Book Review
Barnes in Common recommends.....
GOOD AS NEW (A radical retelling
of the Scriptures)
by John Henson
Published by 'O' Books. ISBN 1-903816-73-4 £19.99
This is a new translation of the early Christian Scriptures, with a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who says, "A presentation of the Christian Gospels of extraordinary power simply because it is so close to the prose and poetry of ordinary life.....written in the dialogue of the streets and shops".
Rowan Williams received quite a bit of "hate mail" as a result of this recommendation. John Henson's translation entails basic rethinking of how Jesus communicated. He sees the phrase: "He spoke as one having authority, not as a scribe" as an essentially scribe-like translation. Those who heard Jesus were much more likely to have said, "That chap knows what he's talking about".
"Jesus was in the business of making God intelligible and loveable to ordinary people", claims Henson. The Gospel writers used the simplest most straightforward Greek. It is therefore bad translation to put the Gospels into sophisticated English.
Henson met J.B. Phillips at a seminar at the time that the New English Bible had just been published and he asked Phillips what he thought was the difference between the NEB and Phillips' own translation. Phillips replied: "I read the Daily Mirror. The translators of the NEB read The Times".
Henson has also rethought the canon of the New Testament. At the Reformation, Martin Luther expurgated the Apocrypha from the canon, though the Roman Catholics still include it. Luther was also undecided about several other books, including Revelation, saying: "My spirit cannot accommodate myself to this book. There is one sufficient reason for the small esteem in which I hold it – that Christ is neither taught in it nor recognized." Henson agrees: "Most of the fundamentalist sects on the fringes of Protestantism, distinguished mainly by their lack of love, have gained their impetus, their twisted theology, their lunacy and fanaticism from too much reading of Revelation."
Henson, whom I have met, was brought up as an Evangelical. He is now an apparently unassuming Welsh Baptist Minister, but you don't have to dig far beneath the loving and laid-back exterior to unearth a passionate espousal of his beliefs in inclusivity and a respect for the feminine.
Jane Sherwin |
