[quote]KingKai25 wrote:
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
[quote]KingKai25 wrote:
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote: A better, accurate translation of the first 3 verses seems awkward in English: “In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth–and the earth was (startling) desolate and empty, with darkness upon the surface of the deep…” Note the tense–its like the past progressive; this is descriptive of events left incomplete in the past. The first action of God is not “created” but saying, “(Let there) be light.” [/quote]Now hold on just a second there Spanky. Are you meaning to imply either incompetence or dishonesty or both in EVERY one of these translators and translation committees?
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-1.htm
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-2.htm
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-3.htm
Furthermore, even if your (or probably Alter’s) past progressive deal is accurate, that could mean 30 seconds. I know you’re not gonna try n say that the preponderance of early Jewish thought, though not uniform in detail, featured a large representation of a belief in millions of years in the Genesis narrative. [quote]DrSkeptix wrote: <<< chooses to follow the literal word of the Bible, one should be a literalist in the extreme, >>>[/quote]Nonsense man! Not every single statement of the bible is intended literally. Also, there are lies reported in the bible as well. [quote]DrSkeptix wrote:<<< and question the use of venerable but inaccurate translations. [/quote] Don’t take me wrong, you are an extraordinarily capable fella and yes I do remember that Hebrew is a native language for you. I mean no disrespect. However, just to be clear. You ARE advancing Alter’s as THE only reliable translation in history then? Because his method and results are quite often quite unique.
[/quote]
This really wasn’t my conversation, but even a background in modern Hebrew does not qualify one as an exegete. Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative is an excellent work, but he is not an exegete either. Moreover, for the record, an ostensibly “literal” translation is not a more accurate translation; certain phrases have to be translated idiomatically into English to be accurately represented.
Regarding your attempt to translate verse 1 as a dependent clause, there are two main problems. First, the arguments in favor of taking verse 1 as a dependent clause hold no water, as they are premised on an tenuous comparison with the beginning of the Enuma Elish and a mistaken assumption about the significance of the definite article’s absence on bereshit. Second, a common convention in Genesis is the beginning of a section with a summative statement. This is evident, for example, in the repetition of the phrase, “these are the generations” found throughout Genesis. Further supporting taking Genesis 1:1 as a summative statement is the parallel in 2:1, the closing verse of the section.
And for the record, though my Hebrew is nowhere near as good as my Greek, I’m not sure why you are taking a qal perfect verb as a past progressive; it is the imperfect that denotes progressive action, and the time designation is determined by context.[/quote]
First, I am not a native speaker of Hebrew. And my grammar is awful without a reliable guide.
Second, the lack of a definite article is irrelevant.
Third, the tense is not qal. In qal, it would read “elohim borach” --“God created.” BUt the text is clear: “borach elohim” a construction in the past tense closest to the awkward English idiom I used. (So the summary staatement issue is nice, and respected, but doesn’t hold here.) I would leave it to JB to correct my understanding of the binyan (construction) here.
Last, this is not taken from Alter’s translation; but from Richard Eliot Friedman’s translation as well as others.
[/quote]
You are completely wrong, Doc. bara is a finite verb, a qal perfect 3 masculine singular. Not sure where you are getting your misinformation, but it is a qal form. And the positioning of the subject “elohim” AFTER the finite verb is standard in biblical Hebrew (verb, subject, object) - the sentence reads, “bara elohim,” God created. I’ve got my BIblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (the standard Hebrew text) open right now. [/quote]
Wrong? Not just “wrong,” but “completely wrong!”
Ok, I’ll see you biblia hebraica and raise you one Rashi.
(BTW, noun-verb position does make a difference, but it is a difference that modernists ignore freely.)
I choose not to translate the entire section from Rashi, but he insists that “breshit bara elohim” is to be understood as “breshit baro” in the context of the lead in, “breshit” not “reshit” (“for (or when) in the beginning” not “in the beginning” because “reshit” acts as a preposition immediately before a noun.)
To simplify, from Herczeg’s annotation of Rashi: "‘bora’ is understood as a gerund rather than a verb. { or the noun, creation or creating} To Rashi, "the verse does not come to teach the order of Creation…rather, the first act of God stated by the passage is ‘God said, “Let there be light.”’ etc.
Sorry that I did not explain that better at first; I was working from memory. But each modern faithful translation–Friedman, Pelcovitz, Herczeg (I don’t know about Alter)–uses something like the awkward construction, “In the beginning of God’s creating…” wherein the act of creating is expressed as a “gerund” or as I put it naively, in the English equivalent of the past progressive. This reading puts the emhasis where it belongs: on the first utterance which was the first act of creation.
It may be qal but that does not make it easy. I may not be completely right, but I am certainly not completely wrong.