A Vulgar Thing

"Heliodorus is Cast Down," II Maccabees 3:25-27

   

Pastor’s Epistle—August 2024

The Bible is a vulgar thing—from the Latin vulgus, meaning “common people.”

When St Jerome translated the Christian Scriptures into Latin at the end of the fourth century, he did so because few in the West still spoke Greek. Latin was the common tongue of the common people; thus, Jerome’s Bible came to be known as the Vulgate, regular language for regular folks.

The dialect of Greek from which Jerome had worked was koine, which also means “common.” Koine was the language of the Hellenistic world, of all the varied cultures and kingdoms conquered by Alexander the Great. The Gospels were written down in koine, despite Jesus teaching in Aramaic, so that everyone could hear and understand.

And what was Aramaic? Why, it was the common Semitic tongue spoken by the Judeans following their return from the Babylonian Exile. We read in the Book of Ezra that most exiled Israelites could no longer understand Hebrew, the language of the Law, and so when the Law was read aloud, learned Levites had to interpret it for the crowd in words they all could understand. Behold, the birth of the sermon.

What we have, then, is a biblical emphasis on translation even within the pages of the Scriptures themselves: from Hebrew and Aramaic to koine Greek and Latin; and after that to English and Algonquin and Mandarin and Maasai and everything in between.

The Word of God, the Good News of Jesus Christ, continually incarnates in new languages and cultures, just as at Pentecost every nation under heaven heard and grasped the Gospel, each in their own native tongue. It has always been vital to the mission of the Church for regular people, common people, to encounter God through the Spirit, the Sacraments, and the Scriptures. We are a polyglot people. Why not then use art as well?

The Year of Our Lord 1866 witnessed the publication of a remarkable two-volume French-language folio edition of the Holy Scriptures, translated from the Vulgate, as La Grande Bible de Tours. And for this worthy and weighty tome, the French artist Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré produced 241 woodcuts illustrating the sacred texts.

They are gorgeous and immensely popular works of art, dripping with drama and heavy with doom. Published simultaneously in the UK, Doré’s illustrations of the Tours Bible both influenced and were influenced by the Victorian Age (1837-1901). His Old Testament scenes focus on massacres and murderers; his New Testament on sentiment and sapience. He seems to have enjoyed high drama all around. We all know how the lurid bits of the Bible keep the rest of it arresting.

Over the course of the following year, and by special request, we will take a monthly look at just under a dozen of these woodcuts corresponding to the Passion of the Christ; paying close attention both to the verses upon which each illustration has been based and also to the artist’s own take on the events depicted therein—his personal translation, as it were. Like as not, you know his works, even if you weren’t aware of his name. Doré still proves persistently popular today.

Every act of translation must needs be an interpretation. No matter how closely we hew to the grammar and meaning of the original, choices have to be made, attempting to stay true to the source material whilst simultaneously expressing the message in a new and different medium. This is true even for the relatively straightforward task of taking the Scriptures from Latin into French—despite the fact that French at heart is really just bad Latin.

We shall hold the original text in one hand and Doré’s translation in the other. We shall look to the Bible, to history, and to art. And we shall trust in the Spirit ever to incarnate anew the Logos, the eternal Word and Son of God, that we may encounter Him in our own age, in our own way.

Or at the very least, we’ll see some pretty pictures.

In Jesus. Amen.