Speech by Archbishop Michael Jackson at the Launch of the Online Archive of Religious Texts

Speech by Archbishop Michael Jackson at the launch of The Online Archive of Religious Texts 1600 to 1882 at the Royal Irish Academy on Wednesday December 11:

Tonight we mark and celebrate the official launch of the digitization and on-line accessibilty of Irish language texts of the Old and New Testaments together with more than seventy other religious texts, spanning the timeframe 1600 to 1882. We congratulate the Royal Irish Academy on this initiative in what I might call: freedom of information, without some of the associations so often linked with the more conventional use of the term: FOI.

Texts and translations in themselves raise issues which are at a stage further down the line from the original texts themselves. The ‘originals’ have already taken life and legs. And, of course, behind the ‘originals’ as we call them, there so often is an even more ‘original’ articulation of what once actually happened before it appears in well-formulated written form. And we may never in fact know what did ‘originally’ happen.Such a state of affairs is as true of religious as it is of secular texts. This is the nature of societies; this is the nature of tradition; this is the nature of texts and textulalization; this is how life moves on. By what the Royal Irish Academy is doing with these texts it is showing that it is the forefront of such freedom of information.

And so, we are always faced with the question which flows directly from this: What is lost and what is gained in the translation? The Irish landscape and its place-names testify to translation, its subtleties and its misunderstandings, its rejections and its appropriations, in ever-changing circumstances but it also enables us instantly, from time to time, to see the inherited in the contemporary, the ancient in the modern, the tradition alive and challenging us not to disregard our roots. Tonight’s texts, I suggest, do exactly the same.

And this is where the approporiate use of information, in its most sophisticated and contemporary form comes to our rescue, and it is why we need to engage with it. Internationally, people can as of now access these texts and bring to bear on them their own scholarship and interpretative understanding. And what is ‘lost in translation’ is very often compensated for by the receiving and embedding of an inherited tradition in a local and living environment which, inevitably and rightly, has an impact on the text as text. Translations have their specific role in our understanding of the past and its legacy and on the present and our entitlement and requirement to interpret and pass on them on in our own time to the following time.

One of the old adages of the Christian religion, is: faith seekingunderstanding. The challenge is always there. Sometimes faith would rather not have to delve deeper than it can avoid into the broad scope of information nor to accept the need for humility and openness in the face of insights beyond its comfort zone. Were it not, however, for this tension we would not be the beneficiaries of modern scientific disclosure and we would be utterly impoverished by this cavity of comprehension. The argument, by the same token, must work the other way round also. Understanding is invited to grapple with faith and in many cases finds itself deeply irritated by its claims to truth. There is need for this conversation in parallel, because religion and its scope and appeal remain part of the fibre and the fabric of international society, in the midst of all of our information. Furthermore, it has long had the capacity to raise and to respond to the questions about the dignity of the human person and the generosity of the common good. These are pressing and painful issues in the world where the boundaries of knowledge are being broken and shattered on a daily basis and for the most exciting and frightening of reasons.

The Royal Irish Academy has, throughout its long and distinguished history, held together the conversation of courtesy in all things Irish and academic. Such conversation is cross-disciplinary and vigorously so, as Irish academics and intellectuals make their contribution, generation by generation, to the adventure of knowledge which today is an international journey. The launch tonight of digital access to Biblical and religious texts in the Irish language from 1600 to 1882 is a testimony to this generosity and this courtesy. It will widen and deepen the impact of faith and understanding as they engage with one another in a critical friendship which is always the very place to begin and end an argument about the things which really matter.

The Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson,

Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin

Launch of Digitized Irish Texts RIA 11.12.13