A Palpable God: Thirty Stories Translated from the Bible With an Essay on the Origins and Life of Narrative

by Reynolds Price

Retells the stories of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Joseph, and Jesus, and discusses the origins of narrative

Genres: Religion, Christian, Spirituality, Nonfiction

195 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University. He taught at Duke since 1958 and was James B. Duke Professor of English.

His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.

Photo courtesy of Reynolds Price's author page on Amazon.com

Reviews

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review title: Truth you can touch and see

Price was an American writer and academic, born in North Carolina and educated at Duke and Oxford, and steeped in the cultural traditions of old-time religion and storytelling. In 1978, in the midst of his career, to consider the origin and power of narratives and refresh his storytelling, he went back to examine the Bible as the central narrative of our culture and his roots. The result is The Palpable God, a classic at once deep and accessible, mystical and literal and true. In his own words, what Price produced was "this collection of stories--perhaps not quite the oldest surviving but the oldest which bear directly on our lives, the line of our culture. They are offered with a prefatory set of questions and considered guesses on the origin, behavior, and destination of story--the chief means by which we became, and stay, human." (p. 14)

The book consists of the prefatory section Price described which is 60 pages or nearly a third of the book in which he examines the origins of narrative stories in human history, the role of the Bible in that history, and his purpose and approach in writing the book. Price makes clear he is no Bible scholar, knowing no Hebrew and a smattering of "fraternity" Greek at the beginning. So his translations of selected Biblical stories, which take up the remaining two thirds of the book, rely heavily on dictionaries, concordances, and commentaries by true Bible scholars, which he mixed with his purpose, approach, and skill as a writer for their impact and interest. He is neither a preacher nor a protagonist here, but a reader in search of the narrative of the Bible which reveals the truth we can touch and see of a truly palpable (able to be touched or felt) God.

Price in his brief consideration of the history of narrative stories in human history describes the purpose of narrative stories as the use of language to convey not just information or news but quite literally sensations: the speaker (narration starting and remaining an oral form passed down by retelling and memory for millenia before written language) was there, they saw, heard, and felt the events the narrative is about.

Narrative, like the other basic needs of the species, supports the literal survival of man by providing him with numerous forms of nurture—the simple companionship of the narrative transaction, the union of teller and told; the narrator's opportunity for exercise of personal skill in telling and its ensuing rewards; the audience’s exercise of attention, imagination, powers of deduction; the spiritual support which both parties receive from stories affirming our importance and protection in a perilous world; the transmission to younger listeners of vital knowledge, worldly and unworldly; the narcotic effect of narrative on pain and boredom; and perhaps most importantly, the chance that in the very attempt at narrative transaction something new will surface or be revealed, some sudden floater from the dark unconscious, some message from a god which can only arrive or be told as a tale. (p. 26)

Price identifies four basic stories from the Bible: "We are loved and needed by our Creator, We suffer but accept our fate, Our enemies and God's are rightly punished, and lastly God is sometimes veiled from our sight. " (p. 23-24). Since Price is neither a preacher nor a proselytizer, his declaration of the truth of the Bible's narratives is the more powerful because of it: "They bear their validation in the narrative bones, bones of the visible actions they describe, and in the reckless bravery on their cloudless faces. They well understand that they give us one choice--if we call them untrue, we must call them insane. They are plainly not deceitful; and I plainly call them true, in some awareness of the range of objections." (p. 45)

In his note on his approach to the translations just before he dices into the meat of the words, Price describes his understanding and dislike of both the literalist word-for-word translation which can result in awkward syntax and misleadingly "literal" and misunderstood narrative and the abstractionist translation which in its attempt to translate what the original writer "meant" can introduce anachronistic language and overuse of the thesaurus; see his examples on p. 49-52 of the same passage from a literal translation, the 1611 King James Bible, and a modern paraphrase. While he nicks the King James for its occasional overuse of vocabulary, he also recognizes that "the King James and its English predecessors achieved their triumph--for close study will show that the qualities of vision, narrative vigor, style, and rhythm . . . have made the King James not only the most influential work in our literature but unshakably the Bible for three centuries. " (p. 54).

In his translations, Price concludes that "I have aimed for the most literal reading versions possible in modern English--as limited in range and color of word and image as their originals require them to be and as clear, but not more so. " (p. 59-60). In his selections--from both Old and New Testaments and with extended translations of the account of Joseph's time in Egypt from the book of Genesis and the whole Gospel of Mark--the desire of the narrator for us to see what they saw, feel what they felt, hear what they heard, know what they knew is, indeed, palpable. The narrative feel is enhanced as Price punctuates and formats the narratives in sentences and paragraphs, as we are used to reading stories, not in the book:chapter:verse format commonly used in Bible study.

When you follow along with a copy of the Bible text the difference in narrative clarity is noticeable and note-worthy. My reading Bible is the New American Standard version, one of the newest translations, which I started using about 20 years ago and find that while it may lack the poetic language of the King James it reads more naturally; compared to Price's translation the passages were sometimes nearly identical, suggesting that both Price and the NAS translators achieved their goal of clarity. But even then, especially in the book of Mark which is already known for its immediacy and brevity of language, Price provides language to touch and see our Palpable God:

Mark 6:12
NAS: They went out and preached that men should repent.
Price: Going out they proclaimed that men should change.

Mark 6:50
NAS: "Take courage; it is I, do not be afraid." [As Jesus walks on water]
Price: "Courage. I am. No fear."

Mark 7:36-37
NAS: And He gave them orders not to tell anyone; but the more He ordered them, the more widely they continued to proclaim it. They were utterly astonished, saying "He has done all things well; she makes even the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
Price: He ordered them to tell nobody but the more he ordered the more wildly they declared it. They were wildly amazed saying "He has done everything right--he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak."

Mark 9:7
NAS: "This is My beloved Son, listen to him!" [God speaking from Heaven]
Price: "This is My son, the loved one. Hear him."

John 11:33, 35, 38
NAS: He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled. . . . Jesus wept. . . . So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. [where his friend Lazarus lay dead]
Price: He howled in his soul and harrowed himself. . . . Jesus wept. . . . So Jesus howling in himself again came to the tomb.

Not everyone who reads the Bible will believe it. Students of science, language, archeology, history, and religion can give a "range of objections", as Price wrote. But words like these that enable us to touch and see God in stories that don't need to claim to be true because they read true can bring us, in the physicality of our bodies and the spirituality of our souls, to belief. Classics of literature let us touch and see the eternal in us and the God who created us. A Palpable God is a classic.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know enough about Bible translation to comment much on Price's work but it was interesting and thought provoking to read sections of scripture in a different translation, set out as stories and not broken into verses, etc. It reads more like ancient encounters between God and His people and I like that aspect.

[Padraic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Price learned Koine Greek and translated the Gospel of Mark with a truth-teller's eye and a jeweler's precision. Scholars blanched. I loved it.

[Sara floerke · Rating 3 out of 5]

New author to me, suggested by Eugene Peterson.

This book was a simple retelling of some OT and Jesus stories. I didn't find the retelling to be all that different from the original (translated of course) text, however, the way he parallels the texts were fascinating. He turns the original verses into narratives...doesn't add anything...no color or detail, but more narrative in form.

The comparisons provided a lot of thought fodder for me.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of "A Palpable God," Reynolds Price, has written a wide variety of books including novels, poems, and this one, inspirational. With this book it seems that Price has set out to try his hand at Bible translation, and quite well he has done so. In one of the book´s prefaces the author indicates that he wanted to write selections of the Bible in "the most literal reading versions possible in modern English--as limited in range and colour of word and image as their originals require them to be and as clear, but not more so." Price uses the word "palpable," a rare adjective in English, in the title to suggest that his intention is to write selections of the Bible in an English rendition that is so easily understood to modern English speakers as to make the God of the selections tangible, obvious, and essentially "touchable." Among the 30 different selections is his version of the complete gospel according to Mark, written as though it were like a newspaper story summarizing the basic biography of a person who claimed to be God, Jesus. I am especially nostalgic about this book because it is the final book to be read by me of all the gift books that my father bestowed to me during his life. It is as though it is my own father delivering his final words to me.

[Bg Abadia]

good