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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] hell
  • Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:51:58 +0000

On 18/03/2006 18:07, Rolf Furuli wrote:
...

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. ...

This is not the basis of my current criticism of the rendering of NP$ as "soul". I have said this in the past, but that was a different issue which I wish to keep separate from this one.

...

I heartily disagree with you that sentences in an English Bible with the
word "soul" are "extremely misleading". ... 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". ...

Yes, it does have its counterpart in one of the English senses of "soul", one which is obsolescent in modern English except in a few fixed phrases like the one you cite. I don't have the thesaurus which you mention, so I will refer you to http://www.answers.com/soul&r=67. In the definition from the American Heritage Dictionary, the first three senses as well as the seventh relate to the immaterial and immortal part of the human, whereas the sense "A human" is number four. Similarly in the Houghton Mifflin thesaurus, where the sense "A member of the human race" comes third. In the Columbia University Press Encyclopedia the only sense of "soul" given is "the vital, immaterial, life principle, generally conceived as existing within humans". Our sources are therefore united in saying that this is the primary sense of the English word "soul", and that the sense "a human being" is secondary. This is very different from the semantic range of Hebrew NP$, for which "the immaterial and immortal part of the human" is not a sense at all. This mismatch is the essence of my criticism of this rendering.

... The philosophical view that Bible readers can
misunderstand the English word "soul," and therefore its use is "extremely misleading" is
in my view wrong. ...

This is not a "philosophical view" but a practical observational fact, which can be confirmed by field testing - and from the prevalent but (in biblical terms) wrong view of the soul held by most English speakers today, whether Christian, Jewish or unbelieving.

... 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.

I will not attempt here to defend the NIV readings, not least because this is a distraction from my main point here. If you do want to choose a single consistent word to render NP$ in English, that word should not be "soul". Perhaps "being" would be better.

... 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. ...

The problem is that by using the English word "soul" you have immediately introduced into your Tanakh translation a strong hint of this concept, which you rightly say is not in the original. Surely it is better to use the right word in the first place than to use a wrong word and attempt to redefine it within the text.

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





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