from: http://g.msn.com/0US!s8.559_6217/77.c39/1??cm=LongHeds
LONDON-BASED AMERICAN Reform Jewish Rabbi Sidney Brichto thinks so. Over the past two years, Brichto—director of the Liberal Jewish Movement in the UK for 25 years—has published eight volumes of “The People’s Bible,” which he hopes will transform the Bible back into the popular literary masterpiece it was once considered. So far, his work has been received favorably by respected critics, and despite his emphasis on an easy-to-read fluid narrative, none has accused him of “dumbing down” the Bible. With 10 more volumes to come, NEWSWEEK’s Malcolm Beith thought this would be the right time to ask Brichto exactly what he intends to achieve. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: There have been some 3,000 translations of the Bible to date. Why another? Rabbi Sidney Brichto: The Bible has been tainted by holiness. No literary person really wants to read it. It’s a best seller least read. If you were to sit on a train and take a Bible out, it would be unusual for another person to sit next to you, because they’d think you’re either a Jehovah’s Witness or an evangelical and would be a bit frightened. I want people to read [the Bible] as literature. I want them to read the narrative as primarily fiction. They’re good stories. I want to make [the Bible] a good read … I have sex scenes, for example, in the story of Esther, because I think it requires [detail], not “He saw her, he asked her to come up to his place and he knew her and she was pregnant.” Something else happened. Those who do read the Bible read it like a duty, a chore. There are so many professors of English who would be embarrassed to admit that they haven’t read Homer or Euripides, but [unashamedly admit they] haven’t read the Bible because they feel it’s a religious tract. Your translation is called the “People’s Bible”— That was the title we gave it in 2000. Actually, I’m not that happy with the title. What would you have preferred? I don’t know. It was a tough decision. We wanted to make a Bible which brought it back to the people, something that was readable. People should not be reading it to say “Did it happen or didn’t it?” The creation of Moses as a fictional character says more about the ideal figure of the Israelites than if he actually existed the way we’re told he existed. I’m very saddened by the fact that people are ignoring a great classic. I’m trying to get my translation put on the bookshops under classics, not in the religion section. Because no one goes near the religion section. When I studied religion as a kid, the agnostics among us joked that the Bible should have been classified as fiction. It took one of my more open-minded professors to acknowledge that this wouldn’t be such a bad idea. That’s very interesting. When you meet people who don’t believe in the Bible, who don’t believe in God, they’re shocked when I tell them they don’t have to believe it’s historically true. They don’t believe, and yet they feel you should. It gives them a justification for ignoring it. I do personally believe that it’s great literature. [For instance, in] the Gospel according to John, the eroticism is not appreciated. According to John, Mary washes Jesus’ feet in the most precious of oils, which his disciples [denounce] as a waste of money and say, “Go sell the oils and give it to the poor, it’s almost a year’s salary.” She’s drying [his feet] with her hair, [and] Jesus says, “You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me with you.” This is just wonderful. You’re the first rabbi ever to translate the New Testament. Why has it taken so long for a rabbi to do this? I’ve been thinking about that. Why … Because it’s seen as a holy work and it’s not [the rabbis’] holy book. I felt that if I was going to do the Bible I had to do it all. Otherwise it would become just a Jewish enterprise, which I didn’t want it to be. I wanted it to be a human enterprise, a literary effort. I also felt that I don’t have to believe in the Greek gods to enjoy Homer. And of course, I’ve always loved the New Testament. Even though I come from an Orthodox Jewish family, in which there was never any New Testament at home, and the word “Jesus” was never mentioned, when I went to school I enjoyed so much listening to the stories of the New Testament. As a Jew, while my parents were saying I shouldn’t be part of the assemblies which talked about Christianity and the birth of Jesus, I loved it because I was proud of Jesus. We may have been persecuted because of him, but I thought that he was one Jew who made good. If you ask what Jews made the greatest contribution to modern civilization, you would have to say, among them, Jesus and Paul. How has the role of the Bible changed over the centuries? It was the [1535 William Tyndale translation of the] Bible which opened up the possibility of English literature. There was no English literature besides Chaucer. Without the [Tyndale] translation, there would have been no market for Shakespeare, the “Faerie Queene,” or Marlowe. The commoner never read until the Bible was translated. The Bible had an enormous impact. Now it’s just become the property of fundamentalists who look to [it] to be told what is right and what is wrong. People read the Bible as the will of God. But it’s absurd because individuals wrote the Bible. So the will of God is how people interpret the will of God. When did the Bible come to be commonly dismissed as hogwash by nonbelievers? I think that probably began to happen with the Enlightenment [of the 18th century]. When the Catholic church insisted that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun went around the earth, and the scientists said, “No, it’s the other way round,” it lost credibility. And then when Darwin came along [with] evolution, and you had fundamentalists saying, “No, we weren’t descended from the apes,” it lost more credibility. The Bible lost its respect as an honest recorder of events. At one time, the Bible was where people looked for answers. It was displaced by science. And the Bible was displaced as a moral book, because—with the exception of The Prophets and a portion here and a portion there—it’s pretty frightening stuff. But I’m not sorry it happened. What I am sorry about is that once it was removed from its pedestal as a source of knowledge, it was also removed from the pedestal of great classic literature. I mean, the Song of Songs, it’s really erotic poetry. When [the Shulamite] says, “Come into my garden and taste its fruits and let them overflow …,” it’s talking about intercourse, and orgasmic delights. I once had a [Baptist minister] friend [who] invited me to talk about my translation. One reading [I did] was from the Song of Songs. We had lunch, and the minister’s wife says to her husband, “Darling, you never told me that Song of Songs was part of the Bible when you read it to me!” Do you think other religious texts could benefit from literary translations? Yes, I do. The religions of the East have been translated so that their wisdom and the beauty of their storytelling capacity is appreciated. I’ve never been able to get myself to the Qur’an, so I don’t know the answer there. I’ve read a translation, and found it captivating. But the problem is that even the most professional translation is not authentic, because the Qur’an is the word of God and can’t be translated from Arabic. You’ve read the Qur’an, and you felt it was fascinating? Could you say that if it were recast that people would want to read it as literature? I definitely think so. Well, if that’s the case, someone should do it. The sad thing is that while religious people may think this is not the purpose, if people [were to] read it as literature they might come to appreciate it as religious literature too. They might even become moved to say that the study of these passages added a dimension to their life. You’re saying one might be able to draw people to the religion through the narrative? Exactly.
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