10 ms·

The Alter Bible

95 points by diodorus 8y ago

bencollier49 8y ago
Fascinating that this made it on to the front-page of HN. I feel sorry for this fellow in as much as his surname must cause some terrific confusion. The King James version has remained popular as a result of its wonderful prose - to see someone approach the Hebrew Bible from a modern angle with the same intent is very interesting - I'll be having a read.
- arethuza 8y ago
  Trivia: the discussions that led to the suggestion to King James VI to create a new bible were held in a church a couple of miles from where I am currently sitting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burntisland_Parish_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burntisland_Parish_Church
  - coltonv 8y ago
    > Kink James VI Quality Freudian slip here.
    - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
      Reminds me of the Amboy Dukes song "Surrender To Your Kings", which on Amazon music is listed as "Surrender To Your Kinks". I wish there was some way to fix that because that error has propagated around the web.
- rc_kas 8y ago
  Right! I did not expect hacker news to produce some bible nerdery. Kind of cool, I'll take it.
whatshisface 8y ago
>Then there is Alter’s preference for “between his legs” rather than “between his feet,” which is used in all three of the earlier versions quoted above. A staff between Judah’s feet sounds like it is planted firmly on the ground, but a mace between his legs has a distinctly more phallic implication, as Alter acknowledges in his note: “the image of the mace between the legs surely suggests virile power in political leadership.” This is a vivid image of patriarchy, entirely appropriate for a speech in which a father is passing sovereignty down to his sons. It sounds like the ancient culture wasn't living up to the modern reader's expectations for how ancient literature was supposed to be read, so they burried some nuts so that the other modern readers could find them as they expected to.
- baldfat 8y ago
  Well it even gets better. 1 Kings 12:10 The young men who had grown up with him replied, "These people have said to you, 'Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.' Now tell them, 'My little finger is thicker than my father's waist. Little finger means his penis.
  - sorokod 8y ago
    The Hebrew version does not mention a finger. It just says "my little" - קָֽטָנִּ֥י
    - baldfat 8y ago
      Well the English translations add finger for a specific reasons. It was really funny to talk about this in my second year of Hebrew. Hebrew is a really pictorial language and it just made me die laughing. Another not as fun one is to look at Noah and what it meant to have his son look at his father's nakedness.
te_platt 8y ago
I've always been fascinated by the difficulties of translation. There is the issue of expressing the original thought. Already I've edited this post several times. Then there is the issue of the surrounding context which will be different for different people. Even for people in the same culture at the same time in the same place. Then the issue of the attitude of the reader. It's not uncommon to get different meanings from the same text on different days. Now with the Biblical text we have copies of text from a different time, culture, and language. I like how this article shows how hard it is to handle even one sentence.
- nestorD 8y ago
  And that's just meaning. I found that preserving the style can be an equally hard thing to do from a language to another.
  - te_platt 8y ago
    As well as sarcasm, emphasis, irony, puns.... I really like this sentence from Douglas Hofstadter: "Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word 'tomato'." There are so many ways a translator could go with that.
    - tome 8y ago
      Could you share a few of them? Only one springs to my mind ...
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I'd prefer a translator that just gave me the words and sentences. As a receiver of that information I can learn to do my own interpretation. Imperfectly and only after some thought and experience, but at least the translator won't be 'in the way' changing the message.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    I happen to personally agree, not least because I don't necessarily trust the motivations of some alterations, but it is worth remembering that this raises the bar for reading and understanding. There is the difference between something that any lay person can read and get a reasonable understanding, and something that requires you to be a scholar of ancient Greek to understand.
lqet 8y ago
Very interesting, and although I have little to no experience with reading the bible, I have to say that everything Alter is quoted as saying in this article makes obvious sense to me. The difficulties translators have with any text should be a reminder of how painfully inadequate any language is as a mediator between two different brains. So much depends in context. > Perhaps the first person to openly suggest otherwise was Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher, who daringly wrote that the books of the Bible ought to be studied in just the same way we would study Greek and Italian poetry. This, 100 times. I am not a religious person at all. However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are. Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years. Yet nobody would ridicule Dante for assuming that hell lies in some cave in Tuscany. If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above.
- xkcd-sucks 8y ago
  A thousand years from now, perhaps Harry potter fans will be literally waging war on star wars fans
  - 0_gravitas 8y ago
    And that the star wars religion will be split into three sects, one for each trilogy (all hail the prequels)
  - lisper 8y ago
    L. Ron Hubbard fans are already waging war on anyone who crosses them.
- gus_massa 8y ago
  The difference is that nobody was ever burn for proclaiming that Dante's work was just fiction. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, saying that these texts are "unrealistic" would get you in trouble.
xamuel 8y ago
>Alter’s Bible doesn’t seek that kind of canonical status; it is not out to replace the Hebrew Bible, but to engage in a dialogue with it. The idea of engaging in a dialogue with the Bible is very important. It should not be viewed as books set in stone, but as living documents that speak to us today. 'Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.' (Matthew 13:52)
otterpro 8y ago
Translating Bible is a difficult task. There are usually two camps of philosophy of Bible translation. There's the word-for-word style where words are translated literally, rather than its intended meaning -- such as the classic King James Version (1611 AD), and more modern NKJV, NASB and ESV. Then there's thought-for-thought style, where it is translated based on its connotation, intention, and geared for modern English -- such as the popular NIV, NLT, and more paraphrase-style translations. I prefer the more literal Bible, but it also makes reading certain passages more difficult, since the original word used may not have the same connotation in English, and there are ancient idioms that may not make sense in English.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Then went to be preferable to have a literal translation plus translator's notes alongside? There's already a long tradition of putting commentary alongside the original text, and this seems like a perfect fit for it.
- verylittlemeat 8y ago
  Understanding the Bible by Stephen L. Harris is a great comprehensive textbook for any person trying to understand the historical and metaphorical meaning in the Bible. It's formatted like a college textbook but i found it very readable for casual learning.
- jki275 8y ago
  The KJV is not a word-for-word literal translation, nor is the NIV a paraphrase. There's a lot more nuance involved. Reading the KJV gives you difficulty because the translation was made in 1615 and the English language has changed significantly since then.
stared 8y ago
It reminds me of "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027 https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0...), which I enjoyed. He, as an atheist, tries to present it in the raw form, without "explaining the hidden message" or any religious interpretation (neither Jewish nor Christian).
habeyer 8y ago
Orthodox Jew here who went through the Yeshiva system (~10 years of full-time study). If you haven't read the Bible in the original Hebrew here's an analogy: imagine the tactile, raw feel of Robert Frost, how the language he employs and the deliberate choice of words makes his poems feel as if they rhyme. Now compact all that into the extreme terseness of Emily Dickinson. My weekly highlight is the public reading of the Prophets in the synagogue every Sabbath. The language, the rhythm, it's beautiful.

95 points by diodorus 8y ago

Fascinating that this made it on to the front-page of HN. I feel sorry for this fellow in as much as his surname must cause some terrific confusion. The King James version has remained popular as a result of its wonderful prose - to see someone approach the Hebrew Bible from a modern angle with the same intent is very interesting - I'll be having a read.

arethuza 8y ago
Trivia: the discussions that led to the suggestion to King James VI to create a new bible were held in a church a couple of miles from where I am currently sitting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burntisland_Parish_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burntisland_Parish_Church
- coltonv 8y ago
  > Kink James VI Quality Freudian slip here.
  - ConceptJunkie 8y ago
    Reminds me of the Amboy Dukes song "Surrender To Your Kings", which on Amazon music is listed as "Surrender To Your Kinks". I wish there was some way to fix that because that error has propagated around the web.
rc_kas 8y ago
Right! I did not expect hacker news to produce some bible nerdery. Kind of cool, I'll take it.

whatshisface 8y ago

>Then there is Alter’s preference for “between his legs” rather than “between his feet,” which is used in all three of the earlier versions quoted above. A staff between Judah’s feet sounds like it is planted firmly on the ground, but a mace between his legs has a distinctly more phallic implication, as Alter acknowledges in his note: “the image of the mace between the legs surely suggests virile power in political leadership.” This is a vivid image of patriarchy, entirely appropriate for a speech in which a father is passing sovereignty down to his sons. It sounds like the ancient culture wasn't living up to the modern reader's expectations for how ancient literature was supposed to be read, so they burried some nuts so that the other modern readers could find them as they expected to.

baldfat 8y ago
Well it even gets better. 1 Kings 12:10 The young men who had grown up with him replied, "These people have said to you, 'Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.' Now tell them, 'My little finger is thicker than my father's waist. Little finger means his penis.
- sorokod 8y ago
  The Hebrew version does not mention a finger. It just says "my little" - קָֽטָנִּ֥י
  - baldfat 8y ago
    Well the English translations add finger for a specific reasons. It was really funny to talk about this in my second year of Hebrew. Hebrew is a really pictorial language and it just made me die laughing. Another not as fun one is to look at Noah and what it meant to have his son look at his father's nakedness.

te_platt 8y ago

I've always been fascinated by the difficulties of translation. There is the issue of expressing the original thought. Already I've edited this post several times. Then there is the issue of the surrounding context which will be different for different people. Even for people in the same culture at the same time in the same place. Then the issue of the attitude of the reader. It's not uncommon to get different meanings from the same text on different days. Now with the Biblical text we have copies of text from a different time, culture, and language. I like how this article shows how hard it is to handle even one sentence.

nestorD 8y ago
And that's just meaning. I found that preserving the style can be an equally hard thing to do from a language to another.
- te_platt 8y ago
  As well as sarcasm, emphasis, irony, puns.... I really like this sentence from Douglas Hofstadter: "Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word 'tomato'." There are so many ways a translator could go with that.
  - tome 8y ago
    Could you share a few of them? Only one springs to my mind ...
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I'd prefer a translator that just gave me the words and sentences. As a receiver of that information I can learn to do my own interpretation. Imperfectly and only after some thought and experience, but at least the translator won't be 'in the way' changing the message.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  I happen to personally agree, not least because I don't necessarily trust the motivations of some alterations, but it is worth remembering that this raises the bar for reading and understanding. There is the difference between something that any lay person can read and get a reasonable understanding, and something that requires you to be a scholar of ancient Greek to understand.

lqet 8y ago

Very interesting, and although I have little to no experience with reading the bible, I have to say that everything Alter is quoted as saying in this article makes obvious sense to me. The difficulties translators have with any text should be a reminder of how painfully inadequate any language is as a mediator between two different brains. So much depends in context. > Perhaps the first person to openly suggest otherwise was Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher, who daringly wrote that the books of the Bible ought to be studied in just the same way we would study Greek and Italian poetry. This, 100 times. I am not a religious person at all. However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are. Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years. Yet nobody would ridicule Dante for assuming that hell lies in some cave in Tuscany. If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago
A thousand years from now, perhaps Harry potter fans will be literally waging war on star wars fans
- 0_gravitas 8y ago
  And that the star wars religion will be split into three sects, one for each trilogy (all hail the prequels)
- lisper 8y ago
  L. Ron Hubbard fans are already waging war on anyone who crosses them.
gus_massa 8y ago
The difference is that nobody was ever burn for proclaiming that Dante's work was just fiction. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, saying that these texts are "unrealistic" would get you in trouble.

xamuel 8y ago

>Alter’s Bible doesn’t seek that kind of canonical status; it is not out to replace the Hebrew Bible, but to engage in a dialogue with it. The idea of engaging in a dialogue with the Bible is very important. It should not be viewed as books set in stone, but as living documents that speak to us today. 'Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.' (Matthew 13:52)

otterpro 8y ago

Translating Bible is a difficult task. There are usually two camps of philosophy of Bible translation. There's the word-for-word style where words are translated literally, rather than its intended meaning -- such as the classic King James Version (1611 AD), and more modern NKJV, NASB and ESV. Then there's thought-for-thought style, where it is translated based on its connotation, intention, and geared for modern English -- such as the popular NIV, NLT, and more paraphrase-style translations. I prefer the more literal Bible, but it also makes reading certain passages more difficult, since the original word used may not have the same connotation in English, and there are ancient idioms that may not make sense in English.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Then went to be preferable to have a literal translation plus translator's notes alongside? There's already a long tradition of putting commentary alongside the original text, and this seems like a perfect fit for it.
verylittlemeat 8y ago
Understanding the Bible by Stephen L. Harris is a great comprehensive textbook for any person trying to understand the historical and metaphorical meaning in the Bible. It's formatted like a college textbook but i found it very readable for casual learning.
jki275 8y ago
The KJV is not a word-for-word literal translation, nor is the NIV a paraphrase. There's a lot more nuance involved. Reading the KJV gives you difficulty because the translation was made in 1615 and the English language has changed significantly since then.

stared 8y ago

It reminds me of "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027 https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0...), which I enjoyed. He, as an atheist, tries to present it in the raw form, without "explaining the hidden message" or any religious interpretation (neither Jewish nor Christian).

habeyer 8y ago

Orthodox Jew here who went through the Yeshiva system (~10 years of full-time study). If you haven't read the Bible in the original Hebrew here's an analogy: imagine the tactile, raw feel of Robert Frost, how the language he employs and the deliberate choice of words makes his poems feel as if they rhyme. Now compact all that into the extreme terseness of Emily Dickinson. My weekly highlight is the public reading of the Prophets in the synagogue every Sabbath. The language, the rhythm, it's beautiful.