​Theology, spirituality and the skopos of Bible translations: the case of the Dutch Statenvertaling

Theology, spirituality and the skopos of Bible translations: the case of the Dutch Statenvertaling

Lourens de Vries

Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Introduction

In this article I discuss the relationship between theology and Bible translation from a skopos perspective. I use the Dutch Statenvertaling of 1637 to illustrate this relationship.

The notion of the skopos (or goal) of a Bible translation is often associated with specific functions or with special audiences that Bible translations may have like study Bibles, common language translations, liturgical translations, Bibles for children, for Muslims, and so on. Although such specific functional elements belong to the skopos of Bible translations, the core of the skopos of Bible translations is formed by theological and hermeneutic elements that define the notion 'Bible' for a given community and that emerge from the specific spirituality of that community. Such complex and sometimes partly implicit notions of ‘Bible’ define the target or goal of every new translation of the Bible.

The various Jewish and Christian communities have created their own Bibles in the course of their histories of translation. These creative translation histories involve the selection of textual traditions, of books to be included in the Bible, views on the relationship between the human authors and the Divine Author of the Bible, and different answers to the crucial question of the hermeneutical division of labour between tradition/Church, individual believer and Bible translation.

Such basic assumptions about the Bible determine how the Bible functions in the various communities and form the framework to further define notions as 'study Bible’ or 'Church Bible' . In the case of missionary translations in situations where communities have not (yet) any notion of ‘Bible’ or ‘Holy Book’ and have not asked for a Bible, the skopos is initially determined solely by the missionary and his or her missionary organization.

Arguments pro or contra specific Bible translations are often formulated in translational, philological or linguistic terms disguising the real objections or preferences that follow from theological and hermeneutic notions of ‘Bible’. For example, terms as ‘literal’ and ‘dynamic’ originate in the discourse of translation studies but often function in a basically hermeneutic discourse and refer to theological issues like the division of interpretive labour between Church, individual believer and Bible translator. As soon as one compares different ‘literal’ or ‘free’ translations of the Bible it becomes clear that there are many ways to be literal or free, and that these types of ‘liternalness’ or ‘dynamicity’are connected to theological, hermeneutical skopos factors. First, I introduce the notion of skopos and then I turn to the Dutch Statenvertaling.

The notion skopos

To understand the skopos notion, it is essential to be aware of the nature of translating as an activity that always involves problems of selectivity and of ‘underdetermination’. A single translation can never show all aspects of a source text. 'It is, at least it almost always is, impossible to approximate all the dimensions of the original text at the same time ' (Ortega y Gasset 2000:62). Translations have to choose and in that process inevitably some aspects of the source are lost. Furthermore, although some translations are excluded as wrong by the source text, there remains too much choice, since any text always can be translated in more than one way, with the source text legitimating these various ways of rendering the text. Source texts, however brilliantly analysed, ‘underdetermine’ their possible interpretations and translations.

Translators solve problems of selectivity and 'underdetermination' intrinsic to translation by invoking criteria outside the source text. It is their only option, whether they are aware of it or not. These external criteria emerge from a complex and heterogeneous set of factors collectively referred to in empirical translation studies as the skopos of the translation. The term skopos was introduced to translation studies by Hans Vermeer (2000:1) who saw translation as action and grounded the idea of skopos in the intrinsically purposive nature of all human action. I prefer to ground the notion of skopos in the practice of translation, as an unavoidable step to solve two types of problems faced by all translators, the problems of selectivity and underdetermination.

The term skopos in itself is not very important and the underlying idea can easily be translated into the terms of other approaches to translation such as the Relevance oriented approach. When translation is seen as interpretive use of language and faithfulness phrased in terms of 'resembling the original closely enough in relevant respects' (Gutt 2000:377 following Sperber and Wilson 1988:137), the skopos approach is a way to explicate the historically and socially determined ways in which Bible translations can be 'relevant' to their audiences. The skopos is the set of factors determining which aspects of the source are selected as relevant and how these relevant aspects should be represented in the translation.

Take a simple Greek clause like pantes z__ē__tousin se in Mark 1:37. The Dutch Nieuwe Vertaling translates this clause as ‘Allen (all) zoeken (seek) u (you)’ and this translation shows one aspect of the source well, namely the syntax of the Greek clause but does not show the durative aspect that the Greek verb has in this verse. If translators decide to translate the durative aspect, there are various possibilities in Dutch, all equally supported by the source text. For example, the Dutch Groot Nieuws Bijbel has ‘Iedereen loopt u te zoeken’ with the durative auxiliary lopen ‘to walk’, the Nieuwe Bijbel Vertaling has another construction (with a form of zijn ‘to be’: ‘Iedereen is naar u op zoek’, literally ‘everyone is for you on the look’). But the versions that reflect the durative aspect cannot at the same time reflect the syntax of the Greek clause. Conveying both the durative aspect and the syntax of the Greek source in one Dutch clause is simply impossible. Translators have to decide which aspect of the source should get priority in the translation (selectivity). At the same time this example shows the problem of ‘underdetermination’: the Greek source text legitimates multiple Dutch translations like ‘Iedereen is naar u op zoek’, ‘Iedereen loopt u te zoeken’ en 'Allen zoeken u'. It is important to notice that that the source text also

excludes some translations like 'Sommigen (Some) zoeken (seek) u (you).' This is not trivial.

The source text is the first judge in the evaluation of translations and should remain so. The skopos

approach is not a form of relativism that wants to dethrone the source text. It is when the source

text legitimates multiple interpretations and translations that skopos factors are needed to reach a

decision, or when the translator is forced by the target language to choose between two aspects of the source that cannot be rendered in one translation. This implies that the skopos of a translation is not so much an optional addition, in the sense that some translations are designed to fulfill a specific function for a specific target audience, but that every translator of every text always faces problems of underdetermination and selectivity and has to turn to skopos considerations.

People have thought about the relation between translation and source text for a long time in terms of notions of equivalence applied to texts. I will call this the textual equivalence model or paradigm, in the words of D. Robinson, Becoming a translator, 192): ‘Translation was a linguistic activity performed on texts. The significant factors controlling translation were abstract structures of equivalence, defined syntactically and semantically, not the social network of people, authors, translation commissioners, terminology experts, readers and others…' A translator transposes a text in language A into a text of language B. If translating is a linguistic operation on texts, one can check whether the operation was a success by comparing elements from text B with elements in text A. If one compares form elements (words, constructions) in A and B, one can find instances of formal equivalence between A and B. If one compares meaning or function elements, then there is functional equivalence[1] or lack of it. Essentially, in this paradigm translations are either word-by-word (formal equivalence) or sense-by-sense transpositions of texts (functional equivalence).

The central problem with the a-historical textual or linguistic equivalence model is that it contains only the source text, the target text and equivalence relations. Commissioners, translators, readers and their historical and institutional contexts are left out. Precisely the factors that, together with other factors like differences in language structure, help explain the complex relationships between translations and source texts because, as we saw, the selectivity and 'underdetermination' intrinsic to translation necessitate external criteria and these can only be found in the historical and social functions and contexts of translations, the skopos.

Now given the selectivity and 'underdetermination' of translations, how do translators into

Dutch decide whether to translate Mark 1:37 as ‘Iedereen is naar u op zoek’ or ‘Allen zoeken u’ or

‘Iedereen loopt u te zoeken’? Equivalence considerations cannot help them since all these translations can claim to be equivalent to some aspects of the source text and none is excluded by the source text, so they will have to take skopos considerations into account. The differences between the various Dutch translations follow from their skopos. For example, the Dutch Groot Nieuws Bijbel has a so called common language skopos. It is a translation primarily made for people outside the churches (external function). Accordingly, its translation of Mark 1:37 ‘Iedereen loopt u te zoeken’ conveys what it means in common Dutch but does not show the form of the Greek syntax. The Nieuwe Vertaling of 1951on the other hand has a church-internal skopos and was meant to function in church communities with inspiration theologies that extended the inspired nature of the Word of God to the language form of the source leading to the translation ‘Allen zoeken u’ that comes close to the form of the Holy Scriptures in this place and is good Dutch.

The skopos of the Statenvertaling of 1637

The best known and most influential translation of the Bible into Dutch is the translation commissioned by the Staten-Generaal, the highest authority in the young Republic, and translated according to the decisions of the Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619) of the Reformed Churches, the Statenvertaling (SV_)_.[2]

The Reformed Church, although not a state-church, was the only church recognized by the highest authority in the Republic, other churches and religions were tolerated as long as they kept a low profile. This calvinistic Reformed Church was the community for which the SV was intended to function, but the SV was also to function in the national context as the Bible of the young Republic. The SV was intended to replace the Deux-Aes Bible that had been the major Dutch Bible for Reformed people in the Low Countries since 1561. The Deux-Aes Bible was inconsistent because its Old Testament was a Dutch adaptation of Luther's relatively free German translation whereas its New Testament was a much more literal translation clearly showing the influence of the so-called Bible of Calvin.[3]

The fact that this Deux-Aes Bible was an adaptation from a German version clashed with the growing national consciousness and its too ‘free’ Old Testament clashed with the Dutch Reformed spirituality that took the Word of God to be inspired by the Holy Spirit in such a way that only a very literal translation was appropriate.[4] Both the national and the Reformed element in the skopos of this version were prominently expressed in the paratext: the title page of the first printed edition of translation of 1637 mentioned the Staten Generael van de Vereenighde Nederlanden in the center of the page in the biggest type, with a picture of the Dutch Lion at the bottom of the page. Just under the Staten Generael the Synode Nationael is mentioned. The title page mentions both text (Uyt de Oorspronckelijcke talen in onse Nederlandsche tale getrouwelijck over-geset**[5]**) and paratext (Met nieuwe bijgevoegde Verklaringen op de duystere plaatsen, aenteeckeningen vande ghelijck-luydende texten ende nieuwe registers over beyde de TESTAMENTEN**[6]**).

According to de Bruin and Broeyer Reformed notions of inspiration made the Dutch

translators perceive the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek source texts as the language of the Holy Spirit and in this inspiration theology the Spirit became so tightly connected to the Word that the Word almost completely ‘absorbed’ the Spirit.[7] Noticing that the Hebrew word moreh occurs twice in Joel 2:23 the translators of the SV remarked, ‘Dit kan den H. Geest alsoo belieft hebben, om de beteeckeninge van 't eerste Moreh t' onderscheyden van 't tweede.’[8] It would not be correct to see a explicit 'mechanical' theology of inspiration behind the strong preference for a literal translation. Explicit, rational theories of 'organic' or 'mechanic' inspiration would develop much later, in the 19th century context of emerging modernity, as a response to historical criticism.[9] The central notion in the hermeneutics behind the Statenvertaling is the idea of a personal and sovereign God calling his chosen ones through his Word and this led to an attitude of obediance, awe and humbleness before that Word.

God is not just speaking through the Bible (divine inspiration), He speaks clearly in his Word (perspicuitas), God's Word contains an essentially clear proclamation of salvation for His chosen ones, even when the Scriptures contained duystere plaatsen (parts that were not clear). The klaarheid der waarheid, the clarity of the (scriptural) truth, a favourite Dutch Reformed expression for the perspicuity of the Scriptures, should be understood in the context of the importance attached in Reformed Theology to the unmediated, direct access of every believer, guided by the Holy Spirit and applying the hermeneutics of schrift met schrift vergelijken (comparing Scripture with Scripture), to the knowledge of salvation in the Holy Scriptures, without mediation by clergy or tradition (sola scriptura). Lay theology was essential in this context and the translation of Scriptures should be as clear as possible to serve the community of lay theologians.

Luther wanted to convey the clear meaning of the Scriptures, as revealed to him under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the translation. In the words of Schwartz, ‘the ultimate intention was to make clear his theological interpretation of the text, an interpretation based on inspiration’.[10] And this inspirational theology of translation was the basis for Luther’s translation rather than a communicative theory of translation avant la lettre.[11] The translators of the Statenvertaling shared Luther’s view on the clarity of the Scriptural meaning as revealed through the Spirit to God’s children but saw it more as a task for the community of believers to derive the ‘knowlegde of salvation’ from God’s Holy Word, with the help of the nota marginalia and other paratextual means. Whereas in Luthers inspirational theology of translation the emphasis is on the inspired translator who conveys the clear meaning of the Scriptures in the translation under the guidance of the Spirit, the Dutch followers of Calvin emphasized the working of the Spirit in the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek scriptures on the one hand and in the hearts of God's children reading the Bible on the other. They did not extend the divine inspiration doctrine to the translator.

Both the motives of the perspicuitas of the Scriptures and of the divine inspiration determined the religious skopos of the Statenvertaling. Two translators, Baudartius and Bogerman, explicitly formulated the link between their inspiration views and their translation skopos when they wrote that they had wanted to remain as close as possible to ‘de oorspronkelijke woorden Godts, die in den Hebreuschen ende Chaldeuschen text staen..’[12] It is important to see both motives, of the sacred aspect of the biblical texts, of God speaking through that Word, and of the perspicuitas, in the intended skopos of the SV The translation of the Bible had to reflect both the sacred inspiration and the perspicuitas. The inspiration notions led to a selection of form aspects of the source text as the key aspect to be retained in the translation, nouns stayed nouns, verbs verbs and Hebrew and Greek syntax were followed as much as possible. The translators and the commisioners of the SV were aware of the fact that giving preference to this form aspect would do damage to conveying the meaning and message of the Scriptures and would create tensions with the idea of the perspicuitas. De Brune, secretary of the Staten van Zeeland, a calvinist with a good knowledge of the Hebrew text remarks in 1644 that ‘de Nieuwe Over-zetters den Hebreeuwsen text zoo gantsch nauw end' nae hebben uytghedruckt, dat zy oock veeltijdts de ordre end' stellinghe der woorden hebben naeghevolght…waerdeur de zin niet zoo klaer end' onbekommert wert uytghedruckt’[13]

To solve this dilemma the Synod of Dordrecht decided that the translators should combine paratext and text in such a way that both key elements in the religious function of the text, the divine inspiration and the perspicuitas, could be done justice. When a literal translation would lead to obscure Dutch, the translators could opt for a more free translation but should then give the literal translation in a marginal note as in the note to the translation with sijnen heyligen arm (with his holy arm) of Isa 52:10 that says ‘Hebr. den arm sijner heyligheyt. D (=Dat is) sijne Goddelicke almachtigheyt, die hy in het verlossen sijnes volcx bewesen heeft.’[14] Similarly, in Isa 52:1 (ir hakodesh) the SV text (see Picture) chooses the free but clear translation heylige stadt (holy city) and gives the 'inspired' word order of the Hebrew in marginal note number 3, Hebr. ghy Stadt der heylichheydt (Hebr. you city of the holiness).Alternatively, the translators could give the more difficult, literal translation in the main text and give the clearer, more free version in a marginal note. In most cases the translators used the latter option.[15] It is clear that the nota marginalia were crucial to balance the perspicuitas and the inspiration motives and that text and paratext together ensured that this translation could perform the religious functions the Reformed leaders and communities in the Netherlands demanded.

Another paratextual way out of this dilemma was to add words in the translation to clarify the sense but to put square brackets around these words and to print them in a different type to indicate that they were human additions to the sacred text. Both the use of brackets and the extreme syntactic interference from the biblical languages can be seen in the translation of 1 Cor 12:3 ‘ende niemant en kan seggen Jesum den Heere [te zijn]’ where the SV follows the Greek syntax oudeis dunatai eipein Kurion I__ēsoun and adds te zijn 'to be' between brackets in an effort to repair some of the perspicuitas problems created by the word-by-word translation.

Such hebraisms and hellenisms of the SV that obscured the clarity of the truth were seen as negative side-effects of the getrouwelijcke (faithful) rendering of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Words of God written under the control of the Holy Spirit and paratext was invoked to mitigate these negative effects.

This is very different from the translation tradition of the Orthodox Churches in the East where the Sacred Inspiration is also present but not balanced by the Reformation idea of perspicuitas.[16] There the Septuagintanisms and Hellenisms of the Slavonic translations and the resulting strangeness and otherness of the text are positively welcomed because the ‘Orthodox tradition views language as an intrinsically inadequate tool for comprehending the holy, and therefore as performing verbally a symbolic role analogous to that enacted visually by icons. Just as the icon makes no claim to be a photographic – or even essentially pictorial – depiction of the scene or event it represents, but rather a window onto the timeless reality to which it testifies and a mysterious means of mediating that reality to the worshipper, so the language of Scripture cannot be a series of logical propositions with a single intended meaning…The implications of this understanding of language for Bible translation are quite considerable. Since the way in which language relates to the realities described in the Bible is seen as a complex and mysterious process, an Orthodox approach would tend to maintain in some way the status of the text as a window onto another world by preserving a sense of the distance between the (modern) reader and the (ancient) text, and by marking in some way the inherent strangeness or otherness of that text.’ [17].

The skopos of Bible translations for Orthodox communities is different from how the Bible functioned for the Dutch Reformed of the 17th century: for the Orthodox the Bible functions primarily in the liturgy and as an icon in the sense indicated by Crisp. It is the Fathers, the patristic tradition, that forms the exegetical and hermeneutical key to the Bible but these understandings of the Holy Writ are not mediated in the translation but in the teaching of the Church. The paratextual elements of the SV most clearly reflect the different religious function of the Dutch Bible: they give laypeople, individual believers, access to the plain truths of the Scriptures, de klaarheid der waarheid. The clarifying marginal notes in the SV are based on the Reformed assumption that the Hebrew and Greek source texts are in principle and as a whole clear but become obscure and strange in the translation. This strangeness, obscureness and otherness is not seen as inherent to the sacred nature of the language of Scripture.

If one just compared the texts of the Eastern versions and the SV one could easily conclude that all these literal translations serve similar sacral-ritual functions and are based on similar theologies of language. Once the combination of text and paratext is taken into account, the vast differences between these translations comes to the fore and the link between these translations and the very different religious functions they serve.

If the inspiration principle and the perspicuity principle were both important elements in the skopos of the Statenvertaling, the issue of the relative weight of both principles becomes crucial. The inspiration notion generally was more important than the perspicuity notion. This can be deduced from the division of labour between text and paratext: faced with the choice between a literal but obscure translation that followed the 'original words of God that are in the Hebrew and Aramaic text' and a clearer translation not exactly following God's Hebrew words, in a majority of cases, the clearer rendering ends up in the marginal notes. Another sign may be that the translators never resisted cheaper editions without marginal notes that soon appeared.[18] In the course of the centuries the perspicuity element became less and less prominent in the way the Statenvertaling functioned. The spiritual descendants of the fathers of Dordt can still be found in a number of small orthodox Reformed denominations in the Netherlands. The Statenvertaling has acquired an immense authority for these denominations but most members of these churches take editions to church that leave out not just the marginal notes but most of the other paratextual elements of the original editions. The deuterocanonicals have no longer any place in these editions. The Dutch language has changed dramatically since the 17th century. All these factors together determine the place and function that the SV has acquired in our time, as a sacred-ritual translation, difficult to understand for most people, a skopos different from the intended skopos of the original edition that also aimed at clarity. Interestingly, parallel editions with the Statenvertaling in the left column and modern clarity- and meaning-oriented versions in the right column are increasingly popular in these circles. The left column with the Statenvertaling is the ‘inspiration column’ and the right one with the paraphrasing version is the ‘perspicuity column’ so to speak. In fact, the right column has taken over the function of the paratext of the old editions of the Statenvertaling. For certain groups of modern readers the Statenvertaling has acquired yet another function, a literary function. They appreciate the specific style and archaic flavour of this version.

The Reformed notion of inspiration by the Holy Spirit was also relevant to problems of canonicity. During the Synod of Dordrecht the deputies could not reach agreement on the place of the deuterocanonicals in the translation. Already in 1561, in the Dutch adaptation of the French Confession de Foy, the Dutch Reformed had expressed that 'we receive these books as holy and canonical not so much because the church accepts them as such but rather because the Holy Spirit witnesses in our hearts that they are from God' (Belydenisse des Geloofs, article V, my translation). The more radical Reformed thinkers among the Synod members, like Gomarus, did not want the Apocrypha to be included in the translation. But because people were used to the Deux-Aes Bible that included the deuterocanonicals, there was a clash between the goals of the Synod and what people expected from a translation of the Bible. By deciding that the deuterocanonicals[19] should be placed behind all the canonical books (that is after the New Testament), with separate pagination, with a separate introduction, and in a different type, the Synod prescribed paratextual elements to bridge the gap between intended and expected skopos. The title page preceding the deuterocanonicals explicitly pointed to their human (that is non-inspired) origin and the introduction to the deuterocanonicals warned the readers to be aware of the heresies they contained.

Summarizing, the skopos of the SV comprises a complex set of heterogeneous elements. First of all, elements such as the inspiration doctrine and the perspicuitas doctrine including the emphasis on lay theology and Reformed hermeneutics of comparing Scripture with Scripture. These factors determine the place and function of Bible translations in the spiritual life of the Dutch Reformed communities of the 17th century. Because of the emphasis in the inspiration doctrine was on the work of the Spirit in the source text and in the believing reader or listener, the translation had to focus on what God said in the Bible, not what God meant. The Holy Spirit would make clear what God meant in the Bible when His children carefully and diligently studied what He had said and how He said it. The extensive paratextual helps in the SV were fallible, human means to clarify what God had meant. Unlike God's Word such paratextual explanations were always open for discussion. What God had said in his Word remained forever but human ideas about what He had meant changed with the times and even Calvin and Luther, with all their insights, were fallible humans and their hermeneutic position did in principle not differ from other children of God who bowed obediently for His Holy Word.

Apart from these 'theological' elements there were political elements in the skopos of the SV: the young Republic wanted its very own Dutch Bible translated from the Hebrew and Greek sources instead of one translated from German or French sources. Finally, the function and place of the SV was co-determined by its predecessor, the Deux-Aes Bible that had contributed also to the notion 'Bible', to expectation patterns about the Bible.

The SV was primarily a Church Bible but its rich paratextual helps made it also suitable for private reading and as a study Bible. It should be kept in mind that the Dutch Reformed notion of inspiration emphasized the role of the Spirit in the source, the inspired Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and in the target, in the heart and mind of the believing individual reader when he read and studied the Word of God. Ultimately it was not the tradition of the Church or the clergy who told the Christian what the Bible meant to say: it was the Spirit who worked through the Word in the heart of the believer. Therefore the SV was designed for both liturgical and private use and the paratextual features of the SV helped the SV to function as study Bible and Bible for private devotion.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Dutch Reformed view of the Bible is the relation between Spirit and Word, with the Word as the key to evaluate all things claimed by people to originate from the Spirit. In their inspiration theology the Spirit became indeed very tightly connected to the Word. Anyone who claimed to be led by the Spirit had to pass the test of the Word to see whether what he said was consistent with the Word of God. Inspired translators who claimed to know what God meant in His Word because they were led by the Spirit and wanted to communicate that meaning in the translation were a threat to the role of the Word as an independent judge of human opinions and interpretations. Luther’s German Bible translation in an adapted Dutch version could not play the role the Bible had to have in the eyes of the Dutch Reformed congregations, as the infallible Word of God, uncontaminated with fallible human ideas and interpretations.

Crisp (2000) links dynamic equivalence approaches, with their assumptions about the clear and normally monovalent meaning of Scriptures that had to be communicated in translations of the Bible, to a Reformation hermeneutics of perspicuity assuming a “direct reading of a plain text”, the possibility to have unmediated access to the meaning of the self-interpreting Scriptures. The above characterization of the hermeneutic place and function of the Bible in Dutch Reformed communities makes clear that there important differences in the various Protestant communities that have to do with the way inspiration notions and perspicuity notions are combined. Precisely because the Word of God was to be the only authority in the Church, the Dutch fathers of Dordrecht rejected translations that claimed to give the plain meaning of the text! God’s Word was clear and perspicuous, to be sure, in the original inspired texts and in the hearts and minds of His chosen ones where the Spirit guided them as long as they carefully studied the Word of God, preferably in the original languages but if that was not possible in a translation with as little human interference as possible. The interplay of text and paratext in the SV remedied the perspicuity problems caused by the translation process: the strange and dark Dutch was not seen as a sign that God, the Other, was speaking but as negative side-effect of the translation process. Although the Dutch were a proud people, they knew God did not speak Dutch in the original Bible but Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and He did not speak strange or dark Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek to express His Otherness.

If the dynamic equivalence approach had implicit hermeneutic assumptions about the Bible, for example perspicuitas assumptions, they would seem to have more affinity with the Lutheran tradition of combining perspicuity views with an inspirational theology of translation, for example (a) the assumption that the Bible is a coherent and basically clear set of messages and meanings from God and (b) that the goal of the Bible translator should be to communicate those clear messages and meanings to new audiences. Notice that the Dutch Reformed fathers of Dordrecht shared assumption (a), perhaps in a form stressing that only true children of God could see those clear messages from God, but not (b) because (b) implies a inspired translator who translates not what God said but what God meant in His Word as understood by the inspired translator, thus blocking the direct communication between God and His people through His Word with the help of the Spirit.

But it is perhaps better to understand dynamic theories of Bible translation primarily in the institutional and social context of the grand missionary movement of the middle of the 20th century that saw Bible translation as the central tool for missionization. When a receptor culture is totally unfamiliar with the biblical worlds and Bible translation does not follow missionization but functions as key tool in Church planting, only message-oriented and highly target-oriented types of communicative Bible translations are of any use. The many Western missionaries that started to communicate the Gospel in hundreds of minority languages in the Third World needed a translation theory that suited this goal that arose from a specific missiology. Just as the Dutch calvinist in the 17th century wanted a Bible translation to conform to their spirituality, to what they wanted to do with the Bible in their communities, the missionaries needed Bibles with which they could perform their spiritual, missionary tasks. That skopos determined the kinds of translation they needed and wanted, and the postwar publications of Nida and others grew out of this context and provided the ideological basis for a pre-given translation practice that was unavoidable given the goals and circumstances of the missionary endeavors.

Basic assumptions defining the notion ‘Bible’ of course can be of a secular nature. In the Netherlands for example there is growing market for “literary”Bibles, for communities of readers that view the Bible as a literary work and want a translation that enables them to do the literary things that they want to do with the Bible. Compare the following statement by Prickett (quoted via Crisp 2000) that “..the Bible is not about things that are natural, clear, simple and unambiguous”[20] in the context of a literary critique of the language of the Good News Bible. Statements like ‘God is the author of the Bible’, ‘the Bible is not about things that are natural, clear, simple and unambiguous’, views about inspiration, perspicuity, unity of Scriptures, and so on, whether “theological”, “philosophical”or “literary”, all belong to the domain of the social and cultural perceptions of the Bible, to the domain of Bible-creating assumptions of communities and NOT to the domain of the scholarly, academic study of the Bible. Scholarly study of Bible translations has the task to explicate and elucidate Bible-creating processes as they unfold in the translation history of Jewish and Christian communities and to show how the textual and paratextual features of translations of the Bible follow from these processes.

Intended and expected skopos

In the case of the Statenvertaling the kind of translation that the Synod wanted and the kind of translation the Reformed communities expected co-incided for the most part. Where there were gaps between the expected skopos and the intended skopos these were bridged by negotiation processes. An example would be the place of the Deuterocanonicals in the Bible. The Reformed communities were used to Bibles with Deuterocanonical books and the more radical, negative ideas of some Synod members like Gomarus had not yet taken root. The Synod discussed extensively about this point and formulated decisions that could bridge these differences in the notion of Bible. The Deuterocanonicals would be included but paratextual elements would express the views of people like Gomarus very clearly.

When in the course of the 19th century Bible Societies would more and more take over the roles of Synods and greater freedom of religion led to societies with a rich variety of Christian (and Jewish) denominations and with highly visible confessional fragmentation, Bible Socieities had to serve all these groups and denominations, and could not take side with a specific notion of ‘Bible’ .

The rich tradition of Bible editions with extensive paratextual elements, as in the Dutch Statenvertaling, was an obvious threat to this theological neutrality, and this explains the preference for safe “without note or comment” Bibles that replaced the paratextually very rich 17th and 18th century Bibles. In countries like the Netherlands with a tradition to solve conflicts of interests within society by negotiation and compromise, Bible Societies ensured that all parties were involved in Bible translation projects. Bibles with a broad skopos, for example the New Translation of the Bible (Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling) designed for use in Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities, are the product of a complex, and highly institutionalized, skopos negotiation process to ensure that the resulting Bible is sufficiently situated on common ground. The churches and groups represented in the project know beforehand they will not get exactly what they want and that compromises are inevitable and honourable. Doctrinal or dogmatic points are peripheral to the negotiation process. The core questions are related to the hermeneutic and theological notion of ‘Bible’. Will this translation be able to function as ‘Bible’in our community and can we do the things with this translation that we traditionally do with Bibles in our community? For Bible Societies it is crucial to understand these questions. For example when a community wants a more “literal” Bible, they may refer to an interpretative division of labour between translator, church and individual reader in which the reader and/or the church is expected to do quite a lot of interpretative work. Or a community may want a dynamic Bible, as clear as possible because it is their idea that the Bible should be understandable for an average reader without dependency on Church or commentary, and they accordingly want a higher level of explicitation and explanation in text and paratext of the new Bible. To understand these questions a thorough knowlegde of the histories and traditions of the various communities is essential.

In the training of Bible translators the various notions of ‘Bible’and the history of Bible translation in a given country or region should be an important element. Bible translators should be able to distinguish and explicate their own notion of Bible, compare it with other notions of Bible and should be able to translate the Bible in different ways according to these various conceptualizations. Two central aspects of the ethics of translation, from a skopos perspective, are, first, that translators should never bow to pressures from communities to violate the source text. The role of the source text to exclude wrong translations should be maximized. Only after that elimination process, dictated by the source, when choices have to be made among possible legimate translations, the community comes in and the function of the Bible translation for the community becomes a crucial tool to make translation decisions.

Summary

It is possible to exclude bad translations of the Bible on the basis of the analysis of the source texts but after exclusion of such bad translations a crucial problem remains: how to choose between multiple translations that are legitimated by the data of the source text. When the source remains silent, the goal of the translation must provide the answer, the function of the Bible translation for the community that is going to use the translation. Central to the skopos of Bible translations are basic assumptions about the Bible. These assumptions can be secular or religious in nature. In this paper I explicated a number of basic assumptions about the Bible in the skopos of the Statenvertaling. The Synod of Dordrecht wanted a Bible that was different from Lutheran, message-oriented Bible because they could not accept the extension of the inspiration doctrine to the inspired translator who ‘knew’ what God meant in His Word and translated what he knew to be the message and the meaning. The concentration on what God had said in His Word, rather than on what He meant, led to a type of translation that was much more difficult to understand than the original texts. This created a conflict with another basic assumption about the Bible, that God spoke clearly in His Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Word, although there were dark places. The extensive paratextual helps in the SV were meant to solve this dilemma of inspiration and perspicuity doctrines.

Calvinistic, Lutheran and Orthodox traditions have different conceptualizations of inspiration, perspicuity and the interpretative division of labour between Church, translator and indivual reader/listener. Of course, within these traditions there are important variations and continuous re-interpretations. For example, the Calvinistic tradition of the late 20th century did no longer, as a rule, apply the notion of inspiration to the word order patterns of Hebrew or Greek grammar but the pre-modern distrust of inspired translators who knew what God meant remained alive long enough to meet its postmodern counterpart.

The way communities construe these notions of inspiration, perspicuity, message and meaning is not to be jugded by translation theorists, it is simply none of their business.It is crucial to acknowlegde that translation theories can describe and analyse but not prescribe the skopos for Bible translations because what people do and want to do with the Bible in their communities, given their spirituality and their histories of hermeneutics and theology, is not something that can be judged on the basis of translation or communication theories. As soon as such theories prescribe the skopos of Bible translations, under the guise of scientific analysis or of general translation principles, they implicitly invoke hermeneutical and theological assumptions and become a party in the skopos negotiation process. Such ‘theories’ of translation then degenerate into ideologies of translation that mask the true nature of Bible translation as spiritually and theologically motivated domestic inscription and Bible translation is misrepresented as an essentially scholarly activity constantly "threatened" by non-scientific social forces of churches, theologies and the interests of publishers. Such social forces become only threatening when there is pressure to translate in ways that violate the source texts, to insert translations that are clearly excluded by the source texts.

In terms of the relationship between theology and the skopos of Bible translations, translation agencies have two options. The first would be complete neutrality with respect to the notion ‘Bible’ in recognition of the fact that general assumptions about the Bible are always embedded in specific theologies and spiritualities. The other option would be take a theological and hermeneutic position about the Bible resulting in preferences for certain types of translation are in accordance with the notion of “Bible”of the agency.

Hermeneutic and theological assumptions about the Bible have a way of entering through the backdoor of theologically ‘neutral’ discourses. A example would be the often expressed and ‘innocent’ remark that Bible translation is first of all ‘communication’. But the notion of communication, with its associated concepts of senders, messages and addressees, easily leads to hermeneutic assumptions about the Bible as message in which the notion of message is coloured by specific theologies. Furthermore, the notion of message may (implicitly) favour an ‘instrumental’ concept of Bible translation and disfavour an ‘hermeneutic’ concept of translation as creative interpretation in the terms of Venuti (1997:6). Of course, there is nothing wrong with a message- and meaning-oriented view of Bible translation but these views should be expressed in the discourse of theology and hermeneutics, as one way to construe the notion of Bible, leading to a preference for Bible translations of a specific type with specific functions.

[1]See E. Nida and C. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden 1969; E. Nida and J. de Waard, From one language to another. Functional Equivalence in Bible Translating, Nashville 1986, two influential books in the field of Bible translation that represent the functional equivalence tradition of sense-by-sense translations.

[2] I heavily rely in this section on C.C. de Bruin and F.G.M. Broeyer, De Statenbijbel en zijn voorgangers, Haarlem 1993.

[3] de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 179.

[4] de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 204.

[5]From the original languages into our Dutch language faithfully translated.

[6]With newly added explanations of obscure places, references to parallel texts and new tables of contents of both Testaments.

[7]de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 271.

[8]The Holy Spirit may have wanted it this way to distinguish the significance of the first Moreh from the second. The example is from de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 271.

[9]See W. Balke, Reformatie: Mythe en werkelijkheid, Amsterdam 2002, p.15.

[10]W. Schwartz, Principles and problems of Biblical translation. Some Reformation controversies and their background, Cambridge 1955, 208.

[11]Schwartz, Biblical Translation, 207-209.

[12]The original words of God that are in the Hebrew and Aramaic text.

[13]‘the new translators have expressed the Hebrew text so precise and close that they also often followed the order and position of the words..because of which the sense was not expressed all that clear and fluent' (de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 308).

[14] Hebr(ew). The arm of his holiness. That is his divine omnipotence which he proved in the saving of his people. Example quoted in de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 273.

[15]de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 274.

[16]See S. Crisp, 'Icon of the Ineffable? An Orthodox View of Language and its Implications for Bible Translation'. Paper for the Triennial Translation Workshop of the United Bible Societies, Malaga 2000

[17]Crisp, 'Icon of the Ineffable?', 6,7.

[18]de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 280.

[19]The Statenvertaling included 3 Maccabees, 3 and 4 Ezra and the Prayer of Manashe in the Apocrypha section, although article VI of the Dutch Confession of Faith did not mention 3 Maccabees. According to de Bruin and Broeyer, De Statenbijbel, 236, the translators probably just followed the Deux-Aes Bible here.

[20] Stephen Prickett, Words and The Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p.10.