{"id":124,"date":"2009-01-06T00:55:59","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T13:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/?p=124"},"modified":"2010-11-24T00:10:33","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T13:10:33","slug":"a-foreignising-translation-of-genesis-1-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/?p=124","title":{"rendered":"a foreignising translation of genesis 1, part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

For background information, read the previous post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This translation is by no means final\u2014it is very much a first draft with notes highlighting areas which I consider remain inadequate. Consequently I’ll be very pleased to consider any suggestions for improvement which I will gladly incorporate!<\/p>\n

I begin with the first two days. Obviously there is much that could be said, I’ve included footnotes to points of particular interest.<\/p>\n

\n

When God began establishing the sky and the land,1<\/a><\/sup> the land was uninhabitable,2<\/a><\/sup> and darkness covered the surface of the primaeval depths.3<\/a><\/sup> But the spirit of God stirred over the surface of the waters and God said, \u201cLet there be light!\u201d And there was light. God recognised that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God named the light \u201cday\u201d and he named the darkness \u201cnight.\u201d Then there was evening and then morning, a first day.<\/p>\n

Then God said, \u201cLet there be a barrier4<\/a><\/sup> between the waters which will separate the waters, and let the barrier separate the waters which are below the barrier from those which are above the barrier.\u201d And it was so. Then God named the barrier, \u201csky,\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> and there was evening and then morning, a second day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

1.<\/a> I\u2019m not entirely happy with \u2018establishing\u2019, but I\u2019m aiming to go beyond \u2018create\u2019 because I think Walton probably has a point when he suggests that \u05d1\u05e8\u05d0 refers to assigning a function to something, although I think he overstates his case. I don\u2019t think the notion of \u201ccreate\u201d is readily excluded from the semantic range of the term, doing so creates(!) too many difficulties in some contexts. Consequently, I suspect that the term may refer to creating with a view to assigning function, and so I\u2019ve lazily adopted the vague \u201cestablish everything (i.e. \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05e9\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5)\u201d to encompass the task of creating and assigning function. On Walton\u2019s views, see his Genesis<\/em> (NIVAC) 70\u201372; Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament<\/em>, 181\u2013184.<\/p>\n

I think \u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 is best translated \u201cland\u201d in Gen 1, although I think that the expression \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05e9\u05de\u05d9\u05dd \u05d5\u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05d0\u05e8\u05e5 is a merism for everything (since there is no land at this point anyway). Unfortunately \u2018everything\u2019 is also inadequate, because \u2018everything\u2019 in the ancient world (cosmologically speaking) was quite different from everything today.<\/p>\n

2.<\/a> Although the precise meaning of \u05ea\u05d4\u05d5 \u05d5\u05d1\u05d4\u05d5 has long been debated, I suspect that in context here it describes the state of the world prior to the acts of God described in the remainder of the chapter\u2014that is, before order, shape, and function had been imparted to the creation. Sailhamer argues that it means no more than \u201cuninhabitable\u201d (see Sailhamer, Genesis Unbound<\/em> [1996] 60\u201366).<\/p>\n

3.<\/a> \u05ea\u05d4\u05d5\u05dd is often translated in such a way as to suggest it is a simple reference to the ocean, but it almost always appears in reference to the ancient waters from which the cosmos was fashioned. Here I want to ensure the modern reader is aware that there’s more in the mind of the ancient reader than the ocean or sea.<\/p>\n

4.<\/a> For \u05e8\u05e7\u05d9\u05e2 I\u2019ve tried to choose a term which reflects the notion of a solid canopy over the world, hence \u201cbarrier.\u201d Terms like \u201cexpanse\u201d allow modern readers to escape the significant cosmological differences which exist between the ancient world and our own and should be avoided.<\/p>\n

5.<\/a> \u201cSky\u201d is ultimately inadequate as a translation for \u05e9\u05de\u05d9\u05dd in this context since the Hebrew idea here doesn\u2019t simply reduce to what modern English speakers mean by \u201csky.\u201d However, until I can think of (or someone can suggest) a better alternative, it will have to remain for now.<\/p>\n

\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For background information, read the previous post. This translation is by no means final\u2014it is very much a first draft with notes highlighting areas which I consider remain inadequate. Consequently I’ll be very pleased to consider any suggestions for improvement which I will gladly incorporate! I begin with the first two days. Obviously there is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,25,24,5,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-genesis","category-hebrew","category-languages","category-old-testament","category-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shields-online.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}