Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 18/11/2005 22:54, Awohili AT aol.com wrote:

> By the way, you may be interested in a different opinion on the KJV voiced  
> by Bible translator Robert Alter, in his _The Five Books of Moses_ (Norton,  
> 2004):
>
> "One might have expected that this recent flurry of translation activity,  
> informed by the newly focused awareness of the meanings of biblical Hebrew,  
> would have produced at least some English versions that would be both vividly  
> precise and closer to the feel of the original than any of the older  
> translations.  Instead, the modern English versions...have placed readers  at a 
> grotesque distance from the distinctive literary experience of the Bible in  its 
> original language.  As a consequence, the King James Version,  as Gerald Hammond, 
> an eminent British authority on Bible translations, has  convincingly argued, 
> remains the closest approach for English readers to the  original -- despite 
> its frequent and at times embarrassing  inaccuracies, despite its archaisms, and 
> despite its insistent substitution of  Renaissance English tonalities and 
> rhythms for biblical ones." -- Introduction,  xvii  (My emphasis)
>
> It would seem that Alter does not agree that the KJV represents "bad  
> English."  And I would argue that the NWT presents a much 'closer approach  in 
> English to the original'  than does the KJV.
>  

This sounds like a description of bad English:

> its frequent and at times embarrassing inaccuracies, despite its archaisms, 
> and despite its insistent substitution of Renaissance English tonalities and 
> rhythms for biblical ones.

Alter's and Hammond's point would appear to be that all other English 
translations are even worse, in one way or another. And they have a 
point, for there certainly is a lack of "English versions that would be 
both vividly precise and closer to the feel of the original than any of 
the older translations". The trouble with Alter's attempt to fill this 
lack, from what I remember from a brief look some time ago, is that the 
English in it is so unnatural that it must also be rejected as "bad 
English". And the same is apparently true of NWT.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/