Joel M. Hoffman
The first part of this book, which covered the problems with translating from one language into another and other related issues in the field of linguistics, was very well done and interesting.
The latter part, which focused on translating various passages of the Hebrew Bible, was excessively repetitive and very dry, and there really was no information in this section that anyone who has taken a survey class in the Hebrew Bible would not know.
This book wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be, I love reading books about misinterpretations in the Bible, This book focused on mistranslations in the Bible and how those mistranslations change the meaning of the Bible, But none of the changes in meaning were too extraordinary, and the book was basically a stepbystep on how to translate the Bible's original Hebrew into English, which could get very dry and indepth at times.
I think I might have enjoyed the book more if it gave more examples of mistranslations instead of spending so much time talking about.
. . well about stuff that was kind of boring, I understand that it was important to explain why the mistranslations took place, but I didn't need to know every single detail.
I feel like this is an important read for anyone who wishes to study the Bible, I know some people won't be all that into it, but I firmly believe this should be incorporated into any person's study who is serious or curious about the word of God.
In summary: translating is really hard, Also, the available biblical translations all suck balls,
Update:
He deals exclusively with the Old Testament, where apparently the original Hebrew words are more or less known contrasted with the NT, where the original words are often in question so only the translation is at issue.
For those interested, he calls the King James version "a fool's gold standard," and he says that the NSRV is the best translation but otherwise has precious little nice to say about even that one.
Hoffman's text on the practice of translating the Bible had many points of interest, and is worth taking a look at.
The opening sections are more about the intrinsic problems and techniques of translation which were a bit basic for me, although many readers will find them illuminating.
What I found lacking was that, aside from the New Testament discussion of Mary's virginity which has been fairly well debunked by now, not many of the essays tied in to functional ongoing debates, or consequences of historical misinterpretation.
The Appendix has a wealth of references though and I certainly intend to follow up on his research suggestions further.
Interesting if you are interested in bible orand linguistics, A little heavy on the linguistics for me, Also I saw the author speak very interesting and unfortunately he pretty much told all the interesting anecdotes from the book so there wasn't much left that interested me in the book.
It is not as controversial as you would think, With exception of the last chapter, But this is really a great book in the discussion of translating, The first half is about the goal of translations and how to go about it, Basically this guy rips apart the KJV and the chapter on Psalmwas very interesting, A good book to spur thoughts about we we think the bible means, The Russian word мир has two main meanings: peace and the world the two meanings were spelled differently before the orthographic reform that followed theRussian Revolution, and identically ever since.
The word is used in the title of Leo Tolstoy'snovel War and Peace, Imagine that all the copies of the novel printed before the Russian Revolution are lost, and somebody writes a book arguing, based on the text of the novel, that its title really means "War and the World".
How might one counter this argument Well, in thes the novel was translated into French as "La Guerre et la Paix" into English as "War and Peace" into German as "Krieg und Frieden" surely, if the preRevolutionary spelling meaning "the world" were used in the original Russian, the translations would be "La Guerre et le Monde", "War and the World", "Krieg und Welt".
This books argues that many words in the Hebrew Bible are usually mistranslated: in Deuteronomy:"bekhol levavkha, bekhol nafshekha" should not be "with all thy heart, with all thy soul" but "with all thy body, with all thy mind" "lo tachmod" in The Ten Commandments means not "thou shalt not covet" but "thou shalt not take for a short time" and so on.
Hoffman bases his arguments on the context of the usage of each word in other places in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.
Well, the Hebrew Bible was translated into many other languages in the antiquity, when Biblical Hebrew was still a living language, in whole or in part: different dialects of Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin.
If "lo tachmod" really means "thou shalt not take for a short time", why is it "Nec desiderabis" in the Latin translation My mother couldn't finish this book because she found the author's attitude repellent, and asked me to try.
He is pretty repellent in the first third of the book, but things get better after that,
The basic premise of the book is that mistranslations of the Hebrew have affected how we understand the Torah.
And by extension, how the New Testament misunderstands the Old, Some of the objections seem a bit pedantic until you remember that in some cases these misunderstandings have led to the deaths of, let's say, millions of people.
In general, however, the issue with the tone is that the author seems to suffer from "presentism", i, e. that because people in prior times didn't have as good an understanding of linguistics that everything they did must have been wrong.
The tone of how he suggests that they were wrong comes off as overly judgmental, You know those really smartyear old boys who act like you are really stupid because you don't know some trivia or other Yeah, like that.
That said, there is a lot of interest in here, Most interesting are the case studies in the last third of the book which discuss specific passages in the Torah, how they were translated in the Septuagint which is, of course, from where the apostles got their Old Testament, and then how the modern translations deal with them.
Hoffman offers his own interpretation based on his study of linguistics he's a Ph, D. , religion, and Hebrew. The most useful part of all is the suggestions for further reading, where he really fleshes out where to find further resources.
Including his dissertation. Anyway, his enthusiasm in that section is infectious for a librarian, and really made me realize that I needed to review my koine ok, and let's be honest, classical Greek, which is very very rusty.
I only have one semester of Biblical Hebrew, but I think that you could understand this if you didn't know too much about Hebrew before.
.
ran into this book at the library on the "New" display and picked it up on a whim,
And, so far, I love it, Written by Joel Hoffman Hebrew scholar, translation theory expert,and Rabbi, this book explores how the Bible's original meaning is sometimes obscured in translations.
Beyond that, it's an interesting look at translation theory for a layman,
David commandeered the book, and after a few pages said, "Joseph Smith would have LOVED this book!" And he's right.
You just can't help respecting Hoffman's labor,
The guy is totally neurotic, you can tell by his compulsive use of parenthesisa problem towards which, I'm highly sympathetic!.
He's also a grammar freak, But, his writing is delightful and so readable,
To show just how fun the book is, I'll quote the opening lines of the preface:
The Biblical book Song of Songs, frequently quoted at weddings, is about romantic love.
Yet most translations speak of "my sister, my spouse" or "my sister, my bride," practices that are not only unromantic, but quite illegal in most places.
How did this happen How did wellmeaning translators throughout history so distort the original meaning of the Bible that, in this case, courtship ended up as a felony
Song of Songs is but one example of a common pattern of mistranslation that prompted me to write this book, even knowing that passions run high when it comes to Bible translation.
For example, in the fall of, a Yale student named Kevin Wilson began a project to translate the Bible into Klingon.
Klingon si the makebelieve language that aliens in the popular Star Trek series would speak if they were real, Wilson's team included nearly a dozen scholars, among them Dr, Lawrence M. Schoen, who had already earned a PhD, in cognitive psychology, and the Reverend Professonr Glen Proechel, then a Spanish instructor at the University of minnesota,
But Professor Proechel ended up quitting the translation project in protest, arguing that Dr, Schoen was doing it wrong, "It's not going
to make any sense" the way Wilson's gang was doing it, he told the Wall Street Journal in June of, explaining that the Klingons' "mode of thought is quite different.
"
There are no Klingons, there is no Klingon thought, and, except for what linguist Dr, Marc Okrand invented for themovie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, there is no Klingon language, But that didn't stop two qualified academicians from taking their vehement disagreement to the media,
Not surprisingly, disputes about translating the Bible into real languages spoken by real people run even deeper,
The first part of this book, which covered the problems with translating from one language into another and other related issues in the field of linguistics, was very well done and interesting.
The latter part, which focused on translating various passages of the Hebrew Bible, was excessively repetitive and very dry, and there really was no information in this section that anyone who has taken a survey class in the Hebrew Bible would not know.
This book wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be, I love reading books about misinterpretations in the Bible, This book focused on mistranslations in the Bible and how those mistranslations change the meaning of the Bible, But none of the changes in meaning were too extraordinary, and the book was basically a stepbystep on how to translate the Bible's original Hebrew into English, which could get very dry and indepth at times.
I think I might have enjoyed the book more if it gave more examples of mistranslations instead of spending so much time talking about.
. . well about stuff that was kind of boring, I understand that it was important to explain why the mistranslations took place, but I didn't need to know every single detail.
I feel like this is an important read for anyone who wishes to study the Bible, I know some people won't be all that into it, but I firmly believe this should be incorporated into any person's study who is serious or curious about the word of God.
In summary: translating is really hard, Also, the available biblical translations all suck balls,
Update:
He deals exclusively with the Old Testament, where apparently the original Hebrew words are more or less known contrasted with the NT, where the original words are often in question so only the translation is at issue.
For those interested, he calls the King James version "a fool's gold standard," and he says that the NSRV is the best translation but otherwise has precious little nice to say about even that one.
Hoffman's text on the practice of translating the Bible had many points of interest, and is worth taking a look at.
The opening sections are more about the intrinsic problems and techniques of translation which were a bit basic for me, although many readers will find them illuminating.
What I found lacking was that, aside from the New Testament discussion of Mary's virginity which has been fairly well debunked by now, not many of the essays tied in to functional ongoing debates, or consequences of historical misinterpretation.
The Appendix has a wealth of references though and I certainly intend to follow up on his research suggestions further.
Interesting if you are interested in bible orand linguistics, A little heavy on the linguistics for me, Also I saw the author speak very interesting and unfortunately he pretty much told all the interesting anecdotes from the book so there wasn't much left that interested me in the book.
It is not as controversial as you would think, With exception of the last chapter, But this is really a great book in the discussion of translating, The first half is about the goal of translations and how to go about it, Basically this guy rips apart the KJV and the chapter on Psalmwas very interesting, A good book to spur thoughts about we we think the bible means, The Russian word мир has two main meanings: peace and the world the two meanings were spelled differently before the orthographic reform that followed theRussian Revolution, and identically ever since.
The word is used in the title of Leo Tolstoy'snovel War and Peace, Imagine that all the copies of the novel printed before the Russian Revolution are lost, and somebody writes a book arguing, based on the text of the novel, that its title really means "War and the World".
How might one counter this argument Well, in thes the novel was translated into French as "La Guerre et la Paix" into English as "War and Peace" into German as "Krieg und Frieden" surely, if the preRevolutionary spelling meaning "the world" were used in the original Russian, the translations would be "La Guerre et le Monde", "War and the World", "Krieg und Welt".
This books argues that many words in the Hebrew Bible are usually mistranslated: in Deuteronomy:"bekhol levavkha, bekhol nafshekha" should not be "with all thy heart, with all thy soul" but "with all thy body, with all thy mind" "lo tachmod" in The Ten Commandments means not "thou shalt not covet" but "thou shalt not take for a short time" and so on.
Hoffman bases his arguments on the context of the usage of each word in other places in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.
Well, the Hebrew Bible was translated into many other languages in the antiquity, when Biblical Hebrew was still a living language, in whole or in part: different dialects of Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin.
If "lo tachmod" really means "thou shalt not take for a short time", why is it "Nec desiderabis" in the Latin translation My mother couldn't finish this book because she found the author's attitude repellent, and asked me to try.
He is pretty repellent in the first third of the book, but things get better after that,
The basic premise of the book is that mistranslations of the Hebrew have affected how we understand the Torah.
And by extension, how the New Testament misunderstands the Old, Some of the objections seem a bit pedantic until you remember that in some cases these misunderstandings have led to the deaths of, let's say, millions of people.
In general, however, the issue with the tone is that the author seems to suffer from "presentism", i, e. that because people in prior times didn't have as good an understanding of linguistics that everything they did must have been wrong.
The tone of how he suggests that they were wrong comes off as overly judgmental, You know those really smartyear old boys who act like you are really stupid because you don't know some trivia or other Yeah, like that.
That said, there is a lot of interest in here, Most interesting are the case studies in the last third of the book which discuss specific passages in the Torah, how they were translated in the Septuagint which is, of course, from where the apostles got their Old Testament, and then how the modern translations deal with them.
Hoffman offers his own interpretation based on his study of linguistics he's a Ph, D. , religion, and Hebrew. The most useful part of all is the suggestions for further reading, where he really fleshes out where to find further resources.
Including his dissertation. Anyway, his enthusiasm in that section is infectious for a librarian, and really made me realize that I needed to review my koine ok, and let's be honest, classical Greek, which is very very rusty.
I only have one semester of Biblical Hebrew, but I think that you could understand this if you didn't know too much about Hebrew before.
.