Andrew Mbuvi

Kara and Eli are joined by Andrew Mbuvi, distinguished scholar of biblical studies whose work bridges theology, race, and social justice. A leading voice in antiracist pedagogy, his scholarship examines how the histories of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament intersect with the realities of race, violence, and power. This conversation is a powerful foundation for understanding why Project Shema is so interested in translation in the first place—how the words we use shape our understanding of both text and one another.

Chapter Breakdown:

• :54 - What does “inclusion” mean to Andrew?
• 2:21 - How we think about the problem of division
• 4:39 - How to expand our understanding of one another’s humanity
• 6:17 - The idea of “superficial differences” between people
• 9:44 - How Andrew’s background informs his inclusion practice
• 16:00 - How coming to America changed his self-understanding
• 18:50 - Language and the need to translate different aspects of yourself and one another
• 31:54 - Translation and true inclusion
• 41:21 - The importance of maintaining curiosity

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Visit our website: www.projectshema.org.

Translations is a new initiative from Project Shema exploring how we can approach complex issues with nuance and empathy. Every six months, we dive into a different topic shaping our world and our work. Through conversations with leading academics, practitioners, and community voices, this podcast invites listeners to learn alongside us as we translate big questions into deeper understanding. http://projectshema.org/translations

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome! We're recording on November 3rd, 2025. Today we're joined by Dr. Andrew Mbubi, a distinguished scholar of biblical studies whose work bridges theology, race, and social justice. A leading voice in anti-racist pedagogy, his scholarship examines how the histories of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament intersect with the realities of race, violence, and power, reminding us that the way we read is never separate from the world we live in. This conversation is a powerful foundation for understanding why we are so interested in translation in the first place. How the words we choose and the way we choose them shape not just our understanding of text, but our understanding of one another. We hope you find this conversation as meaningful and powerful as we did.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

We are here talking today with Andrew Mbuvi. Andrew is a biblical studies scholar and also an inclusion professional. I tend to think of our work at Project Shema as often being about inclusion, if not having a lot of inclusion-related elements. So I just want to start with that word inclusion and what does that mean to you? What is inclusion?

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Thanks, Eli. And thanks, Cara, for inviting me over to this conversation. Inclusion for me is the recognition of the humanity of all peoples, irrespective of their superficial differences, whether that's skin color, hair color, eye colour, height, weight, or cultural, religious, social, economic, political, or national backgrounds or differences. This recognition of the shared humanities of all peoples from all backgrounds, you know, should inform the basis of all relationships. Because we have a shared origin and we have a shared destiny as humanity. So inclusion means for me more than just that recognition, acceptance and celebration of difference. Whether it's the celebration of different peoples, different cultures, different languages, irrespective of and perhaps even because of the distinctives which produce a richness that would be absent without this diversity.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I think that definition is really beautiful, this idea of recognizing humanity and how is our humanity shared. And I'm wondering for you how you would think about the problem of division. Like I I don't know that I would ever think about the problem of in division is like obviously there's dehumanization, but like genuine inability to recognize another's humanity. So how do you think about the problem or like what the things that get in the way of inclusion?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

There are many things, but for me, lack of inclusion reflects a certain myopia, a certain inability to see your own humanity reflected in other people's humanity. In that, I think it also stems from a certain superiority complex, which perceives itself or presumes itself, and I think it's very delusional, as self-sufficient. That in its own idea of what it means to be human, it perceives itself as complete and lacking nothing. And I call it delusional because it in reality all cultures are related. All cultures connect with each other, all cultures borrow from one another. There's no pure culture, there's no pure community, there's no pure language. We all are related somehow. We connect with the world we live in, we connect with the surroundings that we have around us, we connect with aspects of our lives that are shared. So, in many respects, I think the divisions that arise arise from that complex. The individual thinking of themselves better than others around them, thinking of themselves as self-sufficient and not needing others, and willingness to recognize that one could benefit from the difference that is seen in the others, rather than seeing the difference as a basis of separation, right? A basis of pushing against the other, rather than a basis of saying, oh, that's something new I could learn from this person because that's something I don't have in my own self or in my own community or in my own culture. We all are constantly borrowing, or if you want to use the word, adopting or adapting from one another. And that is very visible in things like music, right? You know, music that is produced by a particular culture is often adopted and adapted, sometimes appropriated without acknowledgement, by a certain different culture. But it influences, it's influence that's coming from different parts of the world. So nobody can sort of say my music is purely this.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Yeah, well, I'm hearing you say, like, if I see myself as fully human and I'm holding myself at a certain standard, seeing differences as reasons why that other person is less human if I'm like the top human. Instead, like what we need to do if in an inclusion practice is how can I actually expand my understanding of humanity and those differences and saying, oh, okay, this actually person is at the same level, or I'm I'm appreciating their level of humanity in a way that builds up and doesn't break down.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Correct. I mean, I think there's power dynamics that happen when we encounter difference. That is, if we encounter something that is different, the question becomes, is this thing dangerous for me, or is it something that's going to benefit me? Is it something that I am possibly able to manage, control, and constrain so that it benefits me? In which case, then, how do I do that? Do I do that by imposing my power, my knowledge, my technology on them? Or do I figure out a way of relating so that I can manage to establish contact and relationship that allows what I perceive to be a threat to be addressed and resolved? And I think when we think about, say, colonialism, that's where you see, for example, the imposition of power using technology, using the power that one has, rather than saying, look, let's trade. I can see you have gold, I have silver, let's trade. You say, No, your gold is my gold, and I'm gonna take it whether you like it or not. Right. And that's where imposition then becomes the basis of saying, you're not me, and I'm not you, and I cannot share with you.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

I want to hear more about you referred in your definition to superficial differences between people.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And sort of named a number of categories. I want to hear more about that because we often talk about race, for example, as superficial, right? And not biologically determined, but also real in the way that it functions in the world and that racial differences create different experiences for people walking through the world. So can you say more about those categories and the idea of superficial difference?

SPEAKER_02 6:47

Yes, that's a good point to raise. I call them superficial because they are skin deep. They are, again, that's also an aphorism that still retains that distinction that I'm trying to explain. But what I'm saying is when these elements are put aside, we have a shared humanity. We have, as humans, you know, we bleed red, we walk upright, we are able to communicate through language. So we have all these other shared identities that make us who we are. And it is this sharedness that is core to who we are. It's not the surface differences. And therefore, you know, it's a matter of fast, okay, and and and this, you know, and this is what we call when you talk about the issue of race. Race, as we say in social sciences, is a social construct. That is, it was something that was invented by humans to classify others. Now, there's nothing wrong with classifying others. I have dark skin, you have a light skin, that can be a basis of difference. But when it becomes a basis of dehumanizing the other, then something has gone wrong. And so, and I think that's where racism becomes problematic. What is the reason? What was the primary goal of establishing racial constructs in the first place? In reality, it was to dominate, it was to justify why, especially people of darker hues, people of African descent, could be enslaved, could be colonized, and the society of people from Europe would think of themselves as more advanced than other people in the world, could justify their own reasoning as to why that would happen. So just like, and I use this when I talk to my students, money is a social construct, just like racism, but it's real, right? So that I could starve to death if I don't have money, buy things to purchase what I need, yet if I take a piece of paper that is a piece of paper and a piece of paper that is the money, they're just pieces of paper. But we have imbued one with value greater than the other. We have made one more significant in determining whether I starve or I eat food, because we have put in it a certain sociological determination that it has greater value than the other piece of paper. And that's the same thing with racism. It's real in the sense that the impact of it is real. As a concept, it's a social construct and should and can be changed, just like any social construct. However, its impact is real because then we have built societies based on that construct that we have founded our understanding and thinking about on. And that has an impact. So if I treat a person less than human, it's impacting the reality of that person.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Andrew, how do your how do the identities that you bring into this conversation inform that work for you? How has your background informed your inclusion practice?

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I grew up in Kenya, in East Africa. And back home, racial identities are not highlighted. The influence of race is still there in that there's a tendency to perceive those who have a lighter hue, lighter skinned hue, as more beautiful than those who have a darker steam hue. And this is the product of colonialism, right? Of European colonialism with its racist background that remains and still sort of influences how we see and perceive the world.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, and for sure you could have colorism even within a group of people that we would define as belonging to a single race or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Exactly. That's what has developed now. We have colorism in most parts of formerly colonized African communities. So we see lighter skinned as something that's more attractive than darker skin to the point that people use chemicals, very abrasive and very dangerous chemicals, to lighten their skins just so that they would perceive themselves as attractive, right? So that's there. But really the dominant framework of difference is tribalism. And again, even the notion of tribalism is and of itself a product of colonialism. That is, the construct tribal is a construct that is built on, again, Western notions of what they perceive to be primitive communities of Africa. And so those still remain. We still talk about ourselves as specific tribes, specific people groups. People have tried to move away from the word determined tribe. So they use people groups or people nations and stuff like that to identify the communities. But the difference that remains, the difference that constantly influences us is that you identify with a community largely based on language. You uh belong to a particular community, or I don't want to keep using the word tribe, because you speak that language and you've grown up understanding the cultural aspects that are confined within those language structures. So you belong by identifying, I mean, there's sometimes there's the geographical connection that you belong to this particular group because this particular group occupies this geographical location. But you can also be from outside of that and be part of the community, but never be fully integrated because you're always looked at as an outsider. So there's some level of biological claim in that regard. But yes, the difference is largely based on the different groups. And that's where we find that historically there have been sort of integration has always been sort of problematic. It's it's not always easy to marry from one community to the next. So there's a sense in which, on the one hand, colonialism is never really was never really a positive thing. But as a result of colonialism, there are aspects that have become at least a little positive. That is, I first identify myself as a Kenyan before I think of myself as a Kamba, which is my tribal community. And so basically what you have is a situation where those elements are still present and they still influence how we see each other and how we relate with one another. Coming to the US was a very different impact for me. I never thought of myself, first of all, initially, first as black. I thought of myself as a Kenyan, I thought of myself as a Kamba, I thought of myself as a foreigner, but never really identified myself racially until I came to this country. When I fill out the forms for, you know, government forms, the identity that I'm given, given because I don't have a choice about saying who I am, is black, you know, stroke African American, which is is a very broad category. It includes people from, you know, at least 54 African countries, many Caribbean countries and South American countries, and then of course African Americans in this country. So it's it's a very broad category that doesn't quite tell you who I am. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Not even close.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Yeah. So just having those sort of aspects. And then, of course, what I used to think of as just people's proclivities and interests and curiosity. Over time, I've also learned they have racialized frameworks. When I'm being asked, for example, where do you come from? Sometimes it's not just a curiosity of really how I speak or what I sound like or what I look like. Sometimes embedded in that is the question of the fact that I don't belong. And that I have some aspects about me that say to the person listening to me or engaging with me that I stand out as different. And then I have to, in a sense, in a way that I'm expected then to prove my bona fides that I do belong. In a sense, not literally, but I have to fight to be recognized as as a genuine American. I mean, I have every right to that, which is not a question I don't I don't think, say if I was coming from Europe, even when I do have a strange speech, I don't think that's a question that I'll typically get. And if it is where I was from, it would be, you know, a genuine inquiry of which country in Europe do you belong? It's not it's not a really a question of should you be here, kind of.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Well, and it gets back to your point earlier of am I seeing this as a threat or as I forget the alternative you you posed, but it's like people trying to suss out what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah, I mean the question is whether we belong, whether we have the same shared humanity or not. And if you have a question of why I am here, you know, so you know, because the next thing I say, you know, yeah, yeah, I'm Kenyan, all right, but I'm an American too. I've spent half of my life here now, as I see did in Kenya. So, you know, apart from the fact that legally I have a you know citizenship now, I have every sort of right to say I belong. I mean, most of the white Americans in this country have only been here three generations at most, you know, in that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents migrated from Europe to hit this country. So if we're going to talk about who belongs, it's really Native Americans that belong here. It's not anybody else. The rest of us are really foreigners in that regard. So to me, it's really coming to America that really woke up my own understanding of myself as a black person and what that meant. And it's important for me, as I've learned the American history, as I've become a professor of American history and African and African American religious traditions, to understand how the history of Americans' self-understanding is very much founded on this, and I'm largely talking about white American self-understanding, is built on, in many respects, a race-based understanding of themselves as superior, as you know, above all the other cultures and communities. And therefore, for those of us who are not European, of European descent, we find we have to find ourselves having to justify our right to be here as citizens as. And especially for people whose descendants were brought here by force rather than by choice. That's a whole different category, right? You cannot deny their existence, you cannot deny their presence, you cannot deny their cities' right to citizenship because they didn't choose to be here in the first place, but here we are. And so the country over ye over years of struggle and fight has been forced to embrace this diversity, has been forced to embrace this understanding of itself as not simply a white country. And that I think is is what I have learned as I negotiate not just my own personal life, but also as a scholar, as as a scholar of color, as an author that has to write works that are not necessarily going to be supportive of the typical narrative of westernization, right? As a post-colonial scholar and activist, I am going to say the truth and the truth from the vantage point of the way I have experienced it and seen it.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

I I was just thinking, as you were talking, like I do think one of the, as you said, the the positive example of colonialism, the one positive I think in the environment here in America is that there is some sense of at least deep empathy that can be found navigating America as black. And like there's things that we don't necessarily need to explain to each other, or even if I don't fully understand, I can look at you and feel like that it was difficult and that to have resiliency through that experience really means something. And to stay here and want to be here really takes something, like a a deep, I don't know, care for advancement or or wanting something different or wanting opportunities or something like that, just knowing what it takes to stay in this here. It does bring a sense of community too.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

What I hear also, I mean, I in the background here am hearing the word translation a lot. Like I know it hasn't been said explicitly, but I'm hearing that in different circumstances, people feel the need to translate different aspects of themselves to the people around them or to the community around them. And that there's sort of a significant change in, you know, based on your skin color or where you're finding yourself or the people around you in terms of what aspects of yourself you need to translate for other people.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Yeah, I mean, translation is is significant, right? I mean, language is a very important aspect, as I said. You see, language encompasses not just speech, but it integrates culture, it integrates ways of looking at life, worldviews. It reflects a much deeper aspect of who we are as people than sometimes we recognize. So I think if I were to quote FC Quang in her book Babel, she says language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, they grow, they flourish, and later, together, they fall. Language is such a central aspect, and translation is key to tra you know to how language is used and communicated. Right? So if you think about, for example, one of the things that I think about when I think of language and translation is how we communicate. Interpretation is key to understanding the other person. But what is driving the interpretation matters a lot. I think if when you translate, as we said earlier on, if your interest in translation is to control, and really, and this is very important when it comes to say the way the colonial powers entered into the sphere of the other, was translation is a very underappreciated form of dominance and control. The translator holds the power of the booth process, and it inevitably, intentionally or not, determines the imposition of meaning in the process and then the final product. Again, looking at what Ep Sin Quang says in her book, this is what she says about translation. Translation from time immemorial has been the facilitator of peace. So, on the one hand, these are the two sort of extremes of translation. And she goes on to say translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity for all. So even before enslavement of Africans in the 1400s and 1500s by the Europeans, there was already in place communication between all these places, including Africa and Europe, uh including the kingdoms that were present in different parts of Africa and in Europe. However, translation can also become a tool of oppression. Again, quoting FC Quang, she says, betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original language. It means whopping and distorting it for foreign unintended eyes. So then, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always a necessary act of betrayal? Portrayal. What she's driving at here is the fact that you can never really translate accurately. You can translate words. You may not be able to translate the cultural implications of those words. You may not be able to translate the um the religious understanding of those words. You may not be able to translate the worldview that is portrayed in those words. So just that just because you have a literal translation from one language to the next, so it says boat here, and it says so in their, you know, so you translate it into English a boat. But you have not understood the cultural aspects of that community's understanding of what a boat means for them as a fishing society, as a society that lives by the sea or by the lake, as a society that struggles with the waves or constantly. You know, you have no idea, you have not said anything about all that. Yet for them, when they say boat, it captures everything about those struggles. When you just say boat for your translation, you're just saying boat. You're just talking about the vessel. Say nothing else about what that word means for that community. So translation can be both very powerful in bringing us together. And perhaps is really the hope that we have of trying to bring us together. Let me give you an example. It again it captures the both the negative and the positive. Alexander, who's called the Great in the West and who's called the Terrible in the East, was this Greek emperor who really took over from his father's small kingdom in Greece when he was 23, very young age, and started conquests that lasted the next 10 years, and in that period of time essentially captured and conquered what is at that point the known world, right? And within a very short period of time, Alexander the Great imposed two things that were very important in maintaining his previously unequaled empire in the world. And that was language, right? He had introduced Greek language to every place that he conquered. And culture, Hellenistic culture, introduces the Olympic Games, the way how to dress, uh, public toilets, you know, all these things that otherwise were reserved for the Greeks. He introduces them everywhere that he went. And so Hellenization and the Greek language became the basis upon which he could hold together an empire that consisted of just the largest number of communities held together. Language there then, on the one hand, became a positive thing of at least holding them together, even though it's a negative because obviously he's colonizing them, right? And of course, later Europeans would learn from that on how to do their own colonization of other parts of the world, including Africa. Again, I'll go back to Efse Kwang and quote her again. She says, one of the characters says this. That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say, showing yourself to the world and hoping someone else understands. So, Eli, you have the pessimism of we may never arrive at this. I counter you with my eternal optimism that at some point this process of translating, this process of trying to hear what the other is saying, hopefully, hopefully, at some point, it will bring a sense of understanding and a sense of resolution. Even if I'm hoping that he doesn't have to go through violence to arrive at that, but if we could transform, hopefully it will.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Well, and if our intention is peace, is what I'm hearing you say too. Like if our intention of understanding and translating is peace as opposed to power, am I trying to understand your words? Am I trying to understand your perspective, or am I trying to just understand enough so I can get you to do what I want and what are my intentions around it?

SPEAKER_02 26:06

And again, going back to languages, one of the things that has been observed by scientists is that kids who grow up bilingual or trilingual or quadrilingual, they also develop a certain affinity to holding conflicting positions in their thinking. Not only that, they also develop better understanding of complex ideas than people who grow up with a monolingual sort of way, framework of looking at things. And if we can at least tap into a little into that, we may be able to at least say perhaps what we need is this ability to be able to go beyond seeing just ourselves. Because remember, the idea of self-understanding as superior, right? The idea of superiority is a framework of thinking that perceives oneself as complete, perceives as needing nothing else beyond themselves. Yet for us, translation, right? What we're talking about translation here is a recognition that what you have is not everything. It's not sufficient. And it may look like it's sufficient because you feel like you're in control of everything that you have, but ultimately at some point that will be brought to light that it's not sufficient. And so being aware of the fact that we need to be able to translate is vital. And what purpose for which we are trying to translate, as you rightly say, Cara, what is the purpose for a translator? So a person who perceives themselves as needing to find ways of increasing their own superiority so they learn every language so that they can control other people, then the motive there is very different from the rest of us who are saying, I'm learning a different language, I'm learning a different culture, so that I can benefit by connecting with others, that I can build these bridges and relationships that will make the world a better place. Because then misunderstanding and miscommunications can be reduced, and that way we can live in peace. Because I think a lot of divisions come from misunderstandings, miscommunication, mismis, you know, that idea of failing to understand what the other person is saying.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah, and um the consequences, you're making me think I learned a story yesterday. We have neighbors who are Ukrainian, and their uh mother can't they really want their mother to not live in Kyiv anymore. So two years ago, she came and lived, you know, in our in our town. And it was a matter of weeks. She insisted on going back to the Ukraine and and she just said, I can't, the language that was her reason is just the language. And it didn't matter, you know, the circumstances there, family being here at the end of the day. It was just, I cannot see understanding this language or being able to speak my own language and having others understand me in a way. And I just felt so sad hearing that when so much of the family is is here. It made me think a lot about like what is inclusion and belonging and what are the important things and the sacrifices we might make to feel comfortable or seen all the time.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah. And how many people have to do that all the time?

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Who go to a place where they don't speak the you know, for circumstances, because, you know, whatever. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

You know, people ask me if you value language so much, for example, why didn't you teach your kids Swahili? And um, I think they will have the opportunity to learn Swahili should they want to. Except here it would have been sort of challenging for them to learn Swahili, partly because really, apart from me, there's really no one else they would be able to communicate with. But we also made sure that they learned Hebrew at school. So it wasn't like we were saying that you know they can't learn foreign languages, they can't learn other languages. So they they they they learned Hebrew, they went to Hebrew school, they they can read in Hebrew, they can write in Hebrew, and they can understand to a certain degree spoken Hebrew. So they did have a second language that they were able to learn. But yeah, I mean I hear what you're saying because when sometimes you have to leave your home, and uh obviously the older you are, the more challenging it is to learn a new language. It doesn't necessarily comport well in terms of your own struggles to fit into a new society. And that's the struggle, you know, that we have to deal with in terms of that separation, right? Because again, language, as we're saying, encompasses more than just speech. It's more than just communicating with other people. It's feeling part of that community, feeling like you've settled in, that you belong. Language is vital as the inroad towards that. You know, it's it's think about it, it's it's a bit like um you as a person who has no disability, planning how to use sign language so that you can communicate with people who cannot hear or cannot speak. And therefore, you enter into their world. They become familiar, they become part of your community in a way that somebody else like me who doesn't know those the sign language become part of that community. And that's true of the person that you're referencing who finds it difficult for them to relocate to a place where they would have to learn a whole new language, it becomes a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

You have to become like a whole new person, I think, in a real sense. Like I think we develop other personalities in other languages, or at least that's what I took away from the movie Arrival. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 31:29

No, I mean, I think part of the translation process is that we have to also be aware that translation doesn't go one way.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

So when we translate, we should also be ready to be transformed. Right? It's not we who are simply learning what the other person is, you know, the other culture is doing. I think once we start communicating across cultures, then we should be ready to both cultures to be transformed, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Um is that your advice for people, Andrew?

SPEAKER_02 32:02

That's part of it, because one of the things, if you think about it, communities that say we are inclusive and we are open, right, to inviting people who are different into our communities. A lot of the times those communities that speak that way have not thought through the process of what the implications of that would look like. Therefore, what they do is invite different people to come to their community, but they're not willing to change. They want that person to conform to their community, right? How their community works, functions. They don't want the difference that that person brings to influence them. And that's not inclusion, right? That's not inclusion. If you're going to say, come with your whole self to our community, and I come to with my whole self, and I say, This is the kind of food I like to eat, this is the kind of clothing I like to dress in, and you say, Well, you can't do that here, then you're not including me. Inclusion has to recognize that it expects of us to be transformed by this connection that we make, and that it's it's it's it's both ways. True inclusion would recognize that there's something different there, and I can either accept it, you know, make it part of my community, or not. And if I don't do that, then it's not true inclusion. It doesn't allow for true belonging.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Well, and maybe the worst case being how America does operate, right? Of like, come here. Like America is not an inclusive place. Like America is a place to assimilate and your ability to conform or assimilate matters. And I think we've seen that with Jewish immigrants, we've seen that with a lot of different immigrants. And safety is surrounded by your ability to assimilate. And, you know, what would it actually look like if American really did mean something different? And you made me think a lot about how I, as I entered into the Jewish community, how I sort of insisted that my blackness was coming with me. And so that meant I needed to celebrate Passover in a different way. That meant I needed to do a lot of things in a different way that felt good and true to me because I'm not becoming a hundred, I'm not still a hundred percent, right? I'm now becoming 200%, 100% black and 100% Jewish. And this is that experience all lumped together. And um, and the traditions that we have as a family are not what, for example, my partner would have experienced in his home growing up. It's like we're actually doing something completely new.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Yeah, I mean, it this is the thing. I mean, uh I think when when we hold to superiority, we also tend to hold to a false notion of purity, that our culture, our language, our community has a certain purity. The truth is we we none of none of these cultures, we are not, we are all borrowing from each other, whether we are aware of it or not. And that we are all being influenced by others, whether we are aware of it or not. And this is true of every culture, every language. And therefore, being aware that a certain change has to happen is is a good thing to keep that in mind, so that because then you're aware, you're entering it with a you know open understanding that certain transformations will happen to me, to the community that I'm going to become a part of, but you also don't want to lose yourself, right? So, you know, if you think about the enslavement of Africans in the Americas, one of the things that happened was being disconnected from their African cultures, African languages, African names, African communities. And what you have there is an eradication, a total eradication of their previous lives that they they cease to be who they were, and they are supposed and forced to embrace some a culture and community and language that was completely foreign, and they were they were given no chance to retain any of that past. Of course, you know, clandestinely they did, but in terms of like what was being expected, they didn't. So there's a sense in which when it's forced upon you, it just is totally destructive. However, when it's a choice that one makes, that is, when you're you're making a deliberate connection to be part of a society or community or family that is distinctly different from your one of origins, then you are making a decision without being coerced, making a choice of the things that you want to keep and things that you're willing to let go, and the things that you're willing to negotiate. And that's a process. And that's really the basis of really proper relationships. That's a basis of how we should build relationships that try to figure out what is good for all of us, right? What is beneficial, what is not, what should we be willing to give up, and what should not be willing to give up?

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Yeah. Well, and how does that become a dance of translation and conversation? That I'm not going to force what you need to let go of or what I need to, right? Like how can we sort of have that in conversation?

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Yeah, I mean, that that's a good question. So as a biblical scholar, one of the ways that I try to understand translation. So if we have native speakers, and I'm I'm a translation expert and I'm being sent to a community to find a way, say, let's use the Bible as an example, translate the Bible into their language. I need to trust the native speakers. What they tell me about what they are hearing from what is that we are trying to translate should carry greater weight than just what I think I'm interpreting. Unfortunately, we don't always have the native speakers, like when we have a dead language, like even the Bible, again, going back to the Bible. We have Hebrew and we have Greek and we have Aramaic, but we don't have any speakers of those languages, at least the ancient version of it. We don't. And in that way, then we have to figure out different ways of negotiating that. And that's kind of you know something that we have to figure out uh by either looking at loan words, looking at neighboring languages, and and things like that. So the two extremes that we have to make as translators is how literal we have to be with the translation, which is called form equivalence, that is, you're trying to be as literal as possible, that is both in the language structure, grammar, and everything. So if I give you an example of Bibles that are very literal to the origin to the Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic, that would be like the King James Bible as an example. But then on the other end, we have what we call dynamic equivalence. What you're trying to translate is the concept, not just the words, but the concept of the ideas that were trying to be communicated by the ancient speakers and writers. And in that regard, what you're trying to communicate it is in as equivalent of a translation as possible. Let me give you an example. Among a community called the Rendile, who which uh in Kenya uh relative to the Maasai of Kenya, there was a translation project when I was in college. Uh, when they came to present the Bible, one of the people that had done the translation came to speak at the church that they were presenting at. And one of the passages he said that gave them significant trouble was Deuteronomy 6.5. In Deuteronomy 6.5 says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Now, among the rendile, they also have body parts, just like the Bible. The Bible talks about the love of the stomach, the love of the heart, the love of the mind. The interesting thing is that for the Bible, community that was the ancient Israelites, loving your God the Lord your God with all your heart was like the most significant aspect. For the Rendile, loving something or somebody with your heart, that was the least amount of love. The most significant point of love was stomach. Your stomach, loving your person with your gut. What we, you know, we even have an equivalent in English when we say gut feeling, right? So that loving you somebody with your stomach, with your heart. That is not so if you say love the Lord your God with your heart, you're saying love the Lord your God with the least amount of love. So for the translators, it was like, okay, do we want to stick with the literal words or do we want to translate the concept?

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

For the Hebrews, the most significant love was loving God with your heart. For the rendilla, if you say that, you're going to tell them to love God with the least amount of love that is possible. So the translators had to negotiate with the, you know, with the with the native speakers and figure out what's the best way to go about it. And they ended up translating it as, you know, love the Lord with your stomach, you know, and that's being the most important aspect. And then the love was of the heart was put last, you know, like so that it wasn't the most important aspect. And you know, obviously in that regard, it's not hard for you to just put a footnote there and say the Hebrew says this and that and that. And so let let the preachers have fun with trying to connect for their people with the meaning. But you can see what I'm saying here. The question then becomes, how strict am I going to be with this translation versus how dynamic am I going to be in communicating what the meaning was intended by the authors?

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Well, thank you for that example too, because it's how do our goals get in the way of are we trying to preserve language or are we trying to preserve meaning? And if we're trying to preserve meaning, then getting to that dynamic translation is more important than what those original terms might have been.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

And I know we're we're about out of time here, but I think it's like it's also less about the outcome and more about the curiosity that you approach with. And it's, you know, it's not like what are the exact words that I need to land at, but how can I, how can I open myself up to understanding the experience of someone different from me and what they were trying to communicate? Um, and that I think is like one of the more important pieces that I'm taking away from our conversation.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

Yeah, I mean, and and as a biblical scholar, part of the issue has been this notion that has been developed, especially by evangelical Christianity, about the text being the biblical text being inspired, this idea that it's uh it's the word of God, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Yeah, well, I mean, it's it's like the last five minutes, all I'm thinking about is the Supreme Court constitutional debates also between literalists and like, you know, just this like, well, this is the words that are in there, so this is what we have to go off of. And, you know, like other people who I think sound much more reasonable, who are like, you know, like the internet's not in the constitution. So like what are we what are we even talking about here? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Couldn't even understand our circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing. I mean, translation also has to do with are you trying to, you know, you put it very well, Cara, are we trying to preserve meaning or are you trying to preserve language? Right? And both are important. And when it depends then how you apply it to the document, if you have a document that you're translating, or to the message, what message you're trying to communicate. And there'll always be that tension, right? I don't think there'll there'll always be a straightforward answer. Yeah, there'll always be that tension. But again, as we talked about, the fact that people who grow with a certain dual language, dual understanding of things, living with attention is not a problem. It's the people who think of themselves as superior or think of themselves as having a straightforward answer. Yeah, those are the people that end up having the problem because they cannot handle the complexity that comes with the fact that we can handle difference without resorting to violence.

SPEAKER_01 43:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

It's a perfect note to end on.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

It is. It is.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Thank you so much, Andrew. It's been a pleasure getting to know you throughout this. This has been really uh enlightening, and I hope just encourages folks to do growth, curious things.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Thanks. I appreciate this opportunity to be able to share with you guys, and we'll continue to learn together.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

We appreciate you, Andrew. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Translations is produced by myself, Kara A. Wilson, and Orin Jacobson. Our producer is Nathan Vaughn at NJB Media. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did, please like, subscribe, and share. If you're interested in the subject of inclusion, please also give a listen to our episode with ScholarWig. Weathers. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.