A humorous example [of obstacles
to cross-cultural communication] can be found in a recent publication of the
Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus,
written by Robert Funk and Roy Hoover. They use the following translation (from
their “Scholars Version” of the five Gospels) of Jesus’s statement in Matthew
6:22-23:
The eye is the body’s lamp. It follows
that if your eye is clear, your whole body will be flooded with light. If your
eye is clouded, your whole body will be shrouded in darkness. If, then, the
light within you is darkness, how dark that can be!
The commentary then states the
following:
It was a common view in the
ancient world that the eye admits light into the body (a communication notion).
A clear eye permits the light to enter the body and penetrate the darkness. Light
symbolizes good; darkness evil. (Funk and Hoover, The Five Gospels, 151)
That both this translation and the
attendant commentary are misguided is not at all difficult to demonstrate. The
notion that light comes into the eye from the outside was not in fact a common
view in the ancient world; indeed Plutarch tells us exactly the opposite:
For odor, voice, and breathing are
all emanations of some kind, streams of particles from living bodies, that
produce sensation whenever our organs of sense are stimulated by their impact.
. . . In all probability the most active stream of such emanations is that
which passes through the eye. For vision, being of enormous swiftness and
carried by an essence that gives of a flame-like brilliance, diffuses wondrous influence.
(Quaest. Conv. 680-F)
Or again, when commenting on the
ancient belief in the evil eye, Plutarch says:
Envy, which naturally roots itself
more deeply in the mind than any other passion, contaminates the body too with
evil. . . . When those possessed by envy to this degree let their glance fall
upon a person, their eyes, which are close to the mind and draw from it the evil
influence of the passion, then assail that person as if with poisoned arrows;
hence, In conclude, it is not paradoxical or incredible that they should have
an effect on the person who encounter their gaze. (Quaest. Conv. 681
D-E)
The point is that the ancients understood
light to issue out from the eye and not penetrate into it. As Jesus
says, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” Lamps do not receive light; they emit
light. Sirach reminds us that this is even true of the eyes of God: “the eyes
of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun” (23:19). Thus the
idea of light entering the eye was anything but a “common sense notion” in the
ancient world.
In addition, lack of “clarity” of the e (as
the translation above would have it) is not really the issue in the Jesus
saying at all (the Greek reads: εαν δε ο οφθσλμος σου πονηρος η). Rather it is the eye’s capacity as an active agent to cause
injury to others. As Plutarch indicates, that kind of injury is the result of
envy in the heart that is projected outward through the eyes and onto its
victim like a stream of poisoned particles. Such a glance can damage whatever
it hits. (Richard L. Rohrbaugh, “Hermeneutics as Cross-Cultural Encounter: Obstacles
to Understanding,” in The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective [Matrix:
The Bible in Mediterranean Context; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2007], 3-4, comment in square brackets added for clarification)