What do you think?
Rate this book
Passwords to Paradise: How Languages Have Re-invented World Religions
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
So opens the Gospel of John, an ancient text translated into almost every language, at once a compelling and beguiling metaphor for the Christian story of the Beginning. To further complicate matters, the words we read now are in any number of languages that would have been unknown or unrecognizable at the time of their composition. The gospel may have been originally dictated or written in Aramaic, but our only written source for the story is in Greek. Today, as your average American reader of the New Testament picks up his or her Bible off the shelf, the phrase as it appears has been translated from various linguistic intermediaries before its current manifestation in modern English. How to understand these words then, when so many other translators, languages, and cultures have exercised some level of influence on them?
Christian tradition is not unique in facing this problem. All religions--if they have global aspirations--have to change in order to spread their influence, and often language has been the most powerful agent thereof. Passwords to Paradise explores the effects that language difference and language conversion have wrought on the world's great faiths, spanning more than two thousand years. It is an original and intriguing perspective on the history of religion by a master linguistic historian.
So opens the Gospel of John, an ancient text translated into almost every language, at once a compelling and beguiling metaphor for the Christian story of the Beginning. To further complicate matters, the words we read now are in any number of languages that would have been unknown or unrecognizable at the time of their composition. The gospel may have been originally dictated or written in Aramaic, but our only written source for the story is in Greek. Today, as your average American reader of the New Testament picks up his or her Bible off the shelf, the phrase as it appears has been translated from various linguistic intermediaries before its current manifestation in modern English. How to understand these words then, when so many other translators, languages, and cultures have exercised some level of influence on them?
Christian tradition is not unique in facing this problem. All religions--if they have global aspirations--have to change in order to spread their influence, and often language has been the most powerful agent thereof. Passwords to Paradise explores the effects that language difference and language conversion have wrought on the world's great faiths, spanning more than two thousand years. It is an original and intriguing perspective on the history of religion by a master linguistic historian.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published February 23, 2016
7 people are currently reading
311 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Ostler
40 books99 followersNicholas Ostler is a British scholar and author. Ostler studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he received degrees in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics. He later studied under Noam Chomsky at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in linguistics and Sanskrit.
His 2005 book Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World documents the spread of language throughout recorded human history.
His 2007 book Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin looks specifically at the language of the Romans, both before and after the existence of their Empire. The story focuses on the rise, spread, and dominance of Latin, both among other languages of the Italian peninsula in the early part of the 1st millennium BC and among the languages of Western Europe in the Dark Ages and beyond, presenting the life of Latin as any biographer would present the life of his subject. With this book, Ostler provides a strong argument against the label 'dead language' so often assigned to Latin. However, the title, 'Ad Infinitum,' refers not to this, but to his thesis that the Latin-speaking world was unconscious of its own limits, looking always back to its centre, rather than outwards.
He is currently the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and lives in Bath, England.
His 2005 book Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World documents the spread of language throughout recorded human history.
His 2007 book Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin looks specifically at the language of the Romans, both before and after the existence of their Empire. The story focuses on the rise, spread, and dominance of Latin, both among other languages of the Italian peninsula in the early part of the 1st millennium BC and among the languages of Western Europe in the Dark Ages and beyond, presenting the life of Latin as any biographer would present the life of his subject. With this book, Ostler provides a strong argument against the label 'dead language' so often assigned to Latin. However, the title, 'Ad Infinitum,' refers not to this, but to his thesis that the Latin-speaking world was unconscious of its own limits, looking always back to its centre, rather than outwards.
He is currently the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and lives in Bath, England.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 11, 2016
Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand this book. I feel like I could have gotten as much out of it just by reading the introduction & conclusion. In fact, I would suggest that you read the conclusion before reading the main text, just so you can figure out where Ostler is heading in the middle.
In the introduction, Ostler says he wants to look at how the 'missionary' religions have changed as they have spread to new language groups. This means his focus is on Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. But really mostly Christianity, as there's only 1-2 chapters each on Buddhism and Islam, and mostly Christianity after Paul and up to the Counter-Reformation at that, as there's very little about the transition from the Aramaic Jesus to Greek Christology and nothing about Christian missionary work in North America, Africa, or Asia after the Reformation. Ostler never really explains why translating the Bible and/or preaching in native languages was transformative before the Reformation, but not after, other than to say Protestants use the original language texts as authoritative. So Q.E.D., I guess.
One of the challenges of following Ostler's arguments is that his examples necessarily involve discussing passages of texts in numerous languages many people won't understand. He provides English translations, but then you're in the same situation as if you were trying to understand word choice in poetry in a language you don't understand. People who understand linguistics and/or the languages under discussion will probably get more out of this book than I did.
In the introduction, Ostler says he wants to look at how the 'missionary' religions have changed as they have spread to new language groups. This means his focus is on Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. But really mostly Christianity, as there's only 1-2 chapters each on Buddhism and Islam, and mostly Christianity after Paul and up to the Counter-Reformation at that, as there's very little about the transition from the Aramaic Jesus to Greek Christology and nothing about Christian missionary work in North America, Africa, or Asia after the Reformation. Ostler never really explains why translating the Bible and/or preaching in native languages was transformative before the Reformation, but not after, other than to say Protestants use the original language texts as authoritative. So Q.E.D., I guess.
One of the challenges of following Ostler's arguments is that his examples necessarily involve discussing passages of texts in numerous languages many people won't understand. He provides English translations, but then you're in the same situation as if you were trying to understand word choice in poetry in a language you don't understand. People who understand linguistics and/or the languages under discussion will probably get more out of this book than I did.
August 5, 2017
A strange book that discusses the effect language has had on religion -i.e. how did missionaries translate concepts into different languages and the chaos that came thereafter-- and how religion has changed language--i.e. some languages, like Church Latin and Vedic Sanskrit, are enshrined as 'holy languages' and thereafter afforded special prestige. Not a fan of how Islam and Arabic are given very short thrift at the end, with Ostler sort of concluding that since all Muslims must read the Qur'an in Arabic, there isn't much to discuss.
October 10, 2016
I more or less bought this book sight unseen, barely cracking the cover, because I have been happy with more than one Nicholas Ostler book in the past. He does not disappoint this time, but I think he did have a bit of trouble trying to corral his Many Small Ideas book into something resembling a One Big Idea book. Perhaps he should not have tried, and instead should have just presented it as a collection of essays on the topic of religion and language, and how they affect each other.
In fact, this is a book length discussion of Christianity and language, with a very short book about Buddhism and language in front of it, and an essay on Islam and language at the end. I think that the mismatch is not just a result of his own background as a person who grew up in a Christian society, rather than a Buddhist or Islamic one. Rather, I think that the history of Christianity does intersect with issues of language and translation a lot more often than does Buddhism, which in turn was impacted by issues of translation a lot more often than Islam. But it does give the Buddhist and Islamic portions of the book a bit of a tacked-on feel.
I was also left wondering why the issues of language through the history of Judaism were not included, since surely the preservation of Hebrew for well over a millennia when no one spoke it as their native language, gave room for relevant discussion. Also, given the number of different languages in the Indian subcontinent, I do not believe that Hinduism has been without analogous questions about how to (or whether to) translate a holy text, and if translating the text how to (and whether to) translate a particular word for a central concept.
It should be said, though, that there was a LOT of history of Christianity and language which I didn't know, which being raised as a Christian and having an interest in history, was maybe just a tiny bit surprising. The recurring theme was that every attempt to get everyone on the same page by getting together for a meeting to decide definitively the answers to theological questions, resulted in yet another schism. The frequency with which these were along linguistic lines (Greek vs. Latin being the most prominent example) suggests that even when there is something like a religion to attempt to unite people, a difference in language is always a potential rupture point.
If you're not at least somewhat of a language nerd, this book is probably not going to speak to you. We get a lot of tables and two-column pages showing us how things were translated, and if that sort of thing affects you the way equations affect most people, you will not find this book to be your thing. However, if you are interested in the mental struggle that is involved in any attempt at putting the ineffable down into effed language, Ostler gives us an enjoyable tour of several millennia of it.
In fact, this is a book length discussion of Christianity and language, with a very short book about Buddhism and language in front of it, and an essay on Islam and language at the end. I think that the mismatch is not just a result of his own background as a person who grew up in a Christian society, rather than a Buddhist or Islamic one. Rather, I think that the history of Christianity does intersect with issues of language and translation a lot more often than does Buddhism, which in turn was impacted by issues of translation a lot more often than Islam. But it does give the Buddhist and Islamic portions of the book a bit of a tacked-on feel.
I was also left wondering why the issues of language through the history of Judaism were not included, since surely the preservation of Hebrew for well over a millennia when no one spoke it as their native language, gave room for relevant discussion. Also, given the number of different languages in the Indian subcontinent, I do not believe that Hinduism has been without analogous questions about how to (or whether to) translate a holy text, and if translating the text how to (and whether to) translate a particular word for a central concept.
It should be said, though, that there was a LOT of history of Christianity and language which I didn't know, which being raised as a Christian and having an interest in history, was maybe just a tiny bit surprising. The recurring theme was that every attempt to get everyone on the same page by getting together for a meeting to decide definitively the answers to theological questions, resulted in yet another schism. The frequency with which these were along linguistic lines (Greek vs. Latin being the most prominent example) suggests that even when there is something like a religion to attempt to unite people, a difference in language is always a potential rupture point.
If you're not at least somewhat of a language nerd, this book is probably not going to speak to you. We get a lot of tables and two-column pages showing us how things were translated, and if that sort of thing affects you the way equations affect most people, you will not find this book to be your thing. However, if you are interested in the mental struggle that is involved in any attempt at putting the ineffable down into effed language, Ostler gives us an enjoyable tour of several millennia of it.
June 15, 2017
Neither thorough nor profound, this book fails to scratch the surface of its subject matter entirely mostly because of its focus on Western European and American bible-linguistics. The cursory pass it makes on other traditions is hardly worth reading. If it were entitled "a brief introduction to some thoughts concerning the theology of language as found in Western traditions and reflected elsewhere," it might get as many as 3 stars.
Read
March 7, 2017Alas, not that general audience-cy as its title sounds.
September 27, 2022
This is a challenging read. It is chock-full of linguistic details which can make it difficult if you don't have a great acquaintance with lots of different foreign vocabularies. It's also challenging just on the history of religions side. When I got to the chapters on Buddhism, I found myself retreating to a college-level textbook just to reacquaint myself with some of the basics. To be able to grasp the content of this book, you really need to have more than just a basic background & understanding of the religions being discussed.
But that said -- once you clear that hurdle, the content is very insightful. I found it to be especially so with Christian history (because that's where my focus is). There are some very interesting details on the history of Christian origins, the relation of language to the history of Christian evangelism/spread, and the unfortunate use of language mixed with racism in relation to power - particularly with the spread of Catholicism into new world populations.
The author introduces himself as a non-believer at the start, though he tries to be neutral towards the different religions being survey/analyzed. For the most part he succeeds, though his anti-evangelical bias comes across at the end.
But his central thesis (basically stated in the subtitle) is well-made, with lots of given historical details. It's a very challenging but very insightful read.
But that said -- once you clear that hurdle, the content is very insightful. I found it to be especially so with Christian history (because that's where my focus is). There are some very interesting details on the history of Christian origins, the relation of language to the history of Christian evangelism/spread, and the unfortunate use of language mixed with racism in relation to power - particularly with the spread of Catholicism into new world populations.
The author introduces himself as a non-believer at the start, though he tries to be neutral towards the different religions being survey/analyzed. For the most part he succeeds, though his anti-evangelical bias comes across at the end.
But his central thesis (basically stated in the subtitle) is well-made, with lots of given historical details. It's a very challenging but very insightful read.
July 1, 2019
Through three different world religions: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, Ostler identifies and describes how language has changed. Sometimes the choice was made to translate the religious documents and sometimes not. This choice affects how the language and the religion develops.
March 21, 2024
This book was really fascinating but my library books were overdue by like several months so I couldn't finish reading it 😭😭
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews