Bible Translations

This chapter examines some of the assumptions that are typically employed when dealing with the development of the Hebrew Bible. The first part of the chapter is a critique of the very term "Jewish Bible." It points out some of the problems with the term and make a plaidoyer against being politically correct. The second part focuses on what it means to explain the "development" of the Hebrew Bible and suggests that diachronic analysis alone cannot fully explain its formation. In this author's view, proper understanding of the development of the Bible requires drawing upon intellectual and literary models more commonly associated with the period of the “reception of scripture” than with conventional composition history.

By Ellis R. Brotzman and Eric J. Tully -- This accessibly written, practical introduction to Old Testament textual criticism helps students understand the discipline and begin thinking through complex issues for themselves. The authors combine proven expertise in the classroom with cutting-edge work in Hebrew textual studies. This successful classic (nearly 25,000 copies sold) has been thoroughly expanded and updated to account for the many changes in the field over the past twenty years. It includes examples, illustrations, an updated bibliography, and a textual commentary on the book of Ruth.

By Eugene Nida and Charles Taber (1969/1982) -- This volume on The Theory and Practice of Translation is the logical outgrowth of the previous book Toward a Science of Translating (1964), which explored some of the basic factors constituting a scientific approach to translation. This second volume presents certain of these same theories in a pedagogically oriented order, designed to assist the translator to master the theoretical elements as well as to gain certain practical skills in learning how to carry out the procedures. Though this present book treats the problems of translating primarily in terms of a scientific orientation to linguistic structures, semantic analysis, and [nformation theory, it does not lose sight of the fact that translating is far more than a science. It is also a skill, and in the ultimate analysis fully satisfactory translation is alwavs an art. (This text was made available at the following website: https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-theory-and-practice-of-translation-with-special-reference-to-bible-translating-helps-for-translators-8-d165240678.html)

PART 1: The hope of the faithful, and the grave from which we are dug. The traditional (patristic and early Reformation) doctrine of heaven and hell.
PART 2: The “Larger Hope” and lesser grave taught in the 1894 Revised Version. The assault on the doctrine of eternal retribution and re-definition of the Hebrew 'sheol.'
PART 3: The treatment of 'sheol' in the 1537 Matthew Bible. Comparing the Geneva Bible, Revised Version, and modern Bibles. The problems with the modern translations.

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2009. "Let My People Know!", Jerusalem Post, 18 May 2009.


LET MY PEOPLE KNOW!

Ghil'ad Zuckermann

In 1996 president Ezer Weizman visited Cambridge University to see the medieval Cairo Geniza Jewish manuscripts. He was introduced to the Regius Professor of Hebrew, nominated by the queen of England herself. Hearing "Hebrew," the friendly president clapped the don on the shoulder and asked "ma nishma," the common Israeli "what's up" greeting, which some take to literally mean "what shall we hear" but which is a loan translation of the Yiddish phrase vos hért zikh, literally meaning "what's heard."

To Weizman's astonishment, the distinguished Hebrew professor didn't have the faintest clue about what the president "wanted from his life." As an expert on the Old Testament, he wondered whether Weizman was alluding to Deuteronomy 6:4: Shema` Yisrael (Hear, O Israel). Not knowing Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Romanian - let alone Israeli, the language spoken by Israelis - the Cantabrigian don had no chance of guessing the actual meaning of this beautiful, economical expression.

Semiticist Edward Ullendorff has wrongly claimed that Isaiah could have easily understood Israeli. To begin with, Isaiah would have found it extremely hard to even decode the European pronunciation of Israeli speakers. But more important - and less hypothetical: Do Israelis understand Isaiah?

In the last 10 years, I have unfortunately acquired many enemies because I insisted that Israelis not only do not understand the Bible, but much worse: They misunderstand it without even realizing it! Thus, I was delighted to hear about the project launched by the experienced Bible teacher Avraham Ahuvia and insightful publisher Rafi Mozes, acronymized in the biblionym Tanakh RAM.

What most people call Modern Hebrew, which I term Israeli, is a fascinating and multifaceted 120 year-old Semito-European hybrid language. It is a mosaic rather than Mosaic. Its grammar is based not only on "sleeping beauty" Hebrew, but also on Yiddish, the revivalists' mame loshn (mother tongue), as well as on other languages spoken by the founders, e.g. Polish, Russian, German, Ladino and Arabic. Notwithstanding, the Education Ministry axiomatically assumes that Israeli is simply an evolution of Hebrew and that the Bible is thus written in the very same language spoken by Israeli pupils.

Israelis might understand the very basic meaning of bereshit bara 'elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz (In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth) rather than, say, hatzvi yisrael al bamotekha Halal (II Samuel 1:19: The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places). But how many Israelis can really fathom tohu vavohu or tehom (Genesis 1:2), the Israeli misleading senses being "mess" and "abyss"? How many Israelis know that an `egla meshulleshet (Genesis 15:9) is not a triangular cow but "a heifer of three years old"? If they studied the RAM Bible, they would know because it is translated as such: egla bat shalosh.

Most Israelis misunderstand yeled sha`ashu`im (Jeremiah 31:19) as "playboy" rather than "pleasant child." Ba'u banim `ad mashber (Isaiah 37:3) is misinterpreted by Israelis as "children arrived at a crisis" rather than as "children arrived at the mouth of the womb, to be born." Adam l'`amal yulad (Job 5:7) is taken to mean "man was born to do productive work" rather than "mischief" - an accusation of the inherent wickedness of mankind. One could give thousands of examples, and from post-biblical Hebrew too: for instance, how many Israelis can follow the meaning of the Hanukka hymn "Ma`oz Tzur Yeshu`ati"?

Israelis are incapable of recognizing fine points of aspects and tenses in the Bible. I remember in my IDF basic training, the commander ordered us "od khamesh dakot hayitem kan!" (Within five minutes you will have been here), hayitem referring to an action in the future. In the Bible, heyitem regularly refers to an action that has been completed, independently of whether or not it is in the past or future. Such a biblical mind-set is in strong contradistinction to the Weltanschauung of the Homo sapiens sapiens israelicus vulgaris and to the way Israelis read the Bible.

Ask Israelis what 'avanim shaHaqu mayim (Job 14:19) means and they will tell you that the stones eroded the water. On second thought, they might guess that it would make more sense that the water eroded the stones. Yet such an object-verb-subject order is ungrammatical in Israeli today.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda would have been most content had Israelis spoken biblical Hebrew. Had the Hebrew revival been fully successful, we would indeed have spoken a language closer to ancient Hebrew than modern English is to Chaucer because we would have bypassed more than 1,750 years of natural development.

Given the Israeli language's hybridic heritage and omnipresent misunderstandings of the Hebrew Bible by Israelis, Ahuvia's translation should be cherished by the establishment. The Education Ministry should revise the way it teaches the Bible and treat it as foreign language classes - just like Latin. Tanakh RAM fulfills the mission of red el ha'am not only in its Hebrew meaning (go down to the people) but also - more importantly - in its Yiddish meaning (red meaning speak!). Ahuvia's RAM translation is most useful and dignified. Given its high register, however, I predict that the future promises consequent translations into more colloquial forms of Israeli, a beautifully multilayered and intricately multisourced language of which to be proud.

Prof. Zuckermann splits his time between Israel and Australia. His most recent book Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli, A Beautiful Language: Hebrew as Myth) was published by Am Oved.

www.zuckermann.org

Abstract · The Bibie in the history of pastoral and liturgical use of the friulian language · On February 1, 2019 the new edition of the translation of the Holy Scripture in the Friulian language, La Bibie, published by the Pio Paschini Institute for the History of the Church in Friuli on behalf of the dioceses of Udine, Gorizia and Concordia-Prodenone was officially presented in Udine. At the presentation, attended by numerous authorities and a large audience, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, archbishop of Perugia-Città della Pieve and President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, spoke with a report entitled: The mother’s voice. The ecclesial reasons of the Bible in the Friulian language. On that same occasion, the contribution now published was also read, which aims to outline the historical path within which the new edition of La Bibie is placed.

The Hebrew Bible has long been translated into the Karaim language. Such translations are important for Karaim rituals and help to preserve the Karaim language, which has recently become endangered. Although the language of these translations shows some common features, the translations of different Karaim varieties show some differences, as well. Therefore, the present study analyses part of a translation of the Tanakh into Karaim that was published in Crimea in 1841. The language of the so-called Gözleve Bible is Crimean Karaim, an extinct Eastern variety of Karaim that belongs to the Kipchak (North-Western) group of the Turkic languages. As such, typical Kipchak features are expected to have been preserved in written Crimean Karaim sources. However, the language of this translation also shows Oghuzic characteristics. Thus, this study will demonstrate some specific linguistic characteristics of the Oghuz branch of Turkic as well as their distribution throughout the Book of Leviticus in the Gözleve Bible. Specifically, it will focus on the phonetical, morphological, and lexical features.

Dit is de uitgebreide toelichting bij de vertaalmethode die is gebruikt bij de totstandkoming van de NBV21. Bijbelwetenschappers Matthijs de Jong en Cor Hoogerwerf vertellen hoe deze methode de basis vormt van de revisie en hoe de bijdragen van lezers en gebruikers gewogen en verwerkt zijn. Zo geeft dit boek een integraal beeld van de toegepaste vertaalmethode.
Matthijs de Jong en Cor Hoogerwerf, NBV21: De vertaalmethode toegelicht, Haarlem/Antwerpen 2021.

Тернистий шлях перекладу Морачевського до друку віддзеркалив цілий пласт боротьби за "уповноцінення" української мови, розширення сфери її вжитку за межі селянського середовища та побутового спілкування. Боротьби, яка, з перемінним успіхом триває понад півтора сторіччя. Битви, в якій ентузіазм одинаково протистоїть опору бюрократичних монстрів та байдужості обивательської маси. Ця тяглість процесу робить тим більш актуальним дослідження його першопочатків, так би мовити аналіз пройденого та створення реєстру здобутого та втраченого. Адже є всі підстави вважати, що чи не головним каталізатором появи знаменитого Циркуляру 1863 року з забороною на українське друковане слово стали чотири невеликих зошити, надіслані на розгляд Святійшого Синоду нікому невідомим відставним інспектором Ніжинського ліцею Пилипом Морачевським. Сам перекладач ймовірно до кінця життя так і не усвідомив, якою неприємною несподіванкою для церковної та бюрократичної верхівки імперії стала поява його праці.

The “SIL International Statement of Best Practices for the Translation of Divine Familial Terms” was produced at the Consultation organized by SIL International in Istanbul, Turkey in August of 2011. This Consultation was organized to discuss issues concerning the translation of Divine Familial Terms—with specific focus on the Son of God. The consultation began by considering translation issues, followed by exegetical and hermeneutical considerations, as well as theological and missiological perspectives. This discussion acknowledged the fact that the issues involved in the accurate translation of Father-Son terminology are not merely linguistic in nature. So, even though the Istanbul Statement focuses primarily on best practices for translation, it was drafted in the context of this broader discussion.

This article describes the concept of contextual frames of reference (CFR) and explains its importance to the analysis of Bible translations. The article starts by explaining the idea of cognition, which is fundamental to the notion of CFR. Then it briefly sketches the origin of the concept of framing from its broad context of translation studies up to its specific framework in this article. Finally, it elaborates using Ruth 3:9, 3:10, 3:16 and 4:2 to show how the four heuristic CFRs can be used as a tool for analysing translations. The four heuristic classes of CFR are sociocultural, organisational, communicational and textual. In this article, they are presented as tools that can be used to hypothesise why a translation renders a source text (ST) the way it does, based on an analysis of the probable circumstances surrounding the translation.

By submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.

In the first half of the 16th century in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the reception of Hebrew studies took place. It happened by personal contacts of magnates and church dignitaries with the West-European Hebrew experts, through Jewish converts teaching Semitic languages, through foreign studies at European university centers and through books. Polish Hebrew studies were not creative. The contacts of Polish humanists and reformers with the Jews, persisting in their faith, were of insignificant importance for local Hebrew studies. One could observe humanistic trends of Hebrew studies, as well as trends connected with different Christian confessions. Hebrew studies organization was based on two methods: one within university structures and within religious movements. Polish Hebrew studies were first of all practical. Their aim was to provide an opportunity to use the Hebrew Bible texts directly, and to deal with translation of the Hebrew Bible into Polish.

Translators have historically held incredible power to influence millions of Bible-readers over the eons. Many impressive developments have occurred in the field of textual criticism and lexicology over the last century. Today we can access dozens of English translations, Greek interlinears, and lexical aids online for free. In no other age have Christians had better access to biblical tools for personal study than today. Even so, rather surprisingly, many Bibles contain wild distortions, especially on texts related to dogmas long ago etched in the stone of infallible tradition. In what follows I intend to expose one of the smoking guns of text tampering as it relates to the holy spirit. I want to delve into the world of how translators go about their task, of how Greek grammar translates into English, and how theology consciously or unconsciously gets injected into translations. In particular, I am interested in exposing one of the most flagrant (mis)translation practices found in virtually all English Bibles: rendering impersonal Greek pronouns as personal in English when referring to the holy spirit. What I present here is neither sectarian nor ground breaking. Anyone who can read Greek can verify what I am saying. I will cite mainstream Trinitarian scholars to backup these very points.

The study of the Samaritan version of Saadya Gaon’s translation of the Pentateuch (the tafsīr), mainly based on MS London BL OR7562, shows that a Saadyan version in Arabic Characters was adopted by the Samaritans and adapted to the Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch. The transmission of this version in MS London BL OR7562 continued after the early Samaritan Arabic translation of the Pentateuch and perhaps also its later revision had already been created, since many of their translations were preserved in MS BL OR7562, mixed with its Saadyan basic text. As MS London BL OR7562 also contains numerous words and phrases paralleled only in Christian Arabic translations of the Pentateuch and Saadyan adaptations, mainly related to the Peshitta tradition, it is reasonable to assume that these were the sources of this Samaritan Saadyan version and possibly also of the other Samaritan Arabic translations. The Samaritan version of Saadya’s translation of the Pentateuch also reveals some parallels to tenth- and eleventh-century Karaite translations and it contains prominent Aramaic and Islamic vocabulary, unfamiliar in other versions of Saadya’s tafsīr.

十六世紀半ばから十七世初頭にかけ、日本イエズス会により、日本語の教理書が出版されたということは周知の通りだ。世俗のヨーロッパ文学である『イソップ物語』の和訳、そして天草版『平家物語』、『太平記抜書』の存在もよく知られている。しかし、日本語で書かれたオリジナルのキリスト教説話が現存するということは案外知られていない。近年、このテキスト群を「異文化接触」というレベルで取り上げた研究が現れているが、漢訳仏典や漢籍の影響を受けた『日本霊異記』『今昔物語集』などとは対照的に、室町末期にラテン語文脈から国語に翻案されたキリスト教文学は、残念ながらこれまで国文学として扱われてこなかった。その理由をここで詳しくは追究できないが、日本精神というものが（漢文脈との関連性ではある程度まで認められている一方で）キリスト教との関係性については根本的に異質で相容れないものと一般的には理解されていることが、その背景にあると考えられる。しかし、キリスト教説話を聞いた織豊期の日本人がこのように日本精神とキリスト教を両極的なものとして捉えていたということは、資料からは読み取れない。本稿では、キリスト教も日本精神も信仰していない筆者が日本中世キリスト教の代表的な説話集をバレト写本という資料の中から取り上げ、その原典が何であったかを明らかにし、さらに、同時代の日本文学との関係性を探る。その結果、この説話集は当時の武士階級によって評価された軍記・語り物文学、取り分け幸若舞と最も関連性が深いということを示す。

This translation of Deuteronomy follows a similar approach to my translations of Genesis and Samuel. In this, as in my other translations, my priority was always to express the ideas in the text in the most natural way in English, and at the same time to capture the energy and rhythm of the original Hebrew. Compared with my other translations, this translation is "freer" and departs further and more frequently from the literal meaning of the text. This is especially true for the many laws in the middle portions of the book, which are written in a legalistic prose style that I could only reproduce by employing a more formal semi-legalistic vocabulary and syntax.

One unique aspect of this translation is that it jettisons the traditional chapter divisions and instead organizes the material according to the Masoretic parashot. Organizing the text in this way gets us closer to the ancient writers, and yields numerous insights into their composition approach.

The commentary accompanying the translation focuses primarily on issues of translation and language. After the commentary I provide an essay that summarizes my views on the composition history of Deuteronomy and that assigns each of the parashot to one of the four major compositional stages that I identify, which span a period of nearly three hundred years, from the late seventh century to the mid fourth century BCE.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike International 4.0 license. The full text can also be downloaded at the Internet archive at https://archive.org/details/deuteronomy_202008/mode/2up.

The print edition of this book is available at: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1733441573/

No doctrine has seen more refining in the past twenty-five years than the doctrine of inerrancy. If one says that the Bible is "inerrant," bible teachers, pastors, and scholars will immediately be asking the question, "What kind of inerrancy do you believe?" Their question is

One of the most difficult citations in Ephesians is the use of the Psalms 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8, because of interpretive problems in it. Some scholars argue that Paul had inserted his own word “εδωκεν” than the original word “έλαβες “and caused intertextuality problem as well. My thesis is that Paul did not misquote the Psalms 68:18 in Ephesians 4:8 but emphasize its application in the view of scriptural warrant for Christ’s giving of gifts to the Church. Basically I am seconding the argument of Timothy G. Gombis who has proved that “the writer of Ephesians quotes Ps. 68:18 (MT 68:19; LXX 67:19) in Eph.

Casiodoro de Reina (Montemolín, ca. 1520 -Frankfurt del Meno, 1594 Escritor y traductor de primera Biblia completa impresa en castellano. Formado probablemente en Sevilla, ingresó en el monasterio de San Isidro del Campo (Santiponce), donde desarrolló junto con otros monjes una religiosidad de fuerte influjo protestante en la primera mitad de la década de 1550. En los primeros meses de 1557 una docena de estos monjes, y entre ellos Reina, huyeron a Ginebra. En los doce años siguientes, Reina compuso su traducción de la Biblia entre grandes dificultades debidas a sus traslados (Londres, Amberes, París, Orleáns, Montargis, Estrasburgo, Frankfurt, Basilea), a la persecución por la autoridad española y a la desconfianza de las iglesias calvinistas. Si el período de traducción indicado por Reina es exacto, comenzó la tarea cuando todavía estaba en Ginebra. En 1563, estuvo a punto de perder el manuscrito de la parte ya traducida por él, cuando hubo de huir precipitadamente de Inglaterra ante las insidias de espías y falsos amigos, entre los que se contaban colaboradores suyos. Afortunadamente, el arzobispo de Canterbury Edmund Grindal recuperó sus papeles y se los hizo llegar. En 1569 publicó el resultado de sus trabajos en Basilea, en la imprenta de Thomas Guarin: La Biblia, que es, los sacros libros de viejo y nuevo testamento. Trasladada en Español. Se trata de la primera biblia cristiana completa impresa en castellano. Es conocida como Biblia del Oso porque en la portada figura una marca tipográfica ajena al impresor, con un oso comiendo un panal. En la "amonestación [...] al christiano lector" Reina presenta una defensa encendida de la traducción de la Biblia, como medio para hacer posible su lectura en lengua vulgar. Además, se esfuerza por presentar su postura como conforme a los decretos tridentinos. En este línea de procurar mostrarse como una traducción aceptable para el ámbito católico, Reina mantiene el orden tradicional de los libros, en vez de asumir los de la Biblia hebrea o protestante. Por otra parte, Reina ofrece información sobre su método de trabajo. Reconoce haber elaborado su versión del Antiguo Testamento sobre la base de la traducción latina de Sanctes Pagnino, recurriendo para los lugares oscuros al texto hebreo y a la Biblia de Ferrara (1553), si bien esta última objeto de sus críticas. Sin embargo, para evitar dificultar su aceptación en ámbito católico, Reina silencia la fuente que, posiblemente, usó con mayor asiduidad: la conocida como Biblia de Vatablo, publicada por Robert Estienne en París en 1545. Esta edición, muy criticada por la facultad de Teología de París, presentaba en columnas pareadas la Vulgata y la traducción de Leo Jud, enriquecida con anotación acerca del sentido o forma exactos de las expresiones hebreas subyacentes. Muy a menudo la traducción de Reina coincide con la contenida en la Biblia de Vatablo, ya sea la ofrecida en el cuerpo del texto o en nota (esto último, especialmente cuando proporciona el equivalente de una expresión literal hebrea). Con la Biblia latina del protestante Sébastien Castellion (1551), Reina coincide en respetar el orden de libros de la Biblia católica y en la novedad de usar el término "Jehová", en vez de "Señor". En cuanto a la trducción del Nuevo Testamento, Reina parece haber usado el texto griego de Erasmo, con el apoyo de la traducción de Francisco de Enzinas (1543) y de la revisión de Juan Pérez de Pineda (1556). Esta última es copiada casi exactamente a partir de la Epístola de Santiago, porque los trabajos de imprenta habían avanzado hasta el punto donde él había llegado como traductor. De todos modos, también en el Nuevo Testamento continúa aprovechando lecturas y variantes de la Biblia de Vatablo. Aparte de la Biblia, Reina desarrolló más actividad como traductor. Las dos versiones, castellana y latina, de su Confesión de fe "hecha por ciertos fieles españoles" (en castellano publicada en 1577, inédita la latina) surgen de la autotraducción, sin que los estudiosos se hayan puesto de acuerdo sobre cuál fue la lengua de la redacción primera. Además, como informador del Landgrave de Hesse-Kassel, tradujo ocasionalmente al latín documentos hispánicos de relevancia política.

Set in ancient Egypt, the Story of Joseph is a classic tale of intrigue, betrayal, hope, faith, and redemption straight from the pages of the Book of Genesis in the Bible.

This Story of Joseph presented here is a literal, word-for-word translation (as much as is possible) from the ancient Hebrew Scriptures to modern English. Unless not grammatically possible in English, best efforts have been made to preserve the exact word-for-word flow of the Hebrew word order in an attempt to best capture the meaning and style as intended by the ancient Hebrew.

[Square brackets] have been used to provide suggested [often necessary] extra words in English in order to attempt to best convey the intended exact, literal meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures.

As nothing compares to reading a literary work in its original language – for those who are interested – it is hoped that this Story of Joseph will serve as a convenient tool and platform to “reverse engineer” ancient Biblical Hebrew, i.e. by comparing the literal translation into English offered here, and studying the Biblical Hebrew with this modern, accurate, literal, word-for-word translation of the Story of Joseph from the Book of Genesis (Be-Resheet).

YosefTheStoryOfJoseph.com
DanielAzariah.com

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