Biblical Translation--Eden

Wow. Thank you. I can't hope to comment on the specifics of Ancient Hebrew vs. English, or any details of other languages that may have had a role to play in arriving at the current situation. But here's what I can do... Too few people (only a seeming handful of native English speakers) are aware of the complexity and variability of translation in general, let alone Biblical translation in particular. I suspect that breaking it down into just two "methods" is an over-simplification -- but it is a useful and informative way to simplify the issue, because of the linguistic dilemma that it reveals. I'd like to know if the following paraphrase of the above-quoted portion is consistent with what you meant to say.In order to fully understand literary works in a given language -- or in this case, the written record of an oral tradition -- you should ideally have productive fluency in that language, meaning that not only do you understand what is written/said, but you are also able to express yourself well enough that speakers of the language would understand you. To get this ability, you need lots of practice.It's a good bit harder when there are no living speakers of the language that you can converse with, but in this case, you just need to read a lot more, and read things over and over, and work out different paraphrases of a given passage, and consult with others who are trying to do the same thing. Ultimately, you develop a sense of knowing what the author was probably thinking, how he would have uttered each passage when reading it aloud, and so on. In effect, you learn to become an "active listener/reader", to be able to build up an understanding of each phrase as it is presented to you.If you then try to render that understanding into a different language, you need the same productive fluency there as well, knowing how readers/listeners use that other language, so that you can convey to them a set of meanings that is equivalent to the original text. That is what "expositor" style translation does. (That is, when you say "expounds upon the text to make it say what the reader expects it to say", you mean: "presents it to the reader of some other language so that it 'feels' the same way as it would to a reader of the original language."The big problem with this approach is the unavoidable likelihood that your interpretation will reflect, in possibly significant ways, your own personal background, mindset, feelings, and so on. And there's a much more serious sense in which the biases are not just your own personal "issues", but are the general word world-views of the community within which you were raised, and for whom you are translating.Indeed, a superficial interpretation of what you said could be the starting point for a holy war -- or, more rationally, for abandoning any notion that a "holy" text should provide a basis for any kind of authority: your wording seems to say that the translator tries to tell the target audience what he thinks they want to hear. (If that's actually what you meant, well, bravo! I won't argue with that. )Of course, gaining productive fluency is a long and difficult process, especially for adults working on dead languages, and it usually helps to have a systematic approach that involves an analytical breakdown of the source language into its components and structure. You figure out how to take things apart, you identify the meanings of the pieces, and you assemble the translation, much like you would build a cabinet or a model ship.But there are a few problems with this approach, too. First many of the pieces, taken by themselves, are ambiguous -- they mean different things in different contexts, so you can't get away with just putting pieces together; you still need to have some amount of "fluency". Second, while a broad analysis of the language and its major attributes (nouns, verbs, word order, etc) is pretty consistent and rational (and fairly comparable to the major attributes of other languages), there are many niggling details -- irregularities, idioms, rare forms -- that defy systematic analysis, and could actually be analyzed in a variety of different ways, and defy direct translation into another language.Try to pick an analysis for (e.g.) an English phrase like "suffice it to say...", which is still used a fair bit -- you'll get into trouble no matter what you choose. The "unschooled" reader might view "suffice" as an imperative verb here, but that won't work -- you can't say "Suffice this thing to do that thing"; the well-informed grammar analyst will recognize it as a relic of an earlier stage of English, when there was relatively free word order (subject could follow verb), and there was an actively used subjunctive verb form, with no "s" ending on the third-person singular (i.e. as opposed to "it suffices to say..."), but this sort of structure occurs almost nowhere else in the language today. To translate it effectively, you might have to rephrase it like "let it suffice to say..." or "It's sufficient to say...", but in any case, picking a good translation into Hebrew based solely on the English grammar would be a mistake, I think.Obviously, I don't intend to assert that all translation is doomed to failure. But in the context of this thread, I think the important point to make is that many different translations are always possible, with varying degrees of suitability. Just as there are many ways to say the same thing -- and many ways to understand something that has been said -- using only a single language, so there are even more variations possible when trying to convey a meaning across languages.Also, there is always the presence of errors: mistakes in speech or writing (as well as in hearing or reading) are known to affect communication between speakers of the same language, and these problems are amplified in communication across languages.To establish a doctrine, to enforce a behavior, even to hold stubbornly to a personal belief, on the basis of an assertion that "it must be so because the Bible says exactly this..." is ultimately absurd. Translation can work and can be useful, but it is hard, and the results can never be more than approximately "accurate." Take such results with numerous grains of salt, and an open mind.(In the domain of scientific research, in contrast, you have the unambiguous and universally understood language of numeric measurement and mathematics. Doctrine, behavior and beliefs that are based on empirical evidence would also be founded on approximate accuracy, but here the limits of accuracy are acknowledged and understood, and it's okay to change things when the evidence calls for a change.)Edited by Otto Tellick, : a rather important spelling correction in 6th paragraph (as indicated by strike-out)

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

So, you're talking about the concept of a "checksum" (just like what is used when transferring binary data between computers or other digital devices)... Were the number sums written down at the end of each line? each page? Were they on the same page with the text, or on a separate page? (I'm assuming they could not have been committed to memory.) Was it a "base-10" numeric system? (I don't think anyone had invented the zero yet.)And what would someone do upon coming up with an incorrect total? What would be the potential for confusions, whereby two strings of letters, with just a couple subtle differences between them, happen to produce the same sum? (This can happen with computer checksums as well, though it is relatively quite rare.) Virtually? Not exactly? I could imagine the error rate being lower than what you would get without this process, but it's hard to imagine real perfection. Also, the notion of checksums applies only to direct copying, character by character. There's no way to apply it to translation. And even when you can copy a Hebrew text exactly, you cannot assure a uniformly consistent interpretation of it (in Hebrew) over the life of the copy. People's usage of the language changes inexorably over time, and that affects the meanings of words. Sure, having it written consistently helps a great deal to slow the rate of change, and rituals do a great deal as well to "fossilize" the "intended" meanings (except when the community as a whole ends up changing its intent).Muslims are similarly focused on preserving the "accuracy" of Koranic text, but seeing how that religion has fractured within a relatively short time, I'd have to conclude that preserving the exact text is, by itself, no guarantee of preserving actual consistency. And in the case of Arabic, it has raised all sorts of other problems for Arabic speakers, who must become familiar with an ancestral version of their spoken language in order to learn how to read and right. It would be like Americans having to learn Chaucerian English just to read a newspaper. It's doable, but it's just not as easy as it ought to be.

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

So, are you saying that the discussion is at an impasse? That there is no further basis for (re)consideration of any stance other than to conclude that "the strictest form of creationism" is the only choice? (And what does that entail?)And the basis for this impasse, the reason why further consideration is futile, is simply that the Bible says exactly this:... -- have I understood you correctly?You seem to be making your statements in a manner that asserts you cannot be mistaken, that your particular translations for the specific Hebrew morphemes and phrasal constructions are beyond dispute, and perfectly inerrant. And by extension, your views would seem, potentially, to contradict a lot of observed physical fact.If I have misunderstood you, I apologize, but I hope you can understand the cause of my confusion.If I have paraphrased your intent correctly, I assume you understand that the vast majority of the world will not agree with you, and despite what you might believe, there is no good (factual, objective, rational) reason for them to change their minds. Indeed, the world itself (even granting that it's God's creation) offers a lot of evidence to refute creationism, if you are using that word to mean what most people mean by it. So I'm really puzzled by your statements.

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

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.

Well, jaywill and autumnman have been going on now (back, forth and sideways) at great length, and have expanded the topic of this thread to great breadth. However, speaking as an outsider to both of their respective points of view, I can honestly say that their discussion seems to be hitting continuously and repeatedly on the issue that is at the core of the EvC Forum: what is the basis for belief, and if there is a need to reconcile divergent beliefs, on what basis can this be done?("Belief" here is meant to encompass our ideas about how we should "understand" ourselves, other people, life, the world, the universe, and everything in between; it covers all the stuff going through our minds that is not the direct result of sharable, replicable observation or physical sensation resulting from external, verifiable phenomena.)I would propose the following as the possible bases for holding a given belief (I'd be interested if others would propose changes or additions to this list):

1. Statements, descriptions and (historical or allegorical) accounts made in specific books (e.g. "the Bible says...", or "My textbook's description of the periodic table of elements says...")
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2. Profoundly personal, subjective, internal experiences (e.g. "I have felt the presence of God/Jesus/{other spiritual entity} in my life...", or "I can feel the energy that binds all living things..." or "Understanding these equations and how they describe what I've seen, I feel an overwhelming sense of awe-of/oneness-with/{other emotional state about} nature that I cannot express in mathematical terms...")
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3. Extrapolations or extensions drawn from what is written in specific books, to supply details that were not written there, based on our current sense of what is "logical" or "consistent" -- that is, "reading between the lines" (e.g. "the Bible /my textbook doesn't explicitly say anything about {pick a detail... let's call it X}, but based on what it does say about things relating to X, here is what I believe about it...")
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4. Extrapolations from external or internal experience, to consider things we have not yet experienced, and to organize our expectations about what sorts of things we are likely or unlikely to encounter in the future (e.g. "I believe that arguing with so-and-so about this-or-that will not do anyone any good..." )
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The last two items are generally malleable and flexible -- most people can recognize which of their beliefs are based on extrapolation, and can amend their ideas as new knowledge or a different understanding becomes available. (Well, some people are less willing or able than others in this regard, of course.)Regarding item 1, we have a serious problem when the book in question was originally written thousands of years ago, in a language that is not actively spoken by any living population, about so many things that are beyond or totally outside our current ability to verify independently. The people whose hands first gave physical form to the words of the Bible are long dead; determining their communicative intent (whether or not you consider it to be "their own" or "God's") becomes a tricky matter of linguistic inferences about how the lexicon, syntax and semantics of that language relate to those of any currently living language, which in turn may be based on second-, third-, nth-hand information about meanings and interpretations; ultimately, our understanding of the text requires some speculation (which almost gets us back to the original topic of this thread!)Obviously, none of this is an issue for a textbook describing the periodic table of elements. The content is independently verifiable, and can be understood with consistent precision by all who learn the mathematics and observational techniques involved.Turning to item 2 above, which people often call a (or the) "religious experience", this may be the most significant and powerful basis for personal belief. If I have correctly understood some of the things jaywill has said here, it may be an indispensable prerequisite for holding a belief that is consistent with the one he holds. The problem is that this basis is intrinsically subjective. If people "share" it, it is because they agree to believe that each individual has internally felt "the same thing" that other individuals have felt internally, without any overt, observable evidence for the commonality of their respective experiences. (I would expect that some people would profess to have had such an experience, and would assert that theirs is "the same thing" that others have experienced, without ever quite understanding what sort of thing they're talking about -- what they're actually doing is establishing and maintaining membership in a close-knit group, for whatever reason.)A lot of people have not had such experiences, and therefore have no basis for sharing a belief of this sort -- such people could readily view such "experiences" as imaginary, self-deluding or even hallucinatory. In any case, to say that we "must" have such an experience is not a convincing argument.The length and breadth of the current thread is ample evidence of how differences in belief -- stemming from differences in biblical interpretation or "revelatory experience" -- can become intractable when the parties involved have no other basis for their respective positions. I would even tend to say it is a variant on solipsism (one of my favorite words these days), in the sense that it is an argument between parties for whom personal belief determines reality rather than the other way around.I sincerely hope that no one (esp. autumnman and jaywill) will take my remarks as demeaning or insulting -- that certainly is not my intention, because I have found many of their posts here to be genuinely informative and/or interesting. My intention, in the (presumed) spirit of the EvC Forum, is to contribute an alternative point of view.Edited by Otto Tellick, : (minor grammar repair)

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