Biblical Hebrew Forum

["C. Stirling Bartholomew" <threetreepoint AT earthlink.net>]

On 7/6/05 7:25 PM, "David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com> wrote:

> de Regt is no "house painter" (to use your words). You could say his
> critique is "from the inside", as one "artist" to another.

David,

It was a poor analogy. My understanding is that Alter is a literary critic
and de Regt a linguist-philologist translation consultant.  It does strike
me strange that a linguist would 'bother' to take aim at a literary critic.
Linguists and literary critics play by different sets of rules and it seems
like a dubious project to measure Alter's work against the rules of
information structure framework in functional grammar. Perhaps not. I am
reading he article now.

On page 118 de Regt faults Alter for "Noah walked with God" Gen 6:9. Here
Noah is set in contrast to everyone else and de Regt claims that Alter to be
consistent with his stated policy should have translated this "With God Noah
walked". 

Two questions come to mind. Alter's stated purpose includes "... stylistic
and rhythmic integrity as literary English". I don't think "With God Noah
walked" meets this criteria. L. de Reqt is suggesting that "With God Noah
walked" reflects the information structure of the Hebrew Text placing the
focus element up front. But I don't think this is how English would handle
this. In English the focus element is often marked by vocal emphasis and it
can be clause final.
 

Clay Bartholomew