Until June 30, you have another chance to win a free, singed copy of my And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning. From the book’s blog: We’re giving away a free copy of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, autographed by the author. For the best chances of…
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From the About page comes this interesting pair of questions: 1. Is it true that there was no blue in the Bible, and that the word “blue” in our modern versions is a mistranslation? and 2. How do we know what the Hebrew names of the colors represent? The first question was prompted by a…
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Theophrastus has an interesting post — “Men without hats: Anachronism in Daniel 3:21” — about the Aramaic word kar’b’la in Daniel 3:21. He notes that many translations use the word “hats,” even though “we can be sure that the headgear worn in the Babylonian Captivity most certainly was not a hat.” Take a look. It’s…
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In English, Hosea 2:23 (also numbered 2:25) seems bland: “And I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God’” (NRSV). But as I just pointed out, the names “Lo-ruhamah” and “Lo-ammi,” Hosea’s children, mean “unloved” and “not my people,” respectively.…
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The prophet Hosea, we read, has three children, named yizrael, lo-ruchama, and lo-ammi in Hebrew, but in Greek their names are Yezrael, Ouk-Ileimeni, and Ou-Laos-Mou. What’s going on? Normally Greek names are simple transliterations of the Hebrew sounds. The answer is that the second two Hebrew names are actually phrases that mean “not loved” and…
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The ESV translation of 1 Corinthians 16:13 has Paul tell his audience to “act like men.” This tradition of translation goes back at least as far as the KJV, which renders the text “[behave] like men.” The NRSV, on the other hand, offers “be courageous.” What’s going on? At issue is the Greek verb andrizomai.…
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I imagine a novel written in a remote location, far from western culture. It’s about the last ten days of summer and the nearing autumn. So they call the book the equivalent of “What Happened on September 11” in their local language. My question is this. Should the American version of the book be called,…
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The issue of removing “father” and “son” from Arabic Bible translations has arisen again (in The New American, for example, and Christian Today, among many others), including a petition to put the Father and the Son back into the Trinity, after decisions by Wycliffe Bible Translators, Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), and Frontiers to replace…
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One of the most common expressions in Bible translations is a variation on the theme “daughter of so-and-so,” “father of so-and-so,” etc. For example, in Genesis 11:29, we learn that Milcah was the daughter of “Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah” (NRSV, along with most others). Even the new CEB, which prides itself on…
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