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b-hebrew - Re: Verbforms in Is 51

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  • From: "Paul Zellmer" <zellmer AT digitelone.com>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Verbforms in Is 51
  • Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 06:36:32 +0800


Randall,

If you will allow, I would like to rephrase the translation about Sarah
one more time to make sure I am understanding you. Our translation
philosophy is to understand as best we can the Hebrew, and then change
it only the amount required to bring out that understanding in the
target language, Ibanag. Please see my responses interspersed in the
partial quotation of your last post.

For our list-owner's sake, here's the bibliographic data. (A side
request: I am dealing with a server that does not play with Netscape, so
I have to use IE 5. Does anyone know how to change the address line to
give a default like "yochanan bitan wrote:"?)

----- Original Message -----
From: yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>
To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 2:10 AM
Subject: Re: Verbforms in Is 51


Dear Paul,

you are correct about being intended on-list. sorry about being
'offlist'.
i must manually add 'b-hebrew' and sometimes forget. there, i just did
it
for this email.

PZ: I have found that I am able to use the "Reply All" feature, but
then I delete the sender's address so the posting goes only to the list.
This stops the original sender from getting two copies. I almost showed
how conservative I am by making a reference to the "good, old system at
Virginia." Actually, I appreciate Jonathan finding this server to keep
the list going.

<snip>

>>teHolelxem
>> 'who would birth you'.
>> poetic play for 'your mother'.

<snip>

i think the author primarily meant to describe a 'mother' with an
expanded, poetic
parallel to 'father'. "to sara, who will have birthed you, too". "sara
who gives birth to all of
you." the author avoided a simple past "sara gave birth to you", since
that is
not true in an immediate physical sense. and likewise the author avoided
a
more insipid 'mother' as too simple a parallel to father.

<snip>

but i'm not sure you will want to reproduce the hebrew tense in
translation.
perhaps
"to sara, who became a mother to all of you"
would work better in english and as a translation model.

PZ: Would this fit the sense that you see being put forth here by the
writer: to Abraham, your father, and to Sara, who would have [in the
case that Abraham is your father] given birth to you"? Realize that we
would never add all those words. I only ask it this way to make sure I
understand to what the modal aspect refers. I don't see that modality
at all in your last suggestion. In fact I would probably back-translate
that using a 2fs qatal of HYH and the nominal form for mother.

PZ: By the way, thanks so much for doing the lexical legwork for me.
And I suspect that there could well have been a deliberate play on words
between verse 2 and verse 9.

braxot,

Paul





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