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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II)

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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II)
  • Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:06:06 -0600

Dear Peter,

"When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be light'. And there was light."

HH: "When God began to create the earth, and the earth then was welter and waste, with darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be be light." And there was light."

That is considerably better, except that presumably you omitted "heaven and" accidentally, although I still don't like "welter".

Hh: Yes, I omitted it accidentally. No, I don't like welter either. It sounds stilted to me, but if Alter was simply trying to reproduce the flavor of the Hebrew, perhaps one could accept it. My visceral reaction when I first read these verses by Alter was the same as yours.

Also "then" seems strange if this part is intended to be governed by "when".

HH: Yes, it bothered me, too, but I left it because I wanted to deal with the main grammatical issue. I think Alter was trying to bring out the fact that verse 2 is a circumstantial clause (an offline comment), but in English the "when" is extraneous and does not really match something in Hebrew anyway.

But why didn't Alter write this? Was it because of the hyper-literalism that the vav prefix must always be translated "and"? No, because he has omitted completely the vav prefix at the start of v.3 - which for me is a good reason to reject also Alter's exegesis by which vv.1-2 is a complex subordinate clause and prefer the traditional "In the beginning God created..."

HH: I agree that the traditional rendering is better, even if Herman likes what Alter did. Some do like that "when God began to create" idea, but I found reason to retain the traditional rendering when I studied the issue some years ago (the possible parallel at the start of John 1:1 is not a grammatical reason but may carry some weight). I think Alter left the verbs out because they are understood in Hebrew, but English does not regularly use understand verbs, and I don't think they work here. That was my main point of grammatical disagreement with Alter.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard





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