Translating Genesis with an open mind _ and an ear for a good story

c. 1996 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Stephen Mitchell’s”Genesis: A New Translation of the Classical Biblical Stories”(HarperCollins) is anything but a chapter-and-verse retread of the canonical Genesis. He presents the tales of the Bible’s first book with an open heart, an open mind, and an ear for a good story. This attitude has consequences that are […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Stephen Mitchell’s”Genesis: A New Translation of the Classical Biblical Stories”(HarperCollins) is anything but a chapter-and-verse retread of the canonical Genesis.

He presents the tales of the Bible’s first book with an open heart, an open mind, and an ear for a good story.


This attitude has consequences that are evident in the translation.

In the”Fall”story (Genesis 3), for example, the New Revised Standard Version quotes the serpent with a tone that makes his question to Eve seem quite innocent:”Did God say, `You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?'” By tinkering slightly with the syntax, Mitchell adduces an attitude of dissembling from the serpent:”Did God really say that you’re not allowed to eat from any tree in the garden?”The result is to transform what the committee version renders as a sincere question into the side-winding rhetorical question that leads to Eve’s deception.

Mitchell’s insistence on translating biblical narrative according to his sense of authentic spirituality is most evident in his rendering of the story of Joseph. Mitchell regards this ancient story as one of the most beautiful in Genesis; but in its canonical version the story contains a large quantity of extraneous material _ especially in the Genesis 46-50 passages, which Mitchell relegates to an appendix.

Among them is a narrative in which Joseph becomes”a kind of proto-fascist leader,”Mitchell says.”In return for giving the Egyptians food”during a famine,”he enslaves them all.

Calling such additions”clumsy and bathetic,”Mitchell pointedly wonders in his translation”how any writer could have had the gall to add them to the impeccable prose of the Joseph story is beyond comprehension.” Mitchell says he left many other narratives more or less intact, though some of them in the original form are just”wacky.” For example, in Genesis 18, Abraham sends his wife to help prepare a meal for God and two angels who appear to him one day outside his tent. Before he runs out to prepare a calf and some yogurt, Abraham has asked his wife Sarah _ according to the New Revised Standard Version _ to take”three measures of choice flour, knead it and make cakes.” A reader skimming this translation might overlook the possible conclusion that Abraham’s visitors are gluttons. The Hebrew word rendered as”measure”is”seah”; a”seah”is about one-third of a bushel.

Thus, Mitchell translated”three measures”as”a bushel”_ roughly 60 pounds of flour _ and translates”cakes”as”pita”_ flat, unleavened bread.”I’m very amused by the God who sits down at a picnic table with Abraham and, along with his two angel companions, wolfs down a roast calf and a few hundred pita breads and yogurt,”Mitchell says.”It’s quite lovely to have such a naive, anthropomorphic God.”

MJP END AQUINO

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