Post by CoUrTnEy on Apr 16, 2004 15:38:14 GMT -5
I found this on another message board.. what are your thoughts??
Idioms and the Bible
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I have a degree in Russian language (quite useless). I've learned though the study of language that you need to understand a culture and its idioms before you translate its words. Likewise, you cannot directly translate words and phrases and hope to always retain their original meaning.
For example:
English - "I have a car."
Russian - "Oo menya est mashina," Direct translation - "Near me is a car."
But more to the point, if you were to translate "its raining cats and dogs" (idyot dosht koshkii i soobakii) to Russian a native Russian would look at you a little strange. They might look up at the sky and call you crazy. The reason is simple - Russians do not have that idiom.
So I find it a bit curious that an English speaker would point to the King James Version of the bible and claim that it is the word of God (assuming you believe in sky fairies). It stretches the worn rubber band of wishful logic to believe that 17th century English men understood the common phrases (slang) and idioms of 1st century Mediterranean Jews. That is to say, even if they got all the words right, the intended meaning my be lost on us. If our current society were to crumble and a future Champollion deciphered an American-English "Rosetta Stone," what might he do with phrases like "the chair opposed the board"? Especially if he had nothing else to go on. Would he think that our furniture was animated and were disagreeable to one another?
Our translation of the bible notes that Jesus was dead for three days and then rose up. But perhaps, just maybe, possibly, as Laurance Gardner argues in Bloodline of the Holy Grail , the meaning of "rise from the dead" to a first century Jew was wholely different. It might mean that a person who has been excommuniated from the faith found a way back in.
Idioms and the Bible
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a degree in Russian language (quite useless). I've learned though the study of language that you need to understand a culture and its idioms before you translate its words. Likewise, you cannot directly translate words and phrases and hope to always retain their original meaning.
For example:
English - "I have a car."
Russian - "Oo menya est mashina," Direct translation - "Near me is a car."
But more to the point, if you were to translate "its raining cats and dogs" (idyot dosht koshkii i soobakii) to Russian a native Russian would look at you a little strange. They might look up at the sky and call you crazy. The reason is simple - Russians do not have that idiom.
So I find it a bit curious that an English speaker would point to the King James Version of the bible and claim that it is the word of God (assuming you believe in sky fairies). It stretches the worn rubber band of wishful logic to believe that 17th century English men understood the common phrases (slang) and idioms of 1st century Mediterranean Jews. That is to say, even if they got all the words right, the intended meaning my be lost on us. If our current society were to crumble and a future Champollion deciphered an American-English "Rosetta Stone," what might he do with phrases like "the chair opposed the board"? Especially if he had nothing else to go on. Would he think that our furniture was animated and were disagreeable to one another?
Our translation of the bible notes that Jesus was dead for three days and then rose up. But perhaps, just maybe, possibly, as Laurance Gardner argues in Bloodline of the Holy Grail , the meaning of "rise from the dead" to a first century Jew was wholely different. It might mean that a person who has been excommuniated from the faith found a way back in.
