Let in the Light

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The contemporary debates around care were also being dissected and scrutinised to go beyond the usual ableist approaches which are either patronising and paternalistic or feats of virtue signalling. James developed a conversation of the aesthetics of care and safety which are crucial for working with vulnerable young people that challenged and catalysed Chisenhale Gallery’s praxis of ‘radical commissioning’: “to their credit, they rose to that challenge although not without problems on both sides. But like, you know, they took a punt on something”. In her introduction, she seeks to convey the sheer strangeness of the text, which “speaks to itself and not to me; there is no author in his familiar role, reaching out to me across the centuries and using all his training and ingenuity. The Gospels are an inward-looking, self-confirming set of writings, containing some elements of conventional rhetoric and poetics, but not constructed to make a logical or aesthetic case for themselves; the case IS Jesus; so the words don’t stoop to argue or entice with any great effort . . .” I was able to catch up with James soon after the event and he surprised me by describing himself as “an activist that uses art”. This was interesting for a number of reasons however, particularly as art and activism are seen as kind of separate, despite their evident crossover. IN HER introduction, Dr Ruden explains that she has “often turned to a word’s basic imagery as a defence against anachronism, obfuscation, and lethargy, which drain communications of their primordial electricity”. Reading her translation during Advent I enjoyed reading that the baby " capered" in Elizabeth's womb. The rendering of "crucified" as "hung on the stakes" is a powerfully vivid. Her choices undoubtedly have the ability to unnerve. Such careful, loving reading as we find in James Boyd White's book is as rare as it is precious. This is a book to be read slowly, allowing Augustine's Latin to resonate⁠—to be felt even when little understood. For words are living things, and we here come to know that Augustine's Confessions is a work that is alive in words with all their human complexity— but above all with love. David Jasper, author of Heaven in Ordinary: Religion and Poetry in a Secular Age Let in the Light offers a better way to read a work of literature of enormous and enduring importance. White argues that our easy familiarity with the English language and the inevitable distance and distortions associated with any translation create a barrier between Augustine and his readers. He is a lively, clear, and engaging writer, and the book is extremely sophisticated about literary criticism but wears its sophistication lightly. M. Cathleen Kaveny, author of Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought

TODAY, study of biblical languages is not a requirement for ordinands, although on many pathways it is either required or optional. Most will come to study with no prior knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, and, at St Stephen’s House, Dr Adam has observed students becoming “very excited at first discoveries”. As I watch, I’m reminded that who is, and who is not, permitted to call themselves an artist is still a source of frustration. Amongst the groups of people within society whose art is routinely disregarded or seen as subordinate are disabled people, people with mental health conditions, children and young people. Any intersectionality amongst these categories and the art world grows markedly more difficult. Without necessarily regretting the emphasis on Greek and Hebrew, I wonder what options could be given for people in my position to learn other languages of the Anglican Communion and the implications it might have for ministry — especially as some of the most effective places in which Churches have made reparations for their colonial history is by using their resources to preserve and teach indigenous languages, including through Bible translation.” Equally attuned to the resonances of individual words and the deeper currents of Augustine’s culture, Let in the Light considers how the form and nuances of the Latin text allow greater insight into the work and its author. White shows how to read Augustine’s prose with care and imagination, rewarding sustained attention and broader reflection.AMONG the seminars that Mr Belloli is taking is one exploring post-colonial and anti-racist approaches to the New Testament. Both Denise Buell and Willie James Jennings have drawn attention to “which languages are given less prestige both in priestly formation and in the academy”, he observes. I've spent fifty years translating Sanskrit texts, but only now has this book taught me how to read a text in a foreign language and how to read (and write) a translation. It is also a brilliant book about Latin, Augustine, God, and the meaning of life. Wendy Doniger, author of The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth He is sympathetic to concerns that biblical languages are being squeezed from the curriculum. “One part of that formation involves helping to sensitise ordinands to a different world, a world populated by leaders and ministries and forces and presences that people do not generally contemplate most of the time,” he says. In Let in the Light, White invites readers to join him in a close and engaged encounter with the Confessions in which they will come to share his experience of the book’s power and profundity by reading at least some of it in Augustine’s own language. He offers an accessible guide to reading the text in Latin, line by line—even for those who have never studied the language. If that were pertinent then we would never be able to run the UN or international diplomacy in general, because we would never be able to attain anything like cooperative agreement with other language groups,” he tells me. “Translation does its job.”

I had long long talks with my editor about how I could possibly handle this word, and she was very much for the consideration that the translators generally call dignity,” she recalls. “They make this judgement, this decree, about what’s appropriate for the author to have said. I’m sure they wouldn’t want anybody handling their work that way. But they feel justified in doing it when they translate sacred literature. It is difficult to achieve reading proficiency in either language in the amount of time available, he says, and one of the pitfalls that he seeks to avoid is confirming the “ingrained inclination to think of other languages as more or less successful simulations of English in a sort of secret coded way. They aren’t simulations of English: they are living cultural and expressive phenomena on their own. . .At HowTheLightGetsIn London 2023 you can join a debate about the nature of the universe with the world's top scientists, laugh until your sides hurt with the UK's best comedians, dance at our famous disco tent to the finest beats or dine with our speakers at Inner Circle events. Join us again at HowTheLightGetsIn Hay 2024, 24- 27 May, for another unmissable weekend. Most of us would find Christians “truly cast in the New Testament mould fairly obnoxious”, he argues, and draws attention to the “reassuring gloss” applied to the “raw rhetoric” of the New Testament’s strictures on wealth, for example, and its “relentless torrents of exorbitance and extremism”. In the New Testament, “everything is cast in the harsh light of a final judgement that is both absolute and terrifyingly imminent. In regard to all these texts, the qualified, moderate, common-sense interpretation is always false.”

AT THE inauguration was the true account, and this true account was with god, and god was the true account.” These words are unlikely to be read aloud at many carol services this month, but for Dr Sarah Ruden, this is what it sounds like to translate the Gospels “more straightforwardly than is customary”, to help the reader to “respond to the books on their own terms”. The development of this body of work has greatly altered the scale and ambition of James’s work, resulting in it becoming one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). Hearing this gives me hope that the arts are changing, and that those holding the purse strings are listening and accepting that the accumulation of funding for the disability arts sector is literally life-changing. Sometimes I just give up,” she tells me. “I crumble and I translate the word with two or three English words.” She compares the “very powerful, small vocabulary” of the original language to a “linchpin, the ball-bearing there, and the whole passage with its meaning moves around this word, with the very flexible meanings”. We are accustomed to thinking of English as an “incredibly rich language”, she says. “But in certain ways, English is limited . . . a pragmatic language.”THE effect of encountering biblical languages and exploring various translations should not be underestimated, suggests Dr Cressida Ryan, who teaches New Testament Greek at the University of Oxford. While she isn’t chary of criticising the language of the Greek, which can tend towards “dutifulness and dullness”, she is also utterly convinced of the importance of her task. The Bible is a book that matters, she writes. “We all to some degree define ourselves in relation to it, whether we mean to or not.” THE result, The Gospels, is not Dr Ruden’s first translation of the Bible. In her 2017 book The Face of Water: A translator on beauty and meaning in the Bible (Pantheon, 2017), she offered translations of passages from both the Old and New Testament after first setting out some of the inherent “impossibilities”.