Crystal Clear Until You Look: The Waters of Translation

Original biblical translation is a regularly occurring feature of biblical scholarship, but it frequently appears without any reflection (even when it appears with volumes of voluminous footnotes). This lecture considers the in invisibility of translation to many if not most readers in Christian traditions.

The Rev Dr Wil Gafney, Ph.D. is a biblical scholar whose work focuses on translation of the scriptures for congregations and lay readers, womanist and feminist biblical interpretation and, women who prophesied in ancient Israel and the ancient Afro-Asiatic world and, their reception in rabbinic literature. She is the Right Rev Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church Years A, B and C and a novel Year W (a stand-alone volume) and translator of its biblical selections. She is the author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne and its sequel, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings along with a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah in the Wisdom series and, Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel. She co-edited The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible.

Dr. Gafney is an Episcopal priest canonically resident in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and licensed in the Diocese of Texas and, a former Army chaplain and congregational pastor in the AME Zion Church. A former member of the Dorshei Derekh Reconstructionist Minyan of the Germantown Jewish Center in Philadelphia, she has co-taught courses with and for the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary in Wyncote, PA. Her lectures and sermons are widely sought after in academic and Jewish and Christian congregational spaces in the US and in the UK. She is a public facing religious scholar, preacher, teacher, activist and, an amateur watercolorist.