At Hebrew and Greek Reader, the question is asked whether the NLT’s rendering of Ecclesiastes 11:5 is politically motivated. The issue is the image of …ka’atzamim b’veten ha-m’lei’ah, that is, “like etzems in the beten.” The NLT’s rending is: …a tiny baby [etzem] growing in its mother’s womb [beten]… (I’m ignoring maleh here, because it’s…
Read more
Daniel 12:7 refers to a man who “swore by chei ha-olam,” commonly translated as something like “the one who lives forever.” Some years ago, I had a to translate a similar phrase in the Jewish liturgy, chei ha-olamim, which many prayer books wrongly render, “life of the universe.” It was the last line in the…
Read more
It turns out that “um” means something in English, and we can learn about translation by looking at that short word. The following hypothetical conversation between a shopper and a sales associate at a book store demonstrates: Shopper: “Where can I find a complete bilingual text of Aristotle?” Clerk: “Aristotle who?” Shopper: “Um, the Greek…
Read more
Some people believe that every word of scripture is God-given. Reasonable people can disagree about this (see Clayboy’s thoughtful rejection of the idea, for example) but I’m not sure the inspiredness of the words has anything to do with translation. Even if every Hebrew and Greek word in the current version of the Bible is…
Read more
I frequently read comments like “Every Bible translation is a paraphrase” (Abraham Piper) and cringe. The philosophy seems to be “nothing is perfect, so everything is the same.” I agree that no translations are perfect, but that quite obviously doesn’t mean that they are all the same. A related complaint is that we can’t know…
Read more
Also from the about page: Is it true that in Greek they didn’t have multiple words that meant the same thing or one word that meant multiple things? More clearly — that every word had only one meaning and each thing/idea had only one word for it. Thanks! Thanks for the question, which I think…
Read more
From the about page: Ooh, let me be number eleven! I’d like to formally ask about the possible meanings of Iscariot. Although I highly doubt it’s actually related to the Latin sicarius (assassin), I’ve heard that as an unlikely though interesting theory. What explanation(s) of that surname/eponym do you find plausible? As usual, I’ll start…
Read more
The Greek word hosanna appears six times in the NT: three times in Matthew, twice in Mark, and twice in John. The context is each case includes the quotation, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” from Psalm 118:26. Because Psalm 118:25 contains the Hebrew words hoshi’a na, the Greek…
Read more
Adjectives without nouns are quirky and idiosyncratic, and understanding them is important for translation. As an example, in English we have “the Americans” (American people) but not (*)”the Swisses,” or (*)”the Frenches.” We have “the Swiss” (Swiss people) and “the French” (French people), but “the American” can only mean one person. Other languages work differently.…
Read more
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops started their semi-annual meeting today, and among the topics up for vote is the new English text of the Missal. (Bishop Trautman has been vocal about the shortcomings of the new translation, as summarized here and critiqued here.) So I took a look at some of the proposed…
Read more
Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
