The Carpenter Fund Summer Translation Project

During the dog days of summer, music (of sometimes questionable taste) echoes through the empty Academy halls. Follow the noise, and you will find a team of students, the "minions," poring over Swedenborg’s handwritten manuscripts. This is "The Latin Job." It is not a caper film retold in an ancient Roman setting, and mini-chariot chases are unlikely.

Officially the Carpenter Fund Summer Translation Project, this initiative has been undertaken for the past 25 years with support from the Carpenter Fellowship Fund. After his passing more than 50 years ago, Paul Carpenter left a trust to encourage continued interest in the sacred languages. With this generous support, young scholars can be paid to engage deeply with the Writings. ANC Latin teachers Michaela Boyesen and Ben Cole (who took up the mantle from Rev. Scott Frazier) organize a team of students every summer for work that is not truly translation but "justification."

The task is a rigorous comparison of Swedenborg’s posthumous Apocalypsis Explicata against his original manuscripts. Over the centuries, well-meaning editors standardized Swedenborg’s grammar and punctuation. More recent Swedenborgian scholars have been interested to know what might have been glossed over. Since 1999, “minions,” fueled by Goldfish crackers and coffee, have been undoing those changes as they examine every ink-obscured blob to restore the mystic’s original intent across twelve volumes of printed Latin.

Ultimately, the project aims to produce a faithful representation of Swedenborg’s work, but there is a hidden legacy: a cadre of experienced Latinists worthy of the scholars who came before them. That, and some killer inside jokes.