According to the publication, the Kyiv Summer Theological Institute has for the fourth year in a row brought together enthusiasts of theological study; in 2006 it was held in the village of Lishnya near Kyiv. Each year different teachers with original courses are invited to participate. The publication calls Desnitsky's course Introduction to Biblical Poetics perhaps the most original that year.
Desnitsky said he was participating in the institute for the first time and had come for only a few days. According to him, he had long wanted to visit a Ukrainian village: before that, he had been in Ukraine only in Crimea and Kyiv. He spoke warmly of the village priest, Father Filaret, who, as he described him, is «quieter than water, lower than grass» and at the same time actively participates in village life, creating a spiritual center where a club stood in Soviet times. He attributed the good atmosphere to the organizers: people, he said, feel no pressure and interact without external authorities.
«Many Orthodox Christians do not read the Bible»
Explaining the purpose of the course, Desnitsky began by saying that many Orthodox Christians do not read the Bible, and at most quote from it, reading purely practical brochures instead. The Bible, he said, is Holy Scripture, and therefore it is important simply to take it in hand and read it—the text is special, beautiful, and can be read for pleasure. In the course he demonstrated methods of slow reading of the biblical the Bible, he said, is not only the word of God but also a word written in human language, «not the language of angels but of people,» and in studying it the same methodological techniques apply as in studying any text.
He built his practical recommendation on a comparison: the Bible is like the internet in that it contains many «hyperlinks»—each text leads somewhere, and to understand Scripture correctly one must follow them. It is unlike the internet in that it is very small in volume: the creation of the world takes up literally one page, so skimming the text is unacceptable. It should be read thoughtfully, and such reading, he said, is more like reading a letter from someone you love.
Translations and Relations with the Church
The Institute for Bible Translation, where Desnitsky worked as a consultant, translates Scripture into the languages of small peoples of Russia, publishes and distributes the translations. Among the projects he mentioned the Crimean Tatar translation in Ukraine, as well as projects in the regions of the South Caucasus and Central Asia. He described relations with the Orthodox Church as good: according to him, Patriarch Alexy II not only formally supports the institute but also speaks warmly of its activities, and warm relations have developed with the Yakut diocese—the Gospel has been translated into Yakut, and services with readings from Scripture in that translation have already been held. He said that if they did not do this work themselves, foreign missionaries would take it up.
To the objection that the Bible should be read only in Russian, he replied that all peoples prefer Scripture in their own language, and Yakut is not like Russian, and far from everyone in Yakutia understands Russian well. He quoted a Yakut who, after reading the Gospel in his own language, realized that there was nothing Russian in it, and that Christ is the Savior of the world, not of one people.
Translation Difficulties
Desnitsky agreed that translation is always in some sense interpretation, and said that the Russian Synodal translation is not free from errors. It is especially difficult, he said, to convey the concept of the one God in the languages of peoples with pagan gods. He told of a case when a representative of one such people, reading chapter 21 of the Gospel of John about the miraculous catch of fish, said that they too have a god who sends a good catch, to whom a glass of vodka is poured into the water before fishing. At the same time, he noted, even among peoples called pagan there is a notion of the One God. As another example he cited the Ossetians, descendants of the Alans, among whom, he said, Christian and pagan ideas have mixed.
Sometimes, he said, new terms have to be created: according to his information, only the Chukchi language lacked a concept of God as a person, and translators extracted a root from words about the spiritual and assigned it the meaning «God.» He objected to those who demand that Russian words like «God» and «Lord» be left in translations: then, he said, it would turn out that the Orthodox faith is a religion only of Russians. Besides translation, he added, preaching is also needed: if the Bible reaches a person on a desert island, he will not become a Christian from it; the faith must be explained to him, and that is the task of missionaries.
About translations for peoples who profess Islam, he said they are received differently: sometimes you hear «why do we need the Bible, translate the Quran instead,» but there is also unexpectedly warm attitudes. Islam, in his estimation, is very diverse: the Islam of the peoples of the Volga region or the Crimean Tatars, who lived in a Christian environment, is tolerant and unobtrusive. He told of a mullah in Central Asia who was given the text of the Gospel translated into his native language; according to him, the mullah spoke very well of the book and began every Friday to read passages to fellow believers and teach them to act as the prophet Isa commanded. Specialists in Islamic theology, Desnitsky noted, do not consider the Gospel an authentic text, but he considered it important that they learn the story of the shared biblical saints: the less ignorance there is between people, the less enmity there will be.
To the question whether a Russian person needs to hear Scripture during services in his native language, he answered in the affirmative: he finds it hard to imagine a person who would deny the Russian language the right to be heard during services. The Synodal translation, he said, is recognized by Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants; the translations of the early 1990s from English rather than from the original he called not very good, and he assessed positively the work of Hieromonk Ambrose (Timrot) on liturgical texts, including the Psalter—the translation, he said, sounds good. The abandonment of Church Slavonic, he believed, does not necessarily mean abandoning poetry, and in this area more freedom and initiative are needed.
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