The Travesty of Translation

Posted on April 14, 2013 by

Okay, the title of this post might be overstating my case a bit, but I find myself growing ever so weary of Septuagint Jonah’s translator. Overall he does a rather fine job. But some of the literary artistry is destroyed in the name of lexical diversity and/or specificity. Allow me to explain…

The Hebrew version of Jonah, through lexical repetition, creates a rather intriguing role reversal in the first chapter of the book. God commands Jonah to “rise and go to Nineveh.” Upon arrival he is to “call out against it.”

קוּם לֵ֧ךְ . . . וּקְרָ֣א עָלֶ֑יהָ

 Jonah, as I’m sure you know, did not go. Instead, he “arose” in order to “flee” to Tarshish. The Septuagint translator renders this section

Ανάστηθι καὶ πορεύθητι εἰς Νινευη . . . καὶ κήρυξον ἐν αὐτῇ

At first look, this is a perfectly acceptable translation. As a matter of fact, the translator indicates his understanding of the context. Right? Instead of translating קרא “*καλέω,” he recognizes the religious implications of Jonah’s actions. He is κηρύσσειν “t0 proclaim/preach.” The Greek rendering is altogether appropriate considering his prophetic role (see Johann Lust’s Septuagint Lexicon).

Where, then, is the issue? As the narrative progresses, we find an irresponsive Jonah. God sends a great storm. The sailors are panicked. Jonah does not care. He does not assist the soldiers to lighten the ship. He does not offer prayers or petitions for his life or the lives of his fellow shipmates. Instead, he goes into the innermost part of the ship and falls asleep.

After all their efforts have failed, the captain of the ship approaches Jonah and exhorts him. The Hebrew text reads:

 קוּ֚ם קְרָ֣א אֶל־אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ

“Arise, call out to your God”

The Greek text reads:

ἀνάστα καὶ ἐπικαλοῦ τὸν θεόν σου,

“Arise and call out/invoke your God.”

Granted, the distinction is small. But that small distinction makes all the difference. By using the κηρύσσω word group, he has translated himself into a corner. He cannot translate this section ἀνάστα καὶ κήρυξον πρὸς τὸν θεόν σου. Preaching or issuing a proclamation to God makes little to no sense. The translator is forced to translate קרא how he should have, in my opinion, translated it to begin with (with the *καλέω word group).

As the Septuagint text stands, the role reversal is all but destroyed. The repetition of קרא in the Hebrew original allowed us to make a connection between the roles of Jonah and the captain. Jonah is commanded by God to “arise and call out.” He is sleeping silently. The captain is the one who is calling out to Jonah. He tells him none other than what God has previously told him “arise and call out.” It as if the pagan captain has assumed the role of the prophet, and Jonah has taken the place of the pagan.

This characterization is further supported by the various strands of the narrative. Jonah has all the right knowledge about God, but he is irresponsive. He does not care about the lives of his shipmates. They show the utmost concern for his. Though the sailors do not initially know the God of “the sea” and “dry land,” they “pray,” “sacrifice sacrifices,” and “vow vows” in response to Jonah’s creedal confession.

The good news, in all this, is the fact that the translation of קרא in chapter three remains consistent throughout (κηρύσσω is used). The only instance of inconsistency regarding this specific instance of lexical repetition occurred in 1:6.

This forces us to answer a couple questions?

First, is the contextual rendering of קרא with κηρύσσω worth the cost? Translators have to make these decisions every time they approach the text. Often times the choice is more complex than the above instance. Words in the target language rarely, if ever, have exactly the same semantic range as to source language.

Second, how much has really been lost in this instance and others like it? At the very least I believe that the Hebrew propensity for lexical repetition as a means of creating meaning is lost. Yet, has the role reversal been altogether destroyed? ἐπικαλέω ”to call upon” and κηρύσσω “to preach” are similarly related. But would the observant reader be able to make the connection without having it explicitly made for him through lexical repetition? Or must we have that repetition in order to make any confident claim about meaning?

Sound off in the comments section if you have any thoughts. There are countless instances just like this throughout the LXX edition of Jonah, and your thoughts would be appreciated as I work through it!

Posted in Biblical Studies, Discourse Analysis, Greek, Hebrew, LXX, Old Testament Studies | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Septuagint and Ezekiel 4:12-13

Posted on March 12, 2013 by

Tonight in my seminar on the Prophets we covered Ezekiel chapter 4. There there were many things I found of interest in this passage, I want to hone in on verses 12-13.

Before we get there, let me give you a bit of context as to where we are at in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel has seen a vision of the glory of God atop a chariot which moves about by four living creatures with four wings and four faces, as well as four wheels which have wheels within them. After seeing this vision, Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy against the house of Israel. Ezekiel’s prophesy takes a number of forms. One form of Ezekiel’s prophecy manifests itself in physical signs wherein he acts out the calamity Israel will experience at the hand of her God.

Chapter four contains two different signs. In the first sign, Ezekiel inscribes the city of Israel on a brick. On that same brick he depicts seize engines that are erected against the city. He is commanded to lay bound on his left side on the brick? for 390 days for the iniquity of Israel and 40 days on his right side for the iniquity of Judah.

The second sign is a bit more bizarre and colorful. Ezekiel is commanded to throw a bunch of ingredients together and make barley cakes. These cakes are to be baked over human dung. For those unfamiliar with the Levitical purity laws, or with any sense of human decency and or hygiene, you will know that doing this would make ritually unclean (unpresentable to God). With this background in mind, let’s take a look at Ezekiel 4:12-13.

The Hebrew text reads:

וְעֻגַת שְעֹרִים תֹּאכֲלֶנָּה וְהִיא בְּגֶלְלֵי צֵאַת הָאָדָם תְּעֻגֶנָה לְעֵינֵיהֶם

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה כָּכָה יֹאכְלוּ בְנֵי יִשרָאֵל אֶת לַחְמָם טָמֵא בַּגּוֹיִם אֲשֶר אַדִּיחֵם שָם

“And you will eat it as a cake of barley. And you will bake it on human dung before their eyes.”

“And the Lord said, ‘In this way the sons of Israel will eat their unclean bread among the nations where I drive them them there.”

Notice a few things about this text before we move to the Septuagint translator’s rendering:

  1. The dung is not actually eaten; it is the fuel for the baking.
  2. Despite the fact that he is not commanded to eat the dung, the food becomes unclean.
  3. Though the bread itself becomes unclean through the process of baking, the emphasis seems to be on the means by which it becomes unclean.
  4. There is a repetition of the phrase לַחְמָם “their bread” in 4:12 and 4:13, which is also present in 4:9 (the beginning of this sign unit).
  5. These factors all contribute to a tightly woven symbol: Ezekiel’s act of eating tainted/unclean bread is analogous to the fact that the “sons of Israel” will eat unclean bread among the nations (in exile).

Now, let us turn to the text of the Septuagint.

καὶ ἐγκρυφίαν κρίθινον φάγεσαι αὐτά· ἐν βολβίτοις κόπρου ἀνθρωπίνης ἐγκρύψεις αὐτὰ κατ᾿ ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν

καὶ ἐρεῖς Τάδε λέγει κύριος ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ισραηλ Οὕτως φάγονται οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ ἀκάθαρτα ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν.

“And you will eat them as ash-baked barley cakes. You will cover them in human dung before their eyes.”

“And you will say, thus says the Lord God of Israel. In this manner the sons of Israel will eat among the nations.”

Notice anything different? Yes, the translator expands the beginning of verse three (he adds καὶ ἐρεῖς Τάδε . . . ὁ θεὸς “And you will say, thus . . . God). He also truncates the end of the same verse (אֲשֶר אַדִּיחֵם שָם “where I will drive them there”). While these are significant features, something more significant is at work here.

  1. ἐγκρύψεις ”you will cover” translates תְּעֻגֶנָה ”you will bake.” The dung has been transformed from the fuel for baking into a constituent of the barley cake itself.[1]
  2. The phrase לַחְמָם ”their bread” in v. 13 has been omitted. Instead of reading “their unclean bread” the Septuagint reads ἀκάθαρτα ”unclean things” Though the conceptual link with vv. 9 and 12 remain, the lexical link is broken. This allows ἀκάθαρτα “unclean things” to serve as a general reference to any unclean food categorized as such by Torah.

What all does this mean? In terms of deep structure, very little. That is to say, both the Hebrew and Greek texts communicate basically the same idea. Ezekiel is to serve as a symbol to the people of Israel. Just as he eats unclean bread, so also will Israel.

Yet, the surface structure of the Septuagint adds a different flavor to the overall discourse. Where the Hebrew text retains a tightly formed symbol between Ezekiel and “the sons of Israel” through the repetition of  לַחְמָם “their bread” (vv. 9, 12, 13), the Septuagint translator puts the barley cakes on a lower shelf. He decides that it is better to forgo the tightly woven symbolism in order to spell out the implications it has for Israel. It is not simply bread cooked in/with/on human dung that Israel will eat. The nation will eat all manner of foods that are deemed unclean by God.

I am always fascinated by the choices the Septuagint translator makes. We always finds it easy to criticize our translators of our English Bibles. And we should. We should always keep them honest. But at the same time, we must not be naïve. Translation must be sensitive to the complexities of nuance present in the source language. Something will also be lost in translation, but we must be ever cognizant of the choices we make.

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1 I admit that the manner in which the bread is prepared may be a factor here. The translators of the NETS translate this as “ash-baked” barley cakes. If this is true, it is not so much that the human excrement is a garnish on top of the bread as it is still the way in which it is made.

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An Afternoon Date

Posted on March 10, 2013 by

This afternoon Mary Beth and I took a little time out of the day for ourselves. We went up to Chapel Hill to one our favorite places in the area: The Bookshop.2012-04-19_19-20-01_125

A better selection of used books at a good price you will not find. Mary Beth likes to peruse the Mystery section. She picked up a couple of volumes by Agatha Christie. Can you guess where yours truly migrated? I found my way to the Linguistics section, the Religion section, and the Classic.

Sadly, I didn’t find anything helpful in the Linguistics department. There were a couple of books by Chomsky, but currently I’m in the market for stuff explicitly on Discourse Analysis/Text Linguistics.

I did, on the other hand, find a couple of nice volumes in the Religion/Greek sections. There were a number of old copies of the Nestle Greek New Testament. No, I didn’t leave an author/editor out. These were dated before Aland got involved. As much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t justify the cost/space.

I’m not sure how I justified the cost/space for an old copy of Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.photo

[Here's a shot of the outside]photo-1

[Here is a look at the title page]

I am aware of the fact that Thayer’s work has been superseded by BDAG. I also know that Thayer is largely regarded as obsolete due to that fact that it was written before the discovery of the papyri. Yet, this is the 1889 edition. There’s just something about an old book.

After we finished our book shopping, we migrated to the no longer called Red Bicycle –now under new management and called The Market Street Cafe. Here’s Mary Beth reading her Agatha Christie short stories.

photo-2

There is nothing like a cozy comfy coffee shop with good company and a good book. And no. I wasn’t reading Thayer. I knocked a third of Longacre’s The Grammar of Discourse.

And to top off an already enjoyable day with my lovely wife, I smell the scent of home cooked Daal wafting into my office. I would steal a bit before bed tonight, but I’m afraid the lentils won’t be done cooking until tomorrow morning.

Thank for a wonderful day and a meal to look forward to tomorrow love!

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Dogmatics as an Act of Prayer

Posted on March 5, 2013 by

I pray that you will indulge me as I quote Barth again. I think that this might be a become a bit of a habit. I told Mary Beth this evening that there are some authors that you just can’t quote. Barth is one of them, but not for reasons you might think. Barth is difficult to quote because you never stop. I am only 25 pages into the first volume and I have wanted to post something here from every page. Nevertheless, I won’t pass up the opportunity to share, even if it means you get a bit bored.

The following is taken from the conclusion of the first chapter on “The Task of Dogmatics.” Barth writes,

We maintain that humanly speaking there is nothing to alleviate the difficulty. We simply confess the mystery which underlies it, and we merely repeat the statement that dogmatics is possible only as an act of faith, when we point to prayer as the attitude without which there can be no dogmatic work.

Prayer can be the recognition that we accomplish nothing by our intentions, even though they be intentions to pray. Prayer can be the expression of our human willing of the will of God. Prayer can signify that for good or evil man justifies God and not himself. Prayer can be the human answer to the divine hearing already granted, the epitome of the true faith which we cannot assume of ourselves. We do not speak of true prayer if we say ‘must’ instead of ‘can.’ According to Rom. 8:26f the way from ‘can’ to ‘must’ is wrapped in the mystery at the gates of which we here stand. With this reference we do not give anyone a means by which he can count on succeeding in his work. It must be said, however, that it is hard to see how else there can be successes in this work but on the basis of divine correspondence to this human attitude: ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.’

-Church Dogmatics, The Doctrine of the Word of God I.1, p 23-24

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Dogmatics as an Act of Faith

Posted on March 4, 2013 by

Here is a sobering quote of the evening/morning. Barth writes,

Our comment is that, so long as we understand by Christianity the creaturely and cultural reality of a view of life and the world alongside Platonism, Aristotelianism, etc., and so long as we understand by a form or picture of Christianity the representation of it in its creatureliness according to the laws of the knowledge of such a reality, then the construction of an impressive form of Christianity without believing in it for better or for worse is certainly an attractive and rewarding possibility. But there can be no question of this on dogmatics. In dogmatics Christianity means the proper content of talk about God ventured in the fear of God.”

Sobering words indeed. Earlier in the chapter, Barth argues that the study of God is to be done within the context of the living body of Christ. Here he goes even further. The study of God must be rooted in and grow out of the fear of God. Even more sobering is the reality that a proper fear of God is borne out of encounter with God. How many of us engage in dogmatics, or proper talk about God, as Barth defines it?

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Can Clausal Analysis Solve a Textual Issue in Ezekiel 3:5?

Posted on March 2, 2013 by

In the grand scheme of textual issues in the Hebrew Bible, Ezekiel 3:5 would be one of those passages that would go unnoticed. And for good reason. The passage reads (according to Masoretic punctuation)  כִּי לֹא אֶל–עַם עִמְקֵי שָׂפָה וְכִבְדֵי לָשׁוֹן אַתָּה שָׁלוּחַ אֶל–בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל “for not to a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue you are sent, to the house of Israel.” The editors of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia suppose that the last prepositional phrase “to the house of Israel” is an addition to the text.

This supposition is offered presumably due to the inherent difficulties of the text in its current construction, though Leslie Allen believes it to be a marginal gloss. [1] As the text stands, there are two verbless clauses that span from verses 5 and 6. The English translation of these verses is as follows:

For not to a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue you are sent, to the house of Israel. Not to many peoples deep of lip and heavy of tongue, whose words you do not understand. Surely, if I sent you to them, they would listen to you.

While eliminating the phrase “to the house of Israel” reduces the difficulty of the text, this option is not attested by the versions. BHS offers no evidence for the alternative reading. The Göttingen Septuagint has no variant reading for πρὸς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ Ἰσραηλ “to the house of Israel.” The Vulgate and the Targums are also unanimous in their attestation of the phrase. It seems more likely, on the basis of the textual evidence and the principle of the more difficult reading, that the phrase “to the house of Israel” should remain in the text.

How, then, are we to understand the grammatical difficulties posed by the two verbless clauses?

Option 1: The verbal phrase אַתָּח שָׁלוּחַ “you are sent” has elided in the subsequent clauses. An English representation of this option looks like this:

For not to a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue you are sent, [you are sent]to the house of Israel. Not to many peoples obscure of speech and heavy of tongue [you are sent].

Option 2: The verbal phrase אַתָּח שָׁלוּחַ “you are sent” does double duty for the two clauses. Daniel Block writes, “Without the inserted conjunction ‘to the house of Israel’ is abrupt. But ‘atta saluah probably does double duty, functioning as the fulcrum between negative and positive prepositional phrases” (emphasis mine). [2]  

Block’s proposal is appealing. He recognizes that the two prepositional phrases are closely related. The absence of an intervening contrastive conjunction binds the two clauses together. The fact that the clauses share the same verb, strengthens that tie. The resultant translation is as follows:

For not to a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue, you are sent, to the house of Israel. Not to many peoples obscure of speech and heavy of tongue.

Notice in this translation there are two commas surrounding the verbal phrase. The second comma indicates that the verb belongs with the first prepositional phrase. The first comma indicates that the verbal phrase also belongs to the second prepositional phrase.

Appealing though this solution may be, it doesn’t address the absence of the verb in the third phrase. Has it elided? If so, why not go with the easier option 1? I believe that a third option that uses a clausal analysis to discern the underlying structure provides a better solution.

Option 3: The atnach (the Masoretic symbol indicating a break between clauses) should be placed before the verbal phrase. As it stands, the MT reads “For not to a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue you are sent.” I propose that the text should read:

“For not to a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue, you are sent to the house of Israel, not to many people deep of  lip and heavy of tongue.

Here is a .pdf copy of the clausal analysis I did. Notice that the passage under consideration (3:5-6) is all part of a single כִּי ‘for’ clause. The first phrase is a negated לֹא “not” prepositional phrase with the object “a people.” Next we find the center of the clause “you are sent to the house of Israel.” Even in this clause we find parallels with the previous phrase. אל בית ישׂראל “to the house of Israel” uses the same preposition as the previous prepositional phrase. The object of the preposition in this clause is contrasted with the previous objects (Ezekiel is sent to the house of Israel. He is not sent to a people). Finally, the third prepositional phrase is a direct parallel with the first. Every element is present in the third that is present in the first. [3]

What is the overall takeaway? Though I believe that all of above options are plausible, I think that option 3 strengthens the ties between all three clauses, provides a satisfactory grammatical explanation of the features present in the text, and places the focus on Ezekiel’s doomed mission to the house of Israel.

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1 Leslie C. Allen writes, “The MT reflects the general textual tradition in adding אל–בית ישׁראל ‘to the house of Israel,’ which is hardly in apposition to the ‘people’  of v 5a but evidently intended as a contrast, as if ‘(not . . . ) but to . . . ‘ The construction is awkward, אתח שׁלוח ‘you are sent’ doing double duty. The phrase surely originated as an old marginal gloss on אל–בני ישׂראל ‘to the sons of Israel’ in 2:3, recording a seemingly correct variant such as the Vorlage  of LXX contained. It was wrongly taken with the very similar context of 3:6 in the next column and incorporated into the text.” Ezekiel 1-19, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 28., (Word Books: Dallas, 1994.), 12.

2 Daniel Block, The Book of Ezekiel Chapters 1-28, New International Commentary of the Old Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 127.

3 The third clause does posses multiple additions from the first. The first of which is עמים רבים ”many people.” The second addition is a rather lengthy relative clause that furthers the condemnation God is pronouncing on the house of Israel. If Ezekiel had been sent to “a people deep of lip and heavy of tongue” they would have listened to him, despite the language barrier.

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Translation as Interpretation: A Brief Look at Hosea

Posted on February 25, 2013 by

A mantra among many Septuagint scholars is that all translation is interpretation. Few scholars would disagree with this notion. Many will disagree with the degree of interpretation that takes place in a translation or what constitutes significant interpretation. But few would deny that interpretation, whether outright or subconscious, occurs in all translation.

Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein, in his article “The Interpretative Element in Translation” Textus 8 (1973), 55-77 , extends this principle even further than one might expect. He claims that interpretation takes place even at the level of transliteration. Two specific instances are provided for observation. First, interpretation takes place when a perfectly understandable word that has a lexical equivalent in the receptor language is left transliterated. This could be an act of interpretation wherein the translator views the word as a technical term and believes it is necessary to leave it un-translated. Second, interpretation occurs in instances where proper nouns (names and places) function not just as specific referents but also as signs or omens that bear meaning pertinent to the story.

Hosea 1:8-9 provides a good example of the second instance. Hosea names his daughter לֹא רֻחָמָה and his son he names לֹא עַמִּי. While these are proper names, they also bear significant exegetical weight to the overall meaning of the passage when translated. לֹא רֻחָמָה is translated “Not Pitied” or “No Mercy” and לֹא עַמִּי is translated “Not My People.” The children of Hosea function as a vivid visual of God’s attitude towards Israel.

How does the Septuagint translator handle this text? Instead of transliterating these names, the translator recognized their importance to the overall meaning of the passage and translates accordingly. לֹא רֻחָמָה becomes Οὐκ-ἠλεημένην and לֹא עַמִּי becomes Οὐ-λαόσ-μου. This could just as easily have become Λωρυχαμα and Λωαμμι.

The English translations understand the dilemma: translate or transliterate?

KJV: “Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son. The said God, Call his name Lo-ammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.”

ESV: “When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the LORD said, “Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”"

NET: “When she had weaned ‘No Pity’ (Lo-ruhamah) she conceived agains and gave birth to another son. Then the LORD said: ‘Name him ‘Not My People’ (Lo-ammi), because you are not my people and I am not your God.”

This is another reminder for me concerning the complexities of translation. We must be as sensitive as possible to the complexity of meaning(s) present in the parent text. The receptor language can only approximate that complexity. This does not mean that our translations are inadequate. It does mean there is a wonderful richness to the text that must be minded.

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