[b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II)
Harold R. Holmyard III
hholmyard at ont.com
Tue Nov 22 09:06:06 EST 2005
Dear Peter,
>>>>>"When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then
>>>>>was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath
>>>>>hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be light'. And
>>>>>there was light."
>>>>>
>>HH: "When God began to create the earth, and the earth then was
>>welter and waste, with darkness over the deep and God's breath
>>hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be be light." And
>>there was light."
>>
>That is considerably better, except that presumably you omitted
>"heaven and" accidentally, although I still don't like "welter".
Hh: Yes, I omitted it accidentally. No, I don't like welter either.
It sounds stilted to me, but if Alter was simply trying to reproduce
the flavor of the Hebrew, perhaps one could accept it. My visceral
reaction when I first read these verses by Alter was the same as
yours.
> Also "then" seems strange if this part is intended to be governed by "when".
HH: Yes, it bothered me, too, but I left it because I wanted to deal
with the main grammatical issue. I think Alter was trying to bring
out the fact that verse 2 is a circumstantial clause (an offline
comment), but in English the "when" is extraneous and does not really
match something in Hebrew anyway.
> But why didn't Alter write this? Was it because of the
>hyper-literalism that the vav prefix must always be translated
>"and"? No, because he has omitted completely the vav prefix at the
>start of v.3 - which for me is a good reason to reject also Alter's
>exegesis by which vv.1-2 is a complex subordinate clause and prefer
>the traditional "In the beginning God created..."
HH: I agree that the traditional rendering is better, even if Herman
likes what Alter did. Some do like that "when God began to create"
idea, but I found reason to retain the traditional rendering when I
studied the issue some years ago (the possible parallel at the start
of John 1:1 is not a grammatical reason but may carry some weight). I
think Alter left the verbs out because they are understood in Hebrew,
but English does not regularly use understand verbs, and I don't
think they work here. That was my main point of grammatical
disagreement with Alter.
Yours,
Harold Holmyard
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