Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Ruth 1:8-10: Another Adjacency Pair

Adjacency pairs are cool. Translators do well to watch for them. This is the final installment in a series on a little word in a specific context, כי at the boundary between frame and quotation in Biblical Hebrew. It would take a full-length monograph to go through the relevant examples in the Hebrew Bible (Esh [1957] counts 60; Miller [1996: 105, n. 21] adds others).

To quote Luther out of context, “one little word” is enough to “fell” a translator. Translators trip on function words rather often because they think of them in terms of presumed semantic content. That is a recipe for disaster, since function words tend to be, by definition, lexically empty.

Ruth 1:10 contains an example of כי at the boundary between frame and quotation. Most English translations get the pragmatics of Ruth 1:8-10 right. KJV on the one hand and NIV/ TNIV on the other do not. Details below the jump.

Translation Issues in Exodus 3:12 and Judges 6:16

The correct understanding of a simple word like כי in context has the potential of illuminating the sense of an entire passage. Despite the fact that the standard grammars and lexica interpret כי at the boundary between quotative frame and quotation as if it were equivalent to די recitativum in Aramaic or ὅτι recitativum in Greek whenever that possibility is not precluded by the semantics of the passage in question, it makes more sense, in line with Miller 1996: 103-116, to replace that default interpretation with another, namely, that כי is a clause-initial conjunction which subordinates the clause it heads to a matrix clause in all cases in which a semantically appropriate matrix clause, expressed or unexpressed, is recoverable from the context.

In this post, I apply that criterion to Ex 3:12 and a syntactically parallel passage, Jdg 6:16. In a previous post, I picked on NIV and NLT’s less-than-ideal translations of Num 22:29. In this post, I pick on KJV, NASB, HCSB, NET, and ESV’s less-than-ideal translations of Ex 3:12 and Jdg 6:16.

Max Turner explains why kephalē does not mean source

Beware of linguists. They are full of ideas. In a delightful short essay entitled “Semantics” in the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (ed. Katherine Doob Sakenfeld et al; Nashville: Abingdon, 2009) 161-164, Max Turner lays to rest the theory that kephalē means source. Someone is bound to remark: you’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch. But Turner is right. Below the jump, I provide the relevant text.

How the new NIV should translate Jonah 3:3

James McGrath has picked up on a wonderful post by Simon Holloway, who cannot “recommend NIV weakly enough.” I tend to feel that way about all translations. McGrath and Holloway fail to note that another blogger, Charles Halton, recently addressed the issues of interpretation of Jonah 3:3 with exhaustive attention to the secondary literature. Rightly in my view, Halton comes down on J. R. R. Tolkien’s side of the debate. You didn’t know that Tolkien was one of the translators of the great Jerusalem Bible? Then Holloway’s post will be an eye-opener for you.

Alan Lenzi is Back!

And he cut and pasted all the content from his old blog into his new blog. I love its name: “Feeling Finite.” Here is the link. I would point out to Alan that his return to the blogging community is an answer to prayer. J

Translation Issues in Numbers 22:28-30

The fine detail of passages of biblical Hebrew is not only of interest to grammar geeks. It will interest anyone who wants to engage in a close reading of the biblical text. The correct understanding of a simple word like כי in context has the potential of illuminating the sense of an entire passage. Once it is seen that the first כי in Num 22:29 is a clause-initial conjunction serving to subordinate the clause it introduces to a semantically appropriate “main” clause recoverable from context, the contours of the passage become sharper. In this post, I also take issue with NLT and TNIV insofar as they wander more than necessary from the lexis and syntax of the source text.

Will Obama Flip-Flop on Afghanistan?

If he does, he will lose even more Independent voters (a good third of the electorate in the US) than he already has. David Brooks of the New York Times makes the case that the Obama administration cannot afford to repeat in Afghanistan the egregious errors of Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq. But of course, many Democrats were and continue to be undeclared Rumsfeldians. War on the cheap, war fought from the safe confines of bunker-bases: it’s a recipe for failure. 

Why the work of a biblical scholar is an utter waste of time (Part 2)

The thesis that there is no such thing as a כי recitativum in biblical Hebrew is not new and cannot be attributed to the fancy of a few. Franz Zorell (1933), Shaul Esh (1957); Anton Schoors (1981), Barry Bandstra (1982); Samuel A. Meier (1992), and Cynthia L. Miller (1996) all cast doubt on the existence of כי recitativum. These scholars understand the use of כי at the head of the quotation in terms of the well-known function of כי as a clause-initial conjunction which subordinates the clause it heads to an expressed or unexpressed matrix clause. Miller develops the thesis at length within a credible linguistic framework (1996: 103-116).

Why the work of a biblical scholar is an utter waste of time (Part 1)

The title does not quite catch the facts on the ground, but it is tempting to think that it does. That’s because much of the best work that is done in the field is digested by very few people. Even those with sufficient training rarely wrestle with new research to the extent necessary to overcome the inertia inherent in sitting put on previously acquired points of view. Finally, even when new research is metabolized at the theoretical level, it is rarely applied to practical issues, such as producing more reliable translations of the biblical text in the languages of the world. In all of this, the field of biblical studies is similar to, not different from, other fields of intellectual endeavor.

In this series of posts, I give examples of what I mean from the research of one of the best linguists working in the field of biblical Hebrew, Cynthia L. Miller.

Why believers must complain about and criticize biblical texts

It’s not just biblical texts that believers must complain about. It is God himself. Biblical literature is clear on this point: it is connatural to a believer to criticize God. That’s what Moses and the prophets do. That’s what David and his fellow psalmists do. That’s what Job does. That’s what Jesus does from the cross, in the words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”