Introduction: two kinds of translations

‘This treasure in earthen vessels’ (2 Cor. 4: 7) served as the title for my opening chapter. It indicated the division between form and content in biblical thought. The content was of God, and we might read the form as the text of the Bible. The form was so much dross, setting off the divine beauty of the content. As Robert Gell, echoing Jerome, put it, ‘such must the captive maid be … who must have her head shaven and her nails made to grow … and all means used to make her ugly and deformed … that the divine truth alone may be fair and beautiful in our sight’ (volume I, p. 262). Now, the division of form and content has proved to be one of the most constant ideas through this history, but the Pauline anti-aesthetic has not often been encountered since patristic times. In any period when it was possible to believe that the form of the Scriptures was beautiful, most of the faithful held that faith. Only when the form of the Bible was manifestly inadequate by contemporary aesthetic standards did people try to justify that inadequacy along the lines suggested by Paul.