Igbo Catholic Bible

As noted above, the IRE was meant to be an inter-confessional Bible, and the Igbo Catholic faithful were involved in its production. However, owing to doctrinal differences among the different Christian denominations, especially between the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant churches, the Igbo Catholics felt the need to produce a translation that reflects their doctrines. Thus, after the publication of the New Testament of the IRE and while the complete version of the IRE was being delayed by logistics and the exigencies of duties of the key agents who had been made bishops, the Igbo Catholics embarked on their own translation.

In the Okwu mmalite section of the Igbo Catholic Bible (ICB) signed by Archbishops Anthony V. Obinna and Albert K. Obiefuna, reference is made to the Second Vatican Council as the incident that reinforced the need for an Igbo Bible for the Igbo Catholic faithful:

62 Information got from the website of the International Bible Society, Nigeria (http://biblicaafrica.com/nigeria/about-us/) indicates that the Living Bible, Nigeria was formed in 1977 and, following a merger with the International Bible Society in 1993, was renamed the International Bible Society of Nigeria.

134

For over a century since the gospel of Christ came to our people, the Igbo Christians have yearned to have the Gospel of God in their language. The ideas and directives of the Church Fathers of the Second Vatican Council satisfied that yearning by emphasizing the need for every nation to have the Gospel in their language. (Obinna and Obiefuna 2000: v, my translation) As observed earlier, this Council introduced three scripture readings during Sunday mass, and, in the absence of an existing translation that suits the Catholic liturgy, individual Catholic dioceses and parishes started doing ad hoc translations of the weekly and daily readings (Ezeogu 2012: 174). However, at a meeting of Igbo Catholic bishops on February 5, 1991, presided by the Archbishop Stephen Nweke Ezeanya, the decision was taken to produce an Igbo Catholic Bible (Ifenatuora 2000: vii). Ezeogu (2012: 172) observes that

“the bishops wanted an Igbo Bible that is suitable for Catholic liturgical use” and this entails five things:

1. the translation will follow the Catholic canon of forty-six and not the Protestant canon of thirty-nine books of the Old Testament.

2. the order of the books of the Old Testament, and the numbering of the Psalms, will have to follow the traditional Catholic order in the Vulgate, which follows the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic Text.

3. the translation will have to include “necessary and sufficient explanatory notes” as required by the Catholic Church law.

4. where there are textual variants, the translators should follow the variant in the official Catholic Bible, namely, the Vulgate or one of its modern English incarnations, such as the Jerusalem Bible or the New American Bible.

5. this translation will have to be approved “by the Apostolic See or the Episcopal Conference” as demanded by the same Catholic Church law.

Ezeogu (2012: 172) adds that, because this translation would be read in sacred worship, it should “avoid shocking and explicit language, especially in reference to human sexuality”.

Ifenatuora (1983) mentions the following as the translators of the ICB: Rev. Fr. Christopher Ifenatuora, Rev. Fr. Chudi-Peter Akaenyi, and Rev. Fr. Ernest Ezeogu. Rev. Fr. Fidelis K.

135

Obiora compiled and edited the translation, assisted by Rev. Fr. Bernard Nwokeleme and Rev. Fr. Lawrence Eke. Other members of the translation/editing team were G. U. Ukairo, P.

A. Nwachukwu, S. U. Oruchalu, I. A. O. Ume, G. A. Dike and M. C. Ngoesi, all of whom are linguists and have published research on Igbo language. This list of Igbo clergy and linguists notwithstanding, Ezeogu (2012: 173), who himself is listed as one of the translators, submits that the translation committee ran into financial difficulties and could not pay the translators adequately. Midway through the project, “the Igbo language experts recruited from departments of Igbo studies in various institutions of higher learning in Nigeria had to withdraw their services because they could not be paid”, and the committee had to resort to “the use of interested seminarians”. So, the ICB is a product of the combined efforts of the clergymen and Igbo studies scholars listed above as well as the unnamed seminarians mentioned by Ezeogu (2012). Ezeogu (2012) also observes that some portions of the ICB were poorly translated, and he attributes this to the use of non-professional translators and the poor funding of the project.

On the source text used for the ICB, Ifenatuora (2000: vii) submits that a number of texts were used, which include: Biblia Hebraica Stutttgartensia (in Hebrew), Septuagint (in Greek), Vulgate (in Latin), the Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition) and the Jerusalem Bible (both in English). However, Ezeogu (2012) suggests that the use of texts in Hebrew, Greek and perhaps Latin would have been minimal and that texts in English, apparently the Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version and the Jerusalem Bible, were used. In his words, a “translation from the original languages had been ruled out from the outset, as this would make the project too time-consuming and too expensive” (Ezeogu 2012: 175). Talking specifically about the seminarians’ role, Ezeogu emphasizes that the

“seminarians […] did not have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Greek to work from the original Biblical languages” (Ezeogu 2012: 176). He attributes the portions supposedly translated poorly to this non-proficiency of the seminarians in the original “Biblical languages”.

Furthermore, Ifenatuora (2000: vii) also highlights some special features of the ICB. One, the chapters of the various books are broken into subsections each with a heading. Two, the ICB texts are accompanied with drawings to aid the comprehension of the texts. Three,

136

there are numerous footnotes that explain difficult concepts encountered in the text. What is more, this translation is made into Standard Igbo and also using the recommended Standard Igbo orthography. It should be noted that these special features of the ICB are also used for ideological purposes. For instance, one of the footnotes given in the ICB to clarify difficult concepts is this, provided to clarify the concept of Ekwensu:

This name means a wrongful accuser, a liar, whose work is to lead people into sin. The translation of the name in Hebrew is ekwensu, […] The bearer of this name is the person held guilty for all the things he did in the works of God and of Christ […] Defeating him is the last indication of God’s final victory. (Footnote c, p. 1495, my translation)

This characterization of Ekwensu does not reflect the original Igbo conceptualization of the deity. Rather, it is a transfer of the character of the Christian Devil on an Igbo deity. The footnote is thus a reconceptualization of the Ekwensu deity not only to solve a translation problem as there was no Igbo cultural equivalent for the Christian Devil and Ekwensu was appropriated to fill the gap. It is also an ideological move to completely change the original meaning of the deity, as not doing so would result in a perception of Ekwensu as a heroic deity, which would not be in sync with the character it is used to represent in the IBTs. This elaboration of Ekwensu is expatiated in Chapter 5.