Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Thanks, Yigal:

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> wrote:

> Since Joel Hoffman was once a member of B-Hebrew, I thought that the
> following might be of interest.
>
> Yigal Levin
>
> >From <http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Books/Article.aspx?id=168442>:
> =======================================================
>
> The Jerusalem Post Online Edition
> Books
> February 12, 2010 (12/02/2010 16:43)
>
> Interpreting the interpreted
> Joel Hoffman's book raises our expectations of how we read the Bible.
> By JEROME E. COPULSKY
>
>
>   Dr. Joel M. Hoffman
>
> Traduttore, traditore; translator, traitor, goes the old saw. And if
> there is any book that has especially suffered the treachery of
> translators over the years, it is the Hebrew Bible. …
>
> Joel M. Hoffman's new book, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the
> Bible's Original Meaning, may interest readers concerned with the
> difficulties involved in the translation of Scripture. …
>
> Despite the shortcomings of such translations, Hoffman believes it is
> possible to "recover the original meaning of the Bible," …
>

See below.

>
> Despite his book's title, Hoffman does not make clear what he thinks
> the Bible is. He seems to assume that the Bible has an intrinsic
> semantic consistency, and that the educated reader has absolute access
> to the meaning of the text, the pshat, if you will. While Hoffman
> tells us how the Hebrew language works, he is silent on what kind of
> book (or better, collection of books) the Bible is, sidestepping such
> issues as the authorship of biblical texts, their authority and their
> redaction and transmission. This is unfortunate, as one's conception
> of the "original meaning" of the text will be quite different if it is
> understood as the "revealed word of God," a divinely inspired book or
> a work of purely human imagination.
>
> The reviewer hit a nail on its head, here. Many of our disagreements on
this list, even on the definition of terms, stems from this theological
question. If the book is of divine origin, and the translator understands it
according to a belief that it is of human, not divine, origin, then it is
just as much mistranslated as if it were of human origin but understood as
divine origin.

Isaiah 7:14 is especially problematic, as it is in the middle not only
between divine vs. human origin, but there is disagreement even between
different branches of those who claim divine origin. Does the word mean
“virgin”? Depends on which theological position one takes. Translation
follows theological understanding.

And which theological understanding is original?

Karl W. Randolph.