COLLECTED ESSAYS 877

silent partners in choosing the translators, how the biblical text is rendered, in what order
versions are produced, and the format(s) in which the final product appears.
Finally (and this is by no means a negligible matter), the volume is attractively and
accessibly formatted, with full-color plates allowing readers to glimpse the beauty of many
versions (art often accompanies, and sometimes even overshadows the text) and ample
indexes of scriptural references, languages, and subjects. A combined bibliography of over
fifty pages is further evidence of the care with which this volume was compiled.
There are also certain aspects that could be improved. First, although it is recognized
that some overlapping of coverage is unavoidable, for certain topics the repeated discussion
can become confusing. For example, it is not necessarily efficacious to separate discussion
of the ancient versions (section 1) from their “translation techniques” (section 3). Second,
some of the discussion, especially in section 1, is little more than a listing of people, places,
and versions, without sufficient attention to translators as individuals operating within
defined cultural, political, or religious contexts. Finally, there is a noticeable emphasis on
the work of Eugene Nida—not surprising in and of itself, given his central role in the Bible
Societies. Yet portions of section 2 read as if they were part of an “in-house” analysis of
United Bible Societies activities. As informative as this material is for some readers, it may
come at the cost of fuller analysis of other movements within translation studies that also
bear on Bible translation
Notwithstanding these few concerns, this is a volume that can be warmly recom-
mended for those with an interest in Bible translation. How large a group would this be?
As this collection, along with other recent developments, amply demonstrates, this audience
should include all CBQ readers.

Leonard Greenspoon, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178

STANLEY E. PORTER and MARK J. BODA (eds.), Translating the New Testament: Text,
Translation, Theology (McMaster New Testament Studies; Grand Rapids/Cambridge:
Eerdmans, 2009). Pp. xvi + 360. Paper $36.

First delivered at an academic colloquium held at McMaster Divinity College (Hamil-

ton, Ontario) in May 2005, these papers aim for “creative dialogue around the key issues
related to translating the New Testament in the twenty-first century” (p. xi). Following
Stanley E. Porter’s “Translating the New Testament: An Introduction to Issues of Text,
Translation, and Theology,” the essays in part 1 (“Text”) are Barbara Aland, “New Testa-
ment Textual Research, Its Methods and Its Goals”; Maurice A. Robinson, “Rule 9, Isolated
Variants, and the ‘Test-Tube’ Nature of the NA 27/UBS4 Text: A Byzantine-Priority Per-
spective”; and Philip Comfort, “The Significance of the Papyri in Revising the New Testa-
ment Greek Text and English Translations.” In a subsection of part 1 (“The Text and Luke
16:19-31”), the contributions are Barbara Aland, “The Text of Luke 16”; Maurice A.
Robinson, “The Rich Man and Lazarus—Luke 16:19-31: Text-Critical Notes”; and Philip
Comfort, “Two Illustrations of Scribal Gap Filling in Luke 16:19.”
Part 2 (“Translation”) contains Porter, “Assessing Translation Theory: Beyond Literal
and Dynamic Equivalence”; Alain Gignac, “A Translation That Induces a Reading Experi-
ence: Narrativity, Intratextuality, Rhetorical Performance, and Galatians 1–2”; and Luke
 878 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 72, 2010

Timothy Johnson, “Hebrews 10:32-39 and the Agony of the Translator.” A subsection of
part 2 (“Translation and Luke 16:19-31”) includes Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell,
“Comparative Discourse Analysis as a Tool in Assessing Translations, Using Luke 16:19-31
as a Test Case”; Alain Gignac, “Synchronic Observations on Luke 16:19-31 as Preparation
for a Translation”; and Luke Timothy Johnson, “Narrative Perspectives on Luke 16:19-31.”
The essays in part 3 (“Theology”) are Francis Watson, “Mistranslation and the Death of
Christ: Isaiah 53 LXX and Its Pauline Reception”; Edith M. Humphrey, “On Probabilities,
Possibilities, and Pretexts: Fostering a Hermeneutics of Sobriety, Sympathy, and Imagina-
tion in an Impressionistic and Suspicious Age”; K. K. Yeo, “An Intertextual Reading of
Moral Freedom in the Analects and Galatians”; and Elsa Tamez, “A Latin American Reread-
ing of Romans 7.” A subsection of part 3 (“Theology and Luke 16:19-31”) presents Edith M.
Humphrey, “To Squeeze the Universe into a Ball—Playing Fast and Loose with Lazarus?”;
K. K. Yeo, “A Confucianist, Cross-cultural Translation of Luke 16:19-31: Ethics, Escha-
tology and Scripture”; and Elsa Tamez, “A Rereading of Luke 16:19-31.” Finally, in part 4
(“Text, Translation, and Theology”), Richard N. Longenecker asks “Quo Vadis? From
Whence to Where in New Testament Text Criticism and Translation.”
Readers who care about the technical theory and actual practice of Bible translation
will welcome this volume of well-edited and well-formed essays for their up-to-date insights
on modern text criticism, theology, and newer translation models. But so will readers who
like to chew over the impact of translation on the overall history of Christianity, for instance,
the rendering of an Aramaic oral tradition into Koine Greek, the choice of a translated ver-
sion of the Hebrew Bible, and the eventual adaptation of sacred texts into vernaculars. (By
contrast, Islam has determined that the classical Arabic text of the Qur'an is officially
“untranslatable.”)
The essays give recognition to new work in text criticism, reader-response theory,
rhetoric, orality, discourse analysis, theology, and hermeneutics. Particularly interesting are
the ways in which they nudge us to look afresh at the meaning and transmission history of
Luke 16:19-31, the parable of Lazarus and Dives. Comfort, for instance, lets us peek into
the workshop of Papyrus 71’s scribe, who filled in the story’s narrative gap and named the
rich man “Neuh” (p. 113). Humphrey, neatly directing us to read the parable through the
eyes of poets and fiction writers, concludes that in this parable, “the world [is] squeezed
into a ball” (p. 313).
A few of the authors (especially Porter, Tamez, Humphrey, Yeo) tip their hat to the
emerging dialogue between Bible translation and the global interdiscipline called translation
studies (a dialogue opened a decade ago by the American Bible Society’s Nida Institute for
Biblical Scholarship, particularly in its annual School for Translation Studies). In this dia-
logue, Bible translation is reset in the context of translation studies, a context in which tra-
ditional approaches to Bible translation are creatively challenged, defamiliarized, and
offered a chance to absorb critical thinking about ethics, loyalty, culture, cognition, per-
formance, media, and power as these topics bear on the human behavior called (Bible) trans-
lation and the (hi)story of Bible translation as a spine along which Christianity grew into a
world religion. Tamez’s rereading of Luke 16:19-31 is particularly poignant. Writing as one
of Latin America’s leading feminist and liberation theologians, she rereads the parable in
the context of Latin America’s colonial history and its consequences. We learn from her
 COLLECTED ESSAYS 879

that the two scenes in this parable both “beg to be rejected. Neither one should exist; they
are both sick worlds that crave to be healed” (p. 322).

Robert Hodgson, Jr., Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship, American Bible
Society, New York, NY 10023

TOM THATCHER and STEPHEN D. MOORE, Anatomies of Narrative Criticism: The Past,
Present, and Futures of the Fourth Gospel as Literature (SBLRBS 55; Atlanta: Society
of Biblical Literature, 2008). Pp. x + 304. Paper $35.95.

This book celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of R. Alan Culpepper’s foundational

work of narrative criticism, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Culpepper sought meaning in the Gospel’s literary features
rather than in its sources, compositional history, or historical value. Following Thatcher’s
opening contribution placing Anatomy in context (“Anatomies of the Fourth Gospel: Past,
Present, and Future Probes”), the volume is divided into two parts: “Hermeneutical Reflec-
tions Twenty-Five Years after Culpepper’s Anatomy,” and “Anatomical Probes.”
Part 1 contains six essays. In “Symbolism and History in John’s Account of Jesus’
Death,” Culpepper argues that in John 19:26-27, the scene involving Jesus’ mother and the
Beloved Disciple at the cross, christology and ecclesiology intersect to create the birth of a
new community understood in terms of kinship metaphors. Adele Reinhartz (“Building
Skyscrapers on Toothpicks: The Literary-Critical Challenge to Historical Criticism”)
employs literary criticism to solve a long-standing historical problem regarding the expul-
sion passages: rather than attesting the removal of Christians from synagogues, they are
John’s warnings to believers attracted to Judaism to avoid synagogue participation.
Colleen M. Conway (“There and Back Again: Johannine History on the Other Side of Lit-
erary Criticism”) presents two case studies illustrating the convergence of historical and lit-
erary criticism: the first on postcolonial theory’s illumination of how imperial powers turn
indigenous groups against each other (thus explaining John’s anti-Jewish rhetoric); the sec-
ond on the contributions of masculinity theory to our understanding of the impact of Greco-
Roman ideologies of masculinity on presentations of Jesus. Paul N. Anderson (“From One
Dialogue to Another: Johannine Polyvalance from Origin to Reception”) argues that the lit-
erary, historical, and theological aporias (perplexities) in the Fourth Gospel are due more
to the text’s dialogical origin and development than to discrete literary sources, and that the
text should therefore be read dialogically, utilizing a polyvalent approach, such as Mikhail
Bakhtin’s “dialogism.” Jean Zumstein (“Intratextuality and Intertextuality in the Gospel of
John” [translated by Mike Gray]) finds the Fourth Gospel characterized by two different
interactions: (1) material within the Gospel itself (intratextuality) and (2) material outside
it (intertexuality). This means that the text, not history, stands at the center of the interpreter’s
task, that sophisticated methods are required for interpretation, that a text’s meaning arises
from the interplay between the intention of the work and the intention of the reader (with
emphasis on the reader), and that this model applies to all texts. In “John is Dead; Long
Live John!,” Robert Kysar (with Tom Thatcher) maintains that the concept of the “implied
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