Creativity beyond Dynamic Equivalence in Bonnie Lewis’s English Timshel Translation

Abstract

The societal and cultural significance of the Bible and the interpretations and applications thereof mean that the legitimacy of Bible translations and translation strategies are extensively debated. However, creativity in Bible translation has not often been specifically addressed. In the last century, much of the discourse around Bible translation has been shaped by the work of Eugene Nida. This paper approaches the topic of creativity within Bible translation by examining Nida’s work with a particular concern for this topic. Bonnie Lewis’s Timshel: An Idiomatic Bible Translation is then discussed as a case study. Lewis’s work is an explicitly creative rendering of sections of the Bible in English, inspired by the Jewish tradition of midrash, a reading between the lines, and including extra-biblical content. Examination of Lewis’s project provokes questions about the role of creativity in Bible translation, translation vs. preaching, and who is permitted to translate the Bible.

Of the over 2.4 billion Christians in the world, only a minute proportion are able to understand the texts of the Bible in the original languages (Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Aramaic); the vast majority access the Bible through translation. ¹ Translation is built into the Bible: translation of the New Testament is inherent in the original manuscripts, which recorded in Koine Greek events and conversations that occurred in “the languages of Jesus (whether Aramaic, Hebrew, or possibly a local dialect of Greek)” (Stine 2004, 14). Some versions of Neh 8.8 even state that the Levites “translated” the book of the Law of God for the people (see NIV footnote), although, in a way that perhaps demonstrates different understandings of translation, “translated” is also translated as “interpreting” (NABRE), “amplifying” (AMPC), and “explaining” (LSB, NET). The inbuilt translation in the Bible, in addition to the fundamental belief within Christianity that “God’s word can and should be communicated in all languages and cultures” (Stine 2004, 14), evidenced at Pentecost, leads to a unique situation. No type of translating surpasses Bible translating in the range of genres included in the text, in the variety of source languages and number of target languages ² and target cultures, the historical depth of the translation, the corpus of translated texts, the number of translators, the debates surrounding the translations, and the amount of data collected concerning the translations (Nida 1964, 4). This makes Bible translation an extremely fertile ground for translation studies, and indeed a huge amount of work has been done in this field, but the question of creativity has been explicitly addressed relatively rarely. ³ This paper explores this question by examining the prominent translation scholar Eugene Nida’s treatment of creativity and examining how Bonnie Lewis’s creative translation of sections of the Bible, Timshel, breaks the boundaries established by Nida. This exploration highlights some of the most fundamental questions of Bible translation: What is the role of creativity, or of exegesis? Where is the line between translation and interpretation? What is the correct translation and who decides? Who is allowed to translate the Bible?

Nida’s translation framework: Functional and formal equivalence

Although Bible translation has existed for almost as long as the Bible itself, and Bible translators had discussed and sought to justify their translation strategies before Nida (we may think of St. Jerome [AD 395], Martin Luther [1530], or John Dryden [1681]), their writings focused primarily on defending their translation decisions rather than developing a theoretical basis for strategies that others could employ (Stine 2004, 177). Eugene Nida (1914–2011) was a highly influential scholar, not only in the field of Bible translation but in translation studies more generally, even being considered “one of the pioneers of translation studies as an academic discipline” (Stine 2004, 10), and played a large part in developing a robust theoretical basis for Bible translation. The depth and breadth of his impact makes his work a useful starting point for discussions of contemporary Bible translation, particularly since it may, at least subconsciously, form the basis of criteria of acceptability of new Bible translations. This is not to say that Bible translation scholarship is limited to Nida, nor that Bible translation has remained where it was in the 1960s. Nonetheless, the lasting impact of Nida’s work in how Bible translation is considered both within translation scholarship and among laypeople makes his proposals a useful springboard for discussion.

Before considering Nida’s treatment of creativity, let us briefly consider the framework he provided for translation theory. His 1964 work Toward a Science of Translating and its companion, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Nida and Taber 1969), present the initial foundations of this framework, including the concept of translations as being placed on a continuum between formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. According to Nida, in these works, “formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content,” whereas “a translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture: it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in order to comprehend the message” (Nida 1964, 159). Within the dynamic equivalence approach, Nida emphasises the importance of form, stating that “it would be a serious mistake to distinguish categorically between external form and internal meaning, for the form itself so frequently carries significant meaning” (Nida and de Waard 1986, 13), and implores the translator to “employ a functionally equivalent set of forms which in so far as possible will match the meaning of the original source-language text” (36).

We can draw parallels from Nida’s dynamic equivalence (later termed functional equivalence [Nida and de Waard 1986]) to the early theologian, philosopher, and translation scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher’s imagery of leaving “the reader in peace as much as possible and [moving] the writer toward him” (1813), or the more recent concept of a domesticating translation strategy, introduced by translation scholar Lawrence Venuti, defined as “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to receiving cultural values, bringing the author back home” (Venuti 1995, 16). Indeed, Venuti, who in many works has advocated against domestication in favour of foreignisation (“an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad” [Venuti 1995, 16]), has been critical of Nida’s advocacy of a functionally equivalent approach, arguing that it enlists “transparency” in order to enact “ethnocentric violence” including cultural erasure, and that this “illusion of transparency” hides the processes of interpretation that occur within the translation (Venuti 2008, 16).

Venuti’s more recent work seems to provide a more nuanced view, as he proposes a “hermeneutic” approach to translation that “conceives of translation as an interpretive act that inevitably varies source-text form, meaning, and effect according to intelligibilities and interests in the receiving culture” (Venuti 2019, 1). As noted by Perminova and Naydan, “the ideas expressed in [Venuti’s] book are in line with the modern episteme of dynamic functional systems” (2020, 271) and, indeed, “why would … hermeneutics and dynamic equivalence be mutually exclusive?” (762). In this work, Venuti nevertheless strongly rejects “instrumental” models of translation, such as that which “defines translation as the reproduction of a source-text invariant [and] generates the translation theorist Eugene Nida’s concept of ‘equivalent effect’” (Venuti 2019, 7).

Nida and creativity: Creative writing not creative interpretation

Let us now consider creativity more specifically. As we will see, for Nida, the locus of creativity within translation is (or at least should be) firmly situated in the production of the final text and not within the interpretation of the original. However, as far as the production of the target text is concerned, Nida encourages creative approaches that generate a natural dynamically/functionally equivalent text. At the very beginning of his seminal work in 1964, he balances the artistic and the scientific nature of translation and highlights the “artistic sensitivity which is an indispensable ingredient in any first-rate translation of a literary work” (Nida 1964, 3). Indeed, he believes the Bible texts to have a “remarkable literary character” (Nida 2003, 81–82) and recognises the consequent need for creativity in generating “a completely natural translation … precisely because truly good writing intimately reflects and effectively exploits the total idiomatic capacities and special genius of the language in which the writing is done” (Nida 1964, 163). Additionally, according to Nida and de Waard (1986, 25), “it is important for the translator to identify with the creative expression of the source by creating a functionally equivalent form in his own receptor language.” Nida reveals his belief that training in creative writing is necessary for the production of the kind of translation he advocates for as he laments the “little strenuous effort [that] has been put forth to develop outstanding writers and stylists within the Christian community” and the “relatively few instances in which Christian colleges and training schools have emphasized the development of creative writing for a general audience” (Nida and Taber 1969, 100).

In addition to the creativity required by the translators in the selection of their words, Nida highlights their need to put themselves in the shoes of the readers, stating that “it is actually not the excess of knowledge but the incapacity for imagination which hampers translators” (Nida and Taber 1969, 99). This act of putting oneself in the place of another, of imagining the effect of the text on the reader, is a process that requires a creative imagination, and is a process that Nida considers vital.

Nida also discusses the creativity involved at other stages of the translation process, including proposing the use of a professional stylist to work on the final version of the text, a person who “should have creative writing abilities himself …; he must be able to provide the creative assistance which is so essential” and should be allowed “to do his work alone, in circumstances in which he can be far more creative” (Nida and Taber 1969, 157–58). He also interestingly raises the question of who is responsible for making “judgements about the creative translating of texts involving important sociolinguistic constraints,” explaining that it is usually the publisher who sets the terms of the translation, but “it is clearly the translator … that is responsible for the truly creative solutions” (Nida 1998, 135).

However, there are limits to the extent to which creativity is encouraged within Nida’s vision. Although he accepts that the translator inevitably has a level of personal involvement in the translation, “intellectual honesty requires the translator to be as free as possible from personal intrusion in the communication process. The translator should never tack on his own impressions or distort the message to fit his own intellectual and emotional outlook …, he must exert every effort to reduce to a minimum any intrusion of himself which is not in harmony with the intent of the original author and message” (Nida 1964, 154).

Nida refuted criticism that his dynamic equivalence approach was interpretative (a criticism levelled at him by defenders of a formal equivalence approach) by pointing out “that a formal equivalence translation was also interpretative since it gave sanctity to the words rather than the message, itself a theological statement” (Stine 2004, 54), and by stating that “a translator who produces strictly [formally equivalent] renderings is usually not conscious of the extent to which his seemingly ‘faithful’ translations actually involve serious distortions” (Nida 1964, 192). For Nida, “meaning should be paramount” (Stine 2004, 54), and meaning is constructed through the words themselves (Stine 2004, 54), the form of the text (Nida and de Waard 1986, 13), and its function (25–32). A faithful translation is one that accurately conveys the meaning, or the message, of the text.

Within this idea that the translator should not distort the message, there is an assumption that there is one, and only one, correct interpretation of the original text, that is, the message. This idea is not one that Nida states explicitly, but his discussions of “the meaning” and “the message” of the original text seem to strongly imply that there are not multiple valid meanings. He includes the role of the receptors within this, stating that “the question as to the correctness of any translation can only be answered by asking another question: ‘For whom?’ … ‘Do the receptors understand the text in the correct manner?’” (Nida and de Waard 1986, 33; emphasis mine). This is also demonstrated by his extensive writings on how to correctly interpret language and grammar, both in a general way (see Nida and Taber 1969) and in his specific projects on how to handle Bible texts that have multiple possible readings. Nida instigated the Greek New Testament project, a project that classed the manuscript variations according to how likely they were to be correct (published 1966; see Nida and de Waard 1986, 58), a work “so exhaustive [that] one of the committee members believes that further textual work will most likely be unnecessary unless new manuscripts should be discovered” (Metzger in an interview with Stine, 2000, quoted in Stine 2004, 111). Nida also worked with Louw on a Greek–English lexicon designed to aid translators in understanding the nuances of the meaning of the original Greek (Louw and Nida 1988). These works reduce to a minimum the possible interpretations of the source, and in doing so, remove creativity from its interpretation.

Nida additionally imposes boundaries on how far the dynamic/functional equivalence approach can be pushed in terms of adaptation to the target culture. He gives examples of translation strategies that would fall too far into what would now be considered domestication, such as substantially changing the account in Matt 21.8, in which branches are placed in Jesus’ path as a mark of respect, in order to accommodate the West African cultural belief that this would be an insult. For Nida, this level of cultural difference should be tackled using paratext such as a footnote.

There is a very definite limit as to what proper translation is in this difficult area: one may make explicit in the text only what is linguistically implicit in the immediate context of the problematic passage. This imposes a dual constraint: one may not simply add interesting cultural information which is not actually present in the meanings of the terms used in the passage, and one may not add information derived from other parts of the Bible, much less from extra-Biblical sources, such as tradition. (Nida and Taber 1969, 111)

We can observe from this overview of Nida’s writings that for him, there was a time and place for creativity within Bible translation: creativity should be encouraged in order to render a final translation that reflects the literary value of the Bible in the unique genius of the target language, but the interpretation of the text should be objective and devoid of creativity to the greatest possible extent.

Nida was not alone in holding this view. In addition to his coauthors Taber and de Waard, contemporaries such as Beekman and Callow expressed similar attitudes, with these latter authors also placing a heavy emphasis on meaning and making the text understandable while guarding against over-interpretation: “While it is granted that interpretation of the text is an inevitable part of the process of translation, it cannot be overemphasized that every interpretation should be based upon sound exegetical conclusions which have adequate support from the context” (Beekman and Callow 1974, 23). The notion of exegesis and its place within Bible translation is highly relevant to this discussion of creativity, and we will return to it further on.

Bonnie Lewis’s Timshel translation

The boundaries laid out by Nida provide a springboard for discussion of Bonnie Lewis’s 2020 translation of the Bible, ⁴ which she titled Timshel, meaning, according to Lewis, “thou mayest” (Erre and Lewis 2019), or “we have a choice” (Rodriguez 2021). Lewis describes the work as “a new way to read the Bible that sets the stage for creative interpretation, questions, wrestling and dialogue” (2020b). In it, she seeks to render the twenty selected biblical texts in literary prose, and includes within the text the context she deems relevant for understanding the passage, as well as her interpretations based on theological and linguistic study, and traditional stories passed down alongside the biblical texts.

Lewis views creativity as “the expression of the Divine in you” (2020a) and describes the project of Timshel as “the sacred and creative process of engaging with scripture with modern eyes” (2023). In her process, creativity begins in the very first reading and interpretation of the text. She embraces the idea that there are different valid interpretations of the same text; she uses the Jewish metaphor of the text as a precious stone with many facets that glisten as the jewel is turned, revealing the different layers of meaning within the stories (Lewis 2023; Patterson and Thrift 2019). As such, in contrast to Nida, she does not view her interpretation as definitive, but as one of many possible readings that contribute to a beautiful whole. Meaning is constructed creatively and collaboratively in the reading, and this contributes to the ongoing life of the text, to the way in which “the word of God is living and active” (Heb 4.12, cited by Lewis on The Timshel Cast podcast [Lewis 2020c]), echoing the philosopher Walter Benjamin’s view that translation is the transformation and renewal of a living thing, it is the “continuing life” of the original work (1923, 76). Lewis’s perspective is reflected in her translation of Gen 11, the story of Babel, which she interprets as being fundamentally related to the people misunderstanding who God is, and this problem being compounded by the fact that “they all speak the same language encouraging one another in their thinking, around and around again” (Lewis 2020a). In parallel, a key part of the Timshel project for Lewis is bringing a new, female voice to Bible translation, which has been dominated “for hundreds of years … by a certain group of people and then preached by another certain group of people” (Lewis 2020c).

Let us now examine in more detail the theoretical/theological basis of Lewis’s translation strategy. Lewis was particularly inspired by womanist midrash (Tschanz 2021), including Denise Flanders, author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (2018). According to Flanders, midrash is “a set of interpretive practices, including translation, exegesis, and biblical interpretation, that attends to marginalized characters in biblical narratives,” and which for Flanders is an outworking of the “sanctified imagination in black preaching,” which is the “fertile creative space where the preacher-interpreter enters the text, particularly the spaces in the text, and fills them out with missing details” (2018, 3). This inspiration is evident in multiple ways in Lewis’s translation, including the telling of the resurrection story from the perspective of Mary and the addition of a paragraph telling the (usually untold) story of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, at the end of Gen 22, a story that had been passed down through generations of midrash:

Upon Abraham and Isaac’s arrival, Sarah could not be found. She had gotten word of the purpose of Abraham’s trip and could not bear to live a life without her son. Moving to Kiriath-arba (Hebron) Sarah grieved the loss of her son, the betrayal of her husband and the resulting state of her broken marriage. She rued the barbaric ways of the gods, and the many years she had spent in devotion to them. Her grief was too much to bear, and she died of a broken heart. Abraham received word of her death and went to weep for her. His anguish forever altered his existence. With his new faith still expanding, he had another piece to consider: Yahweh intervened on the mountain to deliver Isaac, but where was Yahweh to rescue Sarah? (Lewis 2020a)

This is clearly an example of what Nida would describe as “add[ing] information derived from … extra-Biblical sources, such as tradition” (Nida and Taber 1969, 111). Additionally, Lewis does not let “the Scriptures speak for themselves” (Nida and de Waard 1986, 24) or “primarily communicat[e] the intentions of the original author” (32), and, by focusing on non-central characters, she is “not in harmony with the intent of the original author and message” (Nida 1964, 154).

It is worth noting that not all of Lewis’s deviations from the standard translations of the Bible are attributable to this kind of approach. For example, Lewis breaks away from the norm of translations of Gen 22 into English in which the reader is led to believe that the heavenly being, “God,” referred to throughout the passage is the God of the Israelites, Yahweh. In Lewis’s translation, she draws a distinction between references to “Elohim” (which she interprets as referring to pagan gods) and Yahweh. She makes this distinction and her interpretation of it explicit within her translation (2020b), which reads, “an ethereal voice called out to [Abraham] in a dream. Abraham believed the summons came from Elohim, one of the pagan gods he worshiped” (Lewis 2020a). Rather than this being considered the addition of information, it could be argued that the information is in fact “present in the meanings of the terms used in the passage” (Nida and Taber 1969, 111). The discussion becomes more complicated, however, in the consideration of whether she is making too much explicit.

According to Nida and Taber (1969, 111), “one may make explicit in the text only what is linguistically implicit in the immediate context of the problematic passage.” Additionally, “for a Bible translator to add a great deal of supplementary information can result in serious distortion, since it would imply that the original receptors of such a communication did not share with the source the background data” (Nida and de Waard 1986, 80). Similarly, Beekman and Callow (1974, 58) state that

implicit information may be expressed explicitly if, and only if, the RL [receptor language] necessitates it. It is not expressed explicitly merely because the translator thinks it would be helpful, or because of his own doctrinal convictions or denominational views, or because some other translator has done so, or because he thinks this is something the RL readers really need to know.

Various changes in form and content are therefore acceptable if, and only if, not making the change would lead to a distortion of meaning: “To correct wrong meaning that distorts the message of Scripture, the use of implicit information is always justified” (Beekman and Callow 1974, 59). The key question then seems to be: how does one define the “right” meaning? One could argue that the kind of information Lewis is adding, if we accept her exegetical interpretation, in fact allows the readers to arrive at the true meaning, which they would not otherwise be able to do, not least because the interpretations she gives are different from those most often given in Bible translations and in church teaching. The readers cannot be expected to infer these meanings for themselves, and so providing the additional context in fact prevents distortion of the meaning.

This fundamental question in Bible translation—what is the “true” meaning of the text?—leads to another: who is responsible for deciding? Is the translator not, in some ways, uniquely qualified to make decisions about the meaning of the text and how to express it? Julia Smith, the only woman to have published a translation of the entire Bible in English, wrote in the preface to her Bible, “It may be thought by the public … that I have great confidence in myself, in not conferring with the learned in so great a work, but as there is but one book in the Hebrew tongue, and I have defined it word for word, I do not see how anybody can know more about it than I do” (Smith 1876).

In other places, Lewis adds colour, filling in the texts’ blank spaces. The few lines dedicated to the “woman of the city” of Luke 7, who “brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind [Jesus] at his feet, weeping, … began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment” (ESV), are fleshed out by Lewis, who includes her understanding of the woman as a victim of human trafficking, an understanding based on her research into the historical context of the passage and the language (Tschanz 2021):

With an audacious passion, she kissed Jesus’ feet, not caring about the dirt that covered her lips and entered her mouth. Overcome with a new type of desire, she hardly noticed the taste of dirt and blood on her tongue. The thousands of tortured nights with strangers, the abuse she suffered, and the shame she bore became apparent within her wild, sexual language and erotic gestures. Her hands fervently moved from his feet to her jar, and breaking the neck against the ground, she opened the jar allowing the perfume to pour onto his feet not saving one drop for herself. Her story laid bare and gushed out on the feet of Jesus for him to heal and all to see. Her hair, lips, and hands wiped the dirt and grime away, and nothing but the aroma remained … (Lewis 2020a)

Similarly, according to Lewis, Jesus, on the path to Golgotha, “thought of Abraham and Isaac and their journey up the mountain. The wood on his back, the path up the mountain, and the death before him. As his thoughts drifted to Isaac, the reflection was all too clear: he would be the sacrificial son” (Lewis 2020a). This “fleshing out” of the inner lives of the people written about in the Bible is an intentional endeavour in Lewis’s translation. According to her, “Timshel brings out the emotions, thoughts, struggles, triumphs and psychological journeys that the Biblical characters are going through” (2020c) and as part of the creative process, Lewis worked with Kyle Horst, a “psychologist and creative writer” (2020c). Here, it seems, the Timshel translation goes beyond making implicit information explicit, and creatively imagines the emotional states of the people described.

Another aspect of Lewis’s creativity in translation is the variety of strategies she employs, using different approaches for different texts in what could perhaps be described as an extreme application of Skopos theory. In some places she performs a literal, word-for-word translation, which almost exactly mirrors other translations (e.g. Gen 22.6, which has exactly the same wording in Timshel and in ESV). In other places Lewis adds her “between the lines” readings, in other places she uses paraphrase, and in others she transfers the text into her own culture, such as in the beatitudes of Matt 4–5, which are modernised and include references to the marginalised: to a gay woman, a black man, conservatives and liberals, illegal immigrants, people suffering from addiction and mental illness, atheists and agnostics. This choice was made in order for the “translation to hold the same boldness and jarring effect as it would have for the first hearers. [Lewis and her team] also wanted to stick to the structure because [they] believe that literary structure and genre is just as crucial as all of the other elements” (Lewis 2019b). For this passage, therefore, Lewis seeks equivalent effect while maintaining some level of formal equivalence. Here, by imagining the passage in a new cultural context, Lewis is taking on a role that, as we will see, Nida reserved for preachers and teachers.

Lewis explains that her approach to the translation is very similar to her approach to preaching, in which she takes into account the historical and social context, the meanings of the words in the original languages, the literary genre and biblical commentaries, a process she defines as exegetical analysis (Lewis 2020a). Nida often highlights the importance of exegesis in translation and the differing roles of translator and preacher:

The translator’s task may be described as being essentially exegetical, in that a translation should faithfully reflect who said what to whom under what circumstances and for what purpose and should be in a form of the receptor language which does not distort the content or misrepresent the rhetorical impact or appeal … the responsibility of the preacher or teacher is to take this message and to apply it hermeneutically to the different cultural contexts in which people now live. The function of the preacher and teacher may likewise be viewed as a kind of translation, but it is cultural-historical translation and not a linguistic one. (Nida 1986, 40)

The theologian J. I. Packer defined exegetical analysis as “the attempt to determine as exactly as possible just what the writer meant by the words he wrote, and how he would explain the sense of his statements could we cross-question him about them. Exegesis involves, on the one hand, setting each passage against its external background (historical, cultural, geographical, linguistic, literary), and, on the other hand, determining from its intrinsic characteristics its aim, scope, standpoint, presuppositions, and range and limit of interest” (Packer 2021, 121). This definition is in alignment with the questions Nida encourages translators to ask of the text, primarily “What did the text mean to people who were the original receptors?” (Nida and de Waard 1986, 177). In contrast, Lewis’s people-centred approach leads her also to ask “Who’s writing the story? Who benefits from the story? Who’s missing from the story?” (Tschanz 2021), which gives a very different perspective, and requires creative responses based on intra- and extra-textual information.

Interestingly, Lewis and Nida are in agreement concerning the importance of having a Bible that is understandable directly to the reader (not only when mediated by a preacher). Nida and de Waard state that “relatively few readers of the Bible always have available persons who can instruct them as to the proper understanding of the text [and …] efforts in the past to correct misunderstanding have been singularly unsuccessful, since most people almost always have greater confidence in the printed word than in supplementary explanations” (Nida 1986, 40). For Lewis, it is problematic that the authority to declare what the Bible says rests with a small group of people (i.e., church leaders), and that people who find it hard to understand the Bible rely on their pastors rather than having direct access to the text (Franklin and Lewis 2021).

A word on paraphrase

One might argue that Lewis’s translation is a form of paraphrase, and Lewis indeed states that some of her translation is paraphrase, whereas some is word-for-word (notably whenever God speaks) and some is thought-for-thought (Erre and Lewis 2019). As such, Timshel is similar in some ways to other Bible translations that have been described as paraphrase, such as The Message, The Voice Bible, and The Living Bible, although Lewis states that her translation goes further than these (Erre and Lewis 2019).

Flanders offers insight into the perspective of the “Western biblical scholarly enterprise,” which codes “interpretation as negative” and “translation as simultaneously neutral … and good, because it preserves the meaning of the text” (Flanders 2018, 282). Both she and Lewis argue that the interpretation of biblical texts has been key within the church since its beginnings, with a translation process being performed by preachers, who must “translate and interpret the word of God into words fit for the congregation” (Flanders 2018, 283) every time they preach, which is reminiscent of Neh 8.8, as cited in the introduction.

Similarly, for Nida, “the issue of translation versus paraphrase looms large in all discussions of translation because such a high percentage of English-speaking persons have the impression that translation is good and paraphrase is bad. They simply do not realise that all translating involves varying degrees of paraphrase … The real problem is not one of translation versus paraphrase but of correct versus incorrect paraphrase” (1998, 128). What therefore becomes important is whether Lewis’s paraphrase is correct, which leads back to the question of how this is defined, and by whom. This observation from Nida also perhaps sheds some light on the rejection of Lewis’s work by some groups—if paraphrase is looked down on, then a translation that goes beyond paraphrase is bound to cause consternation.

Lewis is not the only translator to have gone beyond paraphrase (and provoked outcry). The German Volxbibel, considered an “adaptive retelling” (Lu Fulton 2024) imagines Scripture in the language and the cultural context of modern-day Germany. The project, motivated by the same desire as Lewis, that is, to provide a “low-level bridge for nonreligious people to get into the message of the Bible” (Dreyer quoted in Lu Fulton 2024), also received similarly virulent criticism.

Who can translate?

Within Christianity, there are a range of doctrinal positions on the role of women, particularly within church leadership. Many, usually more conservative, denominations reserve the role of preaching and teaching for men. This raises the question of how the Bible translator fits into this, particularly in light of the complex relationship between Bible translation and preaching. The mixed response to Lewis’s translation, which will be discussed in more detail shortly, cannot be reduced to a simple question of gender (one can look at the response to Eugene Peterson’s The Message translation as proof that criticism is not reserved for women). However, it is worth considering how Lewis’s gender may have played a part in the reception of the translation, particularly since this is a subject Lewis frequently evokes when interviewed. She cites, for example, one person telling her, “you can’t be trusted with interpreting scripture, because Eve was so easily deceived” (Olson and Lewis 2019).

While there seem to be many resources available online, and many discussions online and within church conferences about whether or not women can (or should) take on leadership positions, there seem to be relatively few around whether women can (or should) translate the Bible, which may be a testimony to the general invisibility of translators. We can note, however, that ESV’s fifty-two-person translation committee conspicuously consists entirely of men (Crossway n.d.), as was the case for the original 1978 version of NIV (Marlowe 2001) (the current translation committee of fifteen people includes two women [HarperCollins n.d.]). To what extent does doctrine that applies to preaching apply to translation? Is translation a form of teaching? In a theological paradigm in which women are permitted to teach other women and children, but not men, would this mean that only women and children should read Lewis’s translation? Does the presence of her male collaborator and editor change the conversation? An in-depth discussion of the theological debate on this topic is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this paper, but it is worth noting that Lewis’s translation project intentionally brings these questions into sharp relief. The Timshel website refers directly to this in a provocative way, noting, “Oh, and did we mention it is translated by a woman? Her perspective brings new meaning to the words that have historically been interpreted by men” (Lewis 2023).

Criticism of the Timshel project

The thirty thousand dollar Kickstarter campaign to produce Timshel more than met its goal, despite resistance from certain groups, such as a church Lewis had preached at saying, “we’re going to pray every day for the next thirty days that your campaign fails” (Tschanz 2021). Over four thousand copies of the work were sold. Despite stating that she would love to translate more texts (Erre and Lewis 2019), at the time of writing none has been published and the Timshel project website is no longer functional.

Lewis faced criticism for her project, including from churches who had formerly supported her and invited her to preach: she quotes, for example, an acquaintance as saying, “you are a heretic and you’re going to send everyone to hell” (Tschanz 2021). This criticism may be attributed to many aspects, not least her gender and the interpretative nature of her work.

Lewis’s response to criticism that her translation is too interpretative in many ways echoes that of Nida responding to the same criticism of his dynamic equivalence, that what she is being compared to is already interpretative, whether that be other Bible translations or an understanding of the Bible that comes from preaching (Patterson and Thrift 2019).

From the perspective of translation scholarship, Venuti’s criticism of Nida may also be applicable to Timshel. Does Lewis’s extremely domesticating strategy create an “illusion of transparency” that hides the processes of interpretation that occur within it (Venuti 2008, 16)? If this is the case, perhaps the problem is one of labelling? Would Lewis’s text be more accepted were it classed as interpretation or paraphrase rather than translation? The mixed responses to The Message and the Volxbibel suggest not. Lewis herself has considered this question. Her conscious decision to label her project a translation was the product of a number of reflections, primarily that the fundamental goal was to create a Bible for “those who feel spiritually homeless” (Lewis 2020d) and to challenge those who would gatekeep translation (Tschanz 2021). It was important to her that the text be classified as the Bible (and not as an interpretation) so that people who had been excluded from accessing the Bible through negative experiences with the church would be able to find themselves within the text, and within the text as the Bible (Tschantz 2021). She seems to have achieved this goal: she cites on Instagram “someone who has left the Church: ‘I haven’t read the Bible in ten years but I read your passage and backed the project. I will read this’” (Lewis 2019a). Lewis’s translation was also included on a list of books recommended by a transgender believer at a “Rite of Transition ceremony” (Loewen 2022), which suggests that it has reached people who may otherwise be excluded from church.

Lewis does not shy away from the idea that she makes explicit her interpretation of the text. Instead, the value of her project is that she has done the work for the reader, leaving the reader in peace as much as possible, because she does not expect her reader to be able to perform the exegetical work that she has done. Additionally, Lewis enjoys the possibility that in affronting her reader by the extent of her interpretation, she may cause people to turn again to their Bible and consider what the text is saying, how it is saying it, and the interpretive processes behind the messages that are often taken for granted (Patterson and Thrift 2019), interpretive processes Nida acknowledged yet sought to suppress. Perhaps, in fact, Lewis pushes her domestication so far that she becomes visible, and makes other translators visible too.

Conclusions

Lewis’s Timshel translation consciously breaks the boundaries of Nida’s dynamic equivalence by both encouraging creative interpretation of the source text and by adding extra-textual information, providing a translation intended to welcome in those who have felt excluded from the church. Her work brings into sharp relief some of the most fundamental questions about Bible translating: What is translation? How should the Bible be translated? Who can translate the Bible?