Holy Week Alternate Translations

Several faith communities have asked about using alternate translations of the Good Friday readings, to avoid concerns about language that can be heard as antisemitic. There are a number of great resources available that I'd be happy to approve. In particular, I recommend two to you, both created by my friend, Professor Dan Joslyn-Simietkoski. I share the resources, and his comments about them, below:

"These documents were developed as part of a working group at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Austin, TX. We had received permission from the Bishop of Texas Andy Doyle to do this work. We had planned to do this service last year but did not due to the pandemic. We are proceeding with it this year. The goal is to submit this work to the task force on prayer book revision prior to the next General Convention.

First is the Passion according to the Gospel of John. [When you click this link, the document will be downloaded automatically, and you can find it in your downloads folder. This format retains the annotations.]

There is no rubrical option for another passion reading in the Book of Common Prayer. Thus we need to reckon with the depiction of hoi Iudaioi in this text. The NRSV and most English language bibles approved by the Episcopal Church render this as “the Jews.” The Common English Bible uses “the Jewish leaders” which is accurate in some ways but not others. The [. . .] translation and annotation by my colleague at Seminary of the Southwest, the Rev. Dr. Jane Patterson, renders this term as “the Judeans.” This is an accurate descriptor for a period when regional, religious, and political belonging were a complex reality and not easily separated. As the annotations show, this also highlights the regional rivalries between Galilean and Judean elements in early first-century Jewish life.

There is reason for caution here. Jewish New Testament scholars like Amy-Jill Levine and Adele Reinhartz have expressed concern that removing “the Jews” as a translation option in the Gospel of John might de-Judaize the text for Christians. While I affirm this concern, I would argue that in the context of Good Friday and the history of violence against Jews on this day and as a result of this passage, an alternate rendering that captures an aspect of the dynamics of that context is desirable. [ . . .]

Second is a revised Good Friday liturgy. The vision here is to create an alternate rite to the Good Friday liturgy rather than to replace the 1979 BCP liturgy. We offered alternate epistle readings that provide other perspectives on the meaning of the crucifixion. We also provide the option for a shorter passion gospel that helps ameliorate some of the problems of an anti-Jewish interpretation of the whole passion gospel.

The major revision is to the Solemn Collects. Historically, the church would pray on Good Friday that Jews, who had been blamed for the death of Jesus, would convert away from their blindness and hardness of heart. Too often, following Good Friday services Jews would be attacked after Christians had been stirred up by such prayers. While such a prayer has never been in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, it is a legacy to which we are accountable. In our own time, the Christian churches have begun to repair our relationship with the Jewish people, including developing prayers during this service affirming God’s relationship with the Jewish people. Notably, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Church of England have such prayers, as do other Protestant churches. Now seems like a good time to develop a similar Solemn Collect. This appears as the first of the collects in order to center God’s redemptive work as beginning with the Jewish people (Israel) from whom Jesus is born.

The working group also revised the prayers for those who are not Christian, acknowledging that this is a broad category of people whose own reasons for being in such a position are varied and complex. Here, the collect offers prayers to God, repenting of the times when the deeds of Christians have been the reason for this absence of faith and asking that God’s own desire for the good of all people be realized. A few other passages have been updated in the collect for those who are in need of prayer to note a contemporary expanded scope of concern."