Editorial fatigue : author :: progressive latitude : translator

The so-called Synoptic Problem in biblical studies results from the search for an explanation of the similarities in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that even in a cursory analysis essentially necessitates that there was borrowing between them. In many cases there are entire sentences that are reproduced verbatim in two or even all three of the Synoptics. Although the first to formulate the problem, Johann Jakob Griesbach, posited that Matthew and Luke were the source of Mark, the reverse order is the dominant theory today: the “priority of Mark” is the leading theory that posits Mark as the first written Gospel, which Matthew and Luke then used as a source.

Lately I’ve been interested to learn of Mark Goodacre’s special contribution to the argument for Markan priority. In essence, Dr. Goodacre has demonstrated that in parallel pericopes, while the different Gospels may differ significantly near the beginning of the passage, by the end they tend to conform to much more similar wording. After Goodacre goes on to show that the wording that corresponds more closely toward the end of each passage is more consistent with the wording of Mark throughout the rest of the passage, this amounts to a strong argument for Markan priority. This suggests that Mark was being used as the source, and the redactors of the other two Gospels, after starting off strong in their objective to make the story their own, had a tendency to undergo the effects of what Goodacre calls ”editorial fatigue”, i.e. they lapse into less creative, more verbatim borrowing from Mark.

I’ve got an idea related to all this rattling around in my head. Please stay with me.

As the earliest attested Germanic language by close to two hundred years, and a remarkably archaic language besides, the language of the Goths is extremely valuable for reconstructing Proto-Germanic. Unfortunately, virtually the only texts we have in the Gothic language are manuscripts of Wulfila’s translation of the NT, only about half of which have survived. This is doubly unfortunate because, as the translator burdened with the sacred responsibility of translating a sacred text, Wulfila was extremely slavish to the source text, aping the Greek syntax wherever it was at all intelligible in Gothic. This means that we have very little that we can be confident is authentic Gothic syntax.

What this also means is that where we observe significant variation between the Greek text and Gothic, we may then rightly suspect that we are looking at an instance of native Gothic syntax overriding that of Greek. Studying the deviation of Gothic from the Vorlage (source text) is thus potentially instructive. Here again, an unfortunate limitation is that we only have a very small corpus, so it’s hard to tell how much stock to put into each treatment of Greek.

However, my long-standing interest in the Synoptics suggested to me that for each of the more verbatim parallel passages that survive in the Gothic texts, we actually have two or three shots at seeing how Wulfila might represent a single Greek text: one for each Gospel that translates the identical parallel texts. From what I’ve seen so far, there is indeed usually a difference in the Gothic translation from Gospel to Gospel, even when the underlying Vorlage is identical.

Now back to Dr. Goodacre: I think there may be an analogue of editorial fatigue in the “Gothic Problem” I just laid out. Whereas Matthew’s and Luke’s intents to add distinctiveness to their source material dwindled as the passages drew on, I suspect that Wulfila’s apparent intent to maintain as faithful a translation as possible regardless of how wooden it sounded would have resulted in progressively more latitude in his treatment of the Greek as he grew more confident and/or “fatigued”. This progressive latitude in translation would thus work in reverse of editorial fatigue in a way, since the latter resulted in less variation whilst Wulfila’s fatigue would ostensibly work in the opposite direction. I am unaware of what the literature says about translators’ habits, but anecdotally I have certainly noticed that when I am translating Greek, Old English, or whatever, my initial intent to translate as literally as possible certainly degrades as I progress through the piece I am translating, with gradually increasing inclusion of dynamic equivalents as I progress.

What can be learned from this? Well, because ancient biblical translators were unlikely to carefully sculpt each pericope separately as a redactor would, the points of laxity/fatigue would likely come in less systematic spurts. When comparing Synoptical parallels, we could at best hypothesize that the less slavish treatment of identical Greek passages would probably be a translation further down into that translation session. From where I sit, the most it could do for someone interested in recovering native Gothic syntax is to suggest a reason why one Gospel’s translation may more closely resemble the source: it was translated closer to the beginning of a session than the same passage in another Gospel. It’s an interesting idea nonetheless, and one I’ll be keeping one eye on as I continue my dissertation research in this area.

Any thoughts?

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