The Grammar of God by Aviya Kushner (review)

A title like the one of Aviya Kushner’s recent book is a risky, although attention getting, move; for most people, nothing could occupy the uniquely unpleasant intersection of daunting and boring better than the topics of syntax and a thousands of years old concept of a higher being. However, Kushner provides an insightful and relevant perspective on meaning and translation as she explores the limitations and varieties of translation of the Old Testament into English. In this book, Kushner applies her experience of growing up reading the Torah in her first language of Hebrew and her ten years of studying English translations of Christian Bibles to find out what might be missing from this Christian English text that has so much impact and so many ramifications, even in secular culture. In answering this question, Kushner takes an approach that is not only thorough and scholarly but also completely accessible. By weaving her personal stories about her experiences with studying the Torah, Kushner gives narrative life to her exploration of the Old Testament, morphing the book from a report resulting from a rigorous study into a story with momentum interspersed with these findings. Each chapter of the book discusses a different Old Testament theme (such as creation, man, and song) and begins with a page of a verse in Hebrew, then the Hebrew in the Roman alphabet, then about six different English translations. Including these different translations invites the reader to partake in the process of analyzing the differences for themselves. While she succinctly examines what might have been changed or lost in translation, and the impacts this would have in interpretation, she also gives readers enough background in each chapter to invite them into the conversation. The Old Testament as ongoing conversation rather than prescriptive case-closed command is one of the perspectives for which she effectively advocates.

She selects a wide sample of concepts that gives the reader a good idea of how everything from the rhythm and poetry of the verse to the meaning of a command can be altered. For example, she discusses how the translation of the Ten Commandments into English made them much harsher and more prohibitive than they are in their original language. The Commandments are an important section of the Old Testament, and therefore an obvious choice to discuss, but the type of laugh (out loud vs internal) of Sarah, and what such a difference means in terms of the interpretation of the type of person Sarah was, is a less obvious pick. However, she uses this example to point out how many metaphors are not translated well into English, and how the “flattening” of the original language changes both the lyricism and the interpretation of the story. More than just altering the interpretation, the translation often narrows the options for interpretation, and this is one of the major points made throughout the book: In Hebrew, the text is treated as a living document, messy and with multiple possible interpretations, and the method of reading it involves a communal conversation.

The implications, of course, go beyond just the translation of the Bible, and I imagine this book will be recalled the next time readers encounter any translated work and look for parts that might have been “flattened” as collateral damage in transporting the story from its original language.

In many regards, nonfiction writing shares similar qualities with fiction writing. However, Kushner reminds readers of some of the aspects of nonfiction writing that are unique to this genre and make it so valuable in its own right. She provides the results of a study from which almost any reader can benefit and yet very few have the time to study in such detail themselves. She also grounds the story in her own personal tale of growing up in a very religious Jewish community, which provides background to the research as well as a story that could only be told by Kushner. By blending personal anecdotes with enlightening findings, Kushner capitalizes on much that the nonfiction genre alone has to...