Cosmopolitanism and biblical studies (with a welcome to Society of Biblical Literature Readers)

Cosmopolitanism and biblical studies are not terms one often mentions in the same breath. I won’t bother listing the associations ‘biblical studies’ has (I will let you play that game), but I would be surprised if cosmopolitan turned up anywhere on the list. Yet, that is what we have with this issue of The Bible and Critical Theory. To begin with, from France comes an essay on Paul Ricœur by one of the world’s leading philosophers, Alain Badiou. Then from Switzerland there is Claire Clivaz (Lausanne) and Peter Ben-Smit (Bern, although Peter found his way there from his native Netherlands). Following the path of the mythical Chinese fleet of 1421–23 when it circumnavigated the globe, touching on North America on the way, let us move westward: from Earth’s country music centre, Nashville, we have Jennifer Bird’s paper on ideological readings. And then, from New Zealand (yes, the Chinese are supposed to have been there) comes Philip Culbertson’s piece on Cain. One thing that perpetually confronted me as I worked through these papers was Walter Benjamin’s adage from his ‘Translation’ essay, namely that a translation should hug the original as a coastline hugs the shore: the contours, bumps and inlets of the original should show up in the translation itself. I am no great fan of the dominant ideology of Bible translation – touted by Eugene Nida, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Bible Societies – that goes by the name of ‘dynamic equivalence’. This is the idea that a message and its language is like water and a bucket: you can change the container, but the message remains the same. How such a position ever persuaded any translator is beyond me, since it flies in the face of common sense. Of course the syntax and grammar of a language have a profound effect on the meaning and its translation. It is with great pleasure, then, that three of the papers that appear in this issue are by people whose first language is not English – in these cases French and Dutch. One was translated by others, the Badiou article by Natalie Doyle and Alberto Toscano, but the other two, by Claire Clivaz and Peter-Ben Smit were written in English. Perhaps the best thing about these articles is that the different turn of phrase from what a native English speaker might use (although does that not vary from place to place?) makes the reader stop and think. And that, to my mind, is always a good thing. The other papers are of course just as enjoyable for other reasons. Yet, before I introduce them, let me give a warm welcome to all those people from the Society of Biblical Literature who have signed up to access book reviews printed in the journal. I would give you a big, warm hug if I could, except that I am not really a touchy-feely person; so a firm handshake and a smile will have to do. Welcome indeed! Sarah Cannon from Monash University ePress and Bob Buller from the Society of Biblical Literature have set up a wonderful deal where SBL members can access the book reviews in addition to the SBL’s Review of Biblical Literature. If you are reading this and you are not signed up, please contact Sarah at Sarah.Cannon@lib.monash.edu.au. In this issue, just to welcome our new readers, we have a bumper seventeen reviews, and the way the reviews are coming in we should have about a dozen per issue in the future. Of course, I also encourage you to subscribe to the journal, and Sarah can help you with that too. EDITORIAL