Categories
Do Not Use

Throwback: Lamin Sanneh on Religious Language

The Christian approach to translatability …shows… ordinary men and women as worthy bearers of the religious message.

Because of its concern for translations that employ the speech of the common workaday world, Christian proclamation has had a populist element. In many traditional societies, religious language has tended to be confined to a small elite of professionals. In extreme cases, this language is shrouded under the forbidding sanctions of secret societies and shrines, access to which is through induced trances or a magical formula. The Christian approach to translatability strikes at the heart of such gnostic tendencies, first by contending that the greatest and most profound religious truths are compatible with everyday language, and second, by targeting ordinary men and women as worthy bearers of the religious message. This approach introduced a true democratic spirit into hitherto closed and elitist societies, with women in particular discovering an expanded role.

From Christian Missions and The Western Guilt Complex.

Does this have anything to say regarding the current preoccupation with the literary value of the KJV?