A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
|
|
|
| Volume 6 Number 27 - Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
|
• Search Engine
•
OCN
Website
|
The Orthodox Christian News Service |
|
|
Comments on “Priests Reinterpret ‘Revelations’” Editor: Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever! With regard to the "National Herald" article "Priests Reinterpret 'Revelations' “ [sic]: while Protopresbyter Mark Arey is entitled, I suppose, to his opinion about translating and celebrating the Divine Liturgy and other worship services of the Church in English in the United States, his thoughts are not consonant with the tradition and historical experience of the Orthodox Church. Wherever the Orthodox Church has spread and put down roots, she did not ask the inhabitants of those lands to use a foreign language or adopt a foreign culture, but instead used the local language and culture to bring them to salvation and sanctification in the Lord Jesus Christ. Translating the Bible, the writings of the holy fathers and the liturgical worship of the Church into local living languages has been standard procedure for Orthodox Christians for millennia now, as our saints show us. Saints Cyril and Methodius did it for the Slavs. Saint Stephen of Perm did it for the Komi. Saint Innocent of Alaska did it for the Aleuts. Saint Nicholas of Japan did it for the Japanese. Saint Jacob Netsvetov did it for the Eskimos and Indians of the Yukon Delta. Saint Tikhon the New Confessor did it for English-speaking Americans. These are but a few examples; and as a result of these translators, living, vibrant and intelligible faith and spirituality -- not ethnocentrism or a cultural superiority complex -- took root among those whom they evangelized and converted through the medium of their own languages. It is odd that Father Mark, while decrying the translation and celebration of the Divine Liturgy in English, would take it upon himself to translate the New Testament into English, and presumably benefit or profit from the publication of its books in serial form. Why the Bible, but not the Liturgy? Why not insist on everybody reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek? Surely, if the Liturgy is so "untranslatable" as he claims, the Bible is no less so. Perhaps we should go back even farther, beyond Hellenism, and all use the language our Lord Jesus Christ uttered the Lord's Prayer in -- not Greek, but Aramaic! "In the Church I would rather speak five words with understanding, that I may teach others," says Saint Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 14:19). Why? Because "faith comes through hearing" (Romans 10:17). The Church is not about ethnic pride and cultural preservation or "keeping hold" of "our own"; she is about mission, conversion, salvation and sanctification in Christ. She exists to save *all* humankind, not merely the Greek-speaking portion of it. And she cannot reach people and bring them to Christ without translation, without speaking to them in their own language. She hasn't in the past, she can't in the present and she won't in the future, as the precedence of her own saints shows. On a final note, one hopes "Revelations" [sic] is an error on the part of the "National Herald" and not an indication of the level of accuracy and carefulness in Father Mark's translation -- egregious an error as it would be for a newspaper that prides itself on its Greekness. The last book of the New Testament is "Revelation" (singular, no "s"), just as its Greek title is: "Apokalypsis" (which is singular, not plural). With prayers and good will, Gregory Orloff
|
|
Home • Archives • Search • Submissions • Support Us |
||
|
Orthodox News, PO BOX 6954 |
