Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

Ian, do you know enough ENGLISH to realise that "On the day when I chose
Israel, I swore to them" and "On the day when I chose Israel and swore
to them" have a quite different meaning? If the modern English
translators had wanted to, they could have said the latter. But they
said the former, which quite deliberately and unambiguously means
something different.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Hutchesson [mailto:mc2499 AT mclink.it]
> Sent: 18 March 2002 20:12
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: bereshit (still)
> 
> Ian, I am simply looking at how two respected translation teams
rendered
> >this passage, and parsing their English rather than the Hebrew. They
may
> >be wrong, but they may also be correct. The following translations
also
> >make "I swore" into a main clause and "when I chose subordinate to
it:
> >RSV, NLT, NIV, TEV. Of the English Bibles on my shelf, only KJV and
the
> >English RV agree with you; the modern translations all agree with me.
> 
> And I have given you a clear reason for this. You can add the
> Douay Version to the short list of older translations which do
> the same. The modern Italian version does the same, but Italian
> generally supports longer sentences than modern English. The
> Schlach German translation does the same, as does the Finnish.
> The translation of the Septuagint I use also follows the longer
> sentence structure. What about the Vulgate? Do you note the
> trend, Peter? It would seem to be requirements of modern English
> especially given the older English versions.
> 
> We are not dealing with translations but with the original
> Hebrew.
> 
> >Have you learned enough Hebrew now to be sure that the world-renowned
> >experts on all of these translation teams have (not just possibly,
but
> >certainly) made a mistake?
> 
> As I told you last time. There is no mistake involved. We
> are dealing with the differences between two languages,
> not translations. The translation renders the first
> language into a meaningful state in the second. You will
> find long sentences translated into more English shorter
> sentences as a modern rule. Please don't impute things
> that are simply not in my intention.
> 
> 
> Ian