Commented Translation of an Unpublished Letter by Ellen G. White in the Light of Steiner’s Hermeneutic Movement

Abstract

George Steiner (1929-2020) was a towering figure in literature, who managed to connect literature, philosophy, and Jewish thought. His interdisciplinary approach and erudition made him famous and controversial. His book After Babel (1975) argues that translation is fundamental to human communication, interpreting the biblical story of Babel as a metaphor for linguistic fragmentation and proposing the Hermeneutic Movement, a four-step theory for transferring meaning between languages. The main objective of this article is to apply Steiner’s translation model to the translation of the last discovered letter of Ellen G. White, a pioneer of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Other objectives include studying the context of the letter and forestalling Steiner’s Hermeneutic Movement. To achieve that goal, we offer comments on selected parts of the unpublished letter and apply Steiner’s four movements to them. We also discuss a few translation challenges in the domain of the specificities of the Hermeneutic Movement.