Don't ask me to run it down anymore, but I've never forgotten an old story about two missionaries, sent by the church to an ancient pueblo, where they were commissioned to bring the Word of the Lord to the Zuni people. In background and training, they weren't worlds apart; both were Dutch Reformed, both of a similar age and era.
Well, things happen. Soon enough strife grew between the two of them (just about the only palefaces in the community). One believed mission work among the heathen (their word) should begin with the adults of the pueblo; the other was sure the only means to save souls was to start with children.
But there was this other difference too. One of them--let's just call him Dominie Second--was borne with the remarkable ability to pick language easily. It's not somehow akin to the ability to sit down at a piano and play, but one of the missionaries had dexterity with language that could only be called a gift, an ear for language. He picked up the Zuni language quickly, easily, while Dominie First found himself hopelessly tongue-tied.
It was a brand new mission, and the harvest was slim pickins. Soon enough, Dominie First grew envious of Dominie Second, then annoyed, then aggravated, then, well, angry, at full-volume, not at what Dominie Second did or said, but at the clearly recognizable ability Dominie Second had to engage the locals, with whom he could laugh. He'd learned the Zuni language well enough to make jokes, to banter, to play with nuance, to giggle. If Dominie First would walk into a room and hear Dominie Second cracking jokes with some locals, what Dominie First felt in his heart wasn't the love of Jesus.
Eventually, there came a divorce. Other reasons were reported to the Mission Board, but one of them, unmentioned, was Dominie Second's remarkable lingual talents, which allowed him intimacy with the Zuni that Dominie First simply could not achieve. Neither of the missionary pastors would have quoted Buddha, but what the Buddha maintained might have been helpful: "he who envies others will never achieve peace."
Dante had envy-ers cast into ice cold water, which sounds about right, because out there on the mission field in the hot, high New Mexico desert, things got icy all right.
That old story came back to me when I read The Art of Bible Translation, by Robert Alter. Alter pounds home a thesis he gives at the outset and again and again throughout the study. Goes like this: ". . .meaning in the Bible or in any literary text. . .can never be separated from the nuanced connotation of words and their dynamic interaction as they are joined through sound, through syntax, and through poetic or narrative context."
Alter, who is Jewish, looks upon the Bible as literature. He has little sympathy for those who prefer it to be a "how-to" for getting along righteously. What's more, he loves the mystery of the book, is engaged by what can't be known, admires its gallery of poems and stories for their unique perplexity, not necessarily for what they teach us about life or how they point at a Messiah. The Old Testament may well be holy writ to some, but it's death to its own character if a reader forgets it is most definitely human writ.
I must have read Psalm 30 ("mourning to dancing") a hundred times in my 71 years, but I never, ever thought of it as "expressing gratitude for recovery from a near-fatal illness." I never considered that psalm or even that verse in that kind of homely, human way. After all, the Bible is God's word and it simply isn't all that human. To Alter, it most certainly is.
Will Robert Alter's The Art of Bible Translation change my life? I think not. But his fascinating linguistic stories make me more conscious of the wonder and mystery of the sacred texts. And, even at three score and eleven, that's a good thing.
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