A while back I told you about the "Jesus Movie," which has been translated into an incredible thousand languages and shown on temporary screens by Christian missionaries throughout the world. Well, it turns out a thousand languages is nothing! As I just learned from Adele Horne's understated if somewhat sneaky documentary "The Tailenders," Los Angeles-based Global Recordings Network has been making audio recordings of Bible stories since 1939 (some of the languages they recorded are now extinct!). They have produced records, cassettes and CDs in over five thousand eight hundred languages and dialects (!) - along with nifty simplified players from the cardboard recordplayer above to hand-cranked cassette decks (which play but don't record).As the film shows it, GRN missionaries sound out a potential audience for language and preexisting beliefs before choosing a tape appropriate to them, bringing the Good News to people in their very own idiom. In some cases, not only is the technology new to these audiences, but hearing their own language from it is next to miraculous. And yet, Horne wonders, what do people actually hear? It's hard to know, and not just because of challenges in translation.
Consider, for instance, Script 418, targeted at "Animist" audiences. Accompanied by a picture book with 24 images, it goes from Genesis through Noah to Job and Abraham (in case you wondered if anyone still places Job into the period of the patriarchs) before ending with Jesus. Here's how the story of Job is told (adaptation to local circumstances is permitted if required to make the story relevant).
9. Job Worships God. Job 1:1-12The man in this picture is Job. He worshipped and sacrificed only to the One True God. He did not follow Satan's ways. Job had many children and servants, and large herds of animals. God had caused Job to become very rich. One day God told Satan that He was pleased with Job. But Satan said that Job only worshipped God in order to be rich. He said to God, "If You take away everything that Job has, he will curse You." God knew that Satan lied. He knew that Job would worship Him even if he were poor. So God let Satan take everything from Job to prove that Job was a good man. (Signal)
10. Job in Mourning. Job 1:13-22One day Job's servants brought him terrible news. Job's enemies had stolen his oxen and donkeys and killed his servants. Lightning had killed all his sheep and their shepherds. Bandits had stolen all of his camels. Another servant brought the worst news of all, saying, "Your children were feasting when a storm blew the house down and killed them all." Job shaved his head and fell to the ground. He said, "The Lord gave, and now He has taken away. May His Name be praised!" In all these troubles Job did not curse God. (Signal)
11. Job Suffers. Job 2:1 - 41:34Satan said to God, "If you hurt Job's body he will curse You!" So God allowed Satan to test Job again. Satan brought a terrible skin disease on Job. Job's wife said to him, "Why don't you curse God and die?" But Job refused and said to her, "Shall we accept good from God and not trouble too?" Three friends came and talked with Job for many days. They said that God was punishing Job for some evil he had done. Then God Himself appeared to them. God showed them that they did not understand. God is unlimited in power. He knows all things. He knows what is best for us, and He alone can choose a difficult or an easy life for us. (Signal)
12. Job is Restored. Job 42:1-17When Job saw the greatness of God he was ashamed that he had doubted God or had talked of his own goodness. Job prayed for his friends because they did not understand the ways of God. Then God made Job wealthy and healthy again. His friends came to feast with him and to bring him gifts. God gave him seven sons and three beautiful daughters. He lived to see many of his descendants, and he died a very old man. Friends, God knows why you may suffer in this life. Remember, God loves us and only wants the best for us. He wants us to trust Him so that we may have victory over Satan through the Lord Jesus Christ. (Music)
The story's almost there, I guess, though the sequence of the end is a bit shaky and Job's voice is, well, a bit muffled. We don't hear him protest his innocence, or curse the day of his birth, let alone wonder at the ways of the divine. But then, while God is pleased with him, there's no suggestion that this Job is the most upright of men. In fact, we learn that he doubted God and praised himself - and was then duly ashamed of himself.
But how much of even this declawed version of the story will work in other languages? "The Tailenders" shows a Oaxacan convert trying to render a message about sin in Mixteca - but this language apparently doesn't have words for key notions like "punish"! How would Job's story be rendered? I was about to say that surely this is a story which must work in any language - but then remembered that it hardly works even in English, at least not easily or unequivocally!
Horne offers no direct answer to her questions about what people actually take from the GRN recordings. But she gestures toward saying that it is in any case the form - more than the content - which effects conversions, if conversions they are: sound, technology, wealth, power appeal to people whose very survival is threatened by globalization. (It's characteristic of the film that Horne doesn't ask her missionary subjects what they think of this view - I suspect they're on her wavelength, at least part of the time - let alone any of their audiences.) In the meanwhile, GRN - undaunted - is taking up the "10K challenge" - to evangelize in the all the remaining languages spoken on our planet.
