Give Ear At BBB, Wayne notes the oddity of the English phrase “give ear” for the Hebrew he’ezin. I think it can be useful to look at what went wrong here. The Root of the Problem Hebrew has at least two words for “hear/listen.” The first is shama. We find it, for example, in the…
Read more
While most translations agree that the translation of Genesis 1:1 should read, “In the beginning…” the (Jewish) JPS translation offers instead, “When God began to create…” And the NLT and some others offer a footnote with that possibility. What’s going on? The answer dates back 1,000 years to Rashi. He notes that the usual word…
Read more
Nowadays, translators usually try to figure out what a word originally meant before they translate it. But translation hasn’t always worked that way. For example, a passage in the (mid-first-millennium) Talmud explains the Hebrew word sechvi. The story, in the part of the Talmud known as Rosh Hashanah 26a, explains that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish…
Read more
The first 13 verses of 1 Corinthians 13 form an extended poetic passage about love. As with all stylistic prose, this text is difficult to translate well. In particular, verses 4-7 present a challenge to the translator, because in those verses “love” is personified through 15 Greek verbs that describe what love does. (As an…
Read more
The Dictionary The dictionary can be double edged sword, used either to understand or wielded to confuse. In another forum, a KJVO proponent defended the KJV translation “the voice of the turtle” (for the Hebrew kol ha-tor) as accurately representing a bird call in Song of Songs. His reasoning was that “turtledove” is listed as…
Read more
A string of comments on a thread at BBB raises the issue of what it means in Ezekiel 6:11 to “clap your hands” in horror (NRSV, NAB, NLT, and others). It turns out that the Hebrew doesn’t say “clap” but rather “strike with.”
James 2:23-24 uses the same root twice to highlight the point that Faith requires Works. But that important rhetorical device — duplication of the root — is lost in most translations. For example (NRSV): (23) …”Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” [Genesis 15:6] … (24) You see that a person…
Read more
John 8:32 — “the truth will set you free” (i alitheia eleutherosei umas) — is one of the most well known lines in the Bible. The key words are pretty easy to translate. The Greek alitheia is “truth” and eleutherow is the verb “to free.” So even thought we might prefer “the truth will free…
Read more
In a widely viewed video, Christopher Hitchens mocks the Ten Commandments with, among other jabs, the contrast between a commandment and an observation. “#6: Thou shalt not kill,” Hitchens (mis)quotes at 2:46 into the video. Then he notes (2:48 into the video): “Almost immediately after the events at Sinai, and the delivery of these instructions…
Read more
Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
