“Nuclear families” have nothing to do with “nuclear energy,” in spite of the word “nuclear” in both phrases. Most people know that two unrelated words can look the same: the “bank” in “river bank” and in “money bank,” for example. Such words usually mean completely different things. It’s less commonly appreciated that closely related words…
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I think it can helpful to look at familiar English words as a way of understanding ancient words and how best to translate them. In this case, we’ll look at one way words can mean more than one thing. “Cash” in English One meaning of the English word “cash” is actual physical money — dollar…
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Joel Berkowitz (in Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage) writes of the hubris of Yiddish theaters that promoted Yiddish productions of Shakespeare that were “translated and improved.”* Though we mock it now, I often think I see the same thing in Bible translations, in two related ways: 1. “Translators” want to make the general flavor…
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The English phrase “term of art” is nicely self-referential, because it is one. A “term of art” is a term — a word or a phrase — that is used technically in a narrow context. It usually has nothing to do with “art,” except in the now antiquated sense in which “law,” “science,” etc. are…
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Frequently a Hebrew or Greek word will, in the eyes of English speakers, “mean more than one thing.” There are two ways for this to happen. The first is when there are really two foreign words, similar to the situation with “bank” in English (both a financial institution and the side of a river); that’s…
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Just as people (Peter Kirk on BBB, Doug Chaplin on Clayboy, Mark Goodacre on NT blog, Jason Staples, and more) are talking about sarx again, the New York Times wrote today: Il Giornale’s attack expanded on Thursday, with another editorial aimed at the Catholic Church itself, mocking not just the “hypocrisy” of sexually active priests…
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