Frank, I do not believe that the Aqdas is incomplete without the Bayan, since many of it’s elements have been incorporated by Baha’u'llah in his numerous writing, including the spiritual concepts and the Baha’i callendar.

For example, the submission of marriage to consent of parties involved (which was revolutionnary at that time) was confirmed by Baha’u'llah, but further submitted by Him to the consent of parents.

The Bayan was specifically addressing and abrogating the Muslim society contemporary to the Bab in the East, pending the expounding and reform by Baha’u'llah. It has a huge historical value, but not a practical value for us at this time, which accounts for the translator’s choice of only translating parts of it relevant to our time.

I so agree. Many great suggestions.

I’m glad you have pointed out the forms that institutional learning (or I would call it development) must take for it to be institutional and not just individual. I have thought about this a lot. In addition to the changes you name, I think it would be good to consciously engage some of those ways institutions can actually develop that aren’t completely dependent on the individuals.

When I was in the Chicago community attendance records of all assembly members were part of the annual report. Whenever somebody had very low attendance they were not re-elected. I thought it was great. People need information to vote well. Prayer is not sufficient. Assemblies and the communities they serve could really start developing if the community had access to the information you suggest they should.

best,
Priscilla

My experience on the LSA was that we never had any standard operating procedures for anything, even routine activities such as voting in officers, what to do when someone is wanting to get a divorce or get married, sanctions, etc, and policies the LSA decided upon never got set in concrete or enforced. Made for really long boring meetings as people would spend hours arguing about their interpretations of what the writings etc told us to do. We met 1-2 times a fortnight for about 4-5 hours. Most of the agenda was trivial stuff, so half the members were dozing while others were on their soap box grinding their axes. The local fish club committee had more efficient meetings!

The 2009 Parliament will be hosted in Melbourne, Australia, from December 3rd to 9th, 2009.
Plans call for the Melbourne Parliament to focus on global warming, global peace and justice, exploring religious conflict and violence, globalization, and indigenous and Aboriginal spiritualities. Underlying this programme is a belief in the humanity of all, and a desire to experience it in the flesh. The organisers are also addressing the issue of the carbon foot-print of such an international gathering.

I won’t be going, but full marks to them, and I am sure it will be a great experience and productive, of many participants.

Can I encourage you to attend the Parliament of the World’s Religions to be held in Melbourne in 2009 (http://www.parliamentofreligions2009.org/index.php) in fact I would like to nominate you as a speaker at the event.

These are wonderful perspectives and interpretations of Baha’i themes that I think should be exposed to a wider audience.

Kind regards
Umm Yasmin

Thanks for keeping up this discussion.

I don’t particularly want to be anywhere other than where I am and that is most decidedly on the path. I don’t expect Baha’i to be anything I want — it is Baha’i and that is that.

But my unanswered question is a simple one. I guess you don’t have an answer and that is not surprising: why should you or anyone else know why the Mother Book of the Baha’i faith has no complete and official translation.

One obvious answer is that the Bayan is no longer needed. It was in the days before Baha’ullah declared himself but no longer is. That is what I have always assumed. You indicate that it is needed to complete the Aqdas and — here we are back where we started!

So I pick and choose. I love the Hidden Words and Seven Valleys and don’t love the Aqdas and am intrigued by the Tablets of Baha’ullah revealed after the Aqdas — there is lots to meditate on therein but much of it seems to show that Baha’ullah didn’t know human nature very well. (Or maybe that’s me?)

Any way, many thanks for your patience.

Frank

http://www.h-net.org/~bahai/trans/bayan/bayan.htm
or
http://bahai-library.com/provisionals/bayan.html

The French translation is at
http://tinyurl.com/32egh9
and the Arabic Bayan is at the same site. The original texts are also on line, and Browne has given a summary of contents. So the text is by no means unavailable. It is not available in the wide range of languages that one would like, but that is no easy matter.

The translation of the Aqdas gives a sample of the difficulties involved. What has been done has not been sufficient to give most readers a sense of its coherence, and probably no ‘translation’ would do that — that would need a codification or commentary on the legal sections, that would bring together the Aqdas and other source texts on each issue. As for the codification part, that is the work of the Universal House of Justice, whose function indicated in the Will and Testament includes compiling qanuun, or law codes, for the Bahai community. I do not think the House of Justice intends to issue any law codes in the near future. An individual or a group of individuals could produce a collation and commentary, for particular laws, and I may do so: naturally it would not be a qanuun because it would be just my interpretation. The UHJ is also unlikely to produce commentaries, or initiate a project for a commentary, because of the element of interpretation involved. It is not the job of the UHJ to provide or endorse interpretations of scripture. So it will be up to individuals.

The difficulty is multiplied several times if one contemplates a translation of the Bayan, or a commentary on just some of its laws.

However the primary barrier to appreciating either book, in my opinion, is formed by certain preconceptions about what “law” should be. Religious law is a distinct genre, it is not like secular law: it serves a different purpose and works on the reader in different ways. The structure of religious laws, consisting of core text, commentary and supercommentary, leading to the actual applicable law, is essential to what we are supposed to DO with religious law — study it, and learn from it, not use it to tell other people what they should do. And we can share insights from our study with one another, using whatever sources and language skills are available. There is no end to this: it is not something that can or should be done definitively.

I have shared some insights: it seems to me that you are both objecting that I have tried to explain one apparent contradiction, and objecting that not all the contradictions have been explained for you. In short, you want to be at the beginning or the end, but I think we are intended to be on the path

You wrote: “I can only say why I have not attempted a translation. It is an enormous job, I doubt my ability to carry it through to the end, and to do a technical legal translation would require not just a grasp of Persian, but also of the cryptic Arabic of the Arabic Bayan, which I do not have, and of Shiah family law (which I do have but other translators may not).”

I find it fascinating that you would answer my question re: the Bayan with a reference to yourself. Do you feel the weight if the Bahai world on your shoulders? Surely a translation project like this would be a team effort taking several years, not a one person effort.

I’ll repeat myself: If the Bayan is the Mother Book and if the Most Holy book is incomplete it, why would the present Bahai administration and those that preceded it not have made translating it a project of the highest priority?

Yes its a difficult task that would take much effort and many years. But the Aqdas makes much less sense without it according to your analysis.

When the Aqdas translation was released many Bahais read it and lost heart because it seemed so disjointed, poorly organized and inconsistent with the Bahai writings they knew of. Critics and enemies of the faith attacked it saying things like a book of laws needs to be coherent at the very least.

I think the Aqdas presents a serious problem for the faith and its expansionary goals. Our discussions about picking and choosing come to mind: I think many who pick and choose among the Bahai writings choose to ignore the Aqdas. Of course I’m guessing here, but I do know people who left the faith after starting to doubt upon reading the Aqdas.

Of course its all a test but the Bahai faith presents many tests for a religion that has such grand ambitions.

I agree that sorting out erroneous pilgrim’s notes would be time well spent. I would hope that a retranslation of Some Answered Questions would remove references to Buddhism and native peoples that are objectionable to many people. But at this stage these and other questionable ideas are part of the Bahai belief system, just as the dubious ideas promulgated by Saint Paul are part of the Christian faith.

I think faiths are not made up of just the pristine ideas of their founders. They include the wrong headed ideas of the followers. Like a caravan heading for a destination they pick up vagabonds and dust along the way. But any faith that has a Mother book that is critical to its most holy book can’t withhold it from its followers, unless there is something to hide. This withholding is more serious and damaging than any pilgrim’s note imo.

I suspect that in reality that the Bayan is full of misguided and out dated concepts that were foolish to start with. I think that if the true nature of the Bab’s thinking and writing were well known that knowledge would be damaging to the Bahai faith. I don’t read you saying that the Bayan is for future generations — that’s an almost comical thought in fact.

And I don’t question what you say about the difficulty of translation. But the faith is 164 years old, surely its Mother Book which is critical to its Most Holy Book should be available by now — by hook or by crook — do you agree?

Frank

Scholarship does not fall out of the sky: there is a process of “institutional capacity building” that involves schools teaching the basic languages, higher institutes, libraries, publishing houses, journals and so forth. It may be several generations before the institutions of learning in the Bahai community reach the point at which there is a small group of people with the right skills able to work together over several years to do a fitting translation.

There’s also a matter of community priorities. The pilgrim’s notes from Abdu’l-Baha, in books such as Promulgation of Universal Peace, Paris Talks and Divine Philosophy, cause a tremendous amount of misunderstanding and the importation of strange ideas into the “Bahai teachings”, and the bad translation of Some Answered Questions deprives people of explanations that they were meant to have. These materials are easier to translate, seem more pressing in terms of community needs, and can be done one piece at a time. That is my priority. I do have it in mind to write a commentary on some of the Aqdas laws, with translations of the relevant Bayanic laws: that is a much more manageable project than translating the whole Bayan.