Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>]

Fred, you are entitled to your opinion, though I suspect that many will 
disagree with you about language being unable to capture cultural 
conceptuality. Yes, there is always some loss, but this is not complete loss. 
It seems you are implying wholesale change of meaning when translation 
occurs, perhaps because you are equating culture with language directly. This 
may be the way Islam views translation of the Qur’an, but it does so on the 
basis of a belief in the divine origin and unalterability of the words, 
syllables, and sounds as delivered directly to Muhammad. While Second Temple 
Judaism viewed the biblical texts as divine in origin, they evidently had no 
insuperable objection to translating them (perhaps because their concept of 
divine inspiration was not identical to the way Islam later viewed 
inspiration of the Qur’an).

I’m not sure this thread is going to deal with Biblical Hebrew in any 
significant way. Let’s give it to the end of Monday and then leave it there.


GEORGE ATHAS
Co-Moderator, B-Hebrew
(Sydney, Australia)