November 17, 2006

Names

I was reading a book yesterday about Bible translations. It was discussing the question of using the name of the local deity in the local language to translate "God."

The idea made me uncomfortable, I must admit. Not that I know anything about this stuff, to be sure. So take what I say with a grain of salt, at least.

Nevertheless, "God" is not an utterance that is somebody's name. It is a clumsy placeholder of a term with it's referent in a transcendent Reality that is quite beyond our naming. This goes for the abstract nouns Elohim or Theos or for Biblical titles of God like Adonai or Kyrios.

God does reveal a name to Moses, YHWH, but it's cryptic and hardly a name in any sense that relates to our experience. Jesus reveals God as Father, which isn't a name but a suggestion of a particular kind of relationship.

Thus it seems to me that translating the complex utterance "God" with a proper name doesn't make much sense, religiously or theologically.
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2 comments:

  1. Jeff8:40 PM

    Nice work, Friar,

    Stah Mahket in Glosta... Being a native Bostonian, that made me smile.

    Seriously, though, wonderful homily. Very good work.

    Peace.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brother Charles10:10 PM

    Thanks Jeff, for the encouragement.

    ReplyDelete

Faithful, or even just thoughtful criticisms are always welcome. Uninformed rudeness to other posters or to the Lord and His Church is not.

I also reserve the right to reject comments promoting things like private revelations and fringe points of view, if it seems to me like they are being presented in a misleading way.

If you raise a disagreement with something I say but I do not respond, please do not feel slighted or insulted, or imagine that this automatically means I disagree or agree with you. It's just that I don't find the comment box to be a constructive medium for certain forms of debate.