David Jasper

In 1879, Canon Thomas Frederick Simmons edited the late medieval poem now known as The Lay Folks' Mass Book creating what remains the standard edition of the text. This volume shows how Simmons' interest in the text was related profoundly to contemporary debates about worship in the Church of England, and how he used his medievalist researches as the basis for the most important attempt at Prayer Book revision between the Reformation and the twentieth century.

How does one culture 'read' another? In Literature and Religion, two scholars, one from China and one from the West, each read texts from the other's culture as a means of dialogue. A key issue in such an enterprise is the nature of religion and what we understand by that term in a world in which ancient religious customs seem to be dying or under threat. Does a comparative study of religious literature offer a way towards mutual understanding - or merely illustrate our differences? Underpinned by their own friendship, these two partners in conversation show what is possible.

How does one culture ""read"" another? This book is a series of conversations between a scholar from China and a scholar from the West, each reading texts from the other's culture. One of the key issues is the nature of religion and what we understand by that term in a world in which ancient religious and customs seem to be dying or under threat. Does literature and religion offer the possibility of mutual understanding--or merely illustrate our differences? These conversations between scholars are also between friends. And that, too, is important.

How does one culture ""read"" another? This book is a series of conversations between a scholar from China and a scholar from the West, each reading texts from the other's culture. One of the key issues is the nature of religion and what we understand by that term in a world in which ancient religious and customs seem to be dying or under threat. Does literature and religion offer the possibility of mutual understanding--or merely illustrate our differences? These conversations between scholars are also between friends. And that, too, is important.

For some, the Bible and literature are at odds. The Bible, it is argued, is not properly literature but a piece of outmoded fiction that ought not to be studied or taken seriously. However, the relationship of the Bible with literature as well as its continuing cultural impact cannot be overlooked. The Bible is an ever-fruitful source for creativity that has contributed to all the great achievements of Western thought, writing, and artistry for the last two millennia.With Scripture and Literature, David Jasper has compiled forty years of his writings on the relationship between the Bible, literature, and art. These writings are interdisciplinary in nature and are not the work of a specialist in biblical scholarship. Rather, while acknowledging the Bible as a sacred text in more than one religious tradition, they recognize the Bible as literature in conversation with other literary works and traditions as well as the visual arts. During the forty years which these essays span, enormous changes have taken place in our world. Postmodernism has come and gone; issues in feminism and gender are now acutely, and properly, with us; and the world has become much more of a global village, despite its many divisions. On the other hand, and at the same time, it is remarkable how little has changed, and the reader will find that some older pieces remain relevant and necessary today.Parts of the book deal broadly with questions of translation, rhetoric, war, and evil, while others focus on specific writers and artists, from J. M. W. Turner to the English novelist Jim Crace. Yet behind Scripture and Literature lies a lifetime of careful thought and teaching of the Bible and literature. In the end, Jasper synthesizes his work, offering some reflections on pedagogy and the changes that have occurred from the 1980s up to the present day.

Examining the roots of the relationship between literature and theology, this book offers the first serious attempt to probe the deep theological purposes of the study of literature. Through an exploration of themes of evil, forgiveness, sacrament and what it means to be human, David Jasper draws from international research and discussions on literature and theology and employs an historical and profoundly personal journey through the later part of the last century up to the present time. Combining fields such as bible and literature, poetry and sacrament, this book sheds new light on how Christian theology seeks to remain articulate in our global, secular and multi-faith culture.

Heaven in Ordinary is like a love affair with poetry that engages with religious questions, for good or ill, concerned with five poets who are haunted by God. Poets, in times of great faith and times of doubt, have expressed for us their sense of both the presence and the absence of God in language that is sometimes almost sacramental in its weight of beauty, love, fear, anger or despair. The poets considered here all relate, in some way, to the traditions of Anglicanism through the centuries, reflecting both a common humanity and a wide breadth of human experience as it struggles with God. Heaven in Ordinary is deliberately autobiographical in approach, as it is grounded in David Jasper's own lifetime experience of reading poetry since his school years, and over four decades as a priest. The poets he so beautifully discusses have related both positively and negatively to the Christian faith and the Anglican tradition. Some are deeply religious, others are haunted by God and the divine mystery.

This interdisciplinary study traverses the disciplines of translation studies, hermeneutics, theater studies, and sociology. Under the ""power turn"" or ""political turn"" in translation studies, the omission and untranslatability of religious material are often seen as the product of censorship or self-censorship. But the theology of each individual translating agent is often neglected as a contributing factor to such untranslatability. This book comprehensively traces the hermeneutical process of the translators as readers, and the situational process and semiotics of theater translation. Together these factors contribute to an image of translated literature that in turn influences the literature's reception. While translation theorists influenced by the current ""sociological turn"" view social factors as determining translation activities and strategies, this volume argues that the translator's or the dramatist's theology and religious values interact with the socio-cultural milieu to carve out a unique drama production. Often it is the religious values of the translating agents that determine the product, rather than social factors. Further, the translatability of religious discourse should be understood in a broader sense according to the seven dimensions proposed by Ninian Smart, rather than merely focusing on untranslatability as a result of semantic and linguistic differences. ""Few people have understood the human heart so well as Shakespeare. He understood our volatile frailty, that mixture of the comic and the tragic which elicits the greatest human acts. This is a brilliant, innovative study of intercultural stagecraft and the performability of such intimations of humanity. I cannot commend it too highly."" --Very Rev Professor Iain Torrance, Pro-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, President Emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary ""Taking Shakespeare in the Chinese context as an example, Jenny Wong's book eloquently argues that the omission or repression of religious terms and allusions in literary translation has more to do with difficulties in social, political, and cultural backgrounds than the usually empty talk about linguistic or conceptual untranslatability. This book makes a significant contribution to translation studies and comparative literature. It is a useful book for anyone interested in global Shakespeare, comparative study of religion and literature, and translation and world literature."" --Zhang Longxi, Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at City University of Hong Kong Jenny Wong has taught translation and interpretation at universities in China, including at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, at Hang Seng Management College in Hong Kong, at United International College in Zhuhai, and elsewhere. She is the founder of the Society for English Learning Through Biblical Literature, SELBL (www.selbl.org), a non-profit organization that promotes the cultural significance of the Bible among international students.

This interdisciplinary study traverses the disciplines of translation studies, hermeneutics, theater studies, and sociology. Under the ""power turn"" or ""political turn"" in translation studies, the omission and untranslatability of religious material are often seen as the product of censorship or self-censorship. But the theology of each individual translating agent is often neglected as a contributing factor to such untranslatability. This book comprehensively traces the hermeneutical process of the translators as readers, and the situational process and semiotics of theater translation. Together these factors contribute to an image of translated literature that in turn influences the literature's reception. While translation theorists influenced by the current ""sociological turn"" view social factors as determining translation activities and strategies, this volume argues that the translator's or the dramatist's theology and religious values interact with the socio-cultural milieu to carve out a unique drama production. Often it is the religious values of the translating agents that determine the product, rather than social factors. Further, the translatability of religious discourse should be understood in a broader sense according to the seven dimensions proposed by Ninian Smart, rather than merely focusing on untranslatability as a result of semantic and linguistic differences. ""Few people have understood the human heart so well as Shakespeare. He understood our volatile frailty, that mixture of the comic and the tragic which elicits the greatest human acts. This is a brilliant, innovative study of intercultural stagecraft and the performability of such intimations of humanity. I cannot commend it too highly."" --Very Rev Professor Iain Torrance, Pro-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, President Emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary ""Taking Shakespeare in the Chinese context as an example, Jenny Wong's book eloquently argues that the omission or repression of religious terms and allusions in literary translation has more to do with difficulties in social, political, and cultural backgrounds than the usually empty talk about linguistic or conceptual untranslatability. This book makes a significant contribution to translation studies and comparative literature. It is a useful book for anyone interested in global Shakespeare, comparative study of religion and literature, and translation and world literature."" --Zhang Longxi, Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at City University of Hong Kong Jenny Wong has taught translation and interpretation at universities in China, including at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, at Hang Seng Management College in Hong Kong, at United International College in Zhuhai, and elsewhere. She is the founder of the Society for English Learning Through Biblical Literature, SELBL (www.selbl.org), a non-profit organization that promotes the cultural significance of the Bible among international students.

How language works in the worship of the church has been vigorously debated during the period of liturgical revision in the twentieth century coming at the end of what is known as the Liturgical Movement. Focussing upon the Church of England and the Anglican tradition, this book traces the history of ‘liturgical language’ as it begins in the Early Church, but with particular emphasis upon the English Reformation liturgies, their background in the Medieval Church and literature and their long and varied life in the Church of England after 1662. Inter-disciplinary in scope, yet rooted in a literary approach, the volume provides a rigorous study of the effect of liturgy upon the theological and devotional life of the Church.

Examining the roots of the relationship between literature and theology, this book offers the first serious attempt to probe the deep theological purposes of the study of literature. Through an exploration of themes of evil, forgiveness, sacrament and what it means to be human, David Jasper draws from international research and discussions on literature and theology and employs an historical and profoundly personal journey through the later part of the last century up to the present time. Combining fields such as bible and literature, poetry and sacrament, this book sheds new light on how Christian theology seeks to remain articulate in our global, secular and multi-faith culture.

The sacrament par excellence, the Eucharist, has been upheld as the foundational sacrament of Christ's Body called Church, yet it has confounded Christian thinking and practice throughout history. Its symbolism points to the paradox of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God in Jesus of Nazareth, which St. Paul describes as a stumbling-block (skandalon). Yet the scandal of sacramentality, not only illustrated by but enacted in the Eucharist, has not been sufficiently accounted for in the ecclesiologies and sacramental theologies of the Christian tradition. Despite what appears to be an increasingly post-ecclesial world, sacrament remains a persistent theme in contemporary culture, often in places least expected. Drawing upon the biblical image of ""the Word made flesh,"" this interdisciplinary study examines the scandal of sacramentality along the twofold thematic of the scandal of language (word) and the scandal of the body (flesh). While sacred theology can think through this scandal only at significant risk to its own stability, the fictional discourses of literature and the arts are free to explore this scandal in a manner that simultaneously augments and challenges traditional notions of sacrament and sacramentality, and by extension, what it means to describe the Church as a ""eucharistic community.""