Philology RIP

There’s a remarkable pairing on the obituary page of this mornings' New York Times. On the right, spread over four columns, we have Bruce M. Metzger, a translator of the Bible, and an authority on the New Testament in its original Greek. On the left over two columns, perhaps more of a niche player but no less worthy, Mordkhe Schaechter, as the Times calls him, “a leading Yiddish linguist.”

In another time, there used to be an academic discipline called “philology”—okay, there still is, but not what it used to be. Anyway, “philology,” in the classic sense of the “love of language”—its grammar, its syntax, its evolution, but inseparable from its literature. Language matters, “it makes us different from the beasts,” it is culture, it is what we are.

Both Metzger and Schaechter qualify as philologists in the grand sense, but with provocative differences. Schaechter’s life was an essay in preservation, or retrieval: he consecrated himself to the task of sustaining Yiddish as itself a sustaining force. Metzger’s career presents a different aspect. No doubt about his achievement in language, nor his ability: “besides Greek, Latin and Hebrew,” the Times recounts, he “knew Coptic, Syriac, Russian, German, Spanish, French and Dutch, among others.” A formidable portion of his formidable achievement was dedicated to Getting it Right—to assessing and evaluating the famously refractory corpus of Biblical manuscripts.

Yet perhaps is more visible achievement is the line in the first paragraph of the obituary: he “oversaw the publication of a widely used modern edition” of the Bible—an edition which “eliminated all the these and thous and many of the hes.” Stated plainly, for all his achievement in language, Metzger in the end committed himself to the view that language in the end is not All That Important.

It’s a irony not of his own making. Christianity has always taken a relaxed view of originalism in its textual tradition. Set aside the fact that most Americans think the Bible was written by King James: the vocation of Biblical scholars has been to get the Good News into as many languages as possible (I assume it is available in Sign Language and Klingon).

Muslims, at least, would find this incomprehensible. From one end of Indonesia to the other end of Africa, the core of the Muslim tradition is that Allah speaks with one voice, and that voice is Classical Arabic. Never mind the fact that so many reciters of the Koran have no idea what they are saying: at least they are speaking the authentic Word.

Schaechter in this sense was a lot closer to the tradition of Islam than to Christianity—exemplifying, perhaps, that Islam draws on its Hebrew roots even more directly than Christianity. His job was specifically not to make Yiddish culture available in English, but to make Yiddish culture available in Yiddish—to keep it alive as a language and a way of life.

This distinction seems to me important, but at the end of the day, the unity remains. Language is what makes us what we are. Remember Auden on Yeats.

Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and innocent,

And indifferent in a week

To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives;

Pardons cowardice, conceit,

Lays its honours at their feet.

--W. H. Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats d. Jan. 1939

Fn.: The Times obit of Metzger includes a couple of amusing examples of translational lacunae in the New Testmant. I admit I like these Biblical word games. Abraham needed a computer and Isaac asked him where he would get the hardware. “God,” said Abraham, “will provide the RAM.” Does the Bible mention fleas? Yes, God told Joseph to take his wife and Son and flea into Egypt. Language. It matters.