Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_R_Kirk AT hotmail.com>]

I agree that such a summary would lose the style and the genre. In this
passage the style and genre are those of an official report e.g. for
government archives. I suspect that in East Africa as almost elsewhere
such reports are preserved at great length and detail in filing
cabinets, though I realise probably not in the target language in this
instance. So I would also be a bit reluctant to summarise.

Chosefu, are you aware of the b-trans list at
http://biblepacesetter.org/bibletranslation/? This may be a better forum
for such translation related discussions. At least you will probably get
a wider variety of responses.

Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
  
-----Original Message-----
From: Polycarp66 AT aol.com [mailto:Polycarp66 AT aol.com] 
Sent: 23 November 2002 01:17
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: Repetition in Numbers 7:12-83

In a message dated 11/21/2002 3:51:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
chosefu_chemorion AT wycliffe.org writes:


Dear all. I have two requests.First,Kindly help me to understand the 
   role of repetition in Hebrew narratives.May I also know the authors 
   that I could refer to, if I needed to know more about this topic.
   Secondly, Is it necessary to keep all the repeated paragraphs in my 
   vernacular translation, for example in Numbers 7:12-83? Would 
   summarizing the contents into a table interfere with accuracy?


If all you're interested in doing is conveying the information contained
in the narrative, that can be done.  It was, however, the style of
ancient epic tradition to have such repetitions.  In some cases (e.g.,
Homer and the Bible) you will find accounts where something is foretold
(the gods declare it or God announces his intent -- through prophecy or
otherwise -- to bring about an event; the event is then reported as
happening; finally, there is a report to another actor in the narrative
that the event occurred.  So while you would not lose information, you
would most definitely lose the style.

gfsomsel ---