Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT ozemail.com.au> =====
>Trevor, I don't think I would agree with you here, speaking from the
>viewpoint of a translator. Your analogy is misplaced: translators and
>exegetes are not doctors charged with healing the text, but scholars
>charged with understanding and translating what we have. We can
>speculate that what we have is not exactly what was originally written,
>but in most cases that is speculation and any reconstruction of the
>original is even more speculative. If we start to translate such
>reconstructions, we start on a very slippery slope towards translating
>what some "doctor" thinks that the author ought to have written rather
>than the text we have in front of us.

I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. Don't feel bad 
about that--it's a very specific point that can easily be confused with 
something else. I tried to be careful about how I stated it, but that doesn't 
always work on the first try. (That's the great thing about dialog--it's a 
lot 
easier to get writer and reader on the same page than with a fixed text from 
the past!) Let me begin with the fact of my earlier remarks--I did not 
propose 
an emendation in my reading of the text. My quibble was with the argument 
that 
had been posted. As I said, I was not trying to advocate a particular view of 
how often emendation should be performed or to pass judgment on whether 
emendation was necessary in this passage. My point was that I thought the 
argument was inconsistent. Why? Because he said it was probably a corrupt 
text 
and then explained that he could make sense out of it as it stood and 
proceeded to do just that.

Let's look at the options:
1) The text is fine; deal with it as it stands. Many texts are like this, and 
there's not much to argue about. Of course, we're only dealing with text 
critical issues here.
2) The text is problematic, but it can be understood as it stands and is 
probably not corrupt. Especially in poetry, I think we have to consider this 
a 
viable option. We can't expect the language to stay within the bounds of 
normal prose usage, and it's probably ultimately impossible to define strict 
enough rules to pass judgment on whether a passage is corrupt or just 
creative. There's going to be subjectivity in the text-critical treatment of 
poetry. There's no question about that. But personally I like to start by 
considering all the possible angles from which the text could be left alone.
3) The text is corrupt, and should probably read such-and-such. If I find a 
misspelled word, or if two words are reversed for obvious reasons, or some 
other problem explainable on relatively mechnical grounds, or anything else 
the particular critic wants to put in this category, it might be fairly 
simple 
to see where the problem is and what should really be read.
4) The text is corrupt, but I have no idea how it should read. Sometimes no 
sense can be made of a text whatsoever, and no likely emendations present 
themselves. Now, in such a situation one might allow for the possibility that 
it's not really a corrupt text, but we simply lack the philological data to 
come up with a plausible reading. But I'm talking about a scenario where the 
critic judges the text to be corrupt and has no idea what to do with it. At 
this point, there's not much to be done. One option for the translator, which 
I seem to remember seeing in several NRSV footnotes, is to choose the reading 
of an ancient version and translate that.

My point is that I think the argument that was posted is something different 
from any of these, and shouldn't be considered a valid option. To say that 
the 
text is probably corrupt and then proceed to make sense of the text as it 
stands is IMO grossly inconsistent. If the text is in fact corrupt, it 
shouldn't make sense as it stands. Or if it does, it should be considered the 
wrong sense, since it is a sense that arises from a supposedly corrupt text. 
Let's try an example. Whether it's true or not (I've heard that it's not), my 
high school German teacher explained to us that JFK's famous "ich bin ein 
Berliner" was really a mistake, because "I am from Berlin" or "I am a 
resident 
of Berlin" should be "ich bin Berliner." To add "ein" (the indefinite 
article) 
makes Berliner an object--namely, a type of pastry--so that what he really 
ended up saying was "I am a jelly donut." Now, as I say, I'm not terribly 
concerned at this point with whether or not it was a real mistake. Let's just 
assume for the sake of argument that it was. If a translator were producing 
subtitles for his speech and translated it as it stood, "I am a jelly donut," 
the statement would be completely lost on an English-speaking audience. 
Whereas a German reader or listener could pick up right away that he meant 
one 
thing (and what that one thing was) and accidentally said another (and also 
know what that was), so that the joke and the intended meaning would come 
through, an English reader would only be left wondering why he would say such 
a ridiculous thing. The best course of action for the translator would be to 
translate what he apparently meant, with a note to the effect that his 
grammar 
was not quite right, and if it were necessary to explain the joke, to provide 
a translation of what he actually said. But if he followed the strategy of 
the 
argument I was responding to, he would say something like, JFK probably 
didn't 
mean what he said, but we can make sense of it anyway as it stands: "I am a 
jelly-donut." This isn't making sense of the statement--it's translating an 
accident.

My point, then, is that I would have been fine with him saying that the text 
was difficult but could be understood, or with him saying that the text was 
corrupt and proposing an alternative, or with him saying that the text was 
corrupt and saying he didn't know what to do with it. But if he really thinks 
the text is corrupt (or at least thinks it's likely), why make sense of it as 
it stands? If he can make sense of it as it stands, how does he know it's 
corrupt? What criteria is he using to make that determination? Apparently he 
can't find anything tangible to emend, and apparently he thinks the text 
makes 
sense. It seems to me that he's talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Now, of course he could have said that he thought the text was corrupt but 
that it had somehow been ascribed traditional meaning as it stands (something 
like your suggestion to appeal to traditional commentators). But he didn't 
say 
that. Instead, he gave the impression that he was providing his own reading 
of 
a text that, in his judgment, probably shouldn't have had any meaning. IMO, 
that is a problem.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics