Biblical Hebrew Forum

["B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>]

Hi Peter, you wrote:

 If your
> students get too used to stretching English to its limits in answering
> your exercises, if and when they get on to serious translation (and
> don't put yourself down, Bryan, the next generation of translators of
> standard English Bibles may cut their teeth on your course) they will
> find it hard to distinguish stretched English from standard English, and
> to switch back to the latter.

Oh, no.  Now I have to be responsible for teaching them English, too?  ;-)
(The truth is, at my school, I *do* teach  English, albeit in a another
course.)
I do find your worry a touch fanciful.

If this sounds fanciful, look at some of
> the wildly stretched supposedly English syntax in some modern Bible
> translations. Wayne Leman, who moderates the b-trans list, has collected
> many examples (mostly New Testament); see
> http://biblepacesetter.org/bibletranslation/. For example, there are
> verbs which are always transitive in English, except for some reason in
> the Bible; one example, common in translations of the Hebrew Bible, is
> "send", as in "Send and bring him" (1 Sam 16:11 NRSV). In English this
> is a grammatical error! We really shouldn't teach students that this is
> an acceptable English rendering.

What's wrong with "Send and bring him"?  I think Samuel was using incorrect
Hebrew!  Didn't you catch that?  His tone is abrupt.  I think he is
irritated.  So are we to correct him in English?  I think a good translation
gives correct for correct and incorrect for incorrect.

Don't worry about my course, though.  In stretching English to its limits
there is no need to tolerate the ungrammatical.

>
> Also, I suspect that students want to learn Hebrew because they don't
> trust the standard translations and think they can do better. I was
> surprised that you wrote the opposite.
>

Take my statement in context.  *Within the constraint produced by targetting
a wide audience*, the bookstore translations are worthy accomplishments.
Learning BH should equip people to criticize these translations in more
limited settings like class, church, and synogue (and the b-hebrew mailing
list!).  But first, to become a good critic, the student must learn to
appreciate the Hebrew.  Appreciating the Hebrew, (a.k.a. hearing it, reading
it, comrehending it) is my goal, and I think appreciating it is distinct
from translating it.

Shalom,
Bryan


B. M. Rocine
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13206

ph: 315.437.6744
fx: 315.437.6766