TO THE READER: THE STRUCTURE OF POWER IN BIBLICAL TRANSLATION, FROM TYNDALE TO THE NRSV

This article investigates the mechanisms by which the 'To the Reader' essay that prefaces the NRSV constructs power. The mechanisms and strategies that characterise modern discursive structures of power are used as a theoretical lens for examining the prefatory essay's self-awareness of the forces associated with its arising. Unlike the manner in which power is manifest in earlier biblical translations, power in the NRSV's 'To the Reader' is more subtle-implying an autonomous, unified and unarticulated biblical message which is its own first cause. The analysis presented herein suggests that the construction of power in 'To the Reader' relies on obscuring the limits of its relationship with those forces that encompass the NRSV translation enterprise.