It’s the bestseller universal. It is estimated that about five billion copies of the Bible circulate in the world, and that, in more than 700 languages. Few texts have been more scrutinized, dissected, discussed and translated. In French, translations multiplied throughout the XXe century. This goes from the translation of Louis Segond (1888), produced at the end of the 19eto the Jerusalem Bible (1956) passing through that of La Pléiade (1971) or that of André Chouraqui (1985), who was in search of the Hebrew roots of the Gospels.
What, in 2022, can possibly motivate a solitary translator to start all over again and launch headlong into a new translation of the Gospels? This is the challenge that the writer, publisher and translator Frédéric Boyer has been tackling for several years.
“Each new translation is in search of something. I wanted to personally take up these four Gospels by asking the question of the literature in these texts which restore the life and teaching of a young rabbi called Yeshua at the beginning of the Ier century. For these Jewish texts — which are not yet Christian even if they will become so — are first and foremost literary works. They tell stories, they are prayers, poems that have been written, read, transmitted and commented on. At their origin, there is a literary act. I wondered how these texts invented a new language, a literature and a certain relationship to tradition and transmission. »
At the confluence of several worlds
One can be interested in the Bible without being a believer, explains Frédéric Boyer, as one can marvel at the poems of Saint John of the Cross, one of the greatest poets of the Spanish Golden Age. In 2000, it was Frédéric Boyer who had also been at the origin of the “Writers’ Bible” (The Bible. New translation, Bayard) which associated exegetes with well-known authors, such as Jean Echenoz, Emmanuel Carrère and Valère Novarina. Quebecers also took part in the adventure, such as our former colleague from Homework Marie-Andrée Lamontagne and the poet and essayist Jacques Brault, who has just died.
“This time, I wanted to confront it alone with slightly different questions”, says the translator who, like most specialists, does not believe in the thesis according to which the Gospels were first written. in a Semitic language. “We can always fantasize, as we did on lost texts in Aramaic, in Hebrew and which we have never found. I don’t think they ever existed. Aramaic was not a literary language and, at that time, people no longer wrote in Hebrew, but in Greek. Anyone who wanted to immortalize an oral tradition had an interest in choosing this language. »
The Greek of the Gospels is however at the confluence of several worlds. It is even a language that the anthropologist and philosopher René Girard did not hesitate to describe as “bastardized, cosmopolitan and devoid of literary prestige”.
“It’s true that it’s not a very literary language, like that of Thucydides, for example,” says Boyer. It is a more popular language, of exile and of the diaspora, very cosmopolitan and which has undergone strong influences. The teaching of this rabbi was probably done in Aramaic while Hebrew texts were read in the synagogue. The Gospels bear the scars of this translation work that I have tried to make heard. It’s going a little hastily to say that it’s a language that isn’t beautiful. First, we don’t know. Then, when we see what these texts are going to give, we say to ourselves that they had breath. »
Make the oral heard
The language of the Gospels is first marked by orality since “these texts were not read like today, says the translator. They were written to be read in public. In writing, we tried to restore the force of this word. In Antiquity, there was no opposition between the written and the oral. It is after that it will develop”.
This is why, for example, Frédéric Boyer meticulously endeavors to translate in various ways the conjunction Kai, which does not mean anything in itself, but which signals the taking of the floor. The text is therefore sprinkled at the beginning of sentences with andof yes and of So, trying to restore the original rhythm. “The Gospels are full of words like that that we generally do not translate because we are looking for the beautiful written language, which is legitimate. My idea was on the contrary to make this work heard to try to restore the force of orality, not in the picturesque sense, but because this word has a force and a musicality. It’s fast, rhythmic and sometimes a little incoherent. The idea is not to make something believable, but to capture the attention, to strike the audience and to show that the word is a power, an action. »
Touching the Gospels is also touching words that have long had a strong meaning in our societies. ” Word Fishing, for example, is an English translation of the Latin pecatum, which is itself a translation from the Greek hamartia, itself translated from the Hebrew. Gold, hamartia rather means mistake, lack Where error, as in “missing your way” or “missing the target”. It is a word used in tragedy. As Aristotle explains in the Poetic, the fault is not moral. For Aristotle, Oedipus committed no moral fault. He was simply wrong. »
In Frédéric Boyer’s Gospels, Yeshua therefore does not speak of “sin”, but of “error”. “He always says, ‘you understood this’, ‘I understood that’. The question of interpretation is central, as in the Jewish tradition in general. If you want to live, you have to interpret. There is no life without interpretation. Perhaps the main message is there. Similarly, under the pen of Boyer, the priests become the priestssince they were in charge of the sacrifices.
The Gospels draw on both popular stories, Greek legends and the great stories of the birth of kings or gods. Boyer compares the story of Jesus’ life to that of this ugly young girl who is suddenly discovered to be a princess. “He was born in a stable. No one pays attention to him, he is rejected everywhere and suddenly people say that he is the Messiah, that he was born in Bethlehem and that he is even from the family of David. »
As for the Odyssey, it is most certainly a collective writing on which stories will be grafted. “Mark, Luke, Matthew and John are probably only tutelary figures who lend their name to the Gospels exactly as the songs of numerous bards have been brought together under the name of Homer. »
The end of a world?
In 2001, the “Writers’ Bible” sparked controversy. Catholics had challenged certain translation choices. This time, the controversy could not be there, seems to deplore Frédéric Boyer. “Christian circles are no longer in very good health, he says, and the intellectual forces capable of taking an interest in this debate are no longer there. It’s no secret that Christianity has been collapsing culturally and intellectually for 50 years. I’m obviously talking about Europe. However, hasn’t the strength of Christianity always been its writers, its intellectuals and its theologians? Today, there are not many people left to think, write and reason…”
But, perhaps we will rediscover these texts, immediately rectifies the translator in a moment of start. Moreover, for Frédéric Boyer, isn’t the most beautiful passage in the Gospels that of the women at the tomb where, having come to take care of the body as is done in the Jewish tradition, they discover its disappearance? “Finally, the four Gospels lead to this impossibility of describing what happened. What is beautiful in these texts is that they do not want to stop at death. We are forced to see it, but this will not be the end of the story. We are going to tell how life resumes. This is perhaps the meaning that can still be found there today. »