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TRANSLATING INTERTEXTUALITY IN SCRIPTURE A THESIS-PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GORDON-CONWELL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY BY DALE R. HOSKINS JANUARY 2017 Copyright ©2017 by Dale R Hoskins. All Rights Reserved. To the thousands of language communities around the world who do not yet have God’s Word in their language. To our Lord Jesus Christ, whom I will worship before His throne, along with a countless multitude of people from each of these language communities. After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7.9–10) CONTENTS FIGURES v PREFACE vi ACKOWLEDGEMENTS ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x ABSTRACT xi Chapter 1. RATIONALE AND LIMITATIONS 1 2. THEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK 9 3. LITERATURE REVIEW 38 4. THE PROJECT DESIGN 132 5. OUTCOMES 146 Appendix I. THE TEXT OF THE SURVEY ASSESSMENT TOOL 168 II. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION 176 III. HANDOUTS 181 IV. SURVEY RESPONSES 205 BIBLIOGRAPHY 236 VITA 245 iv FIGURES 1. The Textual Frame of Scripture 16 2. The Model Author and His Model Reader 52 3. The Model Authors and Their Model Reader 53 4. Preserving the Markers 108 5. Translation as a Higher Order Act of Communication 122 v PREFACE The research reflected in this thesis-project is the result of a translation problem I had been contemplating over the decade while serving a translation team in East Africa. As we worked through Scripture, I gained an increasing awareness of how biblical texts interconnect with other texts. I further observed that this interconnection was often lost in the translation. In Hübner’s compilation of Old Testament parallels in the New Testament, he observes that “our New Testament authors lived by Israel’s Holy Scripture, the Old Testament, and the language of this Scripture was largely their own.”1 The interconnectedness of Scripture, however, is more than New Testament authors’ use of the Old Testament. “Language is much more than grammar and syntax. It is layer upon layer of collected memory and shared meaning… [People communicate through their] mutually understood points of reference.”2 Words, expressions, and entire texts evoke memories and emotions tied to other words, expressions, and texts. The language of the authors of Scripture reflects the shared experience with their contemporaries and the shared language of their predecessors. Hallo explains that the context of Scripture is much more than the geographical, historical, religious, political, and literary setting in 1 Hans Hübner, preface to Vetus Testamentum in Novo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), xvii. 2 Carolyn Arends, “In on the Joke: Why We Can’t Get the New Testament Without the Old,” Christianity Today, June 2012, 62. vi which it was created and disseminated, but is also constituted by the earlier texts and traditions that helped inspire it and the later ones that reacted to it.3 This thesis is intended to assist the translator to help the target reader access this intertextual context of Scripture, through both textual and paratextual strategies. Translators easily can be tempted to limit their focus to a specific passage, ensuring its words are clear and accurate. Better translators will look more broadly and use insights from discourse grammar to ensure their translation coheres and flows naturally at the paragraph level and above. However, an illuminated Bible translation4 will provide its readers and listeners access to the intertextuality of Scripture. Sadly, translations of every ilk--“essentially literal” or “meaning-based”-- often obscure or erase intertextual relations. Other than highlighting quotations of Old Testament expressions found in the New Testament, most English Bible translations either ignore intertextuality or address it through inadequate strategies such as literal translations or confusing cross-reference systems. First translations in minority languages experience a different challenge. They are often published as Scripture portions. Whether the portion is one passage, one biblical 3 William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, The Context of Scripture, Volume I: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Leiden, UK: Brill, 1997–), xxvi-xxvii. 4 Kent Richards, “Bible Illuminated” (paper presented at the Nida School of Translation Studies, Misano-Adriatico Italy, May 2011). vii story, one biblical book, or the entire New Testament, they are often translated, checked, and tested without regard to the text of the rest of the canon of Scripture. The aim of this thesis is to develop theoretically sound textual and paratextual strategies for producing an “illuminated” Bible translation. The aim of the project is to develop and test a particular approach to communicate these strategies to experienced Bible translators. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to my Gordon-Conwell mentors, Drs. Roy Ciampa and Bryan Harmelink for their kind assistance and feedback; to my longtime mentor in Bible translation, Dr. Katy Barnwell, for encouraging me to develop into a Bible translation consultant and to pursue further studies; to Seed Company (A Wycliffe Bible Translators Affiliate), for making it possible for me to devote the significant amount of time required for these studies; to our family’s financial and prayer partners who prayed for me and paid my school expenses; and a special thanks to Milt Jones, as well as to Brooke Bryant, Bob Carter, Andy Kellogg, Jeremy Lang, Chris Lovelace, Kitoko Nsiku, and the many other translation consultants who were my dialogue partners and cheerleaders. I am also very grateful to Hope College and Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan for extensive use of their libraries, access to the Library of Michigan’s interlibrary loan system, and a private study room at Western. Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Carole, and my three sons who encouraged, listened, and struggled with me over the years, and enabled me to devote the time needed to complete this work. ix ABBREVIATIONS ANE Ancient Near East BHS Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia HB Hebrew Bible LXX Septuagint MT Masoretic Text NA28 Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland. 28th ed. RT Relevance Theory RV Revised Version (1898) UBS4 The Greek New Testament, United Bible Societies. 4th ed. Where verse numbers in the Hebrew text differ from those in the English Bible, I placed the Hebrew versification in parentheses, for example, Neh 10.34(35); Jon 1.17(2.1). x