Peter Kirk wrote:Indeed. That's because the word "soul" is not being used out of context in the Bible. It is being used as part of a regular set of usages in a context, in accordance with what Jim West and others wrote about words being "meaningless without specific textual contexts".
On 24/08/2003 01:23, furuli AT online.no wrote:
2. A word dos have meaning apart from a context. If we asked a groupI doubt it, unless you can find some common semantic element between the
of people how they would understand the English word "soul," we would
get a whole range of different comments, but probably we would find
some elements which were common to most, or all comments.
Greek concept of an immortal part of the human being and a style of
music. The word "soul" with no context will trigger one meaning for some
English speakers and the other for some others.
Of course, any modern reader who thinks that the OT would be discussing a
20th Century form of music when reading the word "soul" in the Bible, cannot
be viewed as typical in reference to students of Scripture. People with
special learning needs deserve consideration, but I doubt that it is
necessary to "dumb down" the Bible to accommodate those who don't know the
difference between soul as a form of music and soul as a biblical concept.
Well, a few people will be capable of and motivated for study in sufficient depth to decide this for themselves, but most will tend to rely on their own understanding of the word in context, which is probably misleading. I think it would have been better to transliterate "nephesh" in an English text rather than use "soul", because that would force users to do their own research or refer to study notes rather than to insert their own probably inappropriate understanding of the word.There are Bible translations that consistently render NEPE$ by "soul,"The trouble with this is that, even if we use accept your model, there
and by looking up these passages, one can see that this is meaningful
- although it requires more mental exercise from the reader, because
he or she must do more interpretations - than when the word is
interpreted by the translators.
is minimal overlap between the fuzzy Hebrew concept of NEPE$ and average
English speakers' even more fuzzy concept of soul.
Here you have a very good point, for the average modern English speaking
person has had his concept of "soul" tainted by centuries of extra-biblical
teaching that is based more on Platonic dualism than anything else.
However, this is, in fact, a compelling reason for accepting Rolf's model of
translation, for his model allows Bible students to decide for themselves
whether ancient Jewish beliefs were a foregleam of Plato, or not.
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