounds (4/8).

State: Certain states are unclean, but again an examination of these states leads us back to the violation of boundaries. Death, birth, and menstruation were all considered unclean states. Death represents crossing the ultimate spiritual boundary into the unknown, the afterlife (cf. Jesus injunction that Mary Magdalene not hold-possibly touch-him in John 20.17). Birth and menstruation both involve life (and blood), but also the physical crossing of the boundary of the human body (see next section). The (Human) Body: Mary Douglas has captured the essence of this important category as follows: ... the idea of holiness was given an external, physical expression in the wholeness of the body seen as a perfect container. She goes on further to say that ... rituals work upon the body politic through the medium of the physical body ... The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system ... We cannot interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society (Douglas:1966:5152,128,115). One could add here that the body must be seen as an integral part of religious symbolism as well. Leprosy" (or what is also called an itch) is virtually any skin lesion, however minor, which compromises the integrity of the skin. This renders the person unclean until the lesion is healed and ritually purified. Virtually any skin blemish makes a person unclean, or an animal unfit for sacrifice. In the end, it seems that what is at issue is the maintenance of the wholeness or integrity of the body (pure) as opposed to its violation or disintegration. Related also to leprosy on the human body is mould or mildew in a house (Lev. 143.4). It follows the same logic and form as leprosy, so is mentioned here as well. Since everything inside the body which ends up outside the body pollutes, the primary structure seems to be that the sacred and the profane are represented by the inside and the outside respectively. Blood and semen have their own symbolic meaning (a direct connection with life), for example, and thus could be expected to

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carry their own power and danger.25 Blood especially carries a powerful pollution taboo in several different contexts (diet, sacrifice, sex), but can be used to purify as well in certain contexts of dramatic reversal (Gennep:1960, Turner:1977:166ff.).26 This phenomenon, common to many traditional cultures, involves breaking the taboo while in the liminal state. These reversals take place under special ritual circumstances or for persons of special character. Depending on the ritually bounded space and time, blood can be polluting or purifying, and depending on the context saliva can be polluting or healing. Thus the high priest sprinkles the people with animal blood in a sacrificial context, and Jesus heals the blind man by spitting on the ground and making a paste for his eyes. The notion that the conservation of the bodys boundaries represents purity of various kinds does not lack support. Bodily extremities figure prominently in various rituals. Phylacteries are to be tied to wrists and foreheads, which are at the margins of the body (like doors for houses and gates for cities). Circumcision involves another extremity (where wholeness involves losing an extra part). Foot-washing involves yet another extremity. These last two examples have often been interpreted (along with dietary laws and other pollution laws) as a kind of early system of hygiene. It seems much more likely they are part of the pattern of the maintenance of boundaries within a system of pollution.27 If the integrity of the body was what was at issue, then not only letting inside things out but outside things in would be dangerous and potentially polluting. The idea of virginity as a virtue may not be found in Scripture, but at least in the case of Mary that trajectory was begun. While Mary's virginity is usually seen wholly in terms of establishing Jesus non-human origins, the subsequent development of the theme may shed light on the original meaning as well. In any case, the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary simply takes this concept of keeping pure by not crossing the boundaries of the body a step further in the same direction. Dietary Laws: As to regulating that which enters the body, the dietary laws are integrated into the system as a whole in a rather careful way. Thus blood is to be avoided (see above under The [Human] Body). Also that which dies of itself (see below States) is to be avoided. And finally, again following Mary Douglas, that which does not belong wholly to its class (the concept of "wholeness" once more) is to be avoided. Douglas adds: ...food is not likely to be polluting unless the external boundaries of the social system are under pressure (Douglas:1966:126-127). It is interesting to note how the various parts of the system interact, so that the list of unclean birds in Exodus seems to be based on avoidance of blood (birds of prey) or contact with dead bodies/bodies with blood in them (carrion birds), while other unclean animals are classified as such due to other reasons (such as not belonging wholly to their class).28

25 26

Gen 9.4-6 clearly relates the life-blood system and the system of the holy. Only God owns life, blood represents life. Krijn van der Jagt, in personal communication, sees the symbolic systems as functioning in a more dynamic manner than outlined here--according to the rules of the discourse. He cites Dan Sperber, Rethinking Symbolism for this idea. This may well be right. But if so, it makes the ever-shifting frames even more difficult to locate and map. 27 Symbolic elements can have more than one function, of course, as in the case of foot-washing, which has a practical side in a sandal-wearing culture. 28 The point about the unclean birds seems to have escaped most commentators, including Douglas.

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Animal Sacrifice: Animal sacrifice represents the intentional transgression of a symbolic boundary (the body of the animal) within the ritual boundaries of temple and appointed time. Only an unblemished animal is permittedthat is, one with absolutely unbroken skin. Then, in a dramatic reversal, the animals skin is cut, closing symbolically for a moment the distance between us and the Other. In another dramatic reversal, the blood of the animal, normally polluting, at least to eat (due to two symbolic unratified crossings of the boundarythe animals body cut open and the human body taking it in.), now (in some cases) is sprinkled on various objects and people in order to purify them. Blood has its own symbolic power and symbolic system, but works together with the basic idea of boundedness and reinforces it. While Douglas understands these symbolic systems at the social level, there seems to be a religious component as well. Sacrifice represents the symbolic crossing of the fundamental boundary between God and humans within a ritually safe sphere. It is a point at which the people could make symbolic contact with their deity, if only for a ritual moment. Blood which normally polluted now could be used for purification in a ritual reversal. The perfect container of the body of the sacrificial animal was intentionally violated, as if to indicate that the boundary between the profane and the holy, humans and God, had for a moment been obliterated. Walter Kaiser argues from the present state of (at least his) ignorance regarding the sacrificial system that there was no system, but rather that the clean and unclean animals, for example, were arbitrary categories. He compounds this error by elevating it to an example of a theological principle: the absolute sovereignty of God (Kaiser:1994). He should have paid more attention to Mary Douglas (whom he quotes) when it came to the sacrificial system. Whether she is right about the system, there can be no doubt but what there was as system, as any ethnologist would immediately recognize. Conclusions: 1. Holy = the spirit world, which is taboo for those in the profane world except for special people (priests) and under special circumstances (ceremonies carried out in special places--sanctuaries). The separation of the sacred and the profane symbolically establishes the radical distinction between us and the Other. 2. Impure = any unratified crossing of the boundary between the holy and profane (ratified crossings are those made by the proper people at the proper times and places). Unratified crossings can often be put right by various rituals, but not always (touching the ark of the covenant can get you killed). The symbolic "contamination" caused by the transgressing of the boundaries must be "cleansed" through what is called purification, The two worlds should not be in direct contact with one another and must be cleansed of any material from the other world. Any crossing in either direction must be ratified, in part by ceremonial washings. These washings prepare the crosser to make a safe crossing, i.e., one which does not contaminate either world with the essence of the other. This is the essence of uncleanto be contaminated with the Other, or to contaminate It with us. That is also why the books which defile the hands at Qumran were the biblical books (and not some sectarian material, for example). An extended example of the two-way boundary system can also be found in Deut 22.9 in the NIV (cf. the RSV, which obscures the issue): Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled. 3. Ratified crossings often involve dramatic reversals such as happen in many rites of passage (Van Gennep). Involving special people/places/times, these reversals have as their major component the

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reversal of the normal rules of boundary crossing, but taking place within the context or frame of the ratified crossing. 4. Various elements in the real world symbolically represent the distinction between the sacred and the profane. These include the human body (Douglas), the bodies of animals to be used in sacrifice, houses, and cities (doubtless among many more). This outline (perhaps with a few adjustments), along with the basic concept of a symbolic world based on the idea of bounded existence, can be used to explain most of the sacrificial, ritual, and even moral systems of the OT. Transgression is perhaps the most useful overall term in English (in spite of its archaic nature), since all unratified crossings in any sphere are transgressions. It is interesting that in the moral sphere there are not dramatic reversals in the biblical system as there are in other societies (Turner, Van Gennep, et. al.). Mary Douglas is convinced that societies with highly developed pollution laws are societies under external pressure (see above under Dietary Laws). She may well be right. After all, the community which considered itself to have descended from Abraham was under pressure for most of its existence. But there is a religious and theological component to the pollution framework as well. A fundamental theological problem for much of Scripture is how impure humans can approach a pure God. The awareness of the existence of an absolute chasm between sinful humans and a holy God preoccupied many of the writers of both testaments. That the boundary was said to exist for the protection of the humans (Exodus 19.21-25), did not help, since the separation was considered to be permanent. For its part, the Christian community ultimately solved the problem by having God enact the ultimate sacrificial reversal by not just crossing the barrier temporarily (as symbolized in animal sacrifice), but by providing a permanent mediation (symbolized by the tearing of the temple veil). This new theological situation is developed the most fully in the book of Hebrews (Nelson:1976:148-154). Jesus sacrifice opens a safe passage from the profane to the sacredbut only at that crossing point. The problem (as Hebrews puts it) is drawing near to God. This time God is the one making the crossing, and thus erasing the boundary at that point. Once the ultimate dramatic reversal has been enacted, the temple veil is torn and all who are profane has access to the holy via Jesus. Even head coverings for men who are praying are no longer needed (1Co 11). All other crossings are still unratified. There are several implications to the discovery of the significance of culture to meaning in general and of these symbolic systems in particular. They are present both in the cultural framework of the source and of the receptor languages for those involved in Bible translation:

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1. The source culture had and the receptor cultures have highly developed and often deceptively similar mental maps of the world (including similar symbolic systems). As cultures are not fully self-conscious of these mental maps, meaning is often made by receptor cultures without it being a conscious process. 2. Native speakers of the receptor language are the only ones who can be expected to have anything close to an adequate grasp of the implicit aspects of communication which lie below the surface of explicit expression. 3. The intermediate cultures to which those helping with Bible translation so often belong do not share many features of theses conceptual mappings and symbolic systems, having replaced them with modern scientific counterparts. 4. Many biblical texts can and will be understood by receptor cultures in ways that the intermediate (technologically developed, modern, non-traditional) cultures find entirely foreign. These interpretations may well be at variance with the original meaning of the text, yet connect with conceptual and symbolic systems in the original cultures which have been ignored by mainstream exegesis. 5. Translators must be trained to explicitly understand both source and receptor cultural maps, and help their intended audience (most likely through helps such as side-notes) to make the proper connections between the conceptual and symbolic world of the biblical text and their own. These helps will also have to be developed for the different presentations of scripture that are now in use, such as audio and video. 6. Handbooks will have to be adapted to contain more of this culturally implicit information so that the translators will know it exists and be able to include it, either in the translation itself or in helps. 7. At some point, Anthropology (or cultural studies) was dropped as one of the areas of specialized training for UBS TOs (along with Linguistics and Biblical Studies. It should be brought back. Receptor audiences will make meaning out of the texts we help translate. The degree to which that meaning corresponds to the thought-world of the source communication will depend in large part on how well the translators understand their own culture as well as the source text culture(s), and what resources they have to convey those understandings. We often cannot rely on the church to fill this cultural gap. In fact, this gap still exists for most audiences in major languages as well. In too many cases, it is a matter that it is simple, but one would have to be Osage to think of it.

Discussion questions: 1. Cant we do adequate translation without worrying about the thought-world issue? How important is it to include culturally implicit information in translation? 2. Do we know enough about the thought worlds of the original cultures to write the helps? 3. Is it the task of translators to provide cultural background? Shouldnt the church do that? 4. Do we really think people are gong to read the helps we write?

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Bibliography Bascom, R. 1994. Recognizing the Otherness of the Text, unpublished paper for AMRETCON. _____. 1995. Frames and Boundaries in Ancient Israelite Society: Holiness and Pollution in their Social and Religious Contexts, unpublished paper for AMRETCON. _____. 1996. Adaptable for Translation: Deuteronomy 6.5 in the Synoptic Gospels and Beyond in A Gift of God in Due Season, ed. Carr and Weis. Sheffield. Blois, R. de. 2000. Towards a New Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew based on Semantic Domains, unpublished paper for TTW 2000 Brown, R. and Gilman. 1960. The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity, in Sebeok, T. Style in Language. Massachusetts. Cohn, R. L. 1981. The Shape of Sacred Space. AARSR 23. Chico, CA. Countryman, L.W. 1988. Dirt Greed and Sex . Philadelphia. *Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. London. _____. 1975. Implicit Meanings, Essays in Anthropology. London. _____. 1993. In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers. Sheffield. _____. 1996a. Natural Symbols. London. _____. 1996b. Thought Styles. London. _____. 1999. Leviticus as Literature. Oxford. Duranti, A., and Goodwin, C. 1992. Rethinking Context. Cambridge. Duranti, A. 1997 Linguistic Anthropology. Cambridge. Durkheim, E. 1968. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Trans. J. W. Swain. London. Eliade, M. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane. New York. Frankl, V. Mans Search for Meaning. 1965. New York. Geertz, C. Works and Lives. 1988 Stanford. *Gennep, A. van. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago. Girard, R. 1977. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore. *Goffman, E. 1986. Frame Analysis. Maple, York. Gottwald, N. K. 1979. The Tribes of Yahweh. A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel 1250 1050 BCE. Maryknoll, NY. Grace, G. W. 1987. The Post-Linnean world-view and languages of universal translation. Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 29. Foley, W. A. 1997. Anthropological Linguistics. Oxford. Hall, E. T. 1982. The Hidden Dimension. New York. _____. 1990. The Silent Language. New York. Harris, M. 1976. History and Significance of the Emic/Etic Distinction. Annual Review of Anthropology 5: 32950. _____. 1979. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York. Hays, R. B. 1992. Justification. Vol 3, 1131 Anchor Bible Dictionary. Hermans, T. 1995. Translation as an Institution. Multilingual Matters. Kaiser, W. 1994. in The New Interpreters Bible. Nashville. Katan, D. 1999. Translating Cultures. Manchester. Knierim, R.P. 1995. The Task of Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids.

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*Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. New York. *Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago. Lang, B., ed. 1985. Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament. London. Leach, E. R. 1969. Genesis as Myth and Other Essays. London. _____. 1976. Culture and Communication. Cambridge and New York. Lemche, N. P. 1985. Early Israel. Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy. VTSup 37. Leiden. Levine, B. A. 1974. In the Presence of the Lord. SJLA 5. Leiden. Long, B. O. 1981. Social Dimensions of Prophetic Conflict. Semeia 21: 3153. Louw, J. and Nida, E.A. 1989. Greek-English Lexicon Based on Semantic Domains New York. Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London. McLuhan, M. 1967. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto Mendenhall, G. E. 1962. The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine. BA 25: 6687. _____. 1973. The Tenth Generation. Baltimore. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1964. Sense and Nonsense. Evanston. Milgrom, J. 1970. Studies in Levitical Terminology, I: The Encroacher and the Levite; The Term >Aboda. UCPNES 14. Berkeley. _____. 1976. Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance. SJLA 18. Leiden. _____. 1981. Sancta Contagion and Altar/City Asylum. VTSup 32: 278310. _____. 1983a. Of Hems and Tassels. BARev 9/3: 6165. _____. 1983b. Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology. SJLA 36. Leiden. _____. 1983c. The Tassels Pericope, Numbers 15:3741. Beth Mikra 92: 1422. Nida, E. A. 1975. Componential Analysis of Meaning: an introduction to semantic structures. Mouton. Nida, E. A. 1984. Customs and Cultures. Pasadena. Nelson, R. 1976. Raising up a Faithful Priest . Louisville. Palmer, G. B. 1996. Toward a Theory of Cultural Linguistics. Austin. Rogerson, J. W. 1978. Anthropology and the Old Testament. Oxford. _____. 1977. The Old Testament View of Nature: Some Preliminary Questions. OTS 20. _____. 1980. Sacrifice in the Old Testament. Pp. 4559 in Sacrifice, ed. M. F. C. Bourdillion and M. Fortes. London. _____. 1986. Was Israel a Segmentary Society? JSOT 36: 1726. _____. 1992. Anthropology in the OT. Anchor Bible Dictionary. Sakenfeld, K.B. 1985. Faithfulness in Action: Loyalty in Biblical Perspective. Philadelphia Sawyer, F.A., ed. 1996 Reading Leviticus. Sheffield. *Sperber, D. 1975. Rethinking Symbolism . Cambridge. Stine, P. C. and Wendland, E. 1990. Bridging the Gap: African Traditional Religion and Bible Translation. New York. *Turner, V. 1977. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY. Voth, S. 2000. Justice vs. Righteousness. unpublished paper for TTW 2000. Wierzbicka, A. 1992. Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in CultureSpecific Configurations. New York. *Wolff, H.W. 1974. Anthropology of the Old Testament . Mifflintown.

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Wright, D.P. 1992. Holiness in the OT. Anchor Bible Dictionary. *Starred items are the books I consider to be the starting point for study of the material presented in the paper.

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