'soma psychikon' in 1 Cor. 15

 

From JETS:

Second, many commentators, most notably Robert H. Gundry in his magisterial Soma in Biblical Theology, have exploded the old ploy to construe σώμα ψυχικόν as "physical body" and subsequently oppose it to σώμα πνευματικόν ("spiritual body"). By way of summary, σώμα is never used in the NT to denote anything other than the physical body or the human being with special emphasis on the physical body. Hence to maintain that σώμα πνευματικόν refers to a σώμα made out of πνεύμα ("spirit") is self-contradictory, for an immaterial body composed of πνεύμα, by definition, ceases to be a σώμα ("physical body"). Rather, as William Lane Craig points out, Paul discloses the meaning of ψυχικόν and πνευματικόν in 1 Cor 2:14-15: "Α ψυχικός άνθρωπος Csoul-ish human') does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him or her . . . but the spiritual human (πνευματικός) discerns all things." Here we find that ψυχικός and πνευματικός represent opposite dominating principles towards which a person can be fundamentally oriented—either the person's own ψυχή ("soul") or the πνεύμα ("Spirit") of God.29 Clearly ψυχικός άνθρωπος does not signify a "physical human," but rather a human primarily inclined towards the selfish desires of his or her own soul. Likewise, πνευματικός does not refer to an immaterial human, but rather a human primarily inclined towards the desires of the Holy Spirit. It logically follows, therefore, that a σώμα ψυχικόν ("soul-ish body") is a body instinctively steered by the will of the soul, while the σώμα πνευματικόν ("spiritual body") is the same body of flesh as the σώμα ψυχικόν but instinctively steered by the will of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the notion that Paul's doctrine of resurrection in 1 Cor 15:44 opposes the physical body to an immaterial spiritual body is seen to be vacuous.

continued...

BetterBibles.com

 

A belated celebratory shout for the new www.BetterBibles.com, the new home of the Better Bibles Blog (formerly found here), one of my favorite blogs on the Web, period—and the inspiration for this blog and many of its posts. In my glee I cooked up a Twitter feed and two widgets for BetterBibles.com and will be turning them over to the powers that "BBB" at that blog:

Twitter feed:

twitter.com/betterbibles

 

Widgets:

(feed with links to posts only)	(feed with links to both posts and comments, via Twitter)

 

VT on [ydm] in Amos 5:13

From Vetus Testamentum :

To understand the word ידם in Amos v 13 the point is not necessarily to decide whether it signifies silence, mourning or moaning but to recognize that the verb, regardless of which of these options one prefers, signifies shock and extreme anguish before a display of God’s power.14 This is evident from other usages of the verb in the Hebrew Bible.

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JSOT on 'anak' in Amos 7:8

From JSOT:

Duping the Prophet: On [anak] (Amos 7.8b) and Amos's Visions*
by Tzvi Novick
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Vol. 33, No. 1, 115-128 (2008)

Conclusion

I have suggested that, after Amos intercedes to avert the destruction
portended in the first two visions, God rigs the third and fourth visions
so that the prophet will unwittingly sentence Israel, and thus preclude
himself from again intervening on their behalf. God achieves this aim
by taking advantage of the fact that Amos, while prophesying in the
north, is by origin a southerner. The wordplays in the third and fourth
visions rely on puns particularly accessible only to speakers of the
northern dialect, so that Amos can be lured into them unsuspectingly.
In line with this approach, I have interpreted [ank] in 7.8b as a dialectical
variant specific to the north, with the meaning ‘I’ or ‘sigh’. Different
versions of both interpretations have been suggested before, but, in
addition to providing a general framework that explains why [ank] on
either interpretation is otherwise unattested in Biblical Hebrew
(namely, because it is specific to the northern dialect), I have also
marshaled new arguments in support of both proposals.

continued...

NTS on 'arrabon' in 2 Cor. 1 and 5

From NTS:

[A]ρραβων as Pledge in Second Corinthians
Yon-Gyong Kwon
New Testament Studies (2008), 54: 525-541

Abstract

This article argues that αρραβων in 2 Corinthians (1.22 and 5.5) does not mean ‘down payment’ or ‘first installment’ but ‘pledge’ without any sense of pars pro toto. After showing that the meaning of the word depends on its context, the study goes on to examine the two occurrences of the word, concluding that Paul either appeals to the Spirit as God's pledge for his apostolicity (1.22) or as a pledge for the surety of bodily resurrection (5.5). The common view that αρραβων depicts the Spirit as the present realization of salvation is thus exegetically unfounded.

Brad Young on the translation of the word 'torah'

 

Brad Young:



from Meet the Rabbis, p. 39

Arie Uittenbogaard on 'a little lower' in Psalm 8:5

 

From Arie Uittenbogaard:

Psalm 8:5 celebrates mankind's autonomy and sovereignty. The word elohim should here (if not always) be translated with 'powers that be' (after Romans 13:1) and the verb hasar should not be ignored:

[My] translation:

Psalm 8:5, "And You made him so that he requires little from the powers that be."

continued...

Uittenbogaard's take was really interesting and brand new to me. I wonder if this reading would at all speak to Israel's polytheistic religious surroundings; all other religions in their world at the time (how's that for a generalization) bore the idea that you got different things (i.e. crops, offspring, victory) from different gods, and had to appease them all with different sacrifices--and so monotheism was radical because it suggested one God could be in charge of everything. (By the way, I think the majority of American Christians are functionally polytheistic, worshiping God on in his sanctuary and the gods of capitalism, consumerism, nationalism, militarism, and other -ism's in their sanctuaries.) But still, the "requires little from the powers that be" doesn't fully fit this idea, since humans needed nothing from the idol gods of their neighbors (if that's what 'elohim' means here), and needed everything from God.

Anyway, I wonder how YLT and GLT (see below) landed on their rendering (which Uittenbogaard applauds), since it seems like a very unusual choice compared with most historical versions given here. But the NET (see below) sure has done its homework on this!

More generally, looking at these wildly varying translations of this verse is a reminder of the peril of Bible translation; there are so many different ways to translate a verse--and even so many different ways to get it right! And when self-professed "literal" (<skepticism>snort</skepticism>) translations conflict with each other this much, you see why the word "literal" should never leave home without its quotation marks. I realized in compiling these that even the most staunch supporter of "literal" translation would never consistely render "elohim" as "gods" rather than occasionally (and interpretively, if correctly) go with "God." Wouldn't true consistency (or, the [<scorn>eye roll</scorn>] concordant method) in, among other places, Exodus 20:2-3, either turn references to God into "pagan gods" or references to pagan gods into "God"? That would be a slight problem.

Update: Here and here is the analysis I asked for from John Hobbins, and here's a look at the LXX from Suzanne. More here from Bob MacDonald.

Heb
ותחסרהו מעט מאלהים

Heb(ptd)
וַתְּחַסְּרֵ֣הוּ מְּ֭עַט מֵאֱלֹהִ֑ים

Heb(xlit)
watəḥassərēhû mmə‘aṭ mē’ĕlōhîm

LXX
ηλαττωσας αυτον βραχυ τι παρ' αγγελους

LXX(nets)
You diminished him a little in comparison with angels

Targum


Vulg
Minuisti eum paulominus ab angelis

Wycliffe
Thou hast maad hym a litil lesse than aungels

Luther
Du hast ihn wenig niedriger gemacht als Got

Coverdale
After thou haddest for a season made him lower the the angels

Geneva
For thou hast made him a little lower then God

KJV
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels

YLT
And causest him to lack a little of Godhead

ASV
For thou hast made him but little lower than God

JPS
Yet Thou hast made him but little lower than the angels

RSV
Yet thou hast made him little less than God

BBE
For you have made him only a little lower than the gods

GNT
Yet you made them inferior only to yourself

GLT
For You have made him lack a little from God

NIV
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings*

NRSV
Yet you have made them a little lower than God*

* Or than the divine beings or angels: Heb elohim

NJB
Yet you have made him little less than a god

ESV
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings*

TNIV
You have made them* a little lower than the heavenly beings**

CEV
You made us a little lower than you yourself

NET
and make them a little less than the heavenly beings?*

* Heb “and you make him lack a little from [the] gods [or “God”].” The Piel form of חָסַר (khasar, “to decrease, to be devoid”) is used only here and in Eccl 4:8, where it means “to deprive, to cause to be lacking.” The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive either carries on the characteristic nuance of the imperfect in v. 5b or indicates a consequence (“so that you make him…”) of the preceding statement (see GKC 328 §111.m). Some prefer to make this an independent clause and translate it as a new sentence, “You made him….” In this case the statement might refer specifically to the creation of the first human couple, Adam and Eve (cf. Gen 1:26-27). The psalmist does appear to allude to Gen 1:26-27, where mankind is created in the image of God and his angelic assembly (note “let us make man in our image” in Gen 1:26). However, the psalmist’s statement need not be limited in its focus to that historical event, for all mankind shares the image imparted to the first human couple. Consequently the psalmist can speak in general terms of the exalted nature of mankind. The referent of אֱלֹהִים (’elohim, “God” or “the heavenly beings”) is unclear. Some understand this as a reference to God alone, but the allusion to Gen 1:26-27 suggests a broader referent, including God and the other heavenly beings (known in other texts as “angels”). The term אֱלֹהִים is also used in this way in Gen 3:5, where the serpent says to the woman, “you will be like the heavenly beings who know good and evil.” (Note Gen 3:22, where God says, “the man has become like one of us.”) Also אֱלֹהִים may refer to the members of the heavenly assembly in Ps 82:1, 6. The LXX (the ancient Greek translation of the OT) reads “angels” in Ps 8:5 (this is the source of the quotation of Ps 8:5 in Heb 2:7).

Msg
Yet we've so narrowly missed being gods

Alter
and You make him little less than the gods

Uittenbogaard
And You made him so that he requires little from the powers that be.

Rhetorical motives for foreign words in Job?

 

Avi Shveka in JSS:



continued...

JSS on the double plural of 'yom'

 

Meirav Tubul in JSS:



continued...

JSOT on 'tob' in Genesis 6.2

Carol Kaminski in JSOT:

In Gen. 6.2 the sons of God see that the daughters of humankind are 'beautiful', yet the adjective used in 6.2 is not {he}{pe}{yod}, 'beautiful, handsome', but {bet}{vav}{tet}, 'good'. An examination of the adjective {bet}{vav}{tet} in the present study leads to the conclusion that {bet}{vav}{tet} in Gen. 6.2 does not mean 'beautiful', but 'good'. This study proposes that 6.2 is not connected to the 'beauty' motif found in the ensuing chapters of Genesis, but to the 'seeing...good' motif in the preceding creation story (Gen. 1-3). The conclusion is reached that what sets the story in motion is not the attractive appearance of the women, but the false judgment by the sons of God whose actions recall Eve's in Gen. 3.6.

continued...

The 'impossibility' of literally translating volition and succession in Ruth 2

 

From Muraoka's grammar (qtd by Steinberg):

The nuance of succession and the volitive cannot be expressed at the same time. Thus it is not possible to render the following literally: "I want to go and I (then) want to glean"; either the expression of succession or that of will must be sacrificed, to give either: "I want to go and to glean" (Ru 2.2) or "I want to go and (then) I shall glean" (cf. Ru 2.7).

continued...

Heb
אלכה־נא השדה ואלקטה

Heb (xlit)
ēləḵâ-nnā’ haśśāḏeh wa’ălaqŏṭâ

LXX (nets)
Let me go now to the field and gather

Vulg
vadam in agrum et colligam spicas quae metentium

Wycliffe
Y schal go in to the feeld, and Y schal gadere

Geneva
Let mee goe to the fielde, and gather eares of corne

KJV
Let me now go to the field, and glean

RSV
Let me go to the field, and glean

NIV
Let me go to the fields and pick up

Msg
I'm going to work; I'm going out to glean

• The more I think about this, the more I wonder if English doesn't adequately convey both volition and succession in phrases like "I'd like to go and see them," or, in this case, simply "I will go and glean."

• I just realized I had it backwards; Muraoka is saying s&v can be simultaneously expressed in Hebrew but not in English. I think. I've confused myself.

Biblica on Heb. 9:11

S. Fuhrmann in Biblica(pdf):

My approach is based on the observation that a ‘soteriological reading’ of Heb 9,11 is neither necessary nor particularly meaningful. The participium coniunctum
παραγενόμενος ἀρχιερεὺς τῶν γενομένων ἀγαθῶν should rather be read as a strictly christological statement, meaning thus: ‘(Christ), arrived as the high priest whose good qualities (virtues) have come into being’.

continued...

JETS on 'ya'al' as the last word of the Old Testament

 

John Sailhamer in JETS:

From a literary perspective, there is no intertestamental gap between the Testaments. The last word in the Hebrew Bible can also be understood as the first word in the NT. It is a verb without a subject ( וְיָֽעַל
2 Chr 36:23, "let him go up"). Its subject could very well be taken from the first chapter of Matthew in the NT. It is a call for the coming of that one "whose God is with him," and who is to build the Temple in Jerusalem. In Chronicles (and the post-exilic prophets) this one is the messianic (priestly) son of David. Matthew's Gospel, which follows immediately after this last word, begins like Chronicles, with a genealogy identifying Jesus as the Christ (Messiah), the son of David, who is Emanuel, "God with us."

continued...

The Messiah and the Hebrew Bible
John Sailhamer, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Journal of the Evangelical Society 44:1 (March 2001)

SJOT on 'masa' in Hab. 1:1

 

David Cleaver-Bartholomew in SJOT:

According to Tucker, prophetic superscriptions indicate how these texts were understood, and they characterize the book. The superscription in Hab 1,1 indicates that the early tradents who placed it at the beginning of the text understood that chs 1 and 2 should be read as a [משא]. Relatively recent research by Richard D. Weis has revealed that the term [משא] not only identifies a prophetic utterance, but also a genre of prophetic speech.22 One extremely important and relevant characteristic of this genre is that preexilic [משאות] texts frequently contain within themselves the revelations upon which they are based. Another important and relevant characteristic of [משאות] texts is that they respond to “a question about a lack of clarity in the relation between divine intention and human reality. Either the divine intention being expressed in some aspect of human experience is unclear, or the divine intention is clear enough, but the human events through which it will gain expression are unclear.”

continued...

JSOT on Jeremiah's pun on 'brother,' 'supplant,' and 'Jacob'

 

Joachim Krause in JSOT:

While Jacob is liked for his shrewd tactics, people are well aware of the moral problem entailed. Unambiguous accounts are not wanting in the Bible. Hosea 12.4 interprets the prenatal struggle of the twins in an overtly critical account of Jacob’s career: ‘in the womb he supplanted (עקב)* his brother’. Harsher still sounds Jeremiah’s brief and unbalanced remark (Jer. 9.3), playing on the popular etymology of Jacob’s personal name as meaning ‘supplanter’: Trust not a brother, for every brother tries to supplant’ (אל־תבטחו כי כל־אח
עקוב יעקב וכל־רע).

* The semantics of the root 􀀳􀁂􀀋 deserve careful treatment; see n. 5, below, and cf. M. Malul, ‘􀀡􀆖q􀆝b “Heel” and 􀀡􀆖qab “to Supplant” and the Concept of Succession in the Jacob–Esau Narratives’, VT 46 (1996), pp. 190-212. In the present instance, though (as in Jer. 9.3), the LXX’s 􀁑􀁕􀁆􀁓􀁏􀁊􀀑􀁛􀁘 (‘to outwit’) provides a well-chosen interpretation of an attempt whose factual outcome is illuminated by the English verb ‘to supplant’.

continued...

JBL on 'dikaioma' in Romans 5:16

 

J.R. Daniel Kirk in JBL(pdf):

Although mild defenses of the translation “justification” have been offered, I will argue that a better way forward is to render δικαίωμα with the well-attested meaning of “judgment,” “penalty,” or “reparation”—an action performed by a convicted person that satisfies the court and thus justifies the defendant. After summarizing the argument offered in favor of the translation “justification,” I will argue for “reparation” based on (1) inherent probability (that is, that Paul is more likely to use a word with a meaning his readers would understand), and (2) contextual considerations (these simultaneously undermine an assumptionmade in the argument for “justification” and support the alternative reading offered here).

continued...(pdf)

The Hebrew verb + cognate participle as an idiomatic intensive, esp. in LXX quotes

 

Mark Krause:

If the LXX and thus the Hebrew background of the Greek verb + cognate participle are taken into account, any interpretation must see this construction as intensive; any translation must attempt to bring this out.

A survey of the English translations of Mk 4.12 will be illustrative at this point. Unfortunately, the AV translators apparently did not understand the idiom and rendered the text very literally: 'seeing they may see and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand'.

Subsequent translations have followed suit:

NASB: 'while seeing they may see and not perceive; and while hearing, they may hear and not understand' (similarly ASV, NKJV).

Others have attempted to do something beyond such a literal translation:

JB: 'they may see and see again, but not perceive; may hear and hear again but not understand';

NEB: 'they may look and look, but see nothing, they may hear and hear and understand nothing'.

A few have apparently understood the intensive nature of this construction and tried to bring this out in translation:

NIV: 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding';

NAB: 'they will look intently and not see, listen carefully and not understand';

NRSV: 'they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand' (similarly RSV)

The translator should recognize the intensity of this construction and render it appropriately. The English method for intensifying a verb is frequently to use an adverb. The choice of adverb should be guided by the recognition that the Hebrew verb + cognate infinitive absolute construction seeks to intensify the verb's assertion, not its root meaning. Words like 'surely', 'certainly' (or 'most certainly') and 'intently' are appropriate. A possible translation of Mk 4.12 might be:

They are sure to look and not really see,
They are sure to listen and not really understand.

A possible translation of Mt. 13.14 might be:

You will surely listen but certainly not understand,
You will surely look but certainly not see.

— Mark Krause, in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics, p.198-199

new light on Psalm 22:17?

The issue is introduced here by John Hobbins, with more to come there. (Update: Here it is.) My earlier meditation on this is here.

'Bethlehem': 'house of bread' vs. 'house of struggle'

 

From Chuck Cliff:

Not many are aware that [the word] Bethlehem is ... formed from "Bait", "house", and "LeHeM", "bread". Bethlehem therefore has the literal meaning "House of Bread".

The interesting [thing] is that the root meaning of bread refers to the kneading of the dough. As a verb, LHM can refer to battle, in particular the hand-to-hand combat one saw in olden times. Therefore, the word basically means "struggle", "strife", "confrontation".

A small thing, but interesting that the place where the Christian savior is born is, the "House of Bread" or "House of Struggle".

continued...

'gunai' and the limits of corpora

 

Micheal Palmer:

In some cases the limitations of working with ancient texts are recognized, by solutions are not proposed. E. Wendland and E.A. Nida, for example, offer the following statement in their article, 'Lexicography and Bible Translating':

The limited corpus of the New Testament and of other Koine Greek texts makes it impossible to undertake the find-grid distinctions which would be possible if there were more data available and particularly if informants of New Testament Greek were available.

They offer no discussion, however, of how their semantic theory may be adapted to this limitation. In fact, some of their statements might lead the skeptic to conclude that the limitation has been ignored. They state, for example, 'in Greek itself gunai has an associative meaning which is far more favorable than the English term woman.' While this may be a completely valid conclusion, how did they reach it? How can associative meaning be measured given the limited corpus available?

— Micheal Palmer, "How Do We Know a Phrase Is a Phrase?" in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics, p.155