Deafness, as well as blindness, are spiritual biblical images that fill the Holy Scriptures; images of spiritual degradation, denoting complete denial of God, unwillingness to repent and change a sinful lifestyle. For example, the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah: “Go and tell this people: You will hear with your ears and not understand, and with your eyes you will look and not see. For the heart of this people is hardened, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, so that I may heal them” (Isa. 6:9-10) . There are other parallel passages: “You saw many things, but did not notice; His ears were open, but he did not hear” (Isa. 42:20). “Bring out a blind people, although they have eyes, and a deaf people, although they have ears” (Is. 43:8). “They have eyes to see, but they do not see; they have ears to hear, but they hear not” (Ezek. 12:2).To be fair, it is worth noting that, unlike spiritual blindness and deafness, physical blindness is not perceived by the Bible as a defect and is not imputed to a person as a sin. When the apostles asked the Lord about the man born blind: “Rabbi, who sinned, he or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be manifested in him” (John 9:2-3). It is quite natural that deafness as a physical disability is not perceived as a punishment for sins. One can say, on the contrary, since the time of the prophet Moses, God has been taking care of such people. In the book of law Leviticus, the Lord commands the Jews: “Do not curse the deaf, and do not place anything before the blind to cause him to stumble; fear the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:14). Through this command there is a call to show mercy to people deprived of sight and hearing.
The will of God was so favorable that the great prophet Moses, with whom the Lord spoke “mouth to mouth,” also had a physical handicap - tongue-tiedness. Now it is typical for many people with hearing loss. The prophet himself tells the Lord about himself: “I speak hard and am tongue-tied” (Ex. 4:10). In the Explanatory Dictionary of the Church Slavonic Language, “tongue-tied” means a person “who speaks slowly, who speaks slowly, with difficulty, who does not have the gift of speech” 1 . For this reason, Moses asked the Lord for an assistant, because he was afraid that he would not be understood and his word would not have power. If Moses spoke indistinctly and incomprehensibly, then it is quite possible to make an assumption why the Lord gave him his cousin Aaron as an assistant. Being in a family relationship and often communicating with Moses, Aaron could get used to his speech, remember what sounds he did not pronounce clearly and therefore could understand Moses’ speech and convey his words to people.
Further, the New Testament Scripture gives a vivid example of how the priest Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, explained himself by signs in the temple. When Zechariah “in order of succession served before God, by lot, as was usual with priests, he got to enter the temple of the Lord for incense... then the Angel of the Lord appeared to him” (Luke 1:9.11) and announced the imminent birth of his son . For his unbelief, the Angel punished Zechariah: “And behold, you will remain silent, and you will not be able to speak until the day this comes true, because you did not believe my words... Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and were amazed that he was hesitating in the temple . He, having gone out, could not speak to them; and they understood that he had seen a vision in the temple; and he communicated with them by signs, and remained mute. And when his days of service were ended, he returned to his house” (Luke 1:20-23).
Already 2000 years ago there was some kind of, perhaps, primitive finger alphabet that served as a means of communication for deaf and dumb people. The priest Zechariah may have known these signs or invented his own, suitable to explain the reason for his muteness. St. Theophylact of Bulgaria writes: “Zechariah made signs to the people, probably asking about the reason for the silence; but since he could not speak, he explained the reason with signs” 2.
Based on further events in Zechariah’s life: “And they asked his father by signs what he wanted to name his son” (Luke 1:26), we can believe that “Zechariah stopped hearing, and not just speaking. Otherwise, there would be no point in communicating with him using signs, as one usually talks to deaf-mutes” 3 .
Zechariah communicated with the people by signs or gestures, therefore, even now nothing prevents people from performing services with sign language translation and conducting confession in sign language. Also, Saint Zechariah can be a prayer book and patron of deaf people, since it is reliably known from the Gospel that Zechariah was mute, and according to interpretation, deaf.
The Lord healed the deaf man through visible signs: “taking him aside from the people, he put His fingers into his ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; and, looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “open” (Mark 7:33-34).
People involved in deaf pedagogy know very well that it is easier for a deaf person to understand and perceive those objects that he can see and to verify their existence, therefore the Lord, in order to completely assure the deaf person, healing him, puts His fingers in his ears and thereby reveals healing in a visible way, so that the deaf, not yet hearing the words of Christ, could visibly feel his healing.
This healing of the deaf and dumb also did not escape the liturgical Tradition of the Church. Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete prayerfully proclaims: “...Lord, cleanse the lepers, enlighten the blind and lame, heal the deaf and dumb... with a word” 4 (9th canticle of the Great Canon on Tuesday of the first week of Lent). The theme of these healings is very close to St. Andrew, since he himself remained mute until he was seven years old until he received Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Simon Peter also made a sign with his hand to the ap. John asked the Lord who would betray Him (John 13:24). Judas also came up with a sign in the form of a kiss to make it easier to point to the Lord (Matthew 26:48).
App. Peter and Paul, before beginning their speech, gave a sign with their hands (John 13, 24; Acts 12, 17; 13, 16; 21, 40). “This was the custom among the Jews, and that is why he addresses them in the same way,” 5 - this is how St. explains this act. John Chrysostom.
To this day, clergy use gestures during prayers and sermons. For example, pointing with a hand at a lectern with a holiday icon, they begin to talk about this holiday and its iconography.
Historian A.P. Lebedev, describing the difficult trials in the life of St. John Chrysostom writes: “Chrysostom, having heard the words. He struck with the index finger of his left hand (his usual gesture during reflection) and answered: “I was not the first teacher of the Gospel and I will not be the last” 6 .
The patristic heritage is also rich in thoughts about deaf people and the problem of hearing loss.
Church writer of the 3rd century. Tertullian, reflecting on prayer, states: “God does not look at the voice, but at the heart. Even the god of the Pythian oracle says: “I understand the deaf and hear even those who do not speak.” 7 This testimony is important for us in the sense that Tertullian here speaks of the faith of the pagans, who, despite their primitive views about the Creator, were not devoid of the idea that their gods hear all people, and the voice in calling on God has an indirect meaning.
St. Gregory of Nyssa, who lived in the 4th century, spoke about communicating with deaf people: “We talk to the deaf with signs and gestures, not because we do not have a voice, but because it would be useless to explain ourselves in words” 8 .
Blzh. Augustine in his Confessions, when he praises God’s mercy towards people, writes: “Heaven and earth proclaim Your praises to the deaf” 9 (Confessions 10:6).
St. Gregory the Theologian in the poem “Advice to Virgins” writes about the impact of unclean spirits on people deprived of hearing: “The enemy often broke through the hearing even into the deaf” 10. The saint here points out that a deaf person, despite lack of hearing, is susceptible to sinful temptations through the visual perception of the world and to the influence of evil forces through thoughts.
Blzh. Jerome writes about the healing of spiritual ailments in the Church of Christ: “Those who were previously unable to hear the words of the scriptures with deaf ears now rejoice in the commandments of God... and the language of the dumb will be clear, whose lips could not confess the one Lord” 11 . In this interpretation of the deafness of the blj. Nothing prevents Jerome from attributing these words to our modern times, when deaf people can hear the word of God through surdo services.
Evagrius of Pontus praises deafness of mind, since, in his opinion, it is an assistant in prayer. “Strive for this,” writes Abba Evagrius, “so that during prayer your mind becomes deaf and dumb, and then you will be able to pray” (On Prayer, 11) 12.
Thus, the biblical narrative, like the works of the holy fathers, does not exclude the topic of deafness on its pages. They divide it into spiritual and physical, but spiritual deafness is understood as an expression of disbelief in God. Some fathers, in particular Evagrius of Pontus, praise deafness in relation to sinful manifestations of the mind and soul.
We found out that Scripture and Tradition contain important evidence for us about the problem of hearing impairment and communication between people in sign language, therefore preaching to deaf people and indicating the use of signs and gestures during services and the possibility of sign language interpretation of services are invisibly rooted in the Bible and church tradition .
This should inspire modern Orthodox sign language interpreters, and the words of St. Paul “for the word of God there is no bond” (2 Tim. 2:9) to become the motto for the religious education of deaf people.
The Russian Bible Society (RBS) has been operating in Russia for more than 200 years. Since 1813, this society has been translating, publishing and distributing Holy Scripture in our multinational country. An important part of the work of the RBO is the translation of the books of the Bible into the languages of the small peoples of Russia. Recently, RBO became interested in a new project - “The Bible for the Deaf.”
Specialists from the RBO are interested in ensuring that the translation of the Holy Scriptures is understandable to the maximum number of deaf people living in the Russian Federation and the CIS countries. One of the RBO requirements for creating a Bible translation is that Christians from different churches and denominations must participate in this project.
First meeting.
The first meeting to discuss the idea of sign translation of the Bible took place on February 18, 2016 in the RBO building in Moscow (Valovaya St., 8, building 1). Present at this meeting were: Timur Neverov (deputy executive director of the RBO), Vadim Zhizhin (employee of the St. Petersburg branch of the RBO), Tatyana Vavilova (employee of the RBO) and some other employees of the RBO and RS ECB, Alexey Dadochkin, pastor of the “Ark” church in St. -Petersburg. Realizing that translating the Bible for the deaf is impossible without the direct and active participation of sign language speakers themselves, Tatyana Vavilova invited Zhadan Valery, coordinator of ministry among the deaf in the RS ECB, pastor of the Moscow ECB Church of the Deaf, and his wife to this first meeting. The meeting was interpreted by sign language interpreter, Raba Marina.
At this meeting, they reviewed and discussed different options already existing video translations of some books of the Holy Scriptures into the language of the deaf. The meeting participants noted the need to create a large team to translate the Bible for the deaf. As a result, we agreed to continue the discussion at the next meeting.
Second meeting.
On March 3, 2016, another meeting took place, at which an initiative group of 21 people was created. There were 5 employees from the RBO organization, from the Church of the Deaf ECB “Living Word” (Moscow) - 5 people, from the ECB Church “Ark” (St. Petersburg) - 3 people, there were also representatives from several SDA churches - 9 people (Rostov-on-Don, Tula, Khimki, Vladimir) and ministers from other ECB churches near Moscow in other cities (Podolsk, Fryazevo, Shchelkovo). The meeting lasted more than 8 hours. The discussion concerned what sign translation of the Bible should be like, how and where best to carry it out.
Results of the meeting of the initiative group.
In the end it was unanimously decided that a trial translation of the Gospel of Mark would be carried out. One team will work on it, with representatives of all major Christian denominations in Russia. Vadim Zhizhin, an employee of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Russian Bible Society, was appointed coordinator of this project.
It was also decided that the working group for translating the Bible into RSL would include: sign language consultants (3 people), theological consultants (5 people), and other specialists. After preparation, that is, after the work of a team of biblical scholars and sign language specialists, the finished translation into RSL will be performed on camera by two deaf brothers (performers or “presenters”). This decision was made on the basis of a survey among deaf and hard-of-hearing ECB ministers conducted by the ECB coordinator for ministry to the deaf, Valery Zhadan. Work on a trial translation of the Gospel of Mark into Russian Language will take place in two cities: the RBO office in Moscow - the main preparation of the translation, filming - in the studio of the Ark Church in St. Petersburg.
According to generally accepted principles, the translation of the Bible should not be literal, but semantic. Anatoly Rudenko, executive director of the RBO, reminded everyone present of this. The trial translation will be carried out in Russian Sign Language (RSL), understandable to most native speakers. Translation into RSL will be carried out based on the texts Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, the Modern Russian translation and the Synodal translation.
When the trial translation of the Gospel of Mark is ready, it will definitely be checked by the Expert Council, which will include theologians and sign language specialists from the Center for Education of the Deaf and Sign Language. And, of course, the translation will be appreciated by deaf representatives of various Christian denominations, simple sign language speakers from all segments of the population of our country.
What the working group members say about this project.
Alexey T., deaf (teacher of the deaf, ASD in Vladimir): I was invited to participate in this project by Arthur Kurakov, the head of the ASD deaf community in Tula. My desire is to help deaf people understand the living Word from God, to know the Bible in their native sign language. I participate in the working group as an RSL consultant on behalf of the SDA community. I am very concerned that the Bible should not be translated “word for word,” that is, using the method of “tracing sign language.”
Arthur Zh., deaf (pastor of the ECB church of the deaf “Living Word” in Moscow, teacher of the Euro-Asian Biblical Institute for the mission “Ministry of Instruction): Previously, I worked on translating some biblical texts into Russian Language as part of the IMB mission. And when I was invited to participate in this RBO project to translate the Bible into RSL, I was very happy. My goal is that deaf people should be able to understand the Bible in their native sign language.
Andrey K., deaf (leader of the deaf community in the Moscow region, Shchelkovo, teacher at the Euro-Asian Biblical Institute for the Ministry of Instruction mission): I am a member of the working group on translating the Gospel of Mark into Russian Language. Previously, I, like Arthur Zh., worked for several years on translating some biblical texts into RSL as part of the IMB mission. In the process of work, I realized that a video translation of the Bible into RSL is simply necessary for the deaf. Deaf people have been speaking their native sign language since childhood; for most of them it is difficult or almost impossible to understand Scripture in Russian, and this is not their fault. We need a translation into Russian SIGN language.
Pavel P., hard of hearing (chairman of the Tula city local branch of VOG, elder of the SDA Church of the Deaf in Tula): I would like to participate in the working group on translating the Gospel of Mark into RSL - as a consultant on biblical studies. In the course of my work as chairman of the Vogue, I see many problems that deaf people face, especially in the moral and spiritual sphere. They need the Bible in a language they understand! Based on my experience working with deaf people, I realized that deaf people need to speak their native language, which they have known since childhood and which they speak all their lives. Biblical paragraphs must be translated into RSL, using a semantic translation of the Bible that is understandable and accessible to all deaf people. But the main goal remains: not to distort the Word of God.
Danil G., deaf (leader of the ECB church of the deaf “Living Word”, leader of the deaf community “Alpha and Omega” in the Moscow region): I am participating in the trial project as a performer (presenter), that is, I am a “person in the frame.” The purpose of my participation in this project is to help deaf people living in Russia understand what the Word of God says. So that people know about the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a supporter of translation into modern Russian sign language.
May God help you to bring this pilot project to completion!
Worked on the article: Arkhireeva S., Zhnikrup A.
Greetings! My name is Anya Zheleznova.
I want to tell you a testimony. This is not fiction. This is reality.
My classmate was always very honest, and in my life I was very terrible person. Since childhood, I grew up and did not know what the church was, who Jesus was. I lived a very ordinary life. My behavior was bad, and I asked my friend for the address of the church. But she said: “No, in a year.” I say: “No, I would like to now.” She gave me the address of the church. I was looking for her. I spent two days on this. When I entered the church, I really wanted to hide, but when I entered and listened to the pastor’s sermon, and I was called to repentance, it was as if everything was burning inside me. The fire burned very strong, and I don’t even know how to explain it to you...
In the church I do worship, sing with signs, and do counseling, encourage people and they come back to church.
When I repented, I read the Bible, but I didn’t understand the words. And I really needed the help of an outsider to explain the meaning to me. Very complex words, and for the deaf nothing is clear at all, and the concepts are difficult. I tried to study, I tried very hard, but the deaf really need a sign translation of the Bible so that it is easier for us to understand.
My name is Artyom, last name is Filatov.
I repented in 2012. How did I know about God? I learned about God through believing friends. I saw their lives change. I looked at them, but they had their way, and I had mine... I did bad things. But when I did, I felt that I had an obstacle. This made my heart sore. I thought about the fact that I have believing friends. I asked them, "I can't do anything. I want to go to church." They invited me. I came to the church, looked... Everyone there was happy, there was Light, they sang songs. I came to youth fellowship. I participated in this youth fellowship and I realized that I want to change my life. I quit my bad deeds and thank God for changing my life. Thanks to Jesus alone.
Now I am involved in youth communication at church. I share the word of God and preach.
Greetings! My name is Galina Fashina.
I was born before the war in Moscow. During the war it was very cold, I caught a cold, got sick, got complications in my ears and lost my hearing.
I came to God in 1990. I arrived in St. Petersburg and there was American preacher. This interested me very much. There was an announcement and the announcement said, “Who wants to study the Bible, come to us.” I came to listen and from the first day I was so attached to this church that for the next 4 years I attended this church and studied the Bible. Then she repented and was baptized. I was given a Bible, but unfortunately our American pastor died and our church fell apart.
I began to look for another church where I could still come and listen to the Word of God, study it and accept it completely into my heart.
In 1996, at the House of Culture VOG (society of the deaf), I heard that there was a “Mercy” church. I started going there, and since then I have been going there constantly. I serve God, I glorify God, I serve people, I try to help them, I try to fulfill God’s Commandments. I wish the Bible was in sign language for the deaf. Many deaf people want to study the Bible, but there are no aids - no CDs, no sign language for biblical concepts. Therefore, I ask everyone who can help financially to make it possible for a Bible for the deaf to appear in sign language.