From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 20 2000 - 09:03:14 EDT
At 7:55 AM -0400 4/20/00, Polycarp66@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 4/20/2000 5:40:54 AM Central Standard Time, karolus@wf.net
>writes:
>
><<
> The discussion of Rev 19.9 gives me a chance to make a case for translating
> AGGELOS as 'messenger' rather than using the transliteration 'angel.' In my
> experience 'angel' tends to generate static in the mind of the reader.
> Strange to say, it seems to give them too much information. 'Messenger'
> draws attention to the fact that these are beings with a duty to perform,
> namely the bringing of a message. 'Angel' seems to draw attention to the
> bearer of the message and conjures up those confounded unscriptural winged
> critters who inevitably steal the show.
> >>
>
>I agree that there are certain preconceptions in the public mind regarding
>what is intended by the term "angel." There are times when you definitely
>would NOT wish to translate/transliterate AGGELOS as "angel." The reference
>to the messengers from John the Baptizer is one (I would contend also for the
>AGGELOI of the seven letters of Revelation). Despite its flaws, however,
>there is a necessity to distinguish divine messengers from human ones -- here
>the term "angel" is useful.
This is another of those questions, I think, having to do with how much
information the translator is obliged to convey to the audience that has
access only to the target version of a Biblical text (i.e., it's in the
same area as last week's discussion of whether DOULOS ought in every
instance in the GNT to be translated as "slave" in English). I suppose this
is a question more relevant to an audience that is at home in an urbanized
industrial/technological culture and that is genuinely estranged from an
agrarian Hellenistic society with its host of conceptions of intermediate
divine beings such as I suspect only a Byzantine theologian or a scholar in
the field of Gnostic and or late antique and early modern Jewish mysticism
may be able to sort out intelligently. Shall we say that every time we come
across MRAGEL (however one wants to transliterate it) in Hebrew or AGGELOS
in Greek, we should differentiate (if we're able) between a prophet
empowered to deliver oracles for YHWH, a soothsayer, Balaam's ass, or one
of those creatures envisioned by the prophet Isaiah with three pairs of
wings with a special pair to cover their "feet."? Or is a translator
expected somehow to "demythologize" (aye, we are haunted yet by the ghost
of Rudolf Bultmann!) the awesome imagery of whatever passage we are
translating, however important that imagery may have been to the "ambience"
intended by the original composer--and write something wondrously
intelligible such as "agent of God's communication to mortals"? This is not
ultimately unrelated to the question of whether the use of inclusive
language is obligatory for the translator when the implication of the
original Biblical phrasing was inclusive. In my judgment, it would be wrong
to attempt to "demythologize" the language and wrong as well to attempt to
spell out in the translation whatever one feels/suspects was intended by
the Biblical composer with respect to numbers of pairs of wings assigned to
whichever function. Nor do I think the translator has the POWER to place
fetters upon the imagination of a reader of or listener to the Biblical
text--and it just may be that there are some Biblical texts that challenge
and invite the reader/audience to expand imaginatively upon suggestiveness
of the language employed by the text in question. Personally I think there
are passages in Ezekiel, Psalms, Job, and other books of the OT that fall
into this category, and I think the book of Revelation falls into this
category as well. I think that the first or second century reader of the
Greek text of Revelation was aware that he shouldn't assume that an AGGELOS
must be conceived as one who bears a message from the court of Caesar in
Rome. I think we should let AGGELOS be an "angel."
--Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
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