As I’ve said, I’m devoting most of my energy for the next little while to “The Unabridged Bible,” which will gradually start officially rolling out soon. In the meantime, readers here may enjoy my translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls on that site because of my copious translation notes, and because the passages frequently quote…
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In light of my last post, I thought it might be helpful to move beyond theory to actual translation. How would you translate the Hebrew ish and the Greek anthropos in the following passages? Genesis 2:24 [Hebrew]: “Therefore an ish leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife.” Genesis 2;24 [LXX]: “Therefore…
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From the About page comes this great question: Does Genesis 15:1 mean “your [Abram’s] reward will be very great” or “I [God] am your great reward”? The NRSV translates it, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great,” while the KJV has a different understanding: “Fear not, Abram:…
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Doug “Clayboy” Chaplin has an interesting post about literal Bible translations. Among other things, he says: There seems to me — behind the so-called “formal equivalence” emphasis on source language syntax something of a hankering for a sacred language. By sacred I mean, in this context, especially appropriate for or capable of being a vehicle…
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As always, I’ve returned from my week in Israel recharged and renewed. Also, as always, my visit has given me a lot to think about regarding translation. Modern Languages I believe that looking at modern languages can help us understand the nature of translation because it’s easier to know what modern languages mean, so it’s…
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From the About page: Still working on he and vav and I came across this pair of words in Ruth vatishtachu artza. Two questions — why the vav at the end of the first word? And why the he at the end of the second? KJV translates it as if it were hithpael — she…
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It seems that the default explanation for an unknown grammatical feature is to assume, often wrongly, that it is “emphatic.” Here are four examples, three from Hebrew (skip to them: one, two, three) and one from Greek (skip to it here). The Examples The Infix Nun From time to time, a nun will appear between…
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Again from the about page: What’s going on with the pronominal suffixes in Psalm 103 3-8? I can’t find -ki as a pronominal suffix in any of my grammar books — neither singular nor plural! Good question. The suffix -ki (also spelled -chi) is a variant form of -k, and it means “your (sng, f).”…
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Still following up on what Pete Enns said: Second, I would be prepared at how Hebrew does not “behave itself,” i.e., how grammars necessarily abstract the language almost to the point where a fair amount of what you’ve been learning doesn’t correspond to the actual biblical text. More than once I have encountered this sort…
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Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
