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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] translations of important quotes using Rolf's ideas

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: "Lisbeth S. Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] translations of important quotes using Rolf's ideas
  • Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:17:51 +0100

On 09/04/2007 16:20, Lisbeth S. Fried wrote:
How would this passage be translated if there were no presuppositions? If
all the yiqtols and waqatals were translated as future, and all the qatals
as past?
52:13 Look! My servant will act with insight (YIQTOL). ...

Your translation in fact looks quite similar in its English verb forms to the scholarly translation NRSV, and indeed to the traditional KJV. That is not to say that these translators did not have presuppositions, but perhaps that they did not allow those presuppositions to control their translation, and still less to control their understanding of the Hebrew verb system.

I used Rolf's translation, but translated the verbs without any
presuppositions, as if it were normal prose, with yiqtols and waqatols
always future, and qatals always past.
The ONLY reason not to do this, as far as I can see, is the desire to
equate the subject with Jesus.

Maybe, but "the desire to equate the subject with Jesus" by no means implies that Rolf's method should be followed. Generations of Christian readers since KJV, indeed probably back to the 1st century CE using Greek translations (as quoted for example in Acts 8:32-33, complete with Greek aorists rendering the Hebrew QATALs and a Greek future rendering the YIQTOL in Isaiah 53:8), have had no trouble identifying Isaiah's servant with Jesus despite the mismatch in tenses. For they have realised that Isaiah is giving a narrative from a deictic point in the future, after the events he is relating, but that as a standard literary device this deictic point may be in Isaiah's own future. After all, surely on every interpretation of (Deutero-)Isaiah, not just Christian ones, there must be some literary device of this kind, to explain QATALs in verses like 40:1 and 44:23 which must refer to future events.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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