Showing posts with label translation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label translation. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
SBL Link re Hebrew pointing
Best summary yet - and helps support my ignoring the cellophane implied by Lambdin's book (good though it is).
Monday, May 07, 2007
Translating
I wonder whether it is time to put my cards on the table. What is my agenda? What is my motive after 60 years of bodily existence, for this exercise of learning an ancient tongue and putting the words of the Psalms into various pictures and forms of words.
I am over my head, but the Spirit gives me oxygen. There are those whose mother tongue is also English and who have spent a lifetime (some shorter some longer) with Hebrew and its cognate languages. I have spent a year to date after a long slow start of 30+ years perhaps knowing from a distance a word or two. I am very happy to have web-encountered a few of these scholars. I have had a few words with some scholars in the flesh: notably Peter Craigie (long before I was ready to tackle Hebrew) and John Sandys-Wynch and good advice from Bruce Gardner who suggested I ask God for help! So, God, having been engaged to my fleshly engine, and God, knowing well how to teach, God and I continue.
As if Hebrew were a tongue that I was not in a hurry to learn, as if I were a child with the brain of a child, I absorb in visual and aural terms in an almost unconscious manner, using both my own automated transcription (very primitive) and the Hebrew characters themselves. I am taking classes with the local Synagogue, Congregation Emmanu-El in Victoria. I use both online and offline tools generally every day, mostly BlueLetter Bible, Scripture4all, and Mechon-Mamre. The hardest thing to do is to see, hear, and read. Word recognition - I can read my own writing (!) but I cannot instantly recognize Hebrew words. I suspect this is due to the time required to grow brain connections between eye and mouth.
I use a new web-based tool which has been developed over the past 5 years by my own company. I could have used more standard tools but not with such power, flexibility, or beneficial effects to the testing process. But that is not my motivation - I am not in sales.
My 'Why' is highlighted by a post on John Hobbin's site in praise of the translations of David Curzon. I think I want to answer the questions begged by his article on translation.
I did a little search for this unknown person and found more fun and games - perhaps we will meet unknowingly on the streets of NY this summer. DC, where are you? Or should I say, where are you coming from? Physicist, diplomat, poet, theologian - a combination worth meeting. I am glad he is not 'of the cloth'. Better we should learn from everyone.
What questions does he beg:
He writes: Like all other literary classics, the Psalms are always in need of re-translation in order to have them in language, and with an interpretive emphasis, that is both accurate and contemporary. ... My aim is to produce translations usable by contemporary believers and non-believers as structures of meditation.
...
Bravo for the attempt to have poetry that unbelievers will buy and read! I must find more of these examples. My agenda is to undermine the commonplace piety of the 16th century and sentimental 20th century translations we have been subjected to in the Church. I don't know anywhere else that the Psalms are used (except of course the Synagogue - but they read without translation and there I see the LORD inhabiting the praises of his people.) So I am writing for those who are called or call themselves believers. I had better be careful in my criticism - some of these believers, even those one might mistakenly class as simple, mask a considerable Reality. What joy to discover such.
I have no quarrel with them. It is good, isn't it that I have a quarrel with some? (There must be divisions among you). I have a quarrel with some ancient assumptions of Christendom that no longer hold: hierarchy, trust in human forms, piety without engagement, false perfections including inerrancy in any form, and of course my own impatience and potential belligerence. There is a true perfection and exaltation - constantly in the hope of the Psalmist - is it here that Jesus found some of his aphorisms about being lifted up or the nature of the complete or the reality of loving enemies?
And again Curzon writes: The feelings expressed at the beginning of Psalm 13 are infantile. The demands which follow are adolescent. The pivotal recognition is that of a realistic experienced adult. The conclusion is natural wisdom.
...
What! infantile! and recovery to 'Natural' wisdom! What happened to me when I translated Psalm 13? Interesting - I never explicitly wrote about it. It fell in with all those that were in the 'relations with my enemies' genre for me. I certainly understand this - waiting. But the cry - how long - is very specific. The Psalmist cannot live without the presence of God and in some bodily sense of that presence. His hope is in the loving-kindness which has been experienced not just as if by some abstraction called 'belief' (but do see the dialogue between hashem and Elohim in Psalms 14 and 53). To an unbeliever, the Psalmist is deceived by subjectivity. To the Psalmist, the poem is covenant dialogue and God is 'on the hook' to the experience of the loveliness of the knowledge of God. The Psalmist is complaining to the right party! It is not infantile - any more than is Moses when he defends Israel from God's anger asking - what would the Egyptians say? (If we have no enemies, how can we learn how to love them?)
And Curzon writes (twice): God does not answer, and the answer does not depend on belief even though the poem could not have been formed without a culture based on belief in a God who does respond. ... God does not answer supplications in any psalm; the answer to all questions and demands is in the form of a revelation within the psalmist.
Subjectively we are trapped. But God answers. The Psalter has a multiplicity of meanings for me. Utimately God answers with the resurrection. You will not leave your holy one to see corruption. In the meanwhile, we have our full humanity to deal with in our response to the covenant. So I agree in part. God's answer cannot be so 'earth-shattering' as to violate the implied laws of Psalm 148:6 (hurrah for Physics - supported by the Psalms!) Also in the meanwhile, we have the book in which the writers of the NT learned how the Son communicated with the Father and how the life of Jesus recapitulated or was informed by the life of the Psalmist(s) in covenant. I am stretching to express something here - help me out.
And finally Curzon writes and may well achieve: I have in my translations used a strong-stress metric, with as much alliteration and assonance and as little Latinate vocabulary as seemed compatible with contemporary diction and accuracy.
I will admire this when I have time. What a great idea. Here I think he will share with me the desire that we should enter with good intent into this fundamental human endeavour - communicating through the ether across time and space with each other and with --- something more than a Grecian Urn, or the distant maker of a Big Bang without atmosphere. Perhaps string theory with all its unknown dimensions supports the ether after all.
I am over my head, but the Spirit gives me oxygen. There are those whose mother tongue is also English and who have spent a lifetime (some shorter some longer) with Hebrew and its cognate languages. I have spent a year to date after a long slow start of 30+ years perhaps knowing from a distance a word or two. I am very happy to have web-encountered a few of these scholars. I have had a few words with some scholars in the flesh: notably Peter Craigie (long before I was ready to tackle Hebrew) and John Sandys-Wynch and good advice from Bruce Gardner who suggested I ask God for help! So, God, having been engaged to my fleshly engine, and God, knowing well how to teach, God and I continue.
As if Hebrew were a tongue that I was not in a hurry to learn, as if I were a child with the brain of a child, I absorb in visual and aural terms in an almost unconscious manner, using both my own automated transcription (very primitive) and the Hebrew characters themselves. I am taking classes with the local Synagogue, Congregation Emmanu-El in Victoria. I use both online and offline tools generally every day, mostly BlueLetter Bible, Scripture4all, and Mechon-Mamre. The hardest thing to do is to see, hear, and read. Word recognition - I can read my own writing (!) but I cannot instantly recognize Hebrew words. I suspect this is due to the time required to grow brain connections between eye and mouth.
I use a new web-based tool which has been developed over the past 5 years by my own company. I could have used more standard tools but not with such power, flexibility, or beneficial effects to the testing process. But that is not my motivation - I am not in sales.
My 'Why' is highlighted by a post on John Hobbin's site in praise of the translations of David Curzon. I think I want to answer the questions begged by his article on translation.
I did a little search for this unknown person and found more fun and games - perhaps we will meet unknowingly on the streets of NY this summer. DC, where are you? Or should I say, where are you coming from? Physicist, diplomat, poet, theologian - a combination worth meeting. I am glad he is not 'of the cloth'. Better we should learn from everyone.
What questions does he beg:
He writes: Like all other literary classics, the Psalms are always in need of re-translation in order to have them in language, and with an interpretive emphasis, that is both accurate and contemporary. ... My aim is to produce translations usable by contemporary believers and non-believers as structures of meditation.
...
Bravo for the attempt to have poetry that unbelievers will buy and read! I must find more of these examples. My agenda is to undermine the commonplace piety of the 16th century and sentimental 20th century translations we have been subjected to in the Church. I don't know anywhere else that the Psalms are used (except of course the Synagogue - but they read without translation and there I see the LORD inhabiting the praises of his people.) So I am writing for those who are called or call themselves believers. I had better be careful in my criticism - some of these believers, even those one might mistakenly class as simple, mask a considerable Reality. What joy to discover such.
I have no quarrel with them. It is good, isn't it that I have a quarrel with some? (There must be divisions among you). I have a quarrel with some ancient assumptions of Christendom that no longer hold: hierarchy, trust in human forms, piety without engagement, false perfections including inerrancy in any form, and of course my own impatience and potential belligerence. There is a true perfection and exaltation - constantly in the hope of the Psalmist - is it here that Jesus found some of his aphorisms about being lifted up or the nature of the complete or the reality of loving enemies?
And again Curzon writes: The feelings expressed at the beginning of Psalm 13 are infantile. The demands which follow are adolescent. The pivotal recognition is that of a realistic experienced adult. The conclusion is natural wisdom.
...
What! infantile! and recovery to 'Natural' wisdom! What happened to me when I translated Psalm 13? Interesting - I never explicitly wrote about it. It fell in with all those that were in the 'relations with my enemies' genre for me. I certainly understand this - waiting. But the cry - how long - is very specific. The Psalmist cannot live without the presence of God and in some bodily sense of that presence. His hope is in the loving-kindness which has been experienced not just as if by some abstraction called 'belief' (but do see the dialogue between hashem and Elohim in Psalms 14 and 53). To an unbeliever, the Psalmist is deceived by subjectivity. To the Psalmist, the poem is covenant dialogue and God is 'on the hook' to the experience of the loveliness of the knowledge of God. The Psalmist is complaining to the right party! It is not infantile - any more than is Moses when he defends Israel from God's anger asking - what would the Egyptians say? (If we have no enemies, how can we learn how to love them?)
And Curzon writes (twice): God does not answer, and the answer does not depend on belief even though the poem could not have been formed without a culture based on belief in a God who does respond. ... God does not answer supplications in any psalm; the answer to all questions and demands is in the form of a revelation within the psalmist.
Subjectively we are trapped. But God answers. The Psalter has a multiplicity of meanings for me. Utimately God answers with the resurrection. You will not leave your holy one to see corruption. In the meanwhile, we have our full humanity to deal with in our response to the covenant. So I agree in part. God's answer cannot be so 'earth-shattering' as to violate the implied laws of Psalm 148:6 (hurrah for Physics - supported by the Psalms!) Also in the meanwhile, we have the book in which the writers of the NT learned how the Son communicated with the Father and how the life of Jesus recapitulated or was informed by the life of the Psalmist(s) in covenant. I am stretching to express something here - help me out.
And finally Curzon writes and may well achieve: I have in my translations used a strong-stress metric, with as much alliteration and assonance and as little Latinate vocabulary as seemed compatible with contemporary diction and accuracy.
I will admire this when I have time. What a great idea. Here I think he will share with me the desire that we should enter with good intent into this fundamental human endeavour - communicating through the ether across time and space with each other and with --- something more than a Grecian Urn, or the distant maker of a Big Bang without atmosphere. Perhaps string theory with all its unknown dimensions supports the ether after all.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
The brutish and the dull
There seems to be a pair of words used in parallel: the brutish man: אִישׁ בַּעַר and the dullard: וּכְסִיל (Psalm 92, 94, 49, and the latter frequently in Proverbs).
Today I begin Psalm 92 - knowing my own limitations but foolishly venturing into the unknown territory of some sites. I hope I can see the difference between 'publishing in the morning the loving kindness of the LORD' and forcing a cultural opinion about belief on others. I forgot for a moment how each Psalm opens up a new reality to me as I translate. On we go!
Today I begin Psalm 92 - knowing my own limitations but foolishly venturing into the unknown territory of some sites. I hope I can see the difference between 'publishing in the morning the loving kindness of the LORD' and forcing a cultural opinion about belief on others. I forgot for a moment how each Psalm opens up a new reality to me as I translate. On we go!
Psalm 145 Revisited
Still not at the poetic stage, but I had occasion these past two weeks to reread Magonet on the Psalms (A Rabbi Reads the Psalms, Jonathan Magonet SCM Press 2004). So I am beginning to diagram his structures for the Psalms he covers: 145, 92, 23, 25, 19, 22, 51, 118, 115, 121, 124, 134, 146, 90, 73, all of which are in depth. He has fun with Psalm 145, showing a considerable tension between the theology of the chosen and the theology of universality. The Psalmist's universality is shown in the frequency with which he uses the word all. (Blue foreground colour in the diagram.)
Note also I have managed the acrostic with a bit of shifting (clearly seen in the mismatched colours) and a few xtreme spellings and slang: such as xtreme for Het and teous ... righteous for Tsade and killer Glory (not so far from the mark!). Note also the red coloring for the works and deeds referred to. As someone said (must find the quote - Calvin I think) the whole gospel is in the psalter.
If we include the missing Nun from Amos 5:2, the centre of the Psalm is slightly shifted. Where is the centre? Is it the revealing to the children of dust the might and glory, honour of his reign, for all ages, your rule for all; Age to Age? I think the two verse centre is better than the KLM-MLK pun that Magonet suggests (though this works as the stimulus for the acrostic). King/Age are both keywords spanning beginning middle and end of the Psalm.
Other features to note are pronoun usage (I, they, you) and the eventual universality of blessing - if Adonai is blessed by all flesh, there is no two-tiered salvation structure.
Note also I have managed the acrostic with a bit of shifting (clearly seen in the mismatched colours) and a few xtreme spellings and slang: such as xtreme for Het and teous ... righteous for Tsade and killer Glory (not so far from the mark!). Note also the red coloring for the works and deeds referred to. As someone said (must find the quote - Calvin I think) the whole gospel is in the psalter.
If we include the missing Nun from Amos 5:2, the centre of the Psalm is slightly shifted. Where is the centre? Is it the revealing to the children of dust the might and glory, honour of his reign, for all ages, your rule for all; Age to Age? I think the two verse centre is better than the KLM-MLK pun that Magonet suggests (though this works as the stimulus for the acrostic). King/Age are both keywords spanning beginning middle and end of the Psalm.
Other features to note are pronoun usage (I, they, you) and the eventual universality of blessing - if Adonai is blessed by all flesh, there is no two-tiered salvation structure.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Structure and Readings
Somehow when I began this translation project, I knew there was something missing from the traditional English psalter. On at least two fronts, I have now seen what is missing.
1. Translations that fill in the blanks for you prevent you from seeing the gap that the poet left for you to fill in. Sometimes the gap is impossible - it asks for you or your enemy or even God to be filled in - can we live with such ambiguity? (See Psalm 7:13-17 for one example) Some translators just say the Hebrew is difficult and pick one way and leave it at that. Others don't tell you there is a problem, and fill the gap anyway. The reader of the translation may never know that there were other possibilities.
2. Translations that change word order unnecessarily. There was a reason for the Hebrew word order. It reveals a thought process; it contains the equivalent of parentheses - key words bracketing the thought process. These may be a simple or complex parallel, or a chiasm, a parallel deliberately reversed, or they may be tips to a much wider structure. It's a poem - if we are going to sing it in a strange tongue - let's not break it.
I feel vindicated by a recent reissue of A Rabbi Reads the Psalms by Jonathan Magonet. What a lovely book. I love it because he is doing exactly what I have been looking for: revealing the structure and the convenantal dialogue in these poems. He outlines his discovery of the structure of Psalm 25 (and since I haven't translated this yet, it will be easier for having read Magonet) and then laments briefly that his work was rediscovery (Möller 1932 ZAW) of structures confirmed by others - but doubted by Ridderbos. Having looked at this passage in Craigie, it is clear that for once, I am following a set of scholarly links. Craigie is read in London too. So Magonet goes to some lengths to show his structure in detail. He reads it in the context of Exodus 33 and 34. It is convincing in my opinion and will appear soon in these notes.
(My wife likes his book too! It may be the first Biblical Studies book I have read in our 39 years of marriage that she might read too.)
When I was last at the library, I at first only got two commentaries out (Dahood on Psalms 101-150 and Pope on the Song). I got down the three flights of stairs from the BS stacks and heard an inner voice saying: you didn't check out BS-1430 - go up and see what you find. I found these two and several other books that I added to my checkout pile. These two were both good calls.
1. Translations that fill in the blanks for you prevent you from seeing the gap that the poet left for you to fill in. Sometimes the gap is impossible - it asks for you or your enemy or even God to be filled in - can we live with such ambiguity? (See Psalm 7:13-17 for one example) Some translators just say the Hebrew is difficult and pick one way and leave it at that. Others don't tell you there is a problem, and fill the gap anyway. The reader of the translation may never know that there were other possibilities.
2. Translations that change word order unnecessarily. There was a reason for the Hebrew word order. It reveals a thought process; it contains the equivalent of parentheses - key words bracketing the thought process. These may be a simple or complex parallel, or a chiasm, a parallel deliberately reversed, or they may be tips to a much wider structure. It's a poem - if we are going to sing it in a strange tongue - let's not break it.
I feel vindicated by a recent reissue of A Rabbi Reads the Psalms by Jonathan Magonet. What a lovely book. I love it because he is doing exactly what I have been looking for: revealing the structure and the convenantal dialogue in these poems. He outlines his discovery of the structure of Psalm 25 (and since I haven't translated this yet, it will be easier for having read Magonet) and then laments briefly that his work was rediscovery (Möller 1932 ZAW) of structures confirmed by others - but doubted by Ridderbos. Having looked at this passage in Craigie, it is clear that for once, I am following a set of scholarly links. Craigie is read in London too. So Magonet goes to some lengths to show his structure in detail. He reads it in the context of Exodus 33 and 34. It is convincing in my opinion and will appear soon in these notes.
(My wife likes his book too! It may be the first Biblical Studies book I have read in our 39 years of marriage that she might read too.)
When I was last at the library, I at first only got two commentaries out (Dahood on Psalms 101-150 and Pope on the Song). I got down the three flights of stairs from the BS stacks and heard an inner voice saying: you didn't check out BS-1430 - go up and see what you find. I found these two and several other books that I added to my checkout pile. These two were both good calls.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Psalms 14 & 53
Reading all the books about the psalms is no substitute for reading the psalms themselves. But how will you read without dealing with the original text? For example, Bible gateway notes that "The Hebrew words rendered fool in Psalms denote one who is morally deficient." Is that so? And if so, what is the implication for us who read the psalm? Are we morally deficient? or not? Are we right in all our thoughts? Do we ever note the possibility of the nihilism implied in Psalm 14 or 53? Is moral insufficiency of the essence of the problem?
In fact the 'Hebrew words' as if such a piece of intelligence was informative are not purely about 'morality' - whatever that means to us. They are about the tension in us to want our own power and the need in us to know some degree of transformation into joy. The word for fool is not a noun but an adjective. There is no definite article in the poem: so I have translated it as 'foolish said in his heart'. I did this so I could escape momentarily from the automatic reaction in me that says - I'm not so foolish. But am I?
The difference between Psalms 14 and 53 is instructive - in one case the word following abomination is 'wantonness', in the other it is 'injustice'. This foolishness is deeper than our acknowledgement of God as 'existing'. There are two words only in this phrase - AIN ELOHIM - 'God is of no account' would be one possible translation.
The phrase - 'there is none that doeth good' is three words in the Hebrew AIN OSEH TOV - literally 'nothing doing good', in parallel with 'nothing God'. These make the poem less moralistic than relational. Without the presence of God, we are only our own presence - incomplete, and in tune with 'nothing'. The consequences are how the term for foolish is defined in the lexicon: senseless, not appreciating the benefits of the LORD. Note how psalm 53 and 14 use different terms in the same spot in the poem for God - Elohim in Psalm 53 and YHWH in Psalm 14.
Note also the repetition of 'nothing doing good' followed by yet another difference in the psalms - stubborn (14) and not worshipping (53). Such is our state without the joy of love that God, the LORD gives. Whatever our intellectual knowledge - it is not in our own knowing what is not good, it is in the excellence of knowing that Good that comes only from God - an inexpressible word contained in the final verse of the psalm: Salvation (Hebrew yeshua) giving expressed joy in his people.
So this psalm is far from being merely moralistic in content. It lies on the axis of nihilism and joy - deeply expressing for us the reality of being counted among of God's people.
In fact the 'Hebrew words' as if such a piece of intelligence was informative are not purely about 'morality' - whatever that means to us. They are about the tension in us to want our own power and the need in us to know some degree of transformation into joy. The word for fool is not a noun but an adjective. There is no definite article in the poem: so I have translated it as 'foolish said in his heart'. I did this so I could escape momentarily from the automatic reaction in me that says - I'm not so foolish. But am I?
The difference between Psalms 14 and 53 is instructive - in one case the word following abomination is 'wantonness', in the other it is 'injustice'. This foolishness is deeper than our acknowledgement of God as 'existing'. There are two words only in this phrase - AIN ELOHIM - 'God is of no account' would be one possible translation.
The phrase - 'there is none that doeth good' is three words in the Hebrew AIN OSEH TOV - literally 'nothing doing good', in parallel with 'nothing God'. These make the poem less moralistic than relational. Without the presence of God, we are only our own presence - incomplete, and in tune with 'nothing'. The consequences are how the term for foolish is defined in the lexicon: senseless, not appreciating the benefits of the LORD. Note how psalm 53 and 14 use different terms in the same spot in the poem for God - Elohim in Psalm 53 and YHWH in Psalm 14.
Note also the repetition of 'nothing doing good' followed by yet another difference in the psalms - stubborn (14) and not worshipping (53). Such is our state without the joy of love that God, the LORD gives. Whatever our intellectual knowledge - it is not in our own knowing what is not good, it is in the excellence of knowing that Good that comes only from God - an inexpressible word contained in the final verse of the psalm: Salvation (Hebrew yeshua) giving expressed joy in his people.
So this psalm is far from being merely moralistic in content. It lies on the axis of nihilism and joy - deeply expressing for us the reality of being counted among of God's people.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
