How should the OF be celebrated?

[ProVobis]

Well, from that point of view we’ll never perfectly understand what Jesus was saying unless we find it in the original Aramaic. And we’ll never understand the New Testament unless we look at it in Koine Greek, and the OT unless we look at it in ancient Hebrew.

I tried to make the case for this already. If you have the exact Aramaic, let’s go with it, before it gets more corrupted and modernized with every retranslated translation.

 

[EcceAgnusDei]

Let’s go with Shakespeare then. Having studied him, one has to at least sense he chose his words well. There is poetry and beauty in those words any English major loves to death. In fact, he’s probably memorized a ton of Shakespearean phrases. But is someone reading someone else’s translation of it in Chinese left with the greatest appreciation of Shakespeare? I certainly wouldn’t be getting the full Shakespeare if I heard it in Polish. Sure one can follow and enjoy the plot or the acting in the translation but is Shakespeare just about plots? We can get plots from Cliff’s Notes if that’s all we read Shakespeare for. I’m afraid we just have to study the English of that period to fully grasp Shakespeare, and that was my point.

Chancellor Gorkon: You haven’t heard Shakespeare until you’ve heard it in the original Klingon.

• PAX