Text Criticism Terms

Those of us involved in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible like to throw around certain terms to describe the textual phenomena that we see in the Masoretic Text (MT). Early on in my grad studies, I found myself hopelessly confused about that terminology. Words like homieoteuleton, homeoarcton, dittography, haplography, parablepsis, and Vorlage were thrown around like everybody knew what they meant and had been using them in everyday speech for years. I wish I'd known where to find a list of those terms with definitions (most are in Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible - if you're in the same position I was).

Here's a quick and basic guide to those terms and their typical meaning:

Parablepsis, haplography, homeoarcton, and homieoteuleton all refer to a similar phenomenon. Words or letters get skipped. Parablepsis means the scribe's eye skipped over some text. It's usually caused by homeoarcton (skipping between words with similar looking beginnings) or homieoteuleton (skipping between words with similar endings). Haplography just refers to letters being not written.

Dittography means a word or phrase was written twice. I've done that before with writing "the" twice and and not not noticing it it in in proofreading.

Vorlage is a German term that refers to the master copy that a text was taken from. We usually use it to refer to the original language text behind a translation. We only have the translation but we try to figure out what the Hebrew text they were using looked like. This is mostly used in relation to ancient translations where we don't have a copy of their original text. For modern translations, we usually have the original that was used to make the translation.

Where is the God of Justice?

When Malachi wrote (ca. 400 BCE), the people of Judah have returned from exile in Babylon. They are living in the land. The Temple has been rebuilt, but the vision of the prophets of a restoration and renewal of creation accompanied with God-given prosperity has not happened yet.[1] This renewal was part of the prophets’ rhetoric encouraging the exiles to return to Judah. The re-established community of Jews had expected that renewal to accompany their return. Malachi is explaining why it has not happened yet. They still are not following the covenant. They don’t have faith. They aren’t trusting God.

Observing what’s going on in the world around them, the people are discouraged because it appears that the righteous are suffering and the wicked are prospering. Where is God who should be dealing with the wicked?

Mal. 2:17: You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, "How have we wearied him?" By saying, "Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them." Or by asking, "Where is the God of justice?"

The response from God is:“Trust me. I will act. Have faith. Hold firm despite what you see going on. Keep the commandments. Don’t believe the lie that there is no benefit to it. Don’t believe the lie that there is no distinction between the righteous and the wicked. Return to the covenant and I will act. Keep your end of the agreement (something that you haven’t done throughout our relationship) and I will keep my end of the agreement.”

The people are described as robbing God when they do not keep up their end of the agreement.
Of what is God robbed? (3:8) Their faith. The prophet reports the words of the people that indicate they are losing faith in God based on what they see as injustice allowed to go unpunished in the world. The renewal of creation promised by the prophets was not connected with their return from exile as originally hoped. Why keep the covenant? It is all in vain.

Mal. 3:13-15:¹³"Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, 'How have we spoken against you?' ¹⁴You have said, 'It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts? ¹⁵And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.' "

The prophet answers by recasting the hoped-for restoration into a still-future time, contingent on their repentance and return to the covenant. If they repent, God will act and renew the creation as promised in the earlier prophets. It has not happened because their disobedience has brought them under a curse that prevents them from receiving the benefits of the covenant, similar to the blessings and curses promised by Lev. 26 and Deut. 28 as consequences for obeying or disobeying the covenant.

Mal. 3:6-12: ⁶"For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. ⁷From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, 'How shall we return?' ⁸Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, 'How have we robbed you?' In your tithes and contributions.[2] ⁹You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. ¹⁰Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. ¹¹I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. ¹²Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.

References to “the day of his coming” (3:2), God’s judgment on sinners (3:5), his renewal of fallen creation (3:10-12), and the preservation of a righteous remnant (3:16-17) are indicators that the broader context of this passage refers to the eschatological “day of the LORD” spoken of by the prophets.

God will act when the day of the LORD comes and the righteous will receive their reward, and they will have the answer to their question, “Where is the God of Justice?”

Mal. 3:16-4:3: ¹⁶Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. ¹⁷"They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. ¹⁸Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. ^4:1"For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. ²But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. ³And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.

Mal. 3:1 and 4:5 are used in the NT to describe John the Baptist’s role in preparing the way for Christ. The judgment of the Lord described in 3:2-5 is often applied to Christ’s Second Coming.

New Testament preaching to the Jews indicates that Malachi’s message (in the eyes of the early church) had failed to bring about the proper repentance. Note the similarities between Mal. 3:7 and Acts 7:51-53.

Mal 3:7: From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, 'How shall we return?'

Acts 7:51-53: "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. ⁵²Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, ⁵³you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it."

Malachi presents God as somewhat withdrawn from the daily affairs of humanity because of Israel’s continual disobedience to the covenant. The promises of earthly blessing and renewal are ultimately relegated to the eschatological day of the LORD, and the repentance of Israel is offered as a state of affairs which will hasten the day of the LORD’s coming and the ultimate realization of those promises.

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[1] The passages that include the themes of the “day of the LORD” and/or the renewal of creation include Isaiah 2, 11, 35, 49, and 66; Ezekiel 36 and 47; and Joel 1-3.

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[2] “Tithes and contributions” in this verse represents keeping the covenant even in the small details. It is very likely a direct allusion to Nehemiah 13:4-14 where Nehemiah describes an incident involving negligence in collecting tithes of grain, wine, and oil for the Temple. In context, the passage in Malachi is about obedience to the covenant and faith in God despite the worldly injustice the people complained about, not specifically about tithes and offerings. It would be possible to use tithing in a religious context today as a contemporary example of an issue requiring faith and trust in God. Rhetorically, the preacher would be importing the same symbolism as employed by the prophet to achieve the same ultimate goal – repentance leading to obedience and greater faith in God. New Testament passages on giving do not bring in the strict tithe principle from the Law. Rather, the requirements for giving are simply that the believers give cheerfully and generously by their own free will (see 1 Cor. 16:1-2; 2 Cor. 8-9, esp. 9:5-15). Paul encourages giving by promising that God will supply physical and spiritual needs with all sufficiency for those who give generously.

Meaning of Heb Uncertain

Have you ever read "Meaning of Heb uncertain" in your Bible's footnotes and wondered what the problem was? After all, they gave you a translation, usually in good English. The problem is that they can't burden the text with more than a minimal notation that there is a difficulty here in the original language. They don't have space to give detailed notes on how or why they translated a certain way. I think it would be great if the English translation committees had a separate volume explaining the problems and justifying their solution. Every verse doesn't require that kind of explanation but enough do to make it interesting.

What their "meaning is uncertain" note leaves out it HOW uncertain the reading is. There are different levels of difficulty -- either we know the words but the grammar/syntax doesn't follow usual patterns so we're not sure what it means OR the words themselves are virtually incomprehensible so we give it our best shot at what it might mean.

For example, Isa 42:6 says "I have given you for a covenant (to/for/of) the peoples." The problem is that we know the words but the grammar is unexpected. Literally, we have "for a covenant people." It seems ok in English, but covenant is a noun, not an adjective, so it can't be read attributively in Hebrew. Even if that were ok, the following parallel expression in the verse is "for a light (to/for) the nations" which can't be read attributively at all. Two nouns (covenant and people) are juxtaposed without any preposition, conjunction, or even a definite article helping to determine their relationship. Context suggests the relationship is "covenant to the peoples" as is usually translated. Even so, the NRSV marks this phrase with "Meaning of Heb uncertain" because it's phrased in an unexpected way. This strikes me as odd because we still have a pretty good idea of what it says. What it means to be "a covenant to the peoples" is a problem for exegesis, not translation.

The irony is that the translations do not mark all such verses. A much more obscure verse is found in Ezek 23:42a. Literally with no attempt at making sense in English -- "And sound (of) quiet tumult with/in her and to men from the abundance of mankind being brought drunk from the desert." Again, we know what words are there, but the grammar does not yield much in the way of comprehensible meaning. It's likely there was some kind of textual corruption. For "drunken ones" the Qere wants us to read "Sabeans," a tribe of desert nomads. Not much help. The kicker is that the NRSV does not mark that verse with "meaning of Heb uncertain." I would argue that the meaning here is MORE uncertain than in Isa 42:6.

So, sometimes when that footnote is used, it's still fairly clear what the text says, and sometimes when the text is hopelessly obscure, they don't even hint at it with a note. I guess the only solution is for everyone to learn to read Hebrew.

Bible Translation Philosophy

In my "Lost in Translation" post a few days ago, I promised an overview of the major differences between the most popular English translations. The differences stem from which side of the translation philosophy spectrum each version falls on.

The two sides can be described as word-for-word translation versus thought-for-thought translation. Word-for-word is also called literal and thought-for-thought is called meaning-based, idiomatic, or dynamic equivalence. The difference comes from how much the translator helps the reader understand the meaning of the text. All translations are also interpretations of the meaning of the text at some level. Access to the original languages helps one to see that there is often more than one way to read and understand a verse. Word-for-word translations help keep the reader more aware of that ambiguity in interpreting the text. Thought-for-thought translations usually pick one possible meaning (because they're trying to represent the concept, not the words). Using a meaning-based translation removes some of the ambiguity of interpretation, but also gives the impression that the text has a single clear meaning.

Word-for-word translations try to stick as closely as possible to the wording of the original. No translation is truly word-for-word because that would be unreadable in English but the New American Standard (NASB) comes as close as you can get. Literal translations try to represent the Hebrew and Greek in both wording and sentence structure whenever possible. They tend to be conservative in using readings from other ancient sources besides the traditional texts, so they will let a difficult reading stand with little help to decipher it. In other words, they don't try to interpret obscure, hard-to-figure-out passages for the reader. They just represent it in English as best they can.

True thought-for-thought translations try to represent the meaning of the verse in common everyday English. They're not as concerned with the exact wording or sentence structure of the original language text. They might change the word order of a sentence or make other changes to the wording and grammar to make the meaning more explicit. A paraphrase is an extreme example of this kind of translation. It typically represents what one person understands the text to mean and puts it in simple contemporary wording.

Most translations fall somewhere in the middle and mix elements from the two approaches.

Mixed approach translations are moderately idiomatic, with some constructions which are not totally everyday English, typically Hebrew or Greek phrasing put in English.

The following list explains the translation approaches for the most popular versions.

NASB – New American Standard Bible (1967, 1995). The most literal translation available, it very closely follows the sentence patterns of the original language, sometimes at the expense of readability but the updated version of 1995 greatly improved the English style.

ESV – English Standard Version (2001, 2007). This is an essentially literal translation that excels in providing a very readable, easy to follow text. It is my personal favorite and recommended version. For a fuller explanation of why, click here.

KJV – King James Version (1611-1769). The standard English Bible for over 300 years until the modern English versions began to appear in the 20^th century. Noted for its literary elegance, but many consider it difficult to read due to our unfamiliarity with seventeenth-century English grammar and vocabulary. The New King James Version (NKJV) came out in 1982 and tried to preserve the literary elegance of the KJV in more modern English.

NRSV – New Revised Standard Version (1990). A mostly literal translation that is considered to be the approved version of bible scholars due to its willingness to incorporate new findings such as alternative readings from manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

NIV – New International Version (1978). Their approach attempted to blend the goal of accuracy for a literal translation with the concerns for understanding of a meaning-based translation. It is one of the most popular English versions, but some critics claim it waters down theology too much. The most recent version, the TNIV (Today’s New Internation Version – 2005), was widely criticized for their decision to translate in gender-neutral terms (also a feature of the NCV).

NLT – New Living Translation (1996, 2004). A meaning-based translation created for the purpose of making The Living Bible (a paraphrase of the ASV) more accurate while retaining its highly readable character. It is a fairly accurate translation since it sticks closer to a more literal reading in many places. A new edition came out in 2004. I recommend it for those who want a moderately idiomatic version. It is definitely superior to the NIV in my opinion.

CEV – Contemporary English Version (1995). The goal of this translation was to put the Bible into everyday spoken English. It was originally intended for children, so the three men involved immersed themselves in children’s TV programs and popular magazines to get a feel for the everyday language. It is an okay version for reading, but the meaning of many passages comes off differently than in more literal versions because the translators have decided that the readers would have a hard time understanding certain concepts. It is very close to being a paraphrase. The original target audience was kids at a 4th grade reading level. They gave test copies to parents who thought it was so readable that they wanted it for themselves, so they repackaged it as a Bible for adults, too. Same translation, new packaging. (What does that say about the reading -level of the average church-going adult?)

NCV – New Century Version (1987). This version also aims to put the Bible in contemporary language, but they’ve also given it contemporary packaging. For example, the NCV is the version found in the Biblezines like “Becoming,” a cross between the Bible and a women’s magazine targeted to twenty and thirtysomething women. There’s also one called “Revolve” targeted at teen girls. The "Biblezine" is a good way to make everyone buy a new bible every year too. Good marketing plan.

TM – The Message (1993-2002). The most popular paraphrase. The Old Testament was finally finished in 2002. I guess it's okay if you like paraphrases.

Anyone interested in doing serious bible study should choose an essentially literal translation like the ESV, NASB, or KJV. If your interest is primarily devotional reading, a more idiomatic version like the NLT would be a good choice.

Pro-nun-see-ay-shun

It is perhaps a now little known fact that a dictionary will both tell you what a word means and tell you how to pronounce it. Using a dictionary to check words that you don't really know will prevent you from looking foolish. For example, the foolish misuse of a word is called a malapropism. Note the pronunciation from the dictionary /ˈmæləprɒpˌɪzəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[mal-uh-prop-iz-uhm].

This afternoon I was privileged to hear a student presentation on Christianity in Africa that was rather overloaded with malapropisms. Most were of the humorous mispronunciation type. It began innocently enough with the use of "animalistic" where "animistic" was more appropriate. Understandable that a word you don't know gets recast in your mind into a more familiar term. But then they started to come in fast succession. "Anglican" [ang-gli-kuhn] was pronounced "Angel-i-can." Later we would hear the derivatives "Angel-i-cal-ism" and "Angel-i-cal-ization." This was followed shortly by "Episcopal" [i-pis-kuh-puhl] as "Epi-scAH-pickle." Then there was "macro-kisms" (probably for "macrocosms"). The sacrament of holy communion, Eucharist [yoo-kuh-rist], became "Ew-curious." "Theologians" /ˌθiəˈloʊdʒən, -dʒiən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[thee-uh-loh-juhns] were "thee-uh-lah-jins." (God-lozenges anyone?) My personal favorite was not a malapropism per se, just a humorous use of an adjective where an adverb was more appropriate -- Desmond Tutu was a "huge influential man." The best (i.e., most embarrassing part) was that at the end of the seminar hour when the professor was thanking the presenters, this person was naive enough to boast of being a "good communicator." No matter that her presentation was often uncited verbatim recitations of passages from the assigned reading. I, for one, was bored out of my mind. The only redeeming value of her presentation was the high quantity of humorous malapropisms to catalog.

The moral of the story is that dictionaries will tell you how to pronounce a word, even proper names like "Anglican." If you're unsure about how to say a word, you now know where to look. Look it up before you use it, especially in a presentation. The quickest way to damage your credibility is to start mispronouncing words.