[b-hebrew] "Rope Imagery" in Biblical Hebrew
Mary Thompson
maryethomp2005 at mac.com
Thu Dec 11 12:30:44 EST 2008
Hey Karl -
If a person cannot go by previous translations (presumably done by
those who have already studied the language), or by what appears to
be a root word based on the letters, then what hope is there to
arrive at an understanding of the word? You say that we should look
at the language itself, do our own investigation, but how is that to
be done? Isn't that what the dictionary writers did?
If the answer to this question is too long or detailed, you could
refer me to a book that explains how an ordinary person is supposed
to accomplish this.
Thanks,
Mary.
_____________
Mary Thompson
maryethomp2005 at mac.com
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn
how to do it."
-- Pablo Picasso
On Dec 11, 2008, at 11:56 AM, K Randolph wrote:
>
> How many times do I have to emphasize that translations don´t
> impress me?
> You could bring 100 translations. What you need to do is to show me
> from the
> language itself, not translations.
>
>> In your view, are all of these translations in error?
>
>
> Possibly. I notice the LXX translated it as ¨hard¨.
>
> Translation is a tricky activity, and most translators are not Hebrew
> scholars per se. So when they come across verses such as this where
> there
> are no exact equivalents in English, they then go to BDB or some other
> dictionary, without doing their own investigation to see if the
> dictionary
> is right.
>>
> Again I emphasize to be careful not to do the etymological fallacy.
> Just
> because a word may have the same letters as a root does not
> automatically
> mean that the word comes from that root. It is possible that the
> word in
> question is a loan word, making its root in a different language
> with a
> different meaning than the root found in Hebrew.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
>
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