“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not
remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my
highest joy.” (Psalm 137: 5-6 RSV)
A view over Jerusalem showing the Temple Mount and the Dome
of the Rock [photo: UBS/Maurice Harvey WR414/12 ISR91T-1213]
In the second of two articles, the Chuvash writer and Bible translator Eva Lisina describes the spiritual restoration that a visit to the places of the Bible brought her
CHUVASHIA — I spent 15 years translating the Old Testament into Chuvash and in that time I used to dream about the day when we would begin to translate the New Testament. It seemed to me that this would be the happiest experience of all. But everything turned out so much more complicated; it was really a time of trial.
What happened was that my brother died. He was a quite outstanding poet. In fact, since his death, he has even been called a genius. He and I were very close, not just in family terms but spiritually, too.
Serious setback
After he died, I suddenly felt reproachful and angry towards people who, by my reckoning, should have taken better care of him. This caught me off guard and was quite a serious setback: even while working at my desk I was conscious of a constant nagging voice. I can say in all honesty that in 15 years of working on translation of the Old Testament I had never entertained thoughts of anger or reproach while at my desk. And if I had had thoughts like that, then it certainly wasn’t while I was working. I always thought that I was a pretty ordinary person – ready to forgive, and just as ready to accept forgiveness. I can’t recall ever nursing an evil thought against anyone. But now I suddenly found myself unable to forgive. Perhaps someone in this state of mind could translate a piece of secular literature, but when you are working on the New Testament you need a different kind of outlook. After all, how could I translate the Sermon on the Mount when I lacked love and felt unable to forgive my neighbour? It would be blasphemy! In that condition, I shouldn’t even touch the Gospel! But then I came to understand what I had to do – though it’s one thing to understand the nature of the remedy, and quite another to take it and restore your state of health.
Persistence
Previously I had wanted to visit the Holy Land simply as a way of preparing to translate the New Testament, but in the circumstances following the death of my brother the visit became a compelling need. I didn’t tell anyone the reasons – about the unexpected obstacles which had arisen; I just badgered Simon Crisp, the UBS Europe-Middle East Translation Coordinator, about the possibility of a trip. He was probably baffled by my persistence, but I reasoned that if you really need what you ask for, it will be given to you. The resources to finance the trip were found – and the very fact that they were provided from Northern Ireland contributed a good deal to melting the anger in me that the circumstances surrounding my brother’s death had caused. Bethlehem… Jerusalem… Zion… the Mount of Olives… Gethsemane… the Way of the Cross… our Lord’s tomb… Mount Tabor… the Mount of the Temptation…the monasteries – these places where heaven came down to earth fill a pilgrim with so much emotion, and send him away so much richer! Each person has their own special secret, but one thing is sure: such a journey is an experience of salvation.
Deep confession
On the day after my arrival in the Holy Land I went to confession with a monastic priest in Jericho. It was a deep confession, but the priest was full of sympathy and tenderness. It was just as well that by the time we returned to the hotel in Bethlehem that night it was dark in the bus, and no-one could see my face. My soul was so full of love and forgiveness that the tears poured silently down my face. I felt that a weak person like me could hardly contain such love, but that even a little spark helped to purify me. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. To my surprise, I met the same monk again the next morning. “Eva,” he said, “I have been praying for you. Do you remember what I said to you?”
Do you remember?
“Yes, I remember,” I replied. And I shall remember it forever. A couple of days later we were due to climb Mount Sinai. Who has not dreamt of climbing the mountain from whose summit the Israelites were given God’s Law? “And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain quaked greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.” (Exodus 19: 18-20 RSV ) It was on Sinai that the great prophet Elijah hid; Sinai was a place of refuge for the first Christians, a favourite location for monks.
Revelation
After we had made the ascent, a lady who was one of the other pilgrims in our party said, “It’s good that we climbed it at night – if it had been daytime, with all the mountains clearly visible, I would have been too frightened to go up.” Of course she would have climbed really, but all the same, the sight of all those majestic mountains does make you tremble. And just imagine: the people who were to receive the revelation of God wandered around that region for 40 years… Those 2,285 metres were hard for me to climb. Even the Bedouin and their camels went in single file, and some of them probably thought that it would be better to sit this old woman on a camel, too. But I wanted to make the ascent on my own two feet. The last part was especially difficult. But it’s good when things are difficult, because it’s then that we turn to God. As I struggled upwards, I prayed a sincere prayer: “Help me, Lord! Let me glorify your name on the summit of this mountain!” And I finally reached the top! Now, as I write these lines, my eyes are brimming with tears of love and gratitude. There is a small wound on my finger from a Burning Bush on Mount Sinai and it’s a shame that it is going to heal… I had two more deeply personal wishes: to pray at the place in Bethlehem where St Jerome, the translator of the Latin Vulgate, had worked, and to pray at the tomb of Simeon the Godly, one of the translators of the Septuagint. Both these wishes were fulfilled as well. At the end of the trip, on the very last day, I was walking in the garden of the monastery in Ein Karem where the Virgin Mary is thought to have spent three months. I looked down at Jerusalem and said aloud to myself, “You have been blessed with too much happiness. You don’t deserve it; it’s time to go back to Cheboksary and sit down at your desk.” Two things helped me to get myself back into the right state for translating the New Testament. The first was that I remembered that the Chuvash churches were full of people waiting to receive the Bible in their mother tongue.
Special gratitude
The second was that the Bible Society of Northern Ireland supported my trip. When people you don’t know help you, you feel a special kind of gratitude towards them, because help like that warms your soul, the wide world comes closer and you feel that you have brothers and sisters everywhere. And I can say with full assurance: this help will be to the benefit of our common work. May everything good done on this earth be to the Lord’s glory!
The previous article by Eva Lisina appeared in World Report 413/9.
This story refers to project 85225.
(WR414/12 - 08/09.07) [1 photo]