Yesterday's PAYG focussed on the Transfiguration story, as told in Matthew. Usually the recordings use the NRSV, noted for its accuracy of translation, and I noted, having never before been aware of it, the injunction of Jesus not to tell anyone about 'the vision' rather than the more more usual rendering 'what they had seen'. So I did my quick check of cross references and Greek interlinear...
- In Matthew it is referred to as a vision.
- In Mark they are told not to mention what they have seen
- In Luke they tell no-one what they've seen.
This seems to me to go a long way to addressing the literal/figurative arguments over what happened with which people seem to tie themselves in ridiculous knots. The disciples saw what they saw, it was most probably a vision, and it was sufficiently significant that much later they recalled it and told others about it.
Why am I saying all this?
Well, because all translations involve interpretation, and all interpeters are biased, they choose words that fit their understanding of what they've read. By choosing "what they had seen" rather than "the vision" the NIV translaters, deliberately or otherwise, demystify what is actually mystery, and in so doing potentially mislead readers who are probably quite literal in their views.
Because the story told was written down decades later, and was based on a recollection of events some time, possibly years, after it happened. Memory is a funny old thing, it is selective and ambiguous, it distorts, over emphasises, omits and re-imagines what actually occurred. What we read is always an interpetation of recollection, not a verbatim transcript - which can lead us into dead-ends of missing the point. Rather than questions of historicity we should be asking ourselves 'why this story, told this way' because in these editted highlights we call Gospels each author is serving their own chosen agenda.
Because it seems to me there are two extremes to which we can err, neither of which is ultimately helpful. Unquestioning literalism at one extreme and overzealous deconstruction at the other. The point of reading the stories is not to analyse them and critique them, it is to listen for the truths they carry. The point is not to discover the one and only meaning of the text but to listen for new menaings that emerge with every fresh reading. If, as we claim, this is a living word; if as we claim there is always more light and truth to break forth from God's word, then we will explore the middle ground insearch of what that might be.
And then, after the vision, after whatever the story trells or show us, we come down our mountain. We may say nothing to anyone, ever, or we may one day share a remembered story, or we might be dramatically changed...