It is only at the beginning of Gen. 4 that we hear that ‘the human knew Eve, his woman, and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said “I have got me a man with the Lord”, and she bore as well his brother Abel.’ Most readers of the Bible will recognize the translation of the Hebrew term for having sexual intercourse as ‘to know’ implying sexual intimacy. Usually this term has a positive connotation but sometimes it refers... Read more
Gen. 3 begins with a bang by telling us that the serpent is most cunning of all the beasts of the field. Here Alter points out that the proper translation of what the snake said to the woman is as follows: “Though God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden…” and in the Hebrew it is an incomplete sentence cut off by the woman interrupting, and indeed it is a false statement by the snake. The... Read more
Certainly two of the more crucial chapters in the whole OT are Gen. 2-3. Here we will deal just with Gen. 2, and save Gen. 3 for the next post. Whole theologies of sin and human fallenness are built on certain readings of these chapters, and sometimes not even the right questions are asked of these texts. For example, if Adam and Eve are created immortal and lose that by sinning, why was there already a tree of life in... Read more
If we follow the advice of Robert Alter, we will avoid the pitfall of trying to do explanation in a translation rather than doing an appropriate literal translation and letting the commentary do the explaining. So let’s take a few samples from Alter’s renderings of Gen. 1-5. So in the very first verse of Genesis we have “the earth was then welter and waste’ a rendering of tohu wubohu. As you can see from the transliteration, the Hebrew rhymes, one of... Read more
A Sign outside a house I saw in Lexington yesterday. There are so many things wrong with this sign: 1) If you dealing with a criminal who is not right with Jesus, a threat with a gun is not going to fix that. You are more likely to be sending him straight to Hell, and do you want that on your conscience?; 2) this is totally incompatible with love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other... Read more
THE HARBINGER Quite quiet Unexpectedly The Harbinger appears Foreshadowing or foretelling Events of coming years. But for good or ill? The image is opaque The Harbinger relates Some kind of news But first or second rate? Hindsight seems much clearer The Harbinger does not A most unwelcome warning The future’s unclear Like shadows before morning? But if its undetermined Then there’s time to make a change Time to make amends For wrongs that have been... Read more
Obviously there are foods to avoid. Actually real fig pudding is quite nice and a regular feature of the Christmas season in the U.K.– its sweet and tasty. If you ever wondered what could go wrong with Santa once a year trying to fly a bunch of reindeer to locations all over the world, let me tell you its not just about getting stuck in someone’s chimney, as the picture above shows. Wind turbines are dangerous to anything flying. Rumor... Read more
While Robert Alter recognizes the traditional source criticism (JEDP) applied to Genesis, he also believes that one can take the final edited form of Genesis as a coherent whole, indeed as a ‘sefer’ the Hebrew word for ‘scroll’, or later for ‘book’. His translation is based on the latter assumption. He draws an analogy with medieval cathedral to which bits and parts was added over the course of many years and even centuries to create a composite whole. ‘What seems... Read more
The Biblical writers of the OT prose revel in repetition, and are not much given to using synonyms, when one particular word will do the job wherever it needs to be used. It is in poetry that you will find them using synonyms from time to time. “The translator’s task, then is to mirror the repetitions as much as is feasible.” (p.xxvii). Yet surprisingly, even with this deliberately limited vocabulary the terms used can convey nuance for instance ‘the man... Read more
Long before there was a Chris Tomlin, terrific contemporary Christmas music was being made by Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. Here’s a nice sample of three of the best songs on Smith’s Christmas lp. I hope you will check out the whole thing. Christmas is coming! Read more
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