Bible – Page 24 – God Didn't Say That

Making Sense Isn’t Enough

In a widely-quoted post earlier this week on Koinonia, Bill Mounce delineates six “translation procedures”: 1. Concordance. [Translate the Greek consistently into English.] 2. One for one. Prefer a single word translation for one Greek word. 3. Less interpretive. 4. Euphony. 5. Must make some sense. But wait! Theres more! (Sounds like a Greek infomercial.)…
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JoelMHoffman October 30, 2009 1

Sarx, Flesh, and Mismatched Metaphors

T.C. Robinson brings up the issue of sarx again. (We went through this some time ago: Peter Kirk on BBB, Doug Chaplin on Clayboy, Mark Goodacre on NT blog, Jason Staples, a short post here, and more.) The word is a perfect follow up to our discussions earlier this and again today about metaphors. It’s…
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JoelMHoffman October 29, 2009 18

On Metaphorical Dissonance

George Lakoff (in More than Cool Reason) points out that metaphors are conceptual, not merely linguistic. Then he has an example of how metaphors might differ, and what the consequences would be. I think it’s helpful to keep these issues firmly in mind as we translate across cultures. Here’s what Lakoff has to say: 1.…
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JoelMHoffman October 29, 2009 1

Amos’s Clean White Teeth

Amos 4:6 is back, first in a comment and then in a post at Aberration Blog. The Hebrew text reads: v’gam ani natati lachem nikyon shinayim b’chol areichem v’choser lechem b’chol m’komoteichem v’lo shavtm aday n’um adonai. That is, ” ‘I [Adonai] have given [or will give] you a purity/cleanness of teeth in all your…
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JoelMHoffman October 26, 2009 7

The Letter of the Text

Bill Mounce has a post about gramma in Romans 2:27 and 2:29. He’s responding to a question about the ESV’s translation of the word as “letter” in 2:29, but “written code” in 2:27. (Dr. Mounce defends the decision.) Let’s look at how gramma is used. The word gramma refers most basically to letters (of the…
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JoelMHoffman October 26, 2009 0

Q&A: On Matthew 5:17-19

Cameron asks via the About page whether “until everything is accomplished” (eos an panta genetai) in Matthew 5:18 could be punctuated as part of Matthew 5:19, the original being unversified and unpunctuated. That is, could the text read: I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least…
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JoelMHoffman October 25, 2009 2

Miracles and Wonders

Are there miracles in the Bible? The KJV uses the word “miracle” (or “miracles”) less than 30 times. The ESV, only about a dozen. And the NAB half of that, even with the apocrypha. Yet the word appears over 150 times in the NLT. So miracles pervade the Bible only in some translations. Why? What’s…
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JoelMHoffman October 25, 2009 4

Q&A: On Counting Seeds and Descendants

Dannii asks on the About page: In Galatians 3:16 Paul makes an essentially linguistic argument about Genesis 22:18. Does the Hebrew word for ‘seed’ have a similar range of meanings as the English word? Paul’s argument feels strange in English because when ‘seed’ is used to mean descendants it is a non-count noun. Is the…
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JoelMHoffman October 22, 2009 5

Translating Words That Mean More Than One Thing

Frequently a Hebrew or Greek word will, in the eyes of English speakers, “mean more than one thing.” There are two ways for this to happen. The first is when there are really two foreign words, similar to the situation with “bank” in English (both a financial institution and the side of a river); that’s…
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JoelMHoffman October 22, 2009 8

On Translations for Children

Karyn Traphagen notes that Dr. Ellen Frankel has some thoughts about making the Bible PG for children. (Dr. Frankel authored the JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible.) Seeing this reminded of something I saw some time ago in a “children’s prayerbook” along the lines of “Like wine, the sabbath is sweet.” The problem is that children think…
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JoelMHoffman October 20, 2009 9

Tag: Bible