Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Peter,

It is good to hear that you translate the Hebrew text in its own right. The
advantage of this is that the translators have fewer possibilities to force
their personal beliefs on the readers by their choice of words, and the
readers have more opportunities to interpret the text themselves.

Howerver, the philosophy of the modern idiomatic translations, on the basis
of which you criticize a uniform rendering of NP$, works in the opposite
direction. By this method many opportunities for the readers to interpret
the text are taken away from them and they are at the mercy of the
translators. I see several advantages with this modern translation
philosophy, but I see several drawbacks as well.

I heartily disagree with you that sentences in an English Bible with the
word "soul" are "extremely misleading".  A word signals a concept (or
occationally two) in the minds of native speakers. This concept is the
*lexical meaning* of a word; lexicons only contain glosses and not the
lexical meaning. A concept can denote different things, and the context is
the tool the readers can use to find the reference. In "The Concise Oxford
Thesaurus" five different entries are found under "soul". Number  3 is:
""not a soul in sight", person. human being, being, individual, creature."
Thus, the most normal Hebrew reference of NP$ has its counterpart i the
modern English "soul". The philosophical view that Bible readers can
misunderstand the English word "soul," and therefore its use is "extremely 
misleading" is
in my view wrong. When reading the Bible, people should use their mental
faculties and find the references and meanings of the words by help of the
context. People are prevented from this when more than thirty English words
are used for the single Hebrew word NP$. Below I will illustrate this by a
comparison of three passages in the literal NWT and the idiomatic NIV.

Gen 1:20 NIV: Let the water teem with living creatures
             NWT: Let the waters swarm forth a swarm of living souls

> From the NWT rendering readers will understand that animals *are* souls, but
this is taken away from NIV.

Gen 2:7 NIV: the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living
being.
           NWT: And Jehovah God proceeded to form man out of dust from the
ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to
be a living soul.

> From the NWT the readers will understand that man does not have a soul but
*is* a soul; this important teaching is taken away from NIV.

Joshua 10:28 NIV: That day Joshua took Makkedah. He put the city and its
king to the sword and totally destroyed everyone in it. He left no
survivors.
             NWT: And Joshua captured Makkedah on that day and went
striking it with the edge of the sword. As for the king he devoted him and
every soul that was in it to destruction. He let no survivors remain.

> From the NWT the readers will understand that the soul can die, but this is
taken away from the NIV

Exmples from many different uses of NP$ could be given, and in most cases
the NIV prevents the reader from understanding that one and the same Hebrew
word is used. Because of the uniform rendering of NWT, the readers can learn
the different uses of NP$, and by this better understand the view of the
writers as far as human nature is concerned. Instead of viewing the NWT
renderings as "extremely misleading" I think they are very informative. By 
the help of such a uniform rendering the readers can see that any hint of a 
disembodied soul is nonexistent in the Tanakh. This has a bearing on the 
subject "hell" as well.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Kirk" <peter AT qaya.org>
To: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli AT online.no>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] hell


> On 18/03/2006 11:30, Rolf Furuli wrote:
> > Dear Peter,
> >
> > I will not start a theological discussion in any form, only make a few
> > observations. The Old Testament part of many (I think I am justified in
> > saying "most") modern Bible translations is translated in the light of
> > the New Testament. ...
>
> I am happy to say that the Hebrew Bible translation which I worked on, in
> common with all such translations sponsored by the United Bible Societies,
> was specifically intended to be translated in its own right as a work in
> Hebrew concerning Israelite history and religion, and not in the light of
> the New Testament. Of course as the translators are Christians they cannot
> entirely avoid bringing in Christian and New Testament insights. But it
> was a deliberate policy to avoid this as far as possible, and the UBS
> Translation Consultant enforced this rigorously.
>
> I would not disagree with the rest of what you write here except for:
>
>
> > ... what returns according to the writer of this Psalm, Daniel and other
> > books of the Tanakh is the soul (the very person). Thus, some books of
> > the Tanakh teaches the resurrection of the soul.
> It is extremely misleading in these sentences to use the English word
> "soul". What you mean is the NP$, and as such I agree. But the English
> word "soul" in itself implies the Greek concept of an immaterial part of
> the person, not the whole person, which survives death. In this sense the
> Tanakh teaches nothing at all about the soul, and certainly not its
> resurrection.
>
> Of course the real problem here is the misleading use of "soul" for NP$ in
> English Bible translations, based on Greek and Latin translations and
> patristic theology in which NP$ was misunderstood to refer to the Greek
> concept of the "soul". But I have indicated to you in the past, I'm not
> sure about on this list, that one of the worst errors of the New World
> Translation (which it adopted from KJV or earlier) is its consistent use
> of "soul" for NP$.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/