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Interpreting the Language of St Paul

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Translating Religious Texts

Abstract

Before exploring the problems and significance of interpreting the language of St Paul, two matters need to be established. First, why bother with the writings of St Paul? Second, what is the significance of the lexical interplay between the words ‘translation’ and ‘interpretation’ when referring to the texts by St Paul.

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Notes

  1. There are many studies of the Pauline Gentile mission; a helpful introduction can be found in K. Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, 1976).

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  2. C. Rowland, Christian Origins (London, 1985) pp. 194–7.

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  3. For just such a reading, see L. Goppelt, Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times, trans. R. A. Guelich (London, 1962).

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  4. Interesting surveys of the history of biblical scholarship can be found in: Robert Morgan with John Barton, Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 1988)

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  5. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven, Conn., 1974)

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  6. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwin C. Hoskyns (London, 1933).

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  7. A helpful discussion of the difference in both disciplines can be found in P. Cotterell and M. Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation (London, 1989) pp. 77–102.

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  8. See C. Tuckett, Reading the New Testament (London, 1987)

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  9. H. Conzelmann and A. Lindemann, Interpreting the New Testament, trans. S. S. Schatzmann (Peabody, Mass., 1988)

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  10. G. D. Fee, New Testament Exegesis (Philadelphia, 1983)

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  11. Conzelmann and Lindemann, op. cit., pp. 158–99.

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  12. For a discussion of ancient letter form, see D. E. Aune, The New Testament in its Literary Environment, Library of Early Christianity (Philadelphia, 1987) pp. 162–4.

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  13. These include Laodiceans, 3 Corinthians. These and related writings can be found in E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, ed. by W. Schneemelcher, 2 vols (Philadelphia, 1963–5).

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  14. Discussion over authenticity and authorship of the New Testament Pauline epistles can be found in most New Testament Introductions, for example, W. G. Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament, 14th edn (Nashville, 1966).

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  15. Calvin J. Roetzel, The Letters of Paul (London, 1982) pp. 93–116.

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  16. Conzelmann and Lindemann, op. cit., p. 199: ‘Pauline authorship is assumed hypothetically … for reasons of methodology.’

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  17. David G. Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon (Tubingen, 1986).

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  18. See a fine discussion on this point in Luke T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament (London, 1986) pp. 255–7.

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  19. G. D. Fee and D. Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All its Worth (London, 1982) pp. 57–71

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  20. also Cotterell and Turner, op. cit., pp. 100–2.

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  21. A most accessible survey is now Werner Jeanrond, Theological Hermeneutics (London, 1991)

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  22. see also, A. C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons (Grand Rapids, 1980)

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  23. The role of the imagination in New Testament interpretation is well outlined in David Jasper, The New Testament and the Literary Imagination (London, 1987).

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  24. Good discussions of where and how to draw the line are found in G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (London, 1980), and

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  26. See Aune, op. cit., p. 160.

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  27. A full discussion of New Testament letters and their relationship to ancient epistolary form is found in W. G. Doty, Letters in Primitive Christianity (Philadelphia, 1973).

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  29. J. Richards, The Secretary in the Letters of Paul (Tübingen, 1991).

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  30. One critic describes the central point of the letters as: ‘witnesses to and interpretations of the experience of the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus in the continuing life of the church’ (Johnson, op. cit., p. 243).

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  31. G. Lyons, Pauline Autobiography, SBL Dissertation series no. 73 (Atlanta, 1985).

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  34. Most New Testament introductions discuss the occasional nature of the letters; for a brief but good discussion, see Roetzel, op. cit.

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  35. A. B. Spencer, Paul’s Literary Style (Jackson, Miss., 1984) is an exception.

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  36. N. Turner, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 4, Style (Edinburgh, 1976), has a chapter on the style of Paul, mainly to prove Semitic influence.

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  37. C. F. D. Moule, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1953) p. 3.

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  45. See two fascinating analyses of Paul based on his conversion experience: A. F. Segal, Paul the Convert (New Haven, Conn., 1991), and

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  49. Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London, 1980) pp. 1–11.

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  55. For an introduction to the dilemma, see Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (London, 1977).

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  56. The concept adequate and functional versus equivalence is discussed by Basil Hatim and Ian Mason, Discourse and the Translator (London, 1990) pp. 7–8.

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  57. Prickett, op. cit., 4–36.

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  58. George Steiner, After Babel (Oxford, 1975) p. 47.

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  59. Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading (Oxford, 1975).

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  60. Help is given by Peter de Bolla, Harold Bloom: Towards Historical Rhetorics (London, 1988).

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  61. The idea of intertextuality and translation is discussed in Bassnett-McGuire, op. cit., pp. 79, 104

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  62. and Hatim and Mason, op. cit., pp. 120–37

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  64. and E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia, 1977)

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  66. Hatim and Mason, op. cit., p. 11.

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  67. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres, and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, University of Texas Press Slavic Series no. 8 (Austin, Tx., 1986) p. 144.

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  68. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image-Music-Text, trans. S. Heath (New York, 1977) p. 146.

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Authors
  1. Dennis L. Stamps
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for the Study of Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow, UK

    David Jasper (Director) (Director)

Copyright information

© 1993 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Stamps, D.L. (1993). Interpreting the Language of St Paul. In: Jasper, D. (eds) Translating Religious Texts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22841-6_3

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