Biblical Translation--Eden

ICANT: You state: No. My translations of "The BHS Masoretic Hebrew Text" are probably quite different than the translations you are accustomed to, but "The BHS Masoretic Hebrew Text" is exactly the same. The Hebrew consonants which comprise the verses I have translated are exactly the same.My translations are mine, and do not claim them to be the absolutely correct translations; I claim them to be mine. The "interpres" translations I render are supposed to inspire discussion, and debate. No one is supposed to simply accept the translations I render.The one aspect of my "interpres" translation of Gen. 2:16 that I claim as extremely accurate is; a "command" is a "must" not a "may" grammatical expression.Regards;
Ger

Autumnman,So you know Hebrew and translate yourself? What do you think of the concordant method? Here is a link to the interliner that I use:Scripture4All - Greek/Hebrew interlinear Bible software

graft2vine:Thanks for that link to the interliner translation. That is a good place to start becoming familiar with biblical Hebrew.I am not certain what the "concordant {harmonious} method" is. I do know what a "concordance" is, and that is also a good place to start becoming familiar with biblical Hebrew.I do indeed translate myself. However, I still, and probably always will, have much to learn.I look forward to our discussions and debates.Regard;
Ger

The concordant method picks an english word that is the best fit for each hebrew word, and translates it consistently throughout, regardless of the context. The idea is to minimize translation errors, and multiple english words for one hebrew or vice versa.

I am not a native ancient Hebrew reader. But I do refer to English translations, the scholarship of which I trust. And I don't see how your rendering at all makes sense to the rest of the account. Particularly how "whole tree" obscures the matter of which tree was forbidden for man to eat."From the [whole tree] of the garden you must eat" you say is a better translation. Which tree? From which tree did God command man to eat "the whole" of it?There are two trees in the garden that are specifically mentioned -the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Insisting on "must eat" there, I think is wrong. However it is not as damaging to the clarity of the passage as "whole tree". As soon as you want us to read "whole tree" there you cloud the matter. And this confusion can possibly lead to having the passage mean the opposite of what it intends to convey.First of all it is clear that the writer wants us to identify specifically two trees of the many trees which God made to grow in the garden: All these reputable English translations make it clear that two distinct trees are identified among all of the trees -1.) the tree of life2.) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Then we have verse 16: There are two trees identified in verse 9 in particular. And in verse 16 one of these two is again mentioned in particular. Man is forbidden to eat of this tree among all the other trees.You really obfuscat a simple matter by insisting instead of "every tree" that God is commanding man to eat of the "whole tree". When I read with your supplied words I immediately ask "Well then WHICH whole tree is God alledgedly saying man MUST eat?"The next clause is a specific divine command for man not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So "every tree" cannot include that tree. Every tree must mean every other tree in the garden besides the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This would include all the trees not particularly identified and the tree of life.I don't know how "whole tree" would even make sense in the passage.You continued: I will not comment on the technicalities of the Hebrew grammer except to offer reputable English translations as I have above, none of which agree with your rendering.Theologically, I can agree that man MUST eat of the tree of life. And practically I can see that man MUST eat to have food.But as far as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is concerned man , MUST NOT eat of it. Eve, emphasized that her understanding that she was not even to touch it (Gen 3:3). It is hard to believe that any part of it, let alone the whole of it was permitted to be ingested.Besides this it is the fruit of the trees that is probably suggested. It is less likely that God was commanding man to eat bark, root, and leaves. Rather to eat of the trees meant to eat of the fruit of the trees. So again I can't see how "whole tree" could do nothing but confuse and obscure a simple divine instruction.You continued: There is no need to make it considerably more complex. It is very simple. There were two trees and two choices. Man had to take one choice or the other. He could not have both ways. He could take God's way. Or he could take the other way.God's way - all the trees including the tree of life.The other way - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.The two ways were mutually exclusive. This is evident because after man made the choice to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the way to the tree of life was barred and man was expelled from the garden, thus terminating his ability to eat from ANY tree of the garden, at least: The penalty of Genesis 3:22-24 makes clear what God's command in 2:9,16,17 could not have been:1.) It could not have been for man to eat the WHOLE of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
2.) It could not have been to eat the WHOLE of every tree in the garden of Eden, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
3.) It could not have been to eat the WHOLE of both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
4.) It could not have been for man to eat first from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then from the tree of life.
5.) It could not have been for man to eat first of the tree of life and then from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.The command is simple. So simple in fact that a child can grasp it: Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

jawill:I somehow just lost my reply to you when I was in "Preview" mode.Now I need to rewrite the whole thing again.Not right now, however. I need to settle down.Thanks for your thoughtful response.I will get back to your questions
Ger

Ger, Here is the translation from the scripture for all website:

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and he is instructing Yahweh Elohim on the human to say of from any of tree of the garden to eat you shall eat

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and from tree of the knowledge of good and evil not you shall eat from him that in day of to eat of you from him to die you shall die

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I think "shall" makes better sense than "must" as it is the same Hebrew word in both instances I bolded above. Shall is a more gentle way of saying it. Sure we must eat, but that is something we will do regardless, and God is simply declaring it.Again I think the use of "any" is an much better rendering than "whole" and even better than "every" as the KJV puts it. Adam doesn't have to eat from every tree, but he can eat from any of them.

jaywill: you wrote To begin with it is helpful to realize what and where the “Garden in Eden” is.Gen. 2:10 describes the first, unnamed river {likely “The River of Life”} flowing from Eden into the garden. This signifies Eden as a very high place. According to Ezekiel 28:13 & 14, “Eden” is the “Holy Mountain of God”; and “The Garden” {Greek; “paradise”} is the “Holy Garden of God.” Therefore, “The Garden In Eden”, is not of this earth; it is a “Spiritual” place and for this reason does not contain “ground” or any “mortal 0etz=trees.” Only metaphorical {figurative} “0etz=trees” exist on the “Holy Mountain of God” and in the “Holy Garden of God.”“0” is the transliteration of the Heb. sixteenth consonant, “ayin” that has no English equivalent; thus, “0” is silent.The Hebrew word for “tree” is “0etz” and means, “tree or trees, wood, gallows or cross.” Please bear this in mind as we continue.An interpres translation of Gen. 2:9 reads:

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9. And he sprouts, yhwh God, from the ground all trees pleasing to the sight and good for food; And tree the life in middle the garden, and tree the knowledge good and bad.

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The figurative {metaphorical/spiritual} “0etz hachayim=tree the life” would represent an actual, mortal “0etz=tree.” The figurative {metaphorical/spiritual} “0etz hada0ath tob vara0=wood/gallows the knowledge/skill/morality of welfare/benefit/good and injury/distress/evil” would represent the “0etz=wood” contained within the “0etz=tree”An interpres translation of Gen 3:3 reads:

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3. But from fruit the tree which in middle the garden, he said, God, Not you partake from a portion of it, and not you touch at it, lest you naturally die.

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The prepositional clause “bethok” literally means, “in the middle”. Therefore, the author appears to be depicting the “tree the life” and the forbidden “tree” as occupying the exact same “thok=middle” of “The Garden of God.” This suggest that there is only one “0etz=tree” in the middle of the Garden.Gen. 2:16 conveys God commanding, “From the whole tree of the garden you must eat/partake.”In Gen. 3:6 the author describes what the “woman” sees:

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6. And she sees, the woman, that beneficial the wood regarding food, and that pleasing it is to the eyes, and desirable the wood regarding circumspection/wisdom .

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In Gen. 2:16 the author appears to be describing the “kol 0etz hagan=whole tree the garden” as being “all” aspects of the figurative “0etz hachayiym=tree the life”, that would include “wood that is beneficial for food {knowledge of instruments used for gathering food, fire-wood, etc.), wood that is pleasing to the eyes {skill in craftsmanship for making beautiful articles of wood), and wood that is desirable for circumspection {the preservation of knowledge is wisdom).Gen. 2:17 conveys God’s command of prohibition:

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17. But from wood/gallows/cross the knowledge/skill/morality of good/benefit/welfare/right and bad/distress/injury/calamity/wrong-evil not you partake from a portion of it for at the time you partake from a portion of it you [>adam] will die a violent death by human moral authority.

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The repetitive verbal clause employed by the author at the conclusion of Gen. 2:17 is “moth thamuth=die a violent death by capital punishment”.“0etz=gallows” is described as being used in this manner in a number of places throughout the O.T.; see Joshua 8:29 for one example.We have now described five individual metaphorical applications of the Heb. masculine noun “0etz=tree” regarding the “tree in the middle of the Garden of God {Greek, “paradise”)”.In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas (composed before the second century A.D) the author describes Jesus saying:

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"Indeed, you have five trees in paradise, which do not move in summer or winter, and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever is acquainted with them will not taste death" (36:21-24).

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We have covered a lot of ground above, and so I am sure we will have much to discuss and debate.Regards;
Ger

graft2vine: In my opinion, "shall" is a good interpres translation of the "tzvah=command" as well as the repetitive verbal clause >akol tho>kel=eat you must/shall eat".In fact, I wanted to tell you that I was quite impressed with the interlinear translation of the BHS source text provided on the site you suggested I take a look at. I have not as yet had a chance to go through all of Gen. 2:4 - 3:24, but of what I saw the translator did an very good job. As I said above, that site is a good place to start.Insofar as the "concordant method" is concerned, in my opinion, because Heb. terms generally have such a wide range of applications {lexical meanings, if you will} to employ only one "definition" to either a word or bound morpheme would render an accurate translation all but imposible. For example, the prepositon prefix bound morpheme "b" denotes "in, by, at, with, through", to name some of its most common uses; the preposition prefix bound morpheme "m" denotes "from, out of, surpassing, on account of", to again name a some of its most common uses; the conjunction "v" can be rendered "and, so, then, but, thus, therefore" and more.Do you see my point?Regards;
Ger

testing. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

That is frustrating. I have done something like it.

I think that this is really another issue from the matter of the clarity about the allowed tree and the forbidden tree.Nonetheless I will make some comment. Here I notice the popular tendency again to make an absolute dichotomy between allegorical and historical material. I believe that a historical place can have also a symbolic meaning.As a New Testament Christian I of course place symbolic significance to Egypt, the Good Land of Canaan, Mount Sanai, the wilderness, the Red Sea, Armageddon, Jerusalem, Eden with its four rivers.Recognizing symbolism with the names or characteristics of these places does not, for me, necessitate that I take them as also not geographic and historical locations.I have long been conversant on the symbolic significance of the names of the rivers in Eden. But in Genesis the flow of history from events in Eden is seamless in my reading of it. Cain wandered east of Eden to the land of Nod. It is hard to be east of a purely allegorical and abstract place.Perhaps I could just quote the footnotes in the Recovery Version a little on this matter: As you might see, some of us believe great symbolism and allegorical significance is related to the details of the garden in Eden which extend all the way through the OT to the end of the New Testament. God's eternal building is a living "building" built with redemmed, regenerated, transformed, glorified, resurrected, and saints, built up together in divine life and love.At the same time there is a flow of history through early Genesis which lead us to also take Eden as historical and actual. Latter in the book of Ezekiel Eden is used allegorically alone in one passage I think you drew my attention to. This is not how I understand the passages. Rather the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were close to each other. Perhaps their branches even crossed each other in places.If you want to put forth an interpretation that both the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and the fruit of the tree of life were on the same one tree, I would not go along with you on this.Two trees are there in the midst of the garden. The fruit of one was permissible to be eaten. The fruit of the other was completely off limits. Man was commanded not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.One tree stands for God and His divine and uncreated life - the tree of life.The other tree stands for the independence and rebellion of Satan. Notice that it is both good and evil which is on that forbidden tree. Our good can be in rebellion against God. And definitely our evil is in rebellion against God.To partake of the life of God is God's way dispense Himself into the man created in His image. The other way is for man to be joined to God's enemy in a continuation of his ancient rebellion to be independent from God.Man gains through this forbidden way the knowledge of good and evil. However, what he was not told but became painfully aware of was - that we would have only the knowledge. We would not have the power to fully perform the good that we acknowledge and know. And we would not have the power to completely escape the evil that we acknowledge and know.Man becomes very proud of this knowledge. But he lacks the life power to fully perform the good. And he lacks the life power to totally escape the evil.The immediate account of the murder of Abel at the hands of Cain reveal this degradation setting in in man's being. Sin is at the door but Cain is told that he must master it, overcome the temptation, and perform the good that his conscience knows. Cain cannot. He is a slave of sin.Upon eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowlege of good and evil a cosmic enemy of God has attached himself to man's being like a parasite. Instead of being joined to God man has been joined to Satan.I'll have to examine your other comments more carefully latter.Essentially what I see you have done is point out that both trees being in the midst of the garden should mean that they were one tree.I don't see them as one tree but as two. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

This is a very strange idea. Am I mistaken in assuming that your source is A.E. Knoch, or is derived from / consistent with his work? (Here's a relevant link: File not found)It is frankly ridiculous to assert that such a method -- strict, mechanical substitution of a given word in language X (e.g. Hebrew) by a single chosen word in language Y (e.g. English), in all occurrences regardless of context -- should "minimize translation errors". You could say it helps to avoid certain kinds of translation errors, but you need to recognize that it will introduce other kinds of errors.The term "concordance" refers to a list of the distinct words found in a text, such that each word is accompanied by an index of all the locations where it occurs in the text, along with the list of phrases showing the context that surrounds each occurrence. One of Koch's reasons for coming up with the "Concordance Method" of translation was his opinion that a concordance based on an English translation of the Bible was fairly useless in the case where the English translation used a variety of different words for a given original word in Greek or Hebrew.Koch's assertion appears to be that if the translation text as a whole uses this technique of always preserving a precise one-to-one relation between the Greek/Hebrew vocabulary and the English, the concordance built from that translation will be more reliable and informative. I wouldn't doubt that there is some value in building a concordance in this way, especially for those who have an interest in seeing how words were associated and used in the original language (and concordances are generally useful, for those who take the time to use them).But it's a very different thing to assert that the translated sentences resulting from such a method will be "more correct" -- in the sense of conveying the original meaning -- than the sentences resulting from a "looser" translation, where different English words may be used for a given source word depending on the context.The vocabularies of all languages include terms that relate to each other as synonyms, hyper/hyponyms, metonyms and metaphors, and the expressive use of these relations is a common skill shared by all speakers: everyone uses two or more words to mean or refer to "the same thing", and their word choice reflects a wide range of intentions relating to context. Of course, because of differences in phonetic structures, linguistic histories and cultural environments, there can be some surprising differences in how various languages group things together according to these relations. (Anyone who has learned two or more languages will recognize what I'm talking about.)What the "Concordance Method" does, in effect, is to transplant the set of word-sense relations that worked in Greek or Hebrew directly into English, and Koch is asserting that by translating the Bible this way, English readers will eventually learn how these English words are supposed to be related to each other (in their biblical senses), given that their distribution exactly matches the occurrences of the corresponding Greek and Hebrew words. But to do this, of course, readers have to ignore how the various words actually relate to each other in English, and still might not understand why or how the Greek/Hebrew terms were related to each other in the first place.In arguing for his "Concordance Method", Koch makes this curious statement: There are two essential summary points I would extract from that argument:

1. Koch, like so many single-minded Bible literalists, expresses an absurd misconception about the nature of science and scientific knowledge: there is nothing "incommensurable" about square roots or measurements of distance. There are practical limits affecting the accuracy of measurements and the precision of calculations, but these do not defeat the purpose of measurement and calculation. What matters is that we know and can agree on what the limits of accuracy and precision are, and the basis for this knowledge and agreement is the one thing that is essentially lacking in all religious texts: objective, observable evidence.
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2. Koch makes a straight assertion: the nature of the Bible is such that no human can comprehend it. I don't see that as being arguable, and I wouldn't want to argue against that conclusion. I would simply point out that perhaps it makes more sense, in light of that conclusion, to spend one's time on other things, where the prospects for understanding and comprehension are not so impossible.
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In other words, not only is there an insurmountable limit on how well the biblical texts can really be understood in today's languages, but there is also no substantive basis for ever reaching any sort of confirmable, cross-linguistic consensus about what it actually means. The simple fact of fractures that develop in every religious creed, the continuous mutation and diversification of sects, is proof that in the absence of objective evidence, true consensus is unattainable.If you want to argue about interpretations of the Bible in the same way people argue about interpretations of Shakespeare's plays or Joyce's novels, that's fine. But to argue about it in the same way scientists debate theories in astronomy, biology and geology is simply a form of delusion.Of course, maybe some single-minded Bible-literalists do not agree with Koch about the intrinsic incomprehensibility of the Bible, but the fact remains that seeking to understand it in any "scientific" sense (e.g. "this sequence of events in the OT actually happened during this span of time") will only lead to misunderstanding.

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

The verbs are both the same (qal imperfect) as you note. But the grammatical note I looked at says "The imperfect verb form probably carries the nuance of permission." I'll try to find my Hebrew grammar text to find more info, but this makes sense. Even in English, we say, "you may do such-and-such" (meaning you are allowed to, but you don't have to), and we say "you may not do such-and-such" (meaning you are not allowed to). Same verb form, but the negative carries the connotation of command in one case and permission in the other.If the sense were as you translate, shouldn't it have used the perfect rather than the imperfect form?

jaywill: You explained: Isaiah 45:7 conveys yhwh stating:

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7. "I form light and create darkness, make peace and create calamity/evil, I yhwh make all all these."

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There is clearly not much room for "Satan" in that statement. Furthermore, at the conclusion of Isaiah 45:6 yhwh states:

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6. "... I am yhwh and there is none besides [me]."

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The Hebrew Deity, yhwh >elohiym, cannot have an adversary, "a satan."Nor does the Hebrew Deity need someone to help cause havoc on earth.Joshua 8:1 & 18 states this:

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1. Then the yhwh said to Joshua, "Do not fear or be dismayed; take all the fighting men with you, and go up now to Ai. See, I have handed over to you the king of Ai with his people, his city, and his land.
18. "Stretch out the sword that is in your hand toward Ai; for I will give it into your hand."

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Then Joshua 8:25 & 26 state:

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25. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand--all the people of Ai. 26. For Joshua did not draw back his hand, with which he stretched out the sword, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. (NRSV)

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If indeed yhwh >elohiym is, as you claim, "love", then I guess contributing to the killing of men, women, and children {genocide}, as described above, is God's version of tough-love.Who needs a character like Satan?I think that if we can get some of this straight it will make it easier for you and I to continue our discussion.Regards;
Ger