http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tap/7977573.0002.102?view=text;rgn=main
“The ‘truth’ of the photographic portrait becomes both elusive and evasive, as the portrait image itself becomes an object of inquiry, rather than a piece of information.”
For example, womanliness or manliness can be “assumed and worn as a mask … much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove he has not stolen goods.”
Each week I write an exegetical commentary on a passage of scripture used in the liturgy. This involves putting the text in its context and trying to indicate what it might have meant to the people who first heard it or read it. The course material points to the same way of approaching translation. Humpty Dumpty’s conversation with Alice on p.94 of the course is an oblique reference to this passage in Matthew’s Gospel 6:24-34
This is what I wrote about one such passage.
The key words in this passage of the Gospel are “No one can serve two masters.” Jesus goes on to give examples of things that might exert mastery in competition with putting God first.
Matthew quotes Jesus’ words, “You can’t serve God and Money” using the Aramaic word ‘mammon’. This did not have any negative connotation: it was simply a common word meaning ‘property’. The Sanhedrin, the highest court in Jerusalem, had extensive laws and arrangements for dealing with property and disputes over it.[1] The Sanhedrin, also the highest religious court in the land, spent a lot of time dealing with cases involving property and arguments about who owned what and who was qualified to judge such cases. Litigants had to agree to the conduct of the case at every stage creating many opportunities for further disputes. All this legal business could distract the court from its religious duties. Jesus was not saying something that people did not already know. The activities of the Sanhedrin were as well known as those of any other political body.
Jesus uses a typical rabbinic teaching method called ‘light and heavy’. It follows the general formula ‘if this … then how much more that’.[2] He sets out a series of antitheses; firstly ‘life’ versus ‘what you eat and drink’. Matthew uses a word for ‘life’ which also means ‘soul’ but English hasn’t got a word which means both at the same time. The translator plumps for ‘life’ here to make the opposition between the two elements clear. Matthew uses the same word later in the Gospel where ‘soul’ is the better translation.[3] In Jewish thought in Jesus’ time soul and body are one entity and it would be nonsensical to separate the two. The word for the ‘body’ you put clothes on is different. The same word is used for ‘corpse’. The contrast is between being concerned with reality and worrying about appearances.
There is a similar problem for the translator when Jesus says “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew’s word for ‘life’ here has several meanings and it means all of them at the same time, though to different degrees. One meaning is ‘the span of life’, I.e. the number of years you will live. It also means ‘your height’ and, consequently, ‘your handsomeness or physical beauty’ since height and comeliness were thought to go together. Our translation tries to deal with this by using a length, the cubit, to refer to a span of time, leaving aside the connotation that worrying will not improve your looks.
Jesus rounds things off with two typically rabbinic statements. Matthew’s Greek has two words for ‘evil’. The one translated here as ‘trouble’ refers to evil from a human, not necessarily a divine point of view, the sort of trouble that puts you in front of the Sanhedrin.
[1] You can read some of the Sanhedrin’s law here. http://drisha.org/sanhedrin-3/#
[2] There’s a clearer example in Matthew 7:11
[3] Matthew 16:26
Chris Whittle 