述而不譯？－－艾儒略「天主降生言行紀略」的跨語言敘事初探

Translation as Narration: Giulio Aleni's Cross-language Narratives of a Brief Record of the Words and Deeds of the Incarnation

晚明耶穌會士艾儒略的《天主降生言行紀略》1635可謂中文首見耶穌傳，鐘鳴旦考證此書為中古歐洲隱士Ludolphus所著《基督生平》（Vita Christi，474）簡本的翻譯，此為考據此書歐文底本首見之研究貢獻。值得探究的是，儘管艾儒略強調此書不是《聖經》的翻譯，其作者署名與此書前言卻直指此書是《聖經》四部福音書的「譯述」之作。再者書中艾儒略隻字未提Ludolphus，若鐘文考據屬實，《紀略》如何使用《基督生平》一書，則需進一步釐清。因此，本人重新檢視《紀略》、《聖經》四部福音書和《基督生平》三者，並進行文本比較分析以釐清三者的關係之後，再從跨語言敘事角度解析艾儒略所謂之「譯述」，觀察他如何在中文處境傳述天主降生的故事。經比較三者內容顯示，《紀略》的章節應該是刪增重組《基督生平》的章節作為其基本架構，而其內容則應是「譯述」了《基督生平》中所引用的《聖經》經文以及部分非屬《聖經》的記載，加入了個人詮釋之後，以「西史」而非「聖經經典」的面貌，在中文語境中重新建構天主降生的故事。本文以兩個拋物線運動圖示，重建並對比《基督生平》和《紀略》二書中兩個「降生－升天」敘事結構之間的異同之後，發現前書敘事的拋物線運動之超驗性起點（太初有道）在後書的拋物線運動中已經遭到刪除；而前書敘事以返回天堂為終點，在後書則以落實人間之「宗徒敷教萬方」作結。基督降生的故事在艾儒略手下從歐文轉換為中文，其降生事蹟的歷史性與在地性被強化，而其經典性與超驗性則被淡化。雖然「未敢言譯」，艾儒略之「譯述」實際上是採取「以譯為述」的敘事策略，在中文處境重述來自歐洲中世紀的基督降生故事。This paper studies the first Chinese publication on the Jesus story, Tianzhu jiangsheng yanxing Jilue (A Brief Record of the Words and Deeds of the Incarnation, henceforth: Jilue), published by Giulio Aleni (1582-1649) in 1635. In the preface of Jilue, Aleni clearly states that the book is a 'translation and narration' (Yi-Shu 譯述) of the content of the Four Gospels in the Bible rather than a translation of the Bible itself. Around a decade ago, a milestone in the study of Jilue was N. Standaert's discovery that Jilue was a translation of the abridged edition of Ludolphus de Saxonia's Vita Christi (1474). After re-reading in detail Jilue and the Bible, however, the present author finds that almost all the 165 stories of Jesus' life recorded in Jilue have their roots in the biblical texts. This article first clarifies the complicated connection among the three books by re-examining the texts of Aleni's Jilue, the Bible, and Ludolphus' Vita Christi. Secondly, it studies the narrative strategy of transforming and transmitting the Latin Incarnation narrative to Chinese readers and audiences by comparing the narrative structures of both Ludolphus' and Aleni's work with the help of biblical narrative study methodology. This paper concludes that Aleni did not translate the whole abridged version of Vita Christi; rather, he treated it as simply the biblical foundation of his own text. Aleni selected and made use of the biblical quotations in Vita Christi to reconstruct his Jesus story in Jilue. With personal interpretation, the story of the Incarnation was then presented not as a 'biblical canon' but as a 'Western history.' Two diagrams of parabolic movements representing the narrative structures of the two books are formulated in this paper to demonstrate how the other-worldly oriented narrative in Vita Christi was revised in Jilue as a this-worldly one. In a sixstep symbolic process where the unspeakable and untranslatable transcendence is transmitted to the readers and the audiences of a foreign country, Aleni's Jilue was actually a retelling of the Incarnation in the new context of the late Ming.