Trials and Translations: Impossibility of Translating the Bible (notes)
Trials and
Translations: How to Read the Torah
source-sheet
These
assertions hold irrespective of any individual’s religiosity
Some may say
that history is written by the victors, but I would like to say instead that history
is written by the writers.
NB: the Old
Testament (תנך) is in Biblical Hebrew with Aramaic in various minority portions
of Genesis, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezra. Later writings may be in other languages
e.g. Koine Greek [New Testament], Arabic [Quran] etc.
1) Authorial
decisions
•The first ever
Biblical translations were from Hebrew into Aramaic during Persian rule
•The Bible was
first translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC. This is known as
the Septuagint. It took over a century to complete.
• In AD 405, St.
Jerome completed the Vulgate, the Latin translation, after 22 years. This was
based off of the Septuagint, but was reviewed based off of the original Hebrew.
--NB this is not
the same as the one today, as it was not accepted until the mid-6th
century AD from a collection of multiple texts, some of which were apocryphal
beforehand, including טובית and יְהוּדִית
• (At that same time, from the 6th
to the 10th centuries, the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud were
codified, and there really aren’t many accounts of scrivinal errors in that
time through when it was able to be mass-printed)
• The vulgate was used for translations
into Syriac, Arabic, Spanish, and many other languages, including English,
though not German, as Martin Luther used the original
2) There are
many cultural signals lost, including puns
• A difficulty
for the translation into Taetae ni Kiribati (a.k.a. Gilbertese), spoken in a
country whose highest point is 81m, was that there was no word for 'mountain'
or 'hill'.
•Names were
deliberately rewritten to make them more normal sounding (in this case
Anglicized in keeping with its aim to make the Scriptures popular and familiar.
Also consider ‘heaven’
3) There is
grammar that doesn’t exist in every translation
וּמֹשֶׁ֗ה הָיָ֥ה רֹעֶ֛ה אֶת־ צֹ֛אן יִתְרֹ֥ו חֹתְנֹ֖ו כֹּהֵ֣ן מִדְיָ֑ן וַיִּנְהַ֤ג אֶת־ הַצֹּאן֙ אַחַ֣ר הַמִּדְבָּ֔ר וַיָּבֹ֛א אֶל־ הַ֥ר הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים חֹרֵֽבָה׃
u-mo:šɛ
and-Moses
ha:ya: was
roʕɛ
keeping
ʔɛt-so:n
ACC-sheep
yitro:(of)Jethro
ɦotno:
father-in-law.his
‘And Moses
kept the flock of Yitro his father-in-law.’ (Exodus 3:1)
This is the
start of a chapter but it begins with ‘and’. This is not true of the Hebrew,
and the וּ that’s normally a conjunction is an
overt complementizer (basically a marker for a clause that could be
independent)
אדם (Man/Adam) אדמא (soil)
חי (life) חוה (Eveה )
יצחק (Isaac) לצחק (to laugh)
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
“In the case of Genesis 1:1, the difficulty
lies in the way the first two words of the Torah (b'reishit and bara)
interact: if, as seems likely, the word b'reishit means not
"in the beginning" but "in the beginning of " (construct
case, or semikhut, for all you lovers of Hebrew grammar out there
in TV land), then it seems strange that it comes right before the second word, bara,
which seems to mean "(He) created" (i.e., a conjugated verb in the
past tense).” You cannot make out of this a literal translation in English
Also see my videos:
BIBL(e)iography
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