A
Study Bible in Malayalam for the Syrian Church
by D. Babu Paul, Bar Eto Briro
(A STUDY BIBLE IN MALAYALAM FOR THE SYRIAN CHURCH -
Paper presented at the workshop at the Puthenkurisu Patriarchal Centre on March
6, 2008)
Before I proceed further I must record my admiration for Bawa Thirumeni. His Beatitude has an all-encompassing vision about the mission of the Church and this endeavour is proof, if proof were needed, of that. I am grateful that Bawa Thirumeni has been pleased to associate me with this effort.
To understand the project on hand and its significance let me go back to my childhood for illustration. As in most homes in those days when Bible became available for reading in Malayalam we also had the practice of a portion being read before or after the evening prayers. And later my parents would initiate a sort of discussion on the portion read. Very elementary as I see it in retrospect but immensely useful; in fact it is those lessons and discussions that sowed the seeds that later brought forth Malayalam’s first Bible Dictionary, and well before that a decade of Bible Classes in Trivandrum St. Peter’s. Today a repetition of that type of evening family get-together is not easy. And all parents may not be able to explain or clarify either. At the same time compared to my childhood days we have enough material available in print and on line that you do not have to be well versed in Bible to teach the children. Bawa Thirumeni’s effort in launching this project is to make easily available the basics to anybody who would care to enquire. It is therefore a project that speaks of a dutiful shepherd’s sense of responsibility.
The Holy Bible was not written in our language. Obviously we depend on translations. This often creates problems. Most of us know neither Greek, the language of the New Testament, nor Hebrew. So we depend on translators. It is safer to depend on Catholic translators than others because wherever in doubt what the Catholic Text has would be close to our faith. With my personal experience spanning over almost forty years I must say that the best Malayalam translation is the Hosanna Bible, although it does not have the Imprimatur because the Hosanna-publishers obviously did not submit their work for the ‘permission to print’ which is what Imprimatur is essentially about. The official POC version is equally good of course but the overall rating would place the “rebel” work qualitatively better. Then we have the Peshita translations. They are of course good, but they suffer from the basic problem that they are themselves translations from translation. Translating from Peshita is like translating SAKUNTALAM into Malayalam from Tamil into which it was translated from Sanskrit; it goes without saying that if we can translate directly from Sanskrit we would, hopefully, capture Kalidasan’s spirit more accurately. However in the Kerala situation Peshita-versions have a special significance arising from the fact the earlier translations into Malayalam were all by Protestants. Therefore my first submission for the consideration of the scholars summoned by Bawa Thirumeni is that they should refer to more than one translation of the Bible to make sure that we get the meaning correctly.
To study the Bible we use many tools. The first is Commentary. Here again there are many but I would recommend Jerome Commentary both for depth and theological acceptability for us. Protestant commentaries are also of great use provided we are always alert against Protestant views; after all in most aspects there is nothing denominational in exegetics or hermeneutics. Secondly we have the Bible Dictionary. In studying the Bible a dictionary is a technical term which denotes a more exhaustive nature than an encyclopedia. The first original work in Malayalam is VEDASABDARATNAKARAM brought out by the State Institute of Languages. This is meant for a universal secular audience but while care has been taken to avoid controversies to that end the book also highlights our church’s teachings wherever inevitable albeit ever so subtly and cautiously! Thirdly we have Concordances. We have some in Malayalam but it would be better to use English works, and go on line if necessary. And then we have the Reference Bible. The first work in Malayalam is DANIEL published from Angamaly but that may contain a lot of Protestant views which should be carefully and cautiously vetted. In any case we may not need to refer to DANIEL since our scheme of work would be slightly different, as Aprem Thirumeni and Moolayail Cor Episcopa would be explaining at the workshop. Thus my second submission is that we may basically depend on Jerome and VSRatnakaram, for commentary and Dictionary respectively.
Thirdly I come to Concordances. We use concordances to find whereat a particular passage occurs. We may know the case of the Prodigal Son. The average man may not recall that it is in Luke 15. Or the case of the woman who anointed. Or the case of one caught in adultery. With one word we can locate the passage. Secondly we can use the concordance to explain briefly how a topic is treated in Bible, Genesis to Revelation. Blindness for example. If we can locate all references to this we can search and take a thread. “Be fruitful and multiply” appears in two places in Genesis. In a Reference Bible it should be available as a footnote. Thirdly a Concordance helps us to understand what can be described as ‘nuances’ of meaning. Same words may be used by different authors with different connotations. “Righteousness” is an oft-quoted example. Matthew may not intend the same meaning that Paul later develops as his theology unfurls. What words are to be chosen for such a treatment in our Bible is a matter which will finally be decided by the Corps of Editors, based on considerations like significance, theological import and of course space. Similarly what Concordance should be used is also a matter on which the Corps of Editors would take a view. Perhaps it may be possible for us to provide more specifically advice/suggestions once we decide on the words to be included. For instance if one of us is writing for the study of Thessalonians we can perhaps access the words required for those epistles through limited guidance material; this is a matter which we will have to tackle before we actually commence writing. I say this, also, because the Concordances that we have will be in English, and linked to English translations. Often it may become necessary to relate to the original Greek. Here we have tools like Strong’s Numbers which we may not really need except while editing, perhaps, a work of this type. What Strong did was to identify words in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew and assign numbers. With this number we can cross-reference and go deeper into the meaning of the original word. To understand the significance of this exercise, for instance, take the word “church”. Any English Concordance will tell us where this word occurs. However what is translated as church is the Greek word ekklesia. And this word affords different ways to be translated. Unless we go to the Greek, either by learning the language or by depending on tools like Strong’s Numbers we cannot explore this angle. However here again things become more complex when we realize that there may be variations, however minute, even among Greek texts. After all we do not have the original texts; what we have are copies made when no printing press or DTP was available. Consequently mistakes are but natural in transmission. This means that differences in text may not be intentionally made but they do exist. Details on this may be seen in VSR* under the various captions under VEDAPUSTAKAM.
Reference would also be in order to Expository Dictionaries. A famous one is Vine’s Expository Dictionary. What Vine (W E Vine) did is to collect words from original Greek. For instance we have the word ‘love’. In Greek it could be either agape or philo. Beyond Vine’s type of work we may also depend on Dictionaries of Biblical Theology. Here again it would be safer to depend on Catholic works. My own favourite is one edited under the direction of Xavier Leon-Dufour.
Like Concordance we have ‘topical Bible’. The former lists words while the latter will provide references to ideas and themes. It may not be essential to have access to topical Bibles for the limited purpose of our present project.
Cross reference is the one single most important tool we need. A Reference Bible would fail if appropriate cross-referencing is not attempted therein.
It would be in order here to add before concluding some basic principles that should guide us in interpreting the Bible. First and the foremost, we should relate to the context. The context here means the total Biblical context, i.e. what if any does the Bible as a whole say on this? And then the context of the particular book; Philemon and Romans being written in different contexts to different recipients may have to be understood differently. And then of course the context per se; what preceded and what follows may throw light on interpretation. Literal interpretation is a severe temptation. And so is going for the plain sense meaning. Here one has to be guided by the teachings and traditions of the church. This is particularly true in interpreting prophecies. This field is known as hermeneutics. Hermeneuo in Greek means to interpret or to explain. Hermes is a divine messenger according to Greek mythology and the word is derived from this. It may be useful to refer to the entry in VSR* on the subject. Basic to our work on hand is the fact in hermeneutics and exegesis we follow the traditional position of our church and its traditions. In this process, subject to this defining qualification, we can use any of the different types of studies that are available. I enter the caveat because of my personal experience with Barclay. It is a series that gave me confidence to study the Bible, different from Peake or Gore that I had found dry and difficult when I saw them in my father’s bookshelf. Yet I must say it contains too many views extremely Protestant in nature. But they are all useful if we do not get carried away like some latter-day Catholic Charismatics.
We may also refer in passing to the major types of Bible studies. Expository Study takes a passage in the Bible and tries to find out exactly what it means by reading and re-reading, sentence by sentence and word by word, noting differences in translations, trying to understand the context and looking up parallel passages. Topical Study attempts to study a topic by looking at all the passages that deal with a particular topic. Word Study looks at all the references to a particular word in the Bible. An exhaustive concordance is required for this type of study. Thematic Study is similar to topical study, but a little more abstract. Doctrinal Study involves studies on the various doctrines in the Bible, Trinity for instance. Biographical Study is an examination of the life of a particular person in the Bible, what we can learn from the life of a man or woman in the Bible. Character Trait Study looks at a character trait such as pride. Such classification is almost endless: take towns, plants, birds, beasts et al.
Before closing a word on apparent contradictions would also be in order. Most of the contradictions are actually not contradictions at all. They seem to be contradictions because we don't understand enough of our Bibles, or because we don't know enough about ancient cultures. . For example, Romans 3:23 tells us that "all have sinned". 1 Peter 2:22, speaking of the Lord Jesus, tells us, "He committed no sin". Is this a contradiction? In some cases calendars may explain the difference, in some the system of counting time (e.g. HH Zakka I became Patriarch on Sept. 14, 1980. Some may count Jan 1 1981 as the second year of reign, others may count the second year from Sept 14, 1981.), in some places it could be repetitive presentations, it could be that one person has more than one name (Daniel/BabuPaul, Baselios Thomas/Thomas I) and more than one person may have the same name (Babu Paul, MLA and Babu Paul not MLA, Baselios1, 2, and 3). There are books which deal with these like e.g. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. The basic point is that you need the Holy Spirit for your Bible Study. Without the Holy Spirit, Bible study can become intellectually useful but not spiritually profitable. The value of praying over the Bible can hardly be overemphasized. Pray before you begin to study, pray while you study and pray after you study.
The Bible like any branch of knowledge has ‘technical’ terms. While it is not necessary to know all such ‘big’ words like ‘atonement’ we must know that such words allow us to describe complex concepts. Concordances and Bible Dictionaries may help.
I have tried to highlight some areas that appeared important in our work. All of you called by Bawa Thirumeni are knowledgeable people and may take the foregoing only as a beacon light to be followed by each one personally, beseeching guidance by the Holy Spirit and praying before, during and after the work. All I tried to do was to indicate the complexities so that we realize that we are on sacred ground before entering which we may remove the footwear of complacency (cf. Ex 3:5).
May God bless our work and guide us through this difficult Sinai.
