Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIV at MetaCatholic

Doug Chaplin has posted Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIV at MetaCatholic. It is very thorough and creatively organized with a topical acrostic. Check it out to get a taste of what the biblioblogging world was up to during September.

For those who keep track of such things, Jim West is mentioned 3 times. I only bring it up so that I can use my "Jim West" category here.

Translation Insights from the Nida School 2008

I spent two weeks this month learning in an interdisciplinary intellectual endeavor sponsored by the American Bible Society known as the Nida School for Translation Studies. I was in Misano, Italy from 9/7 to 9/21 where the food is excellent, the ocean view is spectacular, and the mosquitoes are terrible. (The learning experience came at a great cost, however. My blogging inactivity must have led to my getting bumped from Jim West's blogroll. Either that or I was cast aside when he found someone new. I'm very disappointed by this.)

Here are the seven most important insights about Bible translation that I took away from the Nida School 2008.

1. Translation is hard work. It really is impossible to fully translate a text.
2. That's because translation involves making difficult choices.
3. Those choices inevitably involve loss on the balance between form and meaning.
4. There is a high degree of subjectivity involved in making those choices.
5. Translation is an art, not a science.
6. Functional equivalence (or dynamic equivalence) becomes more important when translating the Bible for a non-Western culture. Sensitivity to the target culture is absolutely essential. Western culture was shaped by the Bible. The same categories do not apply to cultures that developed independently of the Bible or Western influence.
7. Many modern theories in Translation Studies involve significant change and adaptation of their source material. That level of change is considered unacceptable for most people involved in translating sacred texts such as the Bible.

My research at the Nida School focused on the strategies that English translations have used to render sexual euphemisms in the Hebrew Bible. I'll summarize my findings in a future post, so you all have something to look forward to.

The Bible in One Hand and the Spade in the Other

I used to think the field of "biblical" archaeology had moved beyond the simplistic approach of digging something up, then flipping through the Bible to find an explanation for it. That was the approach in the early days of biblical archaeology, but I thought Syro-Palestinian archaeologists had learned now that they can't make a priori connections between text and artifact.

So, I was completely taken aback to read the following quote from Dr. Eilat Mazar who was profiled last week in the Jerusalem Post magazine. You'll recall she is the archaeologist who found the Gedalyahu ben Pashur seal earlier this summer.

"I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of
excavation in the other," she says. "The Bible is the most important
historical source."

I guess I was wrong. There are still a few biblical archaeologists running around with the Bible in one hand and a tool of some kind in the other. My program at the University of Wisconsin used to have that old style Book and the Spade emphasis back when Biblical archaeology was a bigger part of what was taught.

I should've known better. There will always be people out there using archaeology as a tool of apologetics to defend the inerrancy of the Bible against all attackers. If you're interested in learning more about them, visit The Book and the Spade or Bible and Spade. Those are the people who will get really upset about the upcoming Nova special, The Bible's Buried Secrets.

[Hat Tip to Todd Bolen where I first heard of the Mazar interview. I also read the story via Jack Sasson at the Agade mailing list and saw Jim West's post on it (even if I have 3 other sources, I'm required to mention Jim West. He gets testy if he's not acknowledged.) I also read the story directly from the Jerusalem Post (via Todd Bolen's link). The Nova special about the Bible was on my mind also because of yet another of Jim's posts today (where he unfairly disparaged the legacy of W.F. Albright, in my opinion. Yes, Albright produced G.E. Wright and a school of theological archaeologists, but he also created 2 of the greatest bible and ANE scholars of the latter half of the 20th century, Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman.) I'd also like to thank Google for providing the search capability that led me to the links for The Book and the Spade and Bible and Spade. Ok, I think I've acknowledged everybody...oh wait, thanks to Scribefire for providing the interface where I typed my post.]

The Search for the Aleppo Codex Continues...

I thought it was well-known that some scholars were looking for the missing pages of the Aleppo Codex, but now the mainstream media has decided to do a story on it.

The Aleppo Codex is important because it's probably the best exemplar we have of a carefully done Masoretic manuscript where the textual notations and the consonantal text align well. It was ascribed to Aaron ben Asher whose notation system eventually came to be considered the most accurate and most authoritative. The next best complete Masoretic manuscript that we have is the Leningrad Codex which clearly bears the masoretic notes of a different manuscript. That is, the notations don't line up with the consonantal text in areas like word count, etc.

So if the Aleppo Codex were complete, we would have a better manuscript to use as a base text for all text editions of the Hebrew Bible. Currently, most critical editions of the Hebrew Bible are diplomatic editions based on the Leningrad Codex.

The search for the Aleppo Codex is important and the story that appeared yesterday via the Associated Press gives a good overview of what's being done.

Scholars hunt missing pages of ancient Bible

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer Sat Sep 27, 2:19 PM ET

JERUSALEM - A quest is under way on four continents to find the missing
pages of one of the world's most important holy texts, the
1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible known as the Crown of Aleppo.

Crusaders held it for ransom, fire almost destroyed it and it was
reputedly smuggled across Mideast borders hidden in a washing machine.
But in 1958, when it finally reached Israel, 196 pages were missing — about 40 percent of the total — and for some Old Testament scholars they have become a kind of holy grail.

Researchers representing the manuscript's custodian in Jerusalem now say they have leads on some of the missing pages and are nearer their goal of making the manuscript whole again.

The Crown, known in English as the Aleppo Codex, may not be as famous as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
But to many scholars it is even more important, because it is
considered the definitive edition of the Bible for Jewry worldwide. [More]

HT: Jason Gile, Jim Davila

Literal vs. Idiomatic Bible Translation Method

My experience at the Nida School has been very eye-opening so far into the many different perspectives on translation studies.  We have quite a bit to read, and I came across this quote describing the problem with the debate over whether a literal or idiomatic translation was the better approach.

As is the case in many debates, those in the two camps often wind up talking past each other.  This is sometimes because of differing definitions of or assumptions behind key terms, and sometimes because of differing perceptions of the nature of the subject matter under debate. ...  It is always desirable, but never easy, to agree on terms so that those debating can at least be talking about the same thing.  It is even more difficult, but at least equally desirable, to achieve a perspective which will allow one to understand both sides, to see not so much what was wrong with each, but what was right as well, and how intelligent people could reasonably see each as not just reasonable but right (Tuggy 2003, 244).

That last part describes what I'm trying to accomplish here - get a perspective to understand the different approaches to translation and see what is good about each of them. 

Source Information:

Tuggy, David. 2003. “The literal-idiomatic Bible translation debate from the perspective of cognitive grammar.” In Kurt Feyaerts, ed., The Bible through metaphor and translation: a cognitive semantic perspective, pp. 239-288. Bern: Peter Lang, 2003.