Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Paul Zellmer <zellmer AT cag.pworld.net.ph>]

Rolf Furuli wrote:

> I wonder why Peter, who is also a competent Bible translator, and yourself
> draw the conclusion that
> the literal translation I discuss, is for people who know Greek and Hebrew.
> Here in Oslo I know scores of people, young and old who want to understand
> the meaning of the details in the Bible, but who do not know the original
> languages. I am sure there are many similar people all over the world.

Rolf,

Of course, I cannot speak for Peter.  But from my point of view, a purely 
concordant
translation like you describe would fall seriously short in helping someone 
who has no
biblical language skills in "understand[ing] the meaning of the details in the
Bible."  It would open the distinct probability of misunderstanding of 
concepts
expressed by the chosen "translations," and it would not even begin to 
explain how the
meaning and significance of words change in different forms and in different 
contexts.

As you have stated, there is no 100% overlap of concepts between words in 
different
languages.  So, even though the stated purpose of the translation is to allow 
the
reader to see the word used in the original through a distinct translation, 
that
reader will become misled when the concept in the original language does not 
equate
with the concept in the target language.  And this is assuming that the 
selection of
translations corresponds one-for-one with the original vocabulary, that the 
same word
is not used to translate two different words.  That, Rolf, is an 
impossibility in many
languages.  The language in which I do most of my work has a definite paucity 
of
prepositions--the word used for "to, towards" is the same word as used for 
"from."  It
is also used for "at" and "by" and many other concepts.  And there are no 
other
options!

As far as falling short in explaining different forms and different contexts, 
how
would a concordant translation handle the meaning changes resulting from the 
use of a
root in different stems.  Some of these even change the word into antonyms!  
And the
use of a word with a preposition many times brings out a characteristic of 
the word
that is normally de-emphasized.  A person with no biblical language 
background would
not have the tools to understand this.

Since such a "translation" would have too many shortfalls for a person without
biblical language skills, I would see it only truly benefitting those who 
actually do
have the skills.  And I repeat that the benefit is too small to warrant the 
effort of
developing it.  In fact, I recall an evaluation of NT portion of the 
translation you
chose as the "literal" translation.  The reviewer reported that it was very 
similar to
what would be put out by a person with about half a year's worth of beginning 
Greek
and a simple lexicon.  When we think about how many hours a student must 
study after
that point to understand the structures of a text, how can you expect a 
person with no
Greek or Hebrew to benefit greatly without a guide?

If what you are looking for is a tool that allows a non-student of the 
biblical
languages to gain insight in the significances of the original vocabulary, 
there are
already a number of those out there.  I can recall many hours spent with 
Strong's
Exhaustive doing just that!  And I didn't have to search the entire OT 
through looking
for the occurances of a particular English word.

BTW, what is the term for the smaller divisions of the new Euro?  I wanted to 
use the
equivalent of the American phrase, "This is my 2¢ worth."

Paul
--
Paul and Dee Zellmer, Jimmy Guingab, Geoffrey Beltran
Ibanag Translation Project
Cabagan, Philippines

zellmer AT faith.edu.ph