On Biblical Masculinity and Femininity
What do the Hebrew words for “male” and “female” in the Bible really teach us about gender roles?
Recovering the Erotic Poetry of Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon is replete with erotic poetry, but if you only read the translations, you’d never know it. Phrases like “my beloved is to me a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts” (1:13, NRSV) and “my beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-gedi” (1:14, NRSV)…
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How Similar Words Lead Bible Translators Astray
“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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Why Most Bible Translations are So Bad (And Why the Next Generation Should Care)
This past July I had the pleasure of presenting at a TEDx conference in East Hampton, the broad theme of which was “The Next Generation.” So I offered an 18-minute segment on Bible translation, on what so often goes wrong with translations, and on how to avoid the common mistakes. I couched these topics in…
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Top Translation Traps: Slavery to Form
Zondervan has a chart (reproduced immediately below at right) suggesting that effectively conveying both the form and meaning of the original Biblical documents is the best way to reflect the original reading experience. I disagree, and I think that Zondervan’s approach represents a common and fundamental misunderstanding about how form works. Form and Meaning For…
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Top Translation Traps: Too Much Information
Translators frequently have information at their disposal that doesn’t come directly from the text they are translating. Though it’s often tempting, it is nonetheless almost always a mistake to add the additional information into the translation. For example, if a mystery novel starts, “a man was walking by the beach,” the translator should not change…
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Top Translation Traps: Dependence on the Dictionary
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…
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Top Translation Traps: Mimicry
One of the most non-intuitive aspects of translation is that mimicry can lead the translator astray. For example, it stands to reason that an adverb at the beginning of Hebrew sentence should be translated into English by an adverb at the beginning of a sentence; and, similarly, that an adverb at the end in Hebrew…
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Top Translation Traps: Missing the Point
[Between six appearances in four cities and then having to buy a new car, I haven’t been in front of a computer in nearly two weeks. So I’m playing catch-up, starting with a much-delayed installment of “translation traps.”] Following up on some thoughts about myopic translations, here’s one way in particular that a translation can…
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Top Translation Traps: Myopic Translations
Sometimes it seems that translators look too closely at individual words, only asking “how do I say this ancient word in English?” rather than asking “how do I translate this text into English?” I think this flawed approach comes in part from ignorance, but also from the religious tradition that each word has meaning. So…
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Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives
Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
Interest Rates Old and New: How High is Too High? A short history of ancient interest rates, in light of a 10% cap on credit-card interest rates proposed in the US Senate by Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley
Happy Year of the Snake Why is there a year for such a despicable animal as the snake? There might be a very good reason...
The Surprising Connection Between Hanukkah and Christmas Hanukkah and Christmas, which happen to coincide this year, happen to have a surprising shared history. Here it is.
Positivity Is Poisoning the Holidays (but It Doesn't Have To) Here is an antidote the poisonous pressure to be happy, especially during the holidays.
