3 ms·

It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant - reading it in centuries-old language brought

by soco 5y ago

It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant - reading it in centuries-old language brought me no joy at all.

fidesomnes 5y ago
on the contrary reading it in Latin actually make it an enjoyable read, the English is downright dreadful.
shusaku 5y ago
If you want to read the Old Testament as literature, Robert Alter’s translation is really good. I thought his notes (which are not about theology) really help you tap in to what the authors are doing.
handrous 5y ago
AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic English, except maybe for passages which are themselves written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for whatever purpose—poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without being stuffy or outdated. Another factor in my naming it the probably #2, after Gilgamesh, though, is that everything else is just that bad to a modern reader, so the OT looks pretty damn good compared to all that, even if you're stuck with the King James Version. My favorite story from ancient Egypt[0], I wouldn't recommend to many readers, because damn, it's a slog, and it's still an easier read than some of the others, or than anything I've seen in Sumerian or Akkadian (Gilgamesh excepted). It probably tells better, as a joke (it's a comedic story), than it reads, if you had someone really talented telling it. That's typical for other Near Eastern literatures, too. Lots and lots of repetition, is the main problem for a modern reader, as far as the prose goes. Much of it also doesn't really relate a story, exactly, and the cultural and religious references are obscure at best. You don't even get mythology, really, for the most part. Prayers or incantations, sure, but there's no Hesiod or Ovid of Sumerian religion. There's a little of that, sure, but it's very fragmentary and you have to bring a lot of context from outside of it to make much sense of what you're reading. For the millennia(!) of texts we have from Egypt, for instance, there are only a few short (and often fragmentary) works that we'd recognize as stories. You have to settle for reading a variety of non-fiction or semi-fictional genres to get much more out of it—"mirrors for princes" and scribal didactic texts, which are probably the most interesting of the lot, plus endless formulaic and not-especially-illuminating funerary texts, and a good deal of historical propaganda about military victories, mostly from monumental inscriptions, almost all of which are intensely boring even if you're really into military history. And that's probably the richest literature we have from that region in the pre-classical period, at least as far as what's available in English translation. [0] The Eloquent Peasant
- soco 5y ago
  I guess they were not writing stuff for "readers"? This might be a well-known theory of which I'm just unaware, but could it be that writing fulfilled a different role/need in those epochs?
  - handrous 5y ago
    Oh, that's absolutely a big part of it. There was no "reading public". Very few people could read and write. I assume all the repetition has to do with making the stories better-suited to memorization and oral retelling. I don't mean any of that as some kind of put-down of the ancients, it's just a fact that a modern reader is going to find the material difficult, and, even once acclimated to the difficulty, of limited appeal, with few exceptions (and I'd call out Gilgamesh as the #1 exception)
    - isk517 5y ago
      I would imagine the repetition benefits the listening audience since there is a chance they may not hear something or may miss the significance of something the first time it is spoken.
      - nerdponx 5y ago
        It maybe also benefits a setup where the story is told/sung in small chunks over several days, so you don't forget what happened in the previous episode?
    - whakim 5y ago
      In a world in which most "literature" was memorized and then performed orally, repetition had a few key functions: 1) making it easier to tell a part of the story (an audience probably wouldn't listen to the whole thing in one go); 2) making it easier to memorize (while also allowing the performer/bard some time to "autopilot" and remember what comes next); 3) making the meter fit (this is why you'll see the same epithets over and over).

by soco 5y ago

It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant - reading it in centuries-old language brought me no joy at all.

fidesomnes 5y ago

on the contrary reading it in Latin actually make it an enjoyable read, the English is downright dreadful.

shusaku 5y ago

If you want to read the Old Testament as literature, Robert Alter’s translation is really good. I thought his notes (which are not about theology) really help you tap in to what the authors are doing.

handrous 5y ago

AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic English, except maybe for passages which are themselves written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for whatever purpose—poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without being stuffy or outdated. Another factor in my naming it the probably #2, after Gilgamesh, though, is that everything else is just that bad to a modern reader, so the OT looks pretty damn good compared to all that, even if you're stuck with the King James Version. My favorite story from ancient Egypt[0], I wouldn't recommend to many readers, because damn, it's a slog, and it's still an easier read than some of the others, or than anything I've seen in Sumerian or Akkadian (Gilgamesh excepted). It probably tells better, as a joke (it's a comedic story), than it reads, if you had someone really talented telling it. That's typical for other Near Eastern literatures, too. Lots and lots of repetition, is the main problem for a modern reader, as far as the prose goes. Much of it also doesn't really relate a story, exactly, and the cultural and religious references are obscure at best. You don't even get mythology, really, for the most part. Prayers or incantations, sure, but there's no Hesiod or Ovid of Sumerian religion. There's a little of that, sure, but it's very fragmentary and you have to bring a lot of context from outside of it to make much sense of what you're reading. For the millennia(!) of texts we have from Egypt, for instance, there are only a few short (and often fragmentary) works that we'd recognize as stories. You have to settle for reading a variety of non-fiction or semi-fictional genres to get much more out of it—"mirrors for princes" and scribal didactic texts, which are probably the most interesting of the lot, plus endless formulaic and not-especially-illuminating funerary texts, and a good deal of historical propaganda about military victories, mostly from monumental inscriptions, almost all of which are intensely boring even if you're really into military history. And that's probably the richest literature we have from that region in the pre-classical period, at least as far as what's available in English translation. [0] The Eloquent Peasant

soco 5y ago
I guess they were not writing stuff for "readers"? This might be a well-known theory of which I'm just unaware, but could it be that writing fulfilled a different role/need in those epochs?
- handrous 5y ago
  Oh, that's absolutely a big part of it. There was no "reading public". Very few people could read and write. I assume all the repetition has to do with making the stories better-suited to memorization and oral retelling. I don't mean any of that as some kind of put-down of the ancients, it's just a fact that a modern reader is going to find the material difficult, and, even once acclimated to the difficulty, of limited appeal, with few exceptions (and I'd call out Gilgamesh as the #1 exception)
  - isk517 5y ago
    I would imagine the repetition benefits the listening audience since there is a chance they may not hear something or may miss the significance of something the first time it is spoken.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      It maybe also benefits a setup where the story is told/sung in small chunks over several days, so you don't forget what happened in the previous episode?
  - whakim 5y ago
    In a world in which most "literature" was memorized and then performed orally, repetition had a few key functions: 1) making it easier to tell a part of the story (an audience probably wouldn't listen to the whole thing in one go); 2) making it easier to memorize (while also allowing the performer/bard some time to "autopilot" and remember what comes next); 3) making the meter fit (this is why you'll see the same epithets over and over).