A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
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| Volume 6 Number 26 - Tuesday, June 29th, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
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The Orthodox Christian News Service |
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Priests Reinterpret ‘Revelations’
In an interview with The National Herald, Fr. Mark Arey said that the translation “is something that I always wanted to do. As a matter of fact, this translation is the first of five volumes that constitute the entire New Testament. We have finished the translation, we have not published it yet, it needs editorial work. The second volume that includes the gospel and the epistles of Saint John, will be ready in a few months.” “We began with the Apocalypses because this is the one book that everyone reads about but nobody reads,” Fr. Arey explained. “As you know better than I, it is never read in the Services of the Orthodox Church. At the same time, when you read the book, you feel the Divine Liturgy because it is the vision, the door open, the presbyters surrounding the throne, the incense, the imagery. So we felt with Fr. Philemon Sevastiades, who is my collaborator and my partner in this effort, to do a new translation of Revelations, to reintroduce it to the people,” he added. “There is a deep and abiding message of hope in the Apocalypse, that no matter what happens, the Lord is the Lord of history and God has the final word,” he said. Speaking about the difference between his new translation and existing ones, Fr. Mark said: “I think in my translation I tried to, and if I am successful or not other people will tell, get to the beauty of the sound of the Greek language and tried to convey some of that sound. It is hard to express it sometimes because translation is more art than science,” he explained. “Every translation that we have has been the product of a committee, as you know, but if you look at the great translations, let us say of the classical works ‘The Iliad,’ ‘The Odyssey,’ Plato, Euripides, it is usually one hand who translates. Because I do have a very deep love for the Greek language and the sound of the Greek language— and as priest all these years I have the privilege to read and chant this language in church—I felt that somehow I can convey to those who do not read Greek the intensity of the language. There is richness to Greek in my opinion that exceeds English, including Shakespeare, that I wanted to convey.” Fr. Mark said he applied the meaning-for-meaning method: “I followed St. Jerome’s advice because he is really the master. “I used the original Greek text published by The National Herald in the past with the permission of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and it was also published by the Church of Greece.” Fr. Mark Arey, a convert to Orthodoxy from the Episcopalian Church, speaks about Orthodoxy, Hellenism and the Greek language with such enthusiasm: “I call myself an accidental convert in the sense that I found Orthodoxy and I am not embarrassed to say this, I am proud of it, through my study of classical languages, through my study of Classic Greek. The first Greek expression I ever learned was ‘Christos Anesti’ and my professor of Latin taught me that when I was 19 years old, at the university of Maryland,” he explained. “When I was in the Episcopalian Church, I was searching in my own self for truth, for truthful experience and I remember attending my first Divine Liturgy at St. Sophia in Washington D.C., where the entire Liturgy was in Greek and I remember saying to myself, ‘I am home.’ I just remember saying to myself, ‘this is it.’” Fr. Mark said he believes that Greek is a sacred language: “I believe that the Greek language, as we have in the Divine Services, which, as you know, is constructed from the Sacred Text, the Holy Bible, is a sacred language and there is a tremendous responsibility on the Greek Orthodox Church to preserve and to teach this language as much as possible,” he said. “I prefer to serve the Divine Liturgy in Greek. I understand the need for meaning, but I am not sure that we always foster meaning through using translations. People are saying that the answer to our youth is to do everything in English. I do not believe that. I believe that people need to understand the meaning, because to me you cannot translate Agios o Theos, Agios Isxyros, Agios Athanatos eleison imas.” Fr. Mark believes that we should not lose the Greek language. “The Koran cannot be read in any other language except in Arabic. The Jews, even to this day, read the Torah in Hebrew after so many generations. We the Greek Orthodox, after five generations, we are going to lose not only the Greek language but the language of the New Testament, the language of the Church, the language of the Fathers. I am not a chauvinist. I am willing to do exegesis in English, but I think that we must preserve our Liturgical identity,” he said. Has he ever regretted his decision to convert to Orthodoxy? “No, never,” he told the Herald. “I prefer to liturgize in Greek because I understand it and that is where the thrust of my ministry is, even to the young people who come to my parish, to explain to them and help them to understand the meaning. The verse, ‘ta sa ek twn swn” cannot be translated,” he explained.
Fr. Mark believes that the policy of the
Archdiocese to leave it at the pastor’s discretion
for the use of the Greek language, if fine, “but I
always believed that it is a false point that
children leave because the Liturgy is in Greek,”
he contends. “They may leave because they do not
understand the Liturgy, but if you translate the
Liturgy word-for-word and say it word-for-word,
they will be scratching their heads. The Liturgy
is more than an intellectual experience. It is an
emotional, physiological, spiritual, physical
experience, so to discount the value of the sound
of the language is wrong.” |
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