PROVINCIAL
COURT
BEGINS REVIEW OF APPEAL OF BAN OF BIBLE IN JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES'
TRANSLATION
SOVA
Center
for
News and Analysis, 6 December 2017
On
6 December
2017, the Leningrad provincial court began consideration on the
merits of an
appeal by four foreign organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses
against the ruling
that the publication "Sacred Scripture. New World Translation"
(2015), and also the brochures "The Bible and its Main Subject,"
"Science instead of the Bible?" and "How to Improve Health. 5
Simple Rules" are extremist materials. The decision to ban them
was made
by the Vyborg city court on 17 August 2017.
At
the session,
lawyers for the Jehovah's Witnesses called attention to the
flimsiness of the
arguments of experts, accepted by the court of the first
instance, that the
"New World Translation" is not the Bible and also to the
substitution
of the object of the investigation (from the text of the expert
analysis one
can judge that in reality it was the translation in its English,
not Russian,
text that was examined). They also filed a petition for ordering
a second
expert analysis; the prosecutor did not support this petition.
The judge
concluded that in view of the appearance of contradictions in
the expert
conclusion it is necessary to question the experts themselves
(Natalia
Kriukova, Alexander Tarasov, and Viktor Kotelnikov) and to
schedule the next
session for 20 December.
We
have already
written here in detail about the decision of the Vyborg city
court and the
incompetent expert conclusion, which lay at its base.
We
consider that
finding both the Bible in the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation
and others of
their publications to be extremist is not justifiable and we
regard such
prohibitions as a manifestation of religious discrimination. The
attempt to get
around the law forbidding the finding of sacred scriptures of
world religious
to be extremist, which have been undertaken in this case by the
prosecutor's
office and court, is its own sad precedent, which opens up the
possibility in
the future for banning both other translations and renditions of
sacred books.
(tr. by PDS, posted 6 December 2017)
BANNING
THE
BIBLE IN AN "ORTHODOX COUNTRY"
The
medieval
judicial proceeding to ban an "incorrect" translation of the
Bible
continued in St. Petersburg
by
Anton
Chivchalov
Portal-Credo.ru,
6
December 2017
The
Leningrad
provincial court went on all of an hour and a half today and
postponed the
hearing in the controversial case for banning one of the
translations of the
Bible in Russia, namely the "New World Translation." The
transport
prosecutor's office requested finding that this Bible is not
the Bible, and
what is more, it is "extremist material." Such a status the
Bible, in
any translation, did not have even in the ferocious times of
anti-religious
persecution in the U.S.S.R. of the 1930s. The lawsuit was
granted in the summer
by the Vyborg city court, but the publishers of the Bible
filed an appeal in
the Leningrad provincial court.
A
panel of three
judges in typical form rejected two petitions from lawyers
representing the
religious association of Jehovah's Witnesses in Finland. These
were petitions
for making photo and video recordings and providing a spacious
courtroom—only
six attendees fit into the office. One other is under
review—concerning the
conduct of another expert analysis of the "New World
Translation."
The
controversy
of this judicial proceeding consists in the fact that in its
context the
Russian prosecutor's office finds extremism in well known
biblical stories, for
example, in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by God, and
also in the
existence in the Bible of God's name in the form "Jehovah."
This very
same name is in the Orthodox Synodal translation, and the
attorneys even called
the court's attention to the fact that it is depicted in the
bas-relief on the
Constitutional Court in St. Petersburg.
The
prosecutor's
office also does not like the fact that the word "Bible" is
absent
from the "New World Translation." The attorneys pointed out
that the
first sentence in this book is "This is a new translation of
the Bible. .
. ." They do not like that this translation differs from the
Synodal
translation. The prominent Russian religious studies scholar
Mikhail Odintsov
has already explained to the court that there are many
translations of the
Bible and they differ.
But
logic was
absent from this trial from the very beginning. The court in
Vyborg was not
disturbed either by numerous mistakes and plagiarisms in the
expert analysis,
prepared by experts without the appropriate training, nor by
the theological
character of the expert analysis ("The Bible becomes the Bible
only in the
Church"), nor by the procedural violations, nor by the
substitution of the
object of the investigation, nor by the violation of the law
regarding the
impermissibility of finding the Bible and other sacred books
to be extremist,
nor by the very situation that the court of a secular state is
evaluating the
correctness of biblical translations.
If
this case
ends in a victory for the prosecutor's office, it will be
possible to be
criminally convicted for quoting, for example, on the
Internet: "Love your
neighbor." A whole batch of prominent Russian biblical
scholars and
scholars of religion (Andrei Desnitsky, Ekaterina Elbakian,
Nikolai Shaburov,
etc.) have already called this situation absurd. No one will
win from it.
"It turns out that at any moment any one of our texts and
translations and
any of our studies can be declared extremist simply because it
does not conform
with somebody's understanding of these texts. Therefore for me
this is
categorically unacceptable," said Andrei Desnitsky, a doctor
of philology,
professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and translator
of the Bible.
However,
"there
is no evil without good." It is a positive sign that the
prosecution did not manage to turn the whole proceedings
quickly, quietly, and
covertly to an end from the very start. The case has bogged
down; it is
continuing; it is being spoken and written about. The court
summoned the original
experts—Kriukova, Kotelnikov, and Tarasov. We will soon see
how a high school
mathematics teacher (Natalia Kriukova's specialty) discusses
biblical studies
in the courtroom. A second expert analysis also may be
ordered, involving
other, more genuine, experts.
Of course, this trial may be predetermined just like the April case regarding the liquidation of the "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia." But whatever occurs, the more people hear about this case, the better. Therefore the postponement of the hearing to 20 December is a small, but still a victory for Russian biblical scholarship and Russian readers of the Bible. One still may quote: "Love your neighbor." (tr. by PDS, posted 6 December 2017)
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