• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Corpus Christi Watershed

We’re a 501(c)3 public charity established in 2006. We have no endowment, no major donors, no savings, and run no advertisements. We exist solely by the generosity of small donors.

  • Donate
  • Our Team
    • Our Editorial Policy
    • Who We Are
    • How To Contact Us
    • Sainte Marie Bulletin Articles
  • Pew Resources
    • Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal
    • Jogues Illuminated Missal
    • KYRIALE • Saint Antoine Daniel
    • Campion Missal, 3rd Edition
    • Repository • “Spanish Music”
    • Ordinary Form Feasts (Sainte-Marie)
  • MUSICAL WEBSITES
    • René Goupil Gregorian Chant
    • Noël Chabanel Psalms
    • Nova Organi Harmonia (2,279 pages)
    • Roman Missal, 3rd Edition
    • Catechism of Gregorian Rhythm
    • Father Enemond Massé Manuscripts
    • Lalemant Polyphonic
  • Miscellaneous
    • Site Map
    • Secrets of the Conscientious Choirmaster
    • “Wedding March” for lazy organists
    • Emporium Kevin Allen
    • Saint Jean de Lalande Library
    • Sacred Music Symposium 2023
    • The Eight Gregorian Modes
    • Gradual by Pothier’s Protégé
    • Seven (7) Considerations
Views from the Choir Loft

A Literal Translation of the New Testament

Fr. David Friel · March 11, 2018

ARLIER this year, David Bentley Hart published an article in The Tablet (London) that alerted me to a new translation of the New Testament he had published late last year.1 Hart’s NT, however, is not simply another translation to add to the pile.

In translating the New Testament, Hart set out to render the original text quite literally, even when doing so would produce a rough or surprising result. This was the task put to him by an editor at Yale University Press.

An Eastern Orthodox theologian, philosopher, and cultural commentator, Hart is presently a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study in South Bend. He is the author of many articles and several books, including The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth and The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.

Hart is not idealistic about what he set out to achieve in his NT translation. As he writes in his piece for The Tablet, “I acknowledge, of course, that the translation of words on a page can never be free of some interpretation of their contents.” Nevertheless, he asserts strongly that there is something to be gained by allowing the “historical and cultural remoteness” of an ancient text to remain, rather than trying to smooth such distance out through the translation process.

He has this to say concerning more standard modern translations of the Scriptures:

All of them seem to me to be shaped not only by too many inherited habits of theological thought and usage, but by the curious assumptions that the distinctive idioms and conceptual vocabularies of Jewish, Christian, and Pagan antiquity constitute nothing more than different ways of expressing intuitions and ideas that we today merely express in different (but “dynamically equivalent”) ways.

I tend to think that they actually express fundamentally different ways of seeing reality. For instance, to say that someone is “full of days” is not simply to say the same thing that a modern person means in describing someone as “very old.”

Hart admits very honestly the effect that this project had on him, personally. When he began translating, he says, “I took it as my primary task to restore some proper sense of the distance separating the world of the New Testament from ours—to make the text strange again, so to speak. . . . Precisely in making the texts strange—in trying to make them truly remote—I experienced them with an immediacy that I had never really known before.”

N NO WAY am I advocating that Hart’s translation should be considered for liturgical use. On the contrary, it is clear to me that his translation would not at all suffice for liturgical purposes. But this is not to say that his work has no value.

I believe his version of the NT is worth having on hand as an aid to both prayer and study, especially for those without facility in Greek. It succeeds admirably in shaking out of complacency those who know the Scriptures well, challenging them to hear again these texts, in all their strangeness and urgency.

Hart’s New Testament is available from Amazon, where one can also read positive reviews of the work from such figures as Donald Senior, CP, Rowan Williams, Robert Louis Wilken, Paul Mankowski (First Things), and Jennifer Kurdyla (America).




NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:

1   David Bentley Hart, “The Word made fresh,” The Tablet 272, no. 9233 (13 January 2018): 11-13. For his translation, see David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017).

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Novus Ordo Lectionary Last Updated: January 1, 2020

Subscribe

It greatly helps us if you subscribe to our mailing list!

* indicates required

About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

Primary Sidebar

Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    Simplest “Agnus Dei” Ever Published
    Our choir is on break during the month of July. I needed a relatively simple “Agnus Dei,” so I composed this setting for organ & voice in honor of Saint René Goupil. It has been called the simplest setting ever composed. I love CARMEN GREGORIANUM (“Gregorian Chant”), especially the ALLELUIAS, INTROITS, and COMMUNION ANTIPHONS. That being said, some have pointed out that certain sections of the Kyriale aren’t as strong as the Graduale or Vesperale. There’s a reason for this—but it would be too complicated to explain at this moment.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
    Our choir is on break during the month of July. However, on the feasts website, the chants have been posted for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C), which is this coming Sunday: 6 July 2025.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Bugnini’s Statement (6 November 1966)
    With each passing day, more is revealed about how the enemies of the liturgy accomplished their goals. For instance, Hannibal Bugnini deeply resented the way Vatican II said Gregorian Chant “must be given first place in liturgical services.” On 6 November 1966, his cadre wrote a letter attempting to justify the elimination of Gregorian Chant with this brazen statement: “What really gives a Mass its tone is not so much the songs as it is the prayers and readings.” Bugnini’s cadre then attacked the very heart of Gregorian Chant (viz. the Proprium Missae), bemoaning how the Proprium Missae “is completely new each Sunday and feast day.” There is much more to be said about this topic. Stay tuned.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Pope Pius XII Hymnal?
    Have you ever heard of the Pope Pius XII Hymnal? It’s a real book, published in the United States in 1959. Here’s a sample page so you can verify with your own eyes it existed.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    “Hybrid” Chant Notation?
    Over the years, many have tried to ‘simplify’ plainsong notation. The O’Fallon Propers attempted to simplify the notation—but ended up making matters worse. Dr. Karl Weinmann tried to do the same in the time of Pope Saint Pius X by replacing each porrectus. You can examine a specimen from his edition and see whether you agree he complicated matters. In particular, look at what he did with éxsules fílii Hévae.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed

Random Quote

“Pope Francis breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants because he is free from disordered attachments. Our Church has indeed entered a new phase: with the advent of this first Jesuit pope, it is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture.”

— Fr. Thomas Rosica (31 July 2018)

Recent Posts

  • Simplest “Agnus Dei” Ever Published
  • Bishop François Charrière Vs. Hannibal Bugnini
  • 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
  • “My First Year with the Latin Mass” • A Music Director’s Perspective
  • Boston Auxiliary Bishop: “In offering the Traditional Mass for the first time, after removing the vestments, I knelt in the back pew and wept.”

Subscribe

Subscribe

* indicates required

Copyright © 2025 Corpus Christi Watershed · Isaac Jogues on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Corpus Christi Watershed is a 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to exploring and embodying as our calling the relationship of religion, culture, and the arts. This non-profit organization employs the creative media in service of theology, the Church, and Christian culture for the enrichment and enjoyment of the public.

The election of Pope Leo XIV has been exciting, and we’re filled with hope for our apostolate’s future!

But we’re under pressure to transfer our website to a “subscription model.”

We don’t want to do that. We believe our website should remain free to all.

Our president has written the following letter:

President’s Message (dated 30 May 2025)

Are you able to support us?

clock.png

Time's up