On Joke Bibles

"Well, this is not a Khmer Bible, but it is a Hmong Bible (a language of a tribe in Laos and Thailand)... amazing that they use English lettering... look closely at the words... not to denegrate the Bible, but it reminds me of that old joke about a room full of typewriters and monkeys..."

- Someone who will want to remain anonymous.

"Is this a joke bible?"

- Someone else who will want to remain anonymous.

When people say stuff like that, it really ticks me off.  And it drives me up the wall when Christians, particularly Evangelical Christians, make these claims, particularly since I identify somewhat loosely as an Evangelical.  And how ironic!  Evangelicals, Christians who assert the sanctity of the Word of God, who allegedly champion the importance of being "biblical" and who unfurl the banner of evangelism to all people, making those claims (yes - the anonymous peoples above are Evangelicals).  And no, I'm not interested in "race relations."  No, I'm not interested in "dialogue." Nobody talks about "dialogue" with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and nobody talks of "race relations" with White supremacists.  When language such as the above excludes certain groups of people from being valued in the Kingdom of God, tables must be flipped and the merchants thrown out of the Temple Courts. 

But embedded within these quotes is something much more sinister that needs to be exposed from the dank caves within which such evil thoughts have festered for too long.  That is why we cannot simply accept these quotes as just "two people making silly comments."  Human sociality makes individual speech a reflection of corporate rhetoric.  Thus, when the author of Ephesians asserts in 4:29 to "not let anything unwholesome come out of your mouths," he is not banning f-bombs, s-words, and other profanity (I'm not saying they should be used).  Rather, speech is indicative of the people.  Jesus' opponents in the upper-echelon of the Jewish religious hierarchy certainly understood it, and would not be satisfied until Jesus was hanging on the cross.  His speech reflected the Jewish community - after all, Jesus was a Jew.  For that same reason, a few loony Americans burning Korans and a few silly Christians from Westboro Church may not reflect accurately on American sensibilities or American Christianity, but the light (or, darkness) rubs off on America or the American Church.  Radical individualism, where what I say is simply an issue of my person, is fiction.  What I say reflects me, and it betrays what has formed me.  And if Jesus is a claimant to individual (or, corporate) formation, then what that individual says, however silly, rhetorically paints a skewed picture of Jesus.

So what is that something that is much more sinister?  What underlies those two quotes?  Now, the technical term that floats around is "White racism" but I do want to shy away from that term for two reasons.  "White" here does not refer to Europeans or Americans of European descent.  Rather, it refers to a mentality that has hijacked the word "white" and employed the word as antonymous to "black" which is tied to African slaves ruthlessly shipped over from Africa during the evil slave trade. White conveyed purity, righteousness, and glory; whereas black conveyed savagery, sinfulness, and servility. Because it is a mentality, one does not need to be white to be White.  Indeed, James Cone and other Black liberation theologians have argued that President Barack Obama has in his presidency adopted Whiteness.  And no doubt white Americans can certainly adopt Blackness; James Cone utilizes this language in line with Gustavo Gutiérrez's phrase of "the preferential option for the poor."  The second reason why I want to shy away from the notion of "White racism" is also because non-whites are perfectly capable of racism as well.  Indeed, the first empires and the first colonizers were not western Europeans, but Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Chinese!  When we read the Psalms, especially those involving dashing the babies of the enemies onto rocks, we need to notice the racism written into the text.  Let's not forget - the Israelites were not an isolated culture; it was a vassal state of great empires (namely, Babylon and Egypt).  The imagery used to describe God, and to describe God's enemies, were borrowed from Babylonian sources, much like how in Taiwan, some Chinese terms are matter-of-factly substituted with Japanese. 

So we need to divorce white from White racism.  Thus, I prefer to utilize the terms "Colonial privilege" or "Imperial privilege" because at the end of the day it is such axes of power that affirm or foreclose subjectivities.  It is this matrix of power that determines what is acceptable and what is not.  It also determines the conditions whereby something may be rendered acceptable.  The quotes above are malicious because they assume that Christianity is beholden to a powerful group of insiders who can, somehow, determine if one cultural articulation of God is "right" or "wrong" not by the content of the text, but by how the text looks.  If it looks like gibberish, by golly it must be Holy Gibberish.

For that reason, the quotes above are more sinister and malicious than they suggest on the surface. We may extend grace to them if they did not know that the books were Bibles.  But they knew - even going so far as to include the injunction "not to denigrate the Bible..."  Yet, they went on to suggest that the Bible, when written in Hmong, was a joke and is reminiscent of a room full of monkeys and typewriters.  That is equivalent to saying, "Not to denigrate the Declaration of Independence, but it reads like gorillas gathered in Independence Hall and came up with something from their butts."  Or asking, "Is this a political joke?"  We would be right to respond angrily because the Declaration of Independence constituted the American nation, home to many people.   

Furthermore, denigrating the Hmong Bible written in Latin letters also denigrates the hard work that white missionaries did with the Hmong people in putting the Romanization together.  If I got my Hmong history correct, the Hmong Romanization was put together in an effort to forge connections between the Hmong and western contacts.  The language was made less impenetrable, allowing for missionaries to translate, to the best of their ability, the text from the original Greek and Hebrew to Hmong.  To claim that this Bible is a "joke" or reminiscent of monkeys and typewriters deftly suggests that such efforts are indeed laughable.  And why would they be laughable?  I think it would only be so if there is an embedded notion that the Hmong are somehow "unworthy" of being reached out to.  This alludes to a theological remnant of American racist fundamentalism where White is equated with Christianity.  All other races, therefore, can only understand God however imperfectly.  Thus, to translate the Bible into Hmong is, indeed, a joke; those white missionaries were not doing the Lord's work, but were in essence, on a fool's errand.  Yes - what I am suggesting is that denigrating the Hmong Bible is a malicious act of Imperial privilege.  

I close with a story - a positive one.  At the beginning of the school year, I represented the Asian/Asian American Association at our own table for incoming students.  I brought along a scroll with John 1:1 written out in Chinese.  The campus minister, the (awesome) Rev. Janice Ammon stopped by.  She stared at the scroll and asked, "What does this mean?"  I was floored.  Most Euro-Americans I know who were, shall we say, less "enlightened" gush about how it's like a bunch of pictures.  When I was in Chinese school, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota came by for a visit. Stopping by our class, she took a look at our work and said, "oh, it's like lots of little pictures."  No, lieutenant governor madame.  Maybe you should learn from Rev. Ammon - the good question to ask in the presence of these pictographs is not a ditzy remark, but to interrogate the characters and excavate the story that the characters tell.  And Rev. Ammon did that with her question: "what does it mean?"  So I explained to her how logos in Greek is best translated as 道 in Chinese, which is much better than the English translation "Word," and how it has certain theological and ethical implications. Her eyes glittered, and she responded, "Amazing."  Amazing, not because it's in Chinese (this would be yet another exercising of Colonial privilege), but because the character itself tells a story of the God we worship, and this God indeed is amazing.

The Hmong Bible - no less than the English Bible - speaks about that amazing God, who speaks powerfully through text and humanity to a people who are removed by time and geography from the ancient Near East.  To call the Hmong Bible a "joke" and associated with "monkeys in a room full of typewriters" is to claim that the story of God's work is not that much different than a "joke" and associated with "monkeys in a room full of typewriters."  Such is the power of mere words.  The author of Ephesians 4:29 is prescient in reminding us of this.