When I asked C's freshman religion teacher which Bible to read, he said that while the King James edition was the one I should read, the Jerusalem Bible
was the one I could read.He was right.
Why is the King James version so difficult? I'm sure Katharine can tell us, and I hope she will.
For now, my sense is that the problems come down to unfamiliar grammar combined with unfamiliar idiom:
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.I don't know what this passage means.
Genesis 6, Verse 4
First of all, I don't know what the word giants means in this context. Were the giants the sons of God?
I'm not sure. I don't know how the words and also after that connect the subject of the first independent clause to the subject of the second independent clause: how do the words and also after that relate giants to sons?
Next question: if the sons of God are the giants, are the giants half-God, half-man? (That can't be right, can it? This is the Bible, not The Odyssey
.)The expression came in unto the daughters is unfamiliar, but I can figure it out from context.
As to grammar, the pronouns are an obstacle and have been in virtually every passage I've read:
...when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown...They refers to the daughters of men; them refers to the sons of God; the same refers to the children; and which also refers to the children. I think. If this passage appeared on the SAT, it would be wrong on grounds that the pronoun antecedents are unclear.
In Abraham Lincoln's day, I gather, children were taught to read using the King James Bible, so presumably the pronoun antecedents were clear enough to readers back then. But the King James has different grammatical rules than the ones we're used to, and that's the problem.
If you don't know grammar, you can read the words, but you can't read the text.
A really cool website is the Online Parallel Bible. You can compare 2 different translations side-by-side.
ReplyDeleteI usually read the NAB, though I love the beauty of the Douay-Rheims. The KJV is a no-go for me because of the books removed.
The NAB has Genesis 6:4 as: "At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
The Douay-Rheims reads: "Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown."
I had to look up "Nephilim" because it wasn't a term with which I was familiar.
Robert Alter has worked hard to translate various sections of the bible: The Five Books of Moses, The Wisdom Books, and Psalms. His notes about his translations are very helpful. His objective is to provide a translation that respects the literary language in which the bible is written as well as to to make the meaning accurate. A major point he makes is that most translations have been explication/explanation as much as translation. He aims to translate, not explain. (His notes provide a lot of extra information.)
ReplyDeleteIf you don't understand parts of the Hebrew scriptures, try reading Wallace Stevens. That is something written in your own tongue in more or less your own time that you will also not understand. In other words, the problem isn't the translation of words or the alien culture, it's the poetry and the internal literary conflict as often as not. Translations that clear things up for you are often interpreting rather than translating.
I've never heard of the Douay-Rheims!
ReplyDeleteI'll post the Jerusalem Bible's translation later today. It uses "Nephilim" instead of giants, too.
I want to be able to read King James. I've tried reading it side by side with the Jerusalem Bible, which is semi-helpful. But I think I'm in the position of schoolchildren trying to read complex prose without being taught the structure of complex sentences....I conclude that expecting children to pick up formal grammar via exposure is a bad idea.
ReplyDeleteI also want to be able to read Shakespeare.
the problem isn't the translation of words or the alien culture, it's the poetry and the internal literary conflict as often as not
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but the problem is also the grammar.
I can understand the grammar in the Jerusalem Bible while still not understanding the poetry.
You're looking at one of the most obscure passages in the book of Genesis, there.
ReplyDeleteNephilim comes from the Hebrew root naphal, "fall", so literally means "fallen ones". But the identity of these "fallen ones" (and, for that matter, the reference to b'nei elohim, "sons of god" in v.2) has been a subject of debate among commentators for quite literally thousands of years.
Traditional Jewish midrash (Biblical exegesis) understands b'nei elohim not as "sons of god" but as "sons of the mighty" (because the root of el, "god", means "power"). Taken this way, the key phrase is in v.2, "they took as wives all those whom they chose". The story then becomes one of the sons of the mighty -- i.e. the children of the aristocracy -- seizing peasant women without regard to the women's own desires. It is a story of sexual immorality and abuse of power. The children of these unions are called fallen ones to refer to their fallen social status; they are fallen from their fathers' lofty heights.
That interpretation, as I say, is the mainstream Jewish exegesis, found in most commentators. An alternative interpretation, found in more mystically-oriented exegeses, takes "b'nei elohim" as a euphemism for "angels", and interprets the "nephilim" as literally half-man, half-angels, like something straight out of Greek mythology.
Sometimes the problem isn't grammar or idiom. Sometimes the content is just plain mysterious no matter how you say it.
While the other translations are also confusing here and there, there are a number of things that make the KJB sentence especially so.
ReplyDelete1. The placement of the semi-colon suggests that the biggest break is between the first clause and the rest of the sentence. But there really shouldn't be a break between it and "and also after that." Cf the oddity of: "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that."
2. What does the "when" clause modify: "those days", or "after that", or both? (The disruptive placement of the semi colon does not help in sorting this out)
3. Is "and they bare children to them" part of the when-clause? Semantically, this would make the most sense. But the immediately preceding comma, the overt subject ("they") and the change from present to past tense (from "came" to "bare"), make this interpretation more difficult. Cf:
"when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men and bore children to them."
3. The tense change seems to serve no purpose other than to obfuscate.
4. What follows, as far as I can tell, is a comma splice. "the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown" should either be its own sentence, or should be conjoined to what precedes it by "and."
5. Why "the same" instead of "they"?
6. An additional comma could reduce the additional obfuscation at the end: "which were, of old, men of renown"
This seems to me to be a classic case of iconicity in language: using linguistic form iconically to express or alter content. (onomopeia is another example). Here, the obfuscating punctuation, syntax, and morpho-syntax may serve to lend an aura of mystery to what might otherwise seem (to the writers of old? or the translators of new?) to be too straightforward for a religious text.
It would be interesting to see the original Hebrew, which, according to what little I've read, involves less embedding and more simple parataxis (sentences connected with "and"). That still leaves plenty of room for obfuscation.
Many other religious texts and/or translations, from what I know of them, rely heavily on an obfuscation that is partially linguistic (Zen koans?)
I've suspected the same thing of certain philosophers (Kant, Hegel) and a number of postmodernists as well.
My preference is for maximum linguistic clarity: the best messages, however mysterious, should shine rather than fade away when viewed in the light of a well-written sentence.
Catherine, I recently read a book called Through the Language Glass; it's a fascinating read and i highly recommend it to you.
ReplyDeleteThis issue was explained by the author as a grammar issue: Basically, the ancient Hebrew language did not allow for relative clauses. Sentences are therefore choppy. Pronoun referents are ambiguous.
If you can use Google books, you can refer to the discussion starting on p. 120. The example they use is Hittite.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oore9h_L48EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=through+the+language+glass+ancient+hebrew&hl=en&ei=ebP_TayFIc2x0AHE3_G3Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=relative%20clause&f=false
It's probably worth noting that Biblical Hebrew grammar is quite different from that of English. For one thing, there are cases, but no tenses; instead of past and present, verbs are either in the perfect of imperfect. For another thing, there is no punctuation; none. So much of what puzzles you is an artifact of the translation; on the other hand, such artifacts are unavoidable, because the translation process inevitably introduces grammatical elements that are not found in the original.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the content is just plain mysterious no matter how you say it.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely - but when you put that together with mysterious grammar and mysterious idiom, you may as well be staring at a page of hieroglyphics.
This issue was explained by the author as a grammar issue: Basically, the ancient Hebrew language did not allow for relative clauses. Sentences are therefore choppy. Pronoun referents are ambiguous.
ReplyDeleteoh, that is fascinating!
I'm looking up the book.
One distinct benefit of Catholic school: our sentences to diagram never came from the KJV.
ReplyDeleteMy preference is for maximum linguistic clarity
ReplyDeleteWas the King James Bible linguistically clear for readers in 1850?