Jeremiah's Scribes by Neuman Meredith Marie;

Author:Neuman, Meredith Marie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The designation of “scripture” necessarily invites anxiety about the linguistic relationship between the human and the divine. To designate any text scripture requires acts of canonization and many enfolded interpretive assertions. Specific contests over canonization, of course, raise questions about what criteria are sufficient to determine divine textuality. Doctrinal and ecclesiastic arguments invariably drive such contests, and these contests often implicate broader literary-linguistic assumptions in turn.29 In particular, attempts at translation inevitably reveal that the status of divine texts may be inextricably linked to language itself, and certain foundational translations additionally grappled with the vagaries of textual transmission in the ancient world. Reforming scholars working toward vernacular translation found themselves entangled in a series of complicated textual issues. Advances in humanistic learning increased the awareness of systematic linguistic difference. Grammatical structures themselves, however, sometimes provided unanticipated problems and even contributed to continuing theological divisions. Martin Luther’s struggle to clarify correctly the ambiguities of the verb forms of iustificare and iustificari in the Vulgate brought him to the conclusion that justification (the efficacious transformation of salvation) must, in some places, be simultaneously active and passive—a grammatical conundrum with the very greatest of implications for Western Christianity.30 William Tyndale’s translations of individual words caused controversy (for example, “congregation” versus “church” and “repentance” versus “penitence”), but the incompatibility of grammar systems from one language to another was even more problematic. Vulgate Latin was one stumbling block, but recourse to original languages only revealed that ambiguities of translation lay not in the meaning of words but, more perplexingly, in the very structure of language. Verbs proved particularly tricky, and key points of scripture could not easily be translated from Hebrew or Greek because English simply formed verbs differently.31

While the Logos of scripture would have been held sacred, discomfort at the inevitable divergence of res and verba had long created a self-consciousness of scripture as simultaneously a divine and human text. Classical literary theory bequeathed to Renaissance thought this basic dichotomy, contributing to a distrust of “rhetoric” and skepticism that language can perfectly convey truth. Puritan thinkers seemed to have added to this dichotomous view of language their notion of spiritus that often seems to move within the phenomena of res and verba. Perhaps a triangulated rather than a binary understanding of scriptural language—res, verba, and spiritus—allowed for innovations in pious writing and fostered a surprisingly confident view of the capacity of human language. While they could not hope to be pure authors of effectual language, Puritans conceived of pious writing as a kind of enabled passivity. Using such images as the writing of God’s words on the minister’s heart or of individuals as vessels for godly speech, Puritans sought to describe effectual language as words that were ultimately divine in origin. If res is a truth that human language may approximate but never accurately reproduce, and if verba is a malleable tool that might misrepresent as much truth as it reveals, then spiritus allows the human speaker to articulate truth with a confident (if subjective) humility.

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