At the end of my discussion of anthropos, I concluded that one meaning of anthropos is “man,” and that we see that meaning in Matthew 12:10. Here I want to suggest that, even so, “man” may not be the best English translation for anthropos. Here’s why. One of my points before was that Greek makes…
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In another discussion of gender, John challenges: “Given something like Acts 7:32 ‘I am the God of your fathers [pateres], the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.’, who would have the burden of proof? Was it the God of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel? If the one writing this text was of a…
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Matthew 12:9-14 The parable in Matthew 12:9-14 demonstrates so many key translation points (many of which have already come up recently, in posts too numerous to mention) that I think it’s worth taking a systematic look at that text and the issues it raises. The Plot As I understand it, the general plot of the…
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A recent post by Mike Aubrey (quoting and disagreeing with Paul Helm) again raises the issue of “dynamic equivalence,” and, more generally, the goal of translation. In a comment, Jason Staples suggests: Good post. I think the basic translation philosophy of attempting to most clearly convey the meaning of a text (which is effectively “dynamic…
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Anthropos More: My follow-up to this post The value of men, women and sheep Of sheep and men: overlooking wordplay in translation Aner: either male or female TNIV translators on the English language Following up on the brouhaha I seem to have started, here are some more thoughts on anthropos. Everyone agrees that, in various…
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In response to Scot McKnight’s third post on Translation Tribalism, MatthewS says: A prof told me once that some missionaries in China feel that translators might have made a mistake by translating the word “dragon” in Revelation literally. It is supposed to convey negative affect but the dragon in Chinese culture is a positive thing.…
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The funny thing about what words mean is how hard it is to notice when they mean more than one thing, as, for example, “funny.” The way I’m using it here the word doesn’t mean “humorous” but, rather, “odd.” Two thousand years hence, will scholars be arguing over whether “funny” should be translated into the…
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In a recent discussion here, Paula asks about where the line is drawn between “translation” and what I called “explanation.” It’s a really important question. I don’t think I have an answer in terms of definitions, but I have a few examples, starting with just English. (It’s helpful to look at English to English “translations”…
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I’m following up on my last post about gender and Modern Hebrew. And again, the point is not that ancient Hebrew and Greek are the same as Modern Hebrew (they’re not), but rather that we can learn about how gender works in human language by looking at examples. The Hebrew word ish is one word…
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Last week I suggested that imagery can be subjective, varying from culture to culture. Here’s another example. In antiquity, for a person to be “fat” was a good thing, the word essentially representing the opposite of “scrawny.” Every day, modern America produces something like twice the calories that its population needs to thrive, so many…
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Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
