In a great scene from Pulp Fiction, and there are many, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) eats a terrified character’s hamburger, asks him if he reads the Bible, delivers the intimidating monologue in the picture below, and then shoots the terrified hamburger fan anyway.
In reality, only the last line aligns with the actual scriptural text from the Old Testament. The first part of his recitation appears, instead, to be a reinterpretation of the original Biblical verses. Also, this reinterpretation is influenced (heavily) by the introductory text in Bodyguard Kiba, the 1976 Sonny Chiba film. No hard feelings though, as Chiba was later cast by Quarantino in Kill Bill as the edgy (pun intended) sword-maker, Hattori Hanzo.
The menacing monologue packs much power in English but while we’re on the topic of originality, it is interesting to note that the Bible was not originally in English. And for a long time, it wasn’t legally allowed to be in English at all. Before 1536, it was forbidden to produce a Bible in English as the word of God was strictly controlled by the ones who could read and understand Latin.
William Tyndale, a student at Cambridge University (the petri dish of Lutheran ideas at the time) in 1915, had this to say about theological teaching in universities:
In the universities they have ordained that no man shall look on the Scripture until he be nozzled in heathen learning eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the Scripture.
To right this wrong, he initiated the dangerous task of Biblical translation (not the first attempt of its kind, but a well-renowned one due its eventual influence), and ended up coining famous phrases like "signs of the times," "let there be light," and "ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
As fate would have it, before these words rippled out through the wider society, Tyndale was already uttering his final words, as recorded by martyrologist John Foxe:
He was tied to the stake, and then strangled first by the hangman, and afterwards consumed with fire in the town of Filford, A.D. 1536; crying thus at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”
And open, they did.
In 1536, Henry VIII, upon the insistence of Thomas Cromwell—his chief minister—permitted the English translations, as part of the wider Reformation and a declaration of Henry’s independence from the Pope’s authority in Rome. Two years later, Cromwell issued an injunction which ordered every parish to buy an English Bible. To meet this demand, the Great Bible (named so because of its large size—it was over 14 inches tall!) was put into production. It was based on the translation begun illegally by William from the original Greek and Hebrew. Yes, this is the same William Tyndale who was executed on Henry’s orders. After all, Henry VIII is famous for subverting expectations.
Just kidding, he’s famous for the wife killings.
The linguist’s fascination with the language of religion partly stems from the difficulty in translating these texts. See, translation is tricky to begin with. It’s not as simple as substituting the text word-for-word with equivalents in the target language. Mostly because perfect equivalents do not exist, just like perfect synonyms do not exist (although, don’t announce this to a student removing plagiarism from his paper before a steep deadline). And also because preserving the tone, meaning, and context, is equally important. Even one of the most famous Bible translations, the King James Bible, relied heavily on metaphors (and on Tyndale’s work) instead of opting for a literal and exact translation of the source text.
A strong grasp on the root language is required. The text is then probed with the stick of structural linguistics: the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and so on. But that’s only a small part of the puzzle. The translation must be comprehensible on Functional, Grammatical, Cultural, Interactional, and Sociolinguistic grounds, also known as Hyme’s Five Communicative Competences.
And this difficulty in conserving and faithfully relaying the text’s essence is amplified in religious contexts as misrepresenting the word of God will reportedly earn you a special spot in Hell, right next to a linguist who speaks about the etymology of heaven on a loop.
Very thorough instructions were issued by experts like Hugh Broughton, regarded as one of the greatest Hebrew scholar of his time:
The holy text must be honored, as sound, holy, pure: heed must be taken that the translator neither flow with lies nor have one at all: prophecies spoken in doubtful terms, for sad present occasions, must be cleared by said study and staid safety of ancient warrant…
This obsession with controlling religious texts and “sacred” languages is not unique to the Catholic Church and Latin. We see similar patterns with Hebrew, Quranic Arabic, and Sanskrit. This is despite the fact that today, many Brahmins and Buddhist monks who chant in Sanskrit might not even understand the original meaning of the words. Most linguists consider Sanskrit a “dead language,” owing to the fact that only 14,000 people in India speak Sanskrit as their primary language as per the latest census.
Speaking of Sanskrit, many linguists consider it the origin of their field of study:
There was no systematical theory that we would call a 'theory of language' (i.e. 'linguistics') before Europeans 'discovered' what Indian grammarians had written about language. Linguistics as a western discipline therefore has its roots in ancient India, in the study and preservation of sacred texts.
With this we have come full circle and it is time for a hamburger break. I leave you to contemplate the wonders of translation or, more importantly, the mystery of what was really in that Pulp Fiction briefcase.