1 Corinthians 9:27 and the Quest for a Metaphor-for-Metaphor Translation

The blogosphere is abuzz with a discussion about how best to translate 1 Corinthians 9:27. Nathan Stitt is having a grand ol’ time. So far, I’ve only ventured to a leave a comment on the question over at Gentle Wisdom. It was noticed, so I’d better explain myself.

For me, it’s all about metaphors and how to translate them. I come to the question with an axe to grind. In fact, it’s already sharpened and ready to draw blood. The reason: I despise translations which “improve” on the source text by doing away with metaphorical language and putting clear propositional language in its place. If the text says, “Ouch!” – say “Ouch!” Don’t say, “It hurts me.” (The example is courtesy of Berkeley linguist Rich Rhodes, go here).

But it’s not that simple, and that is what Doug Chaplin is getting at. It’s important to figure out if an apparent metaphor in the source text is live, dead, comatose, or a zombie waiting to pull you to a premature death. You didn’t know there were so many kinds of metaphors? But there are. Someday I will take the question up through the magnificent lens of Benjamin Harshav’s theory of metaphor. For now, I will approach the question in a pedestrian manner.

It so happens that this afternoon, I was reading from David Daniell’s splendid The Bible in English: Its History and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Tyndale is his hero, but he also makes a solid case for the claim that the Geneva New Testament (which he calls ‘1557’) and the Geneva Bible (1560) are of the utmost importance in the history of English Bible translation. So excuse me if I quote at length from Daniell’s exposition (pp. 285-286):

Different features of ‘1557’ may be seen in comparing Tyndale in another short parable, from Luke 18:1-5, first in Tyndale:

And he put forth a similitude unto them, signifying that men ought always to pray, and not be weary saying, There was a judge in a certain city, which feared not God neither regarded man. And there was a certain widow in the same city, which came unto him saying: avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while. But afterward he said unto himself: though I fear not God, nor care for man, yet because the widow troubleth me, I will avenge her lest at the last she come and hag on me.[1]

In ‘1557’:

And he put forth a similitude also unto them, to this end that they ought always to pray, and not to wax faint.

2. Saying, There was a Judge in a certain city, which feared not God, neither reverenced man.

3. And there was a certain widow in the same city, which came unto him, saying, Do me justice against mine adversary.

4. And he would not for a long time: but afterward he said with himself, Though I fear not God, nor reverence man,

5. Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will do her right, lest at the last she come and make me weary with her importunity.

Two thoughts come straight to mind: (1) Tyndale and 1557 are amazing translations. Modern translations stink in comparison. (2) The history of Bible translation includes cases of one step forward, and two back. Overall, that’s how I would see 1557 in relation to Tyndale.

Daniell goes on to explore how KJV Luke 18:1-5 reads in the wake of Tyndale and 1557:

KJV kept the first italics, to this end, but not the others, going back to Tyndale’s ‘a while’. Tyndale’s ‘hag’ did not survive, thought it is recorded in OED (Hag, v.².3.), ‘to fatigue, tire out, “fag”’, first from 1674 (ignoring Tyndale here) and in use until 1854. The ‘importunity’ of ‘1557’ gave the parable its later title, ‘The importunate widow’: the Latin word is neither in the Vulgate, which has sugillet me, figuratively ‘taunt’ (literally ‘beat black and blue’) nor Wyclif, which has ‘condemn me.’

It should be made clear that though additional phrases like ‘weary with her importunity’ expand the Greek ὑπωπιάζη (hupopiadzē), ‘afflict, vex’ (also literally ‘beat black and blue’), it was usually ‘1557’’s marking with italics, not the giving of additional words, which was new. Thus, where, to take one example out of hundreds, ‘1557’ has at Romans 10:30, ‘I mean the righteousness which cometh of faith’, Tyndale had had ‘I mean the righteousness which cometh of faith’.

Now, anyone who doesn’t find Daniell’s discussion of great interest must be dead to the world of words. The same Greek verb, ὑπωπιάζω, occurs in 1 Corinthians 9:27. Here is the larger passage:

οὐκ οἴδατε

ὅτι οἱ ἐν σταδίῳ τρέχοντες

πάντες μὲν τρέχουσιν

εἷς δὲ λαμβάνει τὸ βραβεῖον

οὕτως τρέχετε ἵνα καταλάβητε

πᾶς δὲ ὁ ἀγωνιζόμενος πάντα ἐγκρατεύεται

ἐκεῖνοι μὲν οὖν ἵνα φθαρτὸν στέφανον λάβωσιν

ἡμεῖς δὲ ἄφθαρτον

 

ἐγὼ τοίνυν

οὕτως τρέχω ὡς οὐκ ἀδήλως

οὕτως πυκτεύω ὡς οὐκ ἀέρα δέρων

ἀλλὰ ὑπωπιάζω μου τὸ σῶμα

καὶ δουλαγωγῶ

μή πως ἄλλοις κηρύξας

αὐτὸς ἀδόκιμος γένωμαι

A translation a lot of people like, TC, for example, is TNIV:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

Doug Chaplin translates 1 Cor 9:26-27 thusly:

I don’t jog around taking my eye off the ball, nor do I ponce about shadow-boxing. Instead I put my body through a punishing training schedule, so that I don’t become one of those who tell others what to do, but themselves collapse before the finishing line.

I’m not happy with TNIV or Chaplin (an aside: is ‘ponce’ really a verb, and one that can be used like that?). TNIV is not convincing because it takes the verb ὑπωπιάζω literally rather than metaphorically. Doug’s translation catches the sense, but is prolix and wordy. For example, ‘I put my body through a punishing training schedule’ is clear, but at the cost of a textual lobotomy; that is, the allusivity and compactness of the verb and the larger construction in the original have been removed.

How then might we translate 1 Corinthians 9:27? NJB 1 Cor 9:24-27 – also a bit wordy - deserves to be better known:

Do you not realize that, though all the runners in the stadium take part in the race, only one of them gets the prize? Run like that – to win. Every athlete concentrates completely on training, and this is to win a wreath that will wither, whereas ours will never wither. So that is how I run, not without a clear goal; and how I box, not wasting blows on air. I punish my body and bring it under my control, to avoid any risk that, having acted as a herald to others, I myself may be disqualified.

‘I punish my body’ works pretty well, though it is still not as vivid as the Greek. NRSV uses the identical phrase. I am tempted to translate ‘I abuse my body,’ but the word ‘abuse’ is radioactive in current usage. I field-tested ‘I punish my body’ with my son Giovanni, a high school soccer player. He said, okay, but that’s not what we say. We say, “I bust my butt.’ Now that’s a metaphor. Too bad it's too low brow for a Bible translation.

Here is another attempt at a faithful translation of 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (not the same thing as syntactic transliteration, TC). It owes much to NJB:

You realize, don’t you, that all the runners in the stadium run the race, but only one gets the prize? Run like that – to win. An athlete is disciplined in all things; they do it for a perishable wreath, we, for one that will not perish. So that is how I run, with a clear goal; that is how I box, not wasting blows on air. I break my body, I make it my slave, so that, after having preached to others, I myself am not disqualified.

I realize that ‘I break my body’ is strong language. But athletes talk that way (a google-found quote): “What I would like to do is break my body down to its natural form. . . .  I chose Bikram’s because it’s hard. It makes you strain, sweat and gasp. Some think this is the antithesis of yoga and that makes me like it more. If the whole point was to sit cross legged and focus on the third eye or breathing through the left foot I would be outta there quicker than you can say ‘Crossfit’. . . . I need to indulge my masochistic side on a daily basis.”

So far as I can see, ὑπωπιάζω is not to be taken literally, just as 'I break my body' in English is not literal. Nonetheless, the verb and the larger construction amounts to a strong, vivid, and terse expression. It fits the world of athletics. I remember what it was like to swim competitively. We would train five, six hours a day. I know what it means to break my body, to abuse it, until it does things it would otherwise never have been able to do.

UPDATE: David Ker joins the fray with an eye-popping post. Go here. ElShaddai Edwards makes a number of astute observations. In honor of Doug’s use of the verb ‘ponce,’ here are a couple of image.

SECOND UPDATE: Wise words from Doug Chaplin, who, in an aside, thanks Tyndale and others for introducing (to break it down) Hebraisms, Septuagintalisms, New Testamentalisms, and Vulgatisms into English. Indeed, the language has been enriched thereby. 

THIRD UPDATE: Nathan Stitt goes at it again, and J. K. Gayle very helpfully cites and translates other texts which use the verb in question.

 

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[1] [Note to Suzanne and Rich; ‘man’ is used in an inclusive sense here].

Comments

[Peter Kirk]

John, thanks for this wonderful post.

Yes, "ponce about" is a verb here in England, used idiomatically just as Doug is using it. See this definition, to which I would add that someone who ponces about is not only "not doing something properly, quickly, or seriously" but also acting like a ponce in the sense "If you call a man a ponce, you are insulting him because you think the way he dresses or behaves is too feminine." So, in Doug's paraphrase, Paul is saying he is not boxing in an improper and girlish way.

But, John, I am puzzled by your statement "TNIV is not convincing because it takes the verb ὑπωπιάζω literally rather than metaphorically." What do you want? Be consistent! At the start of the post you write "I despise translations which “improve” on the source text by doing away with metaphorical language and putting clear propositional language in its place." Then you criticise TNIV for not doing away with the metaphorical language! What do you want? You don't criticise Doug for replacing the metaphor by a different one, only for losing compactness, even though his metaphor can easily be misunderstood as literal language. If you want to keep a metaphor, what is wrong with keeping the original metaphor?

The best solution I have seen so far is your Giovanni's. It is a clear modern idiom with probably the right meaning. But there is no danger of it being taken too literally. Well, I hope not - I hope such a translation would not end up with fundamentalists taking knives to cut open their rear ends. But, since for some people this language is too explicit for the Bible, I can offer an alternative which may have originated as a euphemistic variant of Giovanni's expression: "I bust my gut". In the context this is unlikely to be misunderstood literally, although Google shows that it has been used of slimming.

[JohnFH]

Hi Peter.

You may be right that TNIV means to translate a metaphor with a metaphor. But I took 'I strike a blow to my body' literally when I read it, and I don't think I'm the only one.

For something to count as a metaphor, it has be more than strong imagery. Someday I'll go through the question more carefully, on the basis of Harshav's theory of metaphor.

[Suzanne McCarthy]

John,

With little time, but, I am perfectly capable of figuring out that "man" means people in 1567 - don't condescend! And don't prolix and wordy mean the same thing? See ya.

[Duane]

I view this subject as one of the most complex we face in dealing with any non-contemporary literature or literature written in a language other than our own. Even some contemporary literature in our native language can be problematic. A fully spelled out metaphor (X is Y) is generally not a problem. But this doesn't come up all that often. Implied metaphors (Y only) can be a big problem. One of the problems with tropes of all kinds and not just metaphors is that they usually have tight associations with very specific, but often subtle and interacting, cultural phenomena. Such associations may well be beyond our grasp. Take our expression "cool" for example. I think this is more a metonymy than a metaphor but that's a side issue. Before World War I it had a completely different and opposite meaning (See Lincoln's Cooper Union address). In an ancient literature there are likely many occasions where we don't even know we are dealing with a trope; or worse, that we are dealing with something that one might take at face value and as a trope, "The temperature was in the fifties but I loved it. It was a very cool day." I suspect that 1 Corinthians 9:27 may be a case in point. Even questions of whether a trope is "live, dead, comatose, or a zombie waiting to pull you to a premature death" may be nearly impossible to sort out without detailed knowledge of its evolving use and context and the cultural phenomena that may be driving the trope.

[JohnFH]

Hi Suzanne.

But you have to admit, Laila Ali does her Dad proud.

I was of course deliberate in using 'prolix and wordy' to describe - a bit unfairly - a prolix and wordy translation.

[JohnFH]

Duane,

you make an excellent point. David Ker wants us to believe that the original concreteness of this verb is bleached away in both Luke and 1 Cor. I think he's right and wrong at the same time. The way we use language, as you exemplify, is more complex than that.

It's interesting that according to BAGD, the verb is less washed out in Luke (its preferred gloss reads 'in order that she might not fly in my face') and more washed out in 1 Cor ('treat roughly').

[Peter Kirk]

John, I see what you mean now about the TNIV rendering, but I had just the same problem with Doug's rendering: it can too easily be taken literally.

[David Ker]

You've got some great writing in this post. I think the metaphor is dead and no one wants to dance with a dead partner. In fact they're dancing with a ghost that isn't there. So better to just give a literal equivalent and move on... but I'm a brow-beating low brow in this discussion.

[JohnFH]

You make it sound easy, David. What do you mean by a "literal equivalent"?

[J. K. Gayle]

In an ancient literature there are likely many occasions where we don't even know we are dealing with a trope; or worse, that we are dealing with something that one might take at face value and as a trope, "The temperature was in the fifties but I loved it. It was a very cool day."

Duane makes this great point. But we contemporary translators do well with "face value" on this one.

From Homer's single use of ὑπωπιά[ζη] (hupopia[dzē]) in Illiad, to Aristotle's couple of uses in Rhetoric, to the pseudo Aristotle's few uses in Problemata, to Aristophanes's humorous uses in a couple of plays--the word always associated "black" on the "face" and mainly on the "eye." Why? Then we have those two NT uses; then Photius (with his lexicon) and much later Basilius Bessarion with his translations of Aristotle. Whenever is the word not seen in the "face"?

as ARistophanes says:
πρὸς ταῦτα τηροῦ μὴ λάβῃς ὑπώπια.
and the moral is: watch out or you'll get a black eye.

and here's a couple of entries from Photius:
Ὑπώπια:
τὰ ὑπὸ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς πελιώματα·
ἢ τὰ ἐξ αὐτῶν ἐξιόντα πῦα.
Ὑπώπια:
ἀπὸ μέρους τὴν ὄψιν.

Question: if before and after the NT, "black" and "eye" and/or "face" are senses of ὑπωπιά, then why would any English translator of the NT want to be "literal" or "metaphorical" in other ways? In other words, in Luke and in I Corinthians, is there a problem with using "black eye" or "bruised face" when those sorts of physical images fit just fine in translations before and after the NT?

[JohnFH]

Hi Kurk,

thanks for quoting and translating from extra-biblical Greek literature. I am sympathetic to your point, but I ask two things from you:

(1) citation and translation of the Aristophanes occurrences, which I think prove that the metaphor is not always fully loaded (David Ker goes too far, however, if he thinks that it is therefore dead)

(2) your own translation of the relevant passages in Luke and 1 Cor.

[David Ker]

I hesitate to comment here because I don't want you to pluck your beard and rend your garment but I think the CEV translation is in the KJV tradition "I keep my body under control."

All the "bust my ... " renderings are over-translations (if my dead metaphor theory is swallowed) and so they draw more attention to the word than they should.

It's as if someone thousands of years from now read this sentence: "I can't bear another word about 1 Cor. 9:27" and tried to really capture the "rich meaning" of "bear."

[David Ker]

Sorry, I missed JK's last statement.

JK, I think you're providing a lot of helpful evidence here. As Doug and others have pointed out it is hard for us from a distance to know how consciously Paul was using this word. I always work from the assumption that the speaker was using the language intentionally and not simply fumbling around as a non-native speaker.

[Nathan Stitt]

I've left a new post on my blog with a revised translation of vv. 26-27. I think I'll stop after this, though I've really enjoyed the discussion all around.

[J. K. Gayle]

Okay John.

(Nathan's third-round translation is terrific!)

[Iyov]

Daniell's book is quite good, and your post earily presages one I am preparing on the different facsimile editions of the Geneva available. The 1557 is available conveniently in a an edition well worth downloading, The English Hexapla. Unfortunately, the double page layout is a bit strange when using PDF, but certainly usable. (I'm sticking to my hardbound copy -- the book is still in print.) The 1560 can also be downloaded and has just been republished in absolutely beautiful edition (less than $40 from christianbook.com -- especially if you use one of those online coupons). It is true, the KJV has serious competitor's in both Tyndale and the early editions of the Geneva. Later editions of the Geneva are not recommended. I'll post the gory details on my blog sometime in the future.

And, I must say, not only is the Geneva cheaper (at the cost of $0) than the ESV Study Bible, but it is full of Calvinist notes to boot.

[JohnFH]

Thanks for your helpful comments and the buying tips, Iyov.

[J. K. Gayle]

Hi John,

You said: "I am sympathetic to your point, but I ask two things from you."

Would you be so kind now as to let me know if you're still sympathetic here? (I used the space of my blog to respond to your two requests). Or would you mind just saying what you think of my response? I know you're very very busy with other things; but I do value your insight on language and translation. I imagine others reading would welcome your perspectives too, if it is on something you asked me to do!

[JohnFH]

Hi Kurk. Sorry I didn't notice your comment here earlier.

I really don't know for sure what kind of metaphorical transfer we are to presume in the case of the Greek verb in question. I suspect it varied from context to context, whereas you try to translate in a concordant fashion.