Dear Friends,
As we approach an exceptional Easter, celebrated on the same date by Jews and all Christians, it’s time to give you some news about our project. The news from around the world, starting with the Holy Land, isn’t very encouraging, so any sign of hope is welcome, isn’t it?
Among the positive signs, in recent weeks:
- Visits from important contributors to our program: our friend, Dr. Estelle Ingrand Varenne, who heads a magnificent research program on biblical inscriptions in the Mediterranean world; Brother Baptiste Sauvage, president of the Carmel publishing house and who came to work on one of the most fascinating and difficult texts in the entire Bible, the vision of Hezekiah’s chariot; Brother Jordi Cervera i Valls, exegete and explorer, who retraces in our Bible the routes of the Exodus as he has surveyed and photographed them over the past few years.
- Our presence in the media, on the occasion of an essay by your servant, Il nous reste la foi, and the book by Fr. Olivier Catel, Jérusalem un coeur de paix. Two testimonies on the mission of La Bible en ses Traditions and Bibleart: cultivating peace in the heart of the Holy Land, by deploying critical and cordial intelligence at the heart of faith.
- And the recognition of Anton Gaudi, architect of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, as “venerable” by the Holy See: he is, along with Saint Jerome, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Fra Angelico and the venerable Father Lagrange, one of our patron saints!
Thank you for your support! So, here’s some news from our construction site, for this Easter 2025,
full of springtime promise.
Frère Olivier-Thomas Venard
Like any ongoing project, our tool is constantly being improved. We thank you for your indulgence if you encounter some slowness in loading the notes.
WORKS COMPLETED
Foundations
In the translator’s workshop
Diverse facets of our art of translating.
How can one faithfully translate a text as complex as the Scriptures without betraying it?
With Saint Jerome, here is a brief inventory of the main techniques used by the prince of translators!
The Bible laboratory of translation sciences
Word of the month
Words discovered, rediscovered or proposed, throughout our translation work.
“Discourse.” Is it possible that Jesus “discoursed” with his disciples?
Walls and Buttresses
Contexts: welcome to our home!
Topography, archaeology, sociology, ancient cultures.
Biblical texts inscribed in stone, painted on walls from Antiquity to the present day, have much to teach us about the interpretations made of them.
“O death, I will be your death”: the resurrection inscribed on the walls
Ornaments
Reception in visual arts
Still in collaboration with the Almine & Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Foundation, at the time of celebrating Easter, when we are invited to rediscover the truth of our humanity, by leaving the old Adam (or the old Eve!) to put on the new Adam, let us follow in the footsteps of Adam in the history of art.
Picasso’s work is at the hinge between traditional painting and the multifaceted experimentation of contemporary arts.
Work Monitoring
Portrait of the month
The word to the builders of our biblical cathedral.
Sr. Marie-Madeleine Saint Aubin, OSB, is a nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Sainte Marie des Deux Montagnes, a daughter of the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Wisques, of the Congregation of Solesmes, in Quebec. She served as a cantor there for many years. She has collaborated with us for over ten years, both on translation and annotation in Christian tradition and liturgy.
BibleArt, for me…
… with the blessing of the Mother Abbess, these are hundreds of hours spent, over the years, since the monastic enclosure, sharing, with thousands of readers around the world, treasures of wisdom, piety and beauty, drawn from our liturgical life.
After a solid training in classical literature and music (piano and organ), I entered the monastery, where I naturally continued my studies in Latin, in the classics, but especially with a preference for the Fathers of the Church: Saint Ambrose of Milan with his beautiful, very Virgilian language, Saint Leo the Great in the great style of Cicero, and of course the incomparable Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard… I also took courses in Greek, the grammar of which I cultivate intensely and whose dictionaries I assiduously consult! During my ten-year stay in our founding monastery in Vermont, a Jewish friend from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave us an intensive Hebrew course over a few months… In short, these studies help me to delve deeper into the treasures of the Bible.
My motto…
My motto as a nun is: Nihil amori Christi praeponere (“Prefer nothing to the love of Christ”). Saint Benedict introduced this sentence of patristic origin which pleased him in his Rule in chapter 4 of the “instruments of good works”, and in a slightly different form towards the end in chapter 72. An invitation to self-denial for the love of Christ, it is a requirement which gives life!
My favourite book in the Bible…
The Gospel of Saint John has always fascinated me with its depth and realism. But I love the other three very much! In addition, I have a great love for the “epistles of Saint Paul the Apostle,” including those that are no longer attributed to him by modern exegesis! But in fact, the entire Bible is a source of inspiration for me thanks to the interpretation given by the Liturgy, in particular Gregorian chant, which preserves texts sometimes older than those of the official canon. Its melodies are true exegeses of the sacred text, in the radiance of the Fathers who read it in the light of the mystery of Christ.
YOUR SAY
“In your Bible study, as in the monasteries that are a source of prayer, I see two sources of Breath without which I believe the world would completely collapse.
I find it fascinating, in “The Bible in its Traditions,” this idea of perpetual and communal translation, or at least of translation in perpetual work, which, again, seems not very far removed from the perpetual prayer maintained in rare consecrated places.”
Saskia P,
translator (Swiss)
I support the enrichment of BibleArt translations and annotations
