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

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: "B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Alter's translation (Was: Daniel 6:27 (time indefinite) II)
  • Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 01:29:01 +0000

On 22/11/2005 21:49, B. M. Rocine wrote:

...


Judge the diction against the targetted audience. It is not he kind of Bible you take to church. It is big, thick, expensive, and a third or more of the book is commentary. Is all of this a clue to what the book is about? It is a translation for a pretty educated crowd, the kind that would be intrigued with "welter" and willing to look it up if they have to.


Fair enough, if the target is a very specialised group as with NWT.
...


As for whether all the words in narrative parts of the Bible are familiar words, we have no way of judging that. ;-)


Well, we can judge something from the sheer number of different words. The number of words in the narrative parts is probably less than a typical native speaker's vocabulary. That suggests that the great majority of these words are familiar ones, although it can't tell us about every individual word.

We *have* a way of judging whether _bohu_ is unfamiliar. It has an elusive etymology. It only appear three times in the Bible, always in conjunction with the more familiar word tohu, and twice as a veritable allusions to the first in Gen. 1:2. It rhymes with _tohu_. Alter's suggestion that _bohu_ may be a "nonce word coined to rhyme with [_tohu_]" seems plausible. I don't say *probable*; plausible.


Most languages have such doublets, often written with hyphens, e.g. English "helter-skelter", where one element or both is not an independent word. But that doesn't in fact affect the issue, which becomes whether the particular doublet was well understood.

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





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