If for no other reason, the phrase “king of kings and lord of lords” is famous because it’s in Handel’s Messiah. We first find “king of kings” in the OT, where the appellation is used for Pagan rulers: Artaxerxes in Ezra (where “king of kings” is the Aramaic melech malchaya) and Nebuchadnezzar in Ezekiel and…
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Another great question from the About page: I have a question about Matthew 27:54. The centurion and the rest of the detachment set to guard Jesus body cried out and said “truly he was the Son of God!” — or is that really what they said? Since it lacks the articles in Greek, and Latin…
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Peter Kirk drew my attention to a post by Bill Heroman about I Timothy 2: If anyone wants us to be perfectly literal about 1 Tim 2:12, we should note, at least as a beginning, that Paul is primarily speaking against one-on-one mentoring, female to male. “I do not allow a woman to teach or…
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Karyn Traphagen points out that there are no distractions in the Old Testament: In doing some searches in Accordance, I happened to notice that there are no distractions in the Hebrew bible. No Hebrew word is translated by ESV, NIV, NRSV, NET (or many others) as “distract,” “distracted,” or “distractions.” The KJV does translate afuna…
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Also from the About page: Here is a question — I have explored the usage of ish and ishah in Ruth (here) and I was surprised to see in 3.14: vatakom b’terem yakir ish et-rei’eihu vayomer al-yivada ki-va’a ha-isha ha-goren and she rose before a man could recognize his friend and he said — let…
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From the About page: I have a question about Exodus 2:2. What does it mean that she saw that baby Moses was tov? Could it be a statement of affection, the way we refer to children and pets as “good?” Or does “seeing that…good” simply echo Genesis 1? Interesting question. I don’t think it’s an…
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In my last post I asked whether we should use modern terms like “womb” and “stomach” to translate the ancient beten, which was used for both. Similarly, what about “chair” and “throne”? It seems that, at least in the OT, one word was used for both different modern concepts. The Hebrew for both is kisei.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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