La Genèse (1555), and: Les Livres de Salomon (1555) (review)

'Je suis brunette: mais je suis jolie' (Ct 1,5): what a surprising and refreshing change from the familiar 'black but comely'! That single quotation encapsulates much of what Sébastien Castellio was trying to do in his French Bible (1555): to write, in total freedom from the religious constraints of society and Church, a text to be read by, and accessible to, a general public who would not have echoes of the Latin Vulgate to guide their understanding – words such as 'holocauste', 'circoncire', even 'baptiser' are replaced by 'brulage', 'rongner', 'laver'. His surprising, sometimes adventurous translational innovations also enable him to leave aside the multiple layers of interpretation with which the 'Books of Solomon' in particular have been overlaid–a useful strategy for one known for his biblical controversies with Calvin. The translation 'brunette' instead of 'noire' bypasses the whole exegetical tradition in which the 'bride' is the Church, and the blackness is the blackness of sin, and so on. You can't allegorize 'brunette'! In his ambition to provide a Bible for the people he clearly failed: there was only one edition of his text, now known in some 20 surviving copies; this is the first edition, even partial, since then. Castellio's translation was roundly condemned by both Catholics and Protestants – Be`ze denounced the translator's 'ignorance' and 'impiety'; Henri Estienne, in his Apologie pour Hérodote (1566), complained: 'au lieu de cercher les plus graves mots et manieres de parler, pour applicquer à un tel subject, on voit evidemment que cest homme s'est estudié à cercher les mots de gueux'. The two volumes (so far) produced by Max Engammare and his team are a magnificent example of accessible erudition. The text faithfully reproduces Castellio's rather avantgarde orthography and punctuation, simply adding verse numbering for convenience of reference. The Genèse introduction concentrates on linguistic questions: Castellio's treatment of his Hebrew (and Greek and Latin) langues sources (N. Gueunier), the characteristics of Castellio's French (C. Skupien Dekens on syntax and on orthography, J. Chaurand on vocabulary), with a note by Max Engammare on the illustrations (seven blocks for Genesis, six for the whole of the rest of the Bible). Throughout, of course, the existing French translations (Lefèvre d'Étaples and Olivétan) are also compared. This introductory material is not only a presentation of the book of Genesis, it is also directed at the whole of the Bible translation. The three Livres de Salomon each receive an introduction: that to Proverbes (N. Gueunier) is concerned chiefly with textual problems and the variants between the Hebrew, Greek and Latin; l'Ecclésiaste (N. Gueunier) opens a wider perspective in offering an overview of the much-debated theology of the writer, his pessimism, his epicureanism, his reduction of man to the level of the beasts, his refrain of all is vanity (which Castellio translated tout est rien); the Cantique is presented (of course) by Engammare, with an extensive treatment of the Genevan controversies between Castellio, Calvin and Bèze – and also Génébrard who continued the linguistic controversy with Bèze long after Castellio's death. Two points here: these editions are not simply presentations of Castellio's texts, but go well beyond in providing the reader with a full contextualization, linguistic, historical and exegetical. And on a specific point, Engammare reiterates what he said in his 1993 thesis: no document can be adduced to prove Castellio's denial of the canonicity of the Cantique: his reading of the book was literal, not allegorical, it is his enemies who accused him of challenging the canon. Despite Bèze's jibes about...