Category: Bible

A reader writes:

I’ve always got the impression that the Catholic Old Testament is translated from the Septuagint, while the Protestant Bible’s Old Testament is translated from the Masoretic texts. The virtues of this being (A) that the apostles and Christ quoted mainly from the Septuagint, and (B) the Septuagint was translated from older and maybe more accurate versions of the books than what the Jews had in 70 AD. But — at least in a cursory glance, comparing with some Septuagint quotes online — aside from "a virgin shall give birth," all the cited passages in my Catholic Bibles seem to be what’s given as the Masoretic translation. Is this the case?

First a bit of terminology for those who may not be familiar: The Septuagint (LXX) is the major Greek translation of the Old Testament. It was produced between the third and first centuries B.C. and is extensively quoted in the New Testament. The great majority of times that the New Testament quotes from the Old, it’s the LXX version that is being used.

Originally, the term "Septuagint" just referred to the main Greek translation of the five books of Moses (Genesis-Deuteronomy), which were allegedly put into Greek by 70 scholars in Alexandria, Egypt. This is where the name "Septuagint" came from and why the Roman numeral for 70 (LXX) is used as an abbreviation for the translation. Over time (before the first century), it came to include all of the books of the Old Testament, including the deuterocanonicals.

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the main Hebrew edition of the Old Testament. It was prepared between the seventh and tenth centuries A.D. based on earlier Hebrew manuscripts. It does not include the deuterocanonical books.

It’s true that the LXX has an important role in Catholic translations of the Old Testament, but they generally are not straightforward translations from the LXX.

Until recently, most Catholic versions of the Old Testament were translated (primarily) from the Latin Vulgate rather than from the LXX or the MT. They might be based on the Vulgate using the LXX and the MT for purposes of comparison (e.g., to decide between disputed renderings), but the Vulgate was the base text used by most Western Catholics. (It’s different among Eastern Catholics.)

The Vulgate was based on the (pre-Masoretic) Hebrew text, the LXX, and the Old Latin Version.

It was in the 20th century that a significant number of translations started to be made from pre-Latin sources. This was encouraged by Pius XII in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu.

When this started happening, Catholic translators relied on a combination of the LXX and the MT.

The canon of the Catholic Old Testament is based on the LXX, so that’s the top level where the LXX is employed in making translations. (In the ancient world, both the LXX and the Hebrew scriptures had fuzzy boundaries about what books they included, but a few centuries after Christ the Catholic Church settled on one LXX-derived canon and in about the same timeframe the Jewish community settled on one Hebrew canon, which was later used to prepare the MT.)

Some of the books of the Catholic Old Testament seem to have been written as part of the developing LXX tradition (e.g., Wisdom, 2 Maccabees), and so there are no earlier versions. For these, Catholic translators use the LXX since there is no MT equivalent of these books.

Other books of the Catholic Old Testament were based on earlier versions in Hebrew or Aramaic but have survived primarily in the LXX (e.g., Sirach). For these Catholic translators tend to use primarily the LXX, but they may also consult the original language versions to the extent that these have been recovered by archaeology (e.g., the Hebrew version of Tobit).

Still other books are found in both the LXX and the MT. Here recent Catholic translators have tended to use the MT as their base text, using also the LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) for purposes of comparison.

The base text is just a starting point for the translators of major editions of the Old Testament, though. The goal is not to translate what is in the base text but to produce a translation that best reflects what the originals most likely said. This means going with what is in alternative sources (like the LXX and DSS) whenever it appears that the reading in the alternative source is more likely the original reading.

In some passages, it appears that what the MT has is the most original; in others it seems like the LXX or the DSS may better preserve the original.

How this gets sorted out is a complex process, but it’s part of the burden that scholars have to shoulder in an effort to get past the manuscript variation we are confronted with and try to arrive at the original readings. Scholars also disagree, coming to different conclusions or making different choices about what readings should be used. Generally they try to note major alternate readings in the footnotes.

This is not unique to Catholic scholars. Though many Protestant translations lack the deuterocanonicals, Protestant translators are confronted with the same set of questions regarding which readings best reflect the original, and so major Protestant translations of the Old Testament also use a hodge-podge approach to which text to follow in a particular passage (MT, LXX, DSS, or something else). They also generally note major alternate readings in the footnotes.

The major difference is that they let the MT control what they consider canonical.

Hope this clarifies things by muddying them!

Ja! Das ist ein Kinderbibel!

O, du schoene!

O, du schoene!

O, du schoene!

Kin-der-bi-bel!

Okay, so what’s a Kinderbibel? Well, if you think of what the German roots of the word "Kindergarten" mean and what the word "bibel" sounds like in English, you should have a pretty good clue:

It’s a Children’s Bible.

Aid To The Church In Need has produced a children’s bible called God Speaks To His Children that is now online in 20 (!) languages.

ENGLISH IS ONE OF THEM.

Now, by "children’s Bible," they don’t really mean a children’s Bible–a version of Scripture translated or annotated for kids. They mean a book of famous Bible stories with the text taken from the Bible and paraphrased for kids. But that’s not reason that the project isn’t worthy.

If y’all have or know folks who have young kids,

CHECK IT OUT.

OTHER LANGUAGES HERE. (Click on your part of the world map to see languages from your area come up.)

A reader writes:

I read your blog post "Tin-Eared Translators" but I was hoping you would address the entire phrase "angel of the Lord" as it’s used in Gn 22 (and elsewhere in the OT).   The phrase often seems to refer to God himself – for example, "you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me" (v. 12, RSV-CE).  Could you comment on the use of this phrase?  Thanks!

It’s true that "the angel of the Lord" often seems to speak with the voice of the Lord, and this has led some (particularly in Protestant circles) to speculate that the angel of the Lord is some kind of divine manifestation, such as a pre-Incarnate appearance of the Second Person of the Trinity.

Catholics generally have not gone for this piece of speculation, though it would be permitted by the Church.

A significant problem is the fact that the term "angel" is used to describe this being, and the pre-Incarnate Christ is not an angel.

It seems more likely (to me, anyway) that we are to understand the angel of the Lord speaking in the Lord’s voice the same way we would understand the messenger of a king speaking in the king’s voice. Messengers of that kind regularly would read proclamations written in the voice of the one who sent them or orally deliver messages prefixed with some tag such as "Thus says my master. . . ."

It also is not clear to me that the use of the definite article ("the" or ha- in Hebrew) is meant to indicate that there is one angel in particular who is known as the angel of the Lord (implying that he’s the Lord’s angel in a way that other angels are not). The rules in different languages about when the definite article gets used and how much weight should be put on it are not always clear. When the Old Testament says that the angel of the Lord did something, it may only mean that the angel of the Lord who happened to be there at the moment, did the thing–not that there is a unique "angel of the Lord."

That being said, there are passages in which there seems to be ambiguity about whether we’re looking at an angel or a manifestation of God himself.

St. Paul’s solution to such passages seems to be to interpret them as involving encounters with angels rather than divine manifestations. Thus he says that the Law was put in effect by angels through a mediator [Moses]  (Gal. 3:19), when if you look back in the Torah it makes it sound like God himself was there with Moses (Ex. 24:9-12).

I meant to blog about this last week but didn’t, so here goes.

Did y’all notice how tin-eared the translation of the Old Testament reading was at last week’s Sunday Mass?

Wow, it was awful!

The passage was the sacrifice of Isaac from Genesis 22. The very first part of the reading revealed the tin ear of the translators of the New American Bible. Here’s the first verse:

Some time after these events, God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, "Abraham!" "Ready!" he replied.

There are so many problems here. First, the text needlessly puts a quotation from God ("Abraham!") right up against a quotation from Abraham ("Ready!"), making the text "unproclaimable." A lector is going to have to be really on his toes to distinguish these two quotations in a way that the congregation will be able to distinguish between who is talking. (This juxtaposition of the two quotations is NOT present in the Hebrew word order of the passage. It’s something that’s been foisted on the text by the translators.)

Worse, what’s with this "Ready!" business? That’s certainly not what it says in the Hebrew. The word in Hebrew is hinneni, which is just hen (pronounced "hain") with a first person singular ("I") pronoun suffix stuck on it. Hen can mean either "lo!/behold!" or it can mean "here" or "there." So you’d either want to translate hinneni literally along the lines of "Behold! It is I!" or "Behold me!" or (more likely) "Here I am!"

In no case does hinneni mean "Ready!"

If "Ready!" isn’t defensible as a literal translation, is it defensible as a dynamic translation? Heck no! If an English-speaker hears God call his name, the English-speaker is certainly not going to respond by saying "Ready!" That’s not part of English style in such situations.

The translation is thus defensible neither as a literal nor as a dynamic translation based on ordinary English style.

It’s simply TIN EARED–the kind of thing that a FIRST YEAR Hebrew student ought to have MARKED WRONG on his homework.

But that wasn’t what first leapt out at me when I listened to this passage at Mass. What leapt out was this part:

But the LORD’S messenger called to him from heaven, "Abraham, Abraham!" "Yes, Lord," he answered.

"Do not lay your hand on the boy," said the messenger. "Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son."

What’s with all this "messenger" business?

Yes, it’s true that in the biblical languages the word for "angel" and the word for "messenger" are the same word, but in English we have two different words, and if we’re clearly talking about a heavenly messenger rather than one sent by an earthly king (as in this case) then "angel" is the appropriate translation–at least for a translation that is to be used in the liturgy.

I’d have no objection if a non-liturgical translation wanted to consistently render malak or angelos as "messenger" in order to help the reader see a little more how the text would have sounded to its original readers, but that kind of translation would let you put in a note that explains that this is the same word as "angel" in the original.

But liturgical translations don’t come with footnotes when you hear them proclaimed, and it’s just going to confuse the listeners, who probably won’t know that malak means both "messenger" and "angel." The listener may wonder why "messenger" is used in this passage where other translations have "angel."

He may even think that there’s a difference between this kind of divine messenger and an angel. After all, if he’s been paying attention then he knows that other Mass readings do use the word "angel," and so to find "messenger" in this passage could suggest a difference between the two.

What an amateurish, tin-eared translation we’re stuck with.

I agree with Fr. Richard John Neuhaus:

Conservative priest Richard John Neuhaus complained in First Things magazine that the NAB remains "a wretched translation. It succeeds in being, at the same time, loose, stilted, breezy, vulgar, opaque and relentlessly averse to literary grace."

Fortunately, there’s a new 8-translation edition of the New Testament for Catholics that will at least let Catholics compare the disasters that we’re hearing at Mass with how the same passage reads in other translations.

GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

Unfortunately, this New Testament still won’t help folks baffled by readings from Genesis.

Down yonder, a reader (quoting me) writes:

Maybe, though the literal sense of those texts is that God will send a great age of peace, during which it will be as if all strife–even between animals–will be eliminated.

Er. No. What you mean here is that the meaning of the passage is certainly metaphorical. Which, to be sure, it is. Lions, leopards, lambs, kids — even if the beasts will literally exist, they will be part of, and symbolically represent, that peace.

The literal meaning is what the passage actually says not what it actually means, even if that meaning is demonstrably false or makes no sense.

Er, yes, actually.

This may be a case of field-specific jargon.

In biblical studies the "literal" sense of the text–in the proper sense of the word–is what the author meant, not what his words say.

Thus when Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son, the literal sense of the text is not that there was this son who demanded his inheritance and went and spent it on loose living and came back to his father, who received him.

The literal sense is that God is always willing to take back a sinner, no matter what he has done.

I know it’s paradoxical to call this the literal sense, but this is the sense in which the term is used in classical exegesis (e.g., in the dictum that the literal sense of the text is always the foundation of the spiritual and you can’t play the spirital against the literal.

Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. the profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."

Unfortunately, there is no word that has become firmly established for what you are calling "literal," and someitmes biblical scholars casually speak of it as literal, too–leading to confusion.

To avoid this problem, in what I originally wrote I contrasted literal with "even more literal." In other places, I’ve used the terms hyper-literal or literalistic.

In any event, the contrast remains between the surface meaning of the words of a text and what the author intended to communicate by them. In biblical studies–as paradoxical as it sounds–the latter is properly considered the literal sense of the text, not the former.

For those who may ont be aware, maranatha is a word based on what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 16:11:

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha (KJV).

Unfortunately, maranatha is not a single word in Aramaic. It’s a combination of two words, and the correct division of them here is not clear.

This has not stopped countless Evangelical ministries from slapping Maranatha on all kinds of things, though.

Now, with that as introduction, a reader writes:

How does not pronounce:  Marana tha and Maran atha?

And am I correct that it was used as a short prayer?

I assume that the first question is "how does one pronounce" these two phrases.

The easies way to answer that is to simply show you how they’re pronounced, so I did a quick audiopost over on my audio blog.

LISTEN TO IT HERE.

As to its use as a prayer, we need to go into what it means. 

The early manuscripts that we have do not have spaces between the words, and so we have to guess at word division.

It’s clear that the first word of the phrase means "Our Lord," rendered here as Mar (the ordinary Aramaic word for "Lord"), with the possessive suffix "our" tacked on to it. The question is: What is the suffix? Is it -an or -ana? This is what causes the two word divisions as marana tha and maran atha.

The first of these is commonly understood to mean "Our Lord, come!" and the second clearly means "Our Lord comes" (or "Our Lord has come.")

My Aramaic instructor (who is a native speaker of modern Aramaic and who uses classical Aramaic professionally) is utterly convinced that the first division of the word is wrong. In fact, he is contemptuous of those who use the first division as know-nothings on Aramaic.

If I recall correctly, he has three arguments for this:

1. -ana simply is not a pronoun suffix in Aramaic.
2. Putting the verb atheh into the imperative form would not cause the first letter (which is a consonant in Aramaic) to drop off.
3. Even if the first letter did drop off, the pronunciation rules of Aramaic would require the resulting word to be pronounced ta, not tha.

Normally I generally defer to my instructor on such matters, but let’s look briefly at his arguments.

1. I do have at least a couple of grammars of early Aramaic on my shelves listing -ana as the suffix meaning "our," so there may have been some dialects of Aramaic where "our" was -ana rather than just -an.

2. This seems to be the weightiest argument. I’ve consulted multiple grammars and lexicons, and unless the verb atheh had a really, really irregular imperative form in Paul’s dialect, it just should not become tha (or ta). It should be atha, and I can find no indication in any of the lexicons that it had an irregular form in in the imperative. Some lexicons explicitly list atha as the imperative form.

3. This argument also has weight, though it could be gotten around if marana ta had already become perceived as one word, in which case the usual pronunciation rules would change it to maranatha. The problem is that this seems to be a distinctively Christian phrase (applying specifically to Jesus and not to God as "Our Lord"), and there just weren’t that many years between Jesus’ ministry and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. It’s hard to imagine marana ta becoming one word that fast.

I think there’s also exegetical evidence that points to the correct reading being Maran atha. Paul has just issued a "Let him be anathema." It seems to me that it makes more sense to say "Let him be anathema [because] Our Lord comes" than "Let him be anathema. Come, Our Lord!"

The first would make Maran atha an affirmation of the Lord’s future coming, when those who have become anathema will be judged. The second would be a vengeful calling down of divine judgment upon them.

As to its use in prayer, if Maranatha is understood as "Our Lord, Come!" then it’s a prayer on its face.

Even if not, it still became part of Christian prayer via the liturgy. In the Didache ("did-ah-khay") the instructions regarding the Eucharist include what seems to be a part of a prayer which reads in part:

10:12 Hosanna to the God of David.
10:13 If any man is holy, let him come;
10:14 If any man is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen [SOURCE].

In this case Maran atha isn’t a term addressed directly to God but is an affirmation term, like Amen, which functions at the end of a prayer to mean (roughly) "So may it be" or "It is so." This also is not a word addressed directly to God on its face, but is an affirmation that one has confidence in what God will do. Maran atha, like Amen, thus may be a prayer affirmation addressed indirectly to God.

The Didache is a first century Christian document that may not have been written very long after Paul lived. Some even argue that it was contemporary with Paul’s letters. However that may be, neither Paul nor the Didache are the likely source of the phrase. They are both probably drawn on an earlier source, possibly the first liturgies celebrated in the Aramaic-speaking Christian community.

A correspondent writes:

1. Noah had three sons. What order were they in birth (who was oldest, second and youngest)?

It is commonly thought that the order is Shem, Ham, and then Japheth. The main reason is that this the the order the names are given in when they are introduced in Genesis 5:32 and elsewhere. Also, Genesis 10:21 explicitly states that Shem is Japheth’s elder brother.

I have seen it argued that Ham was the oldest but lost his birthright due to the incident where Noah got drunk, but the arguments for this are not convincing.

2. Does the birth order in this case have any theological significance ?

It shows Israel being descended from the firstborn (actual or legal, depending on the birth order theory you take).

3. One of the sons was the father of the chosen people, the other the Canaanites.    What happened to the descendants of the third son ? 

They went a variety of places, many of which were overseas from Israel, which is why Genesis 10:5 describes them as being maritime peoples, since that is how the Israelites encountered them (via the sea). They also went other places, generally to the north, northeast , and northwest from Israel’s perspective.

One thing you should be aware of regarding ancient near eastern genealogies like the one in Genesis 10 is that they aren’t exclusively biological in nature. They also include legal adoptions of peoples and tribes. If two tribes formed an alliance or merged culturally then they one tribe would be adopted into the lineage of the other. This is similar to how in our modern genealogies we don’t separate out people who were adopted. Grandma is still Grandma whether your mother was physically born to Grandma or whether she was adopted by her. The ancient near easterners did the same thing, only they did it with tribes instead of just individuals, and they allowed the adoptions to take place after the original patriarch of the lineage was dead. (We can see these kind of adoptions happening elsewhere in the genealogies of Israel in the Bible, as when Caleb is reckoned both as a Kennizite and as a descendant of Judah.)

As a result, the table of nations given in Genesis 10 isn’t simply a biological record. It includes biological factors as well as cultural and political affiliations, resulting in adoptions of tribes into lineages that aren’t necessarily biologically related. This kind of genalogization is how patriarchical cultures keep track of everybody and how they relate to each other.

The upshot is that the decendants of Japheth aren’t necessarily all biological descendants of his. Some may be descendants attributed to him by adoption even after his death.

In general, the Japhethites represent speakers of Indo-European languages like Greek.

A reader writes:

Are you familiar with this 2nd Edition of the Ignatius Catholic Leather Bible that has just been released?  It is leather and I would like to get one, but I am never sure on what will be considered a "good" translation.   I have read your tracts on Bible translations already and know that you recommend the RSV, so is the 2nd Edition RSV going to be pretty much the same thing and trustworthy?

I had not previously been familiar with the 2nd edition of the Ignatius Bible, though my confidence in the publishing house is such that I would have been able to recommend it anyway.

By a strange coincidence, however, I happened to have the chance to examine a copy of it today. (Our purchaser at Catholic Answers wanted me to look over a copy to see if it was something we want to carry.)

As a result, I now have more familiarity with it and can give a more specific response.

It appears that they have done three basic things:

1. They re-typeset it so that it looks better than it did before on the page.
2. They took the notes that used to appear in appendices at the end of the Old and New Testaments and put them on the pages that the notes apply to, so you no longer have to flip to the back of the book.
3. They made minor changes to confusing and archaic language at a very small number of points in the translation.

Here’s how the Ignatius web site (www.ignatius.com) describes this edition:

A completely new typeset and designed edition of the popular Ignatius Revised Standard Version Bible, with minor revisions to some of the archaic language used in the first edition. This revised version is a contemporary English translation without dumbing-down the text. This second edition of the RSV doesn’t put the biblical text through a filter to make it acceptable to current tastes and prejudices, and it retains the beauty of the RSV language that has made it such a joy to read and reflect on the Word of God. Now the only Catholic Bible in standard English is even more beautiful in word and design!

Note the clause that I’ve highlighted in blue. This is code for "this Bible does not make feminist revisions to the genders that are found in the biblical text."

That’s a good thing.

And I’d have no problem recommending this edition.

It occurred to me that folks who are latecomers to the Genesis 1 discussion might want to read the posts in chronological order rather than reverse-chronological order, since together they form basically a single article.

This’ll also be a more convenient format for folks who want to link to them.

So here they are. . . .

Continue reading “Genesis One”

The Framework Interpretation holds that the six days of creation are not intended to be taken literally as a chronology of how God made the world. That’s what they seem to be on the surface, but there are clues in the text–such as the creation of the sun three days after the day/night cycle has been established–that tell us that this is not meant to be taken literally.

The Framework Interpretation holds that Genesis 1 tells us what God did without attempting to tell us in a literal fashion when God did it. Instead, the facts of creation have been fitted into the framework of a single Hebrew week. (The week being a characteristic measure of time among the Hebrews; prior ancient cultures didn’t have weeks.)

The Fourth Day sun problem that other interpretations have (and have typically solved by introducing things the text does not mention, like atmospheric conditions that clear up, allowing the sun to be seen, or days that overlap each other chronologically) is of itself significant evidence for the Framework Interpretation.

But the interpretation could be strengthened if we could sketch out the specific way in which the events of creation have been fitted into a framework–in other words, if we could point to the framework itself. It’s a fair question, after all: "If this isn’t organized chronologically, how is it organized?"

A careful reading of the text reveals this, and we can see not just that the author has arranged things out of chronological order in a way detectable to the ancients, we can see specifically how he has organized them. We know what his organizational criteria were.

For centuries it has been recognized that the six days of creation are divided into two sets of three. In the first set, God divides one thing from another: He divides the light and the darkness on Day One (giving rise to day and night), he divides the waters above from the waters below on Day Two (giving rise to the sky and the sea), and he divides the waters below from each other (giving rise to the dry land) on Day Three. Classically, this is known as the work of division or distinction.

In the second three days, God goes back over the realms he produced in the first three days by division and then populates or "adorns" them. On Day Four he populates the day and the night with the sun, moon, and stars. On Day Five he populates the sky and sea with the birds and the fish. And on Day Six he populates the land (between the divided waters) with the animals and man. Classically, this is known as the work of adornment.

That this two-fold movement represents the ordering principle of Genesis 1 also is reflected at the beginning and end of the narrative. At the beginning we are told that "the earth was without form and void" (Gen. 1:2). The work of distinction cures the "without form" problem, and the work of adornment cures the "void" (empty) problem. Likewise, at the end of the narrative we are told "the heavens and the earth were finished [i.e., by distinction], and all the host of them [i.e., by adornment]" (2:1).

People have recognized for centuries that these are the ordering principles at work in Genesis 1. This is not something modern Bible scholars came up with (e.g., see Aquinas, ST I:74:1).

I don’t fault anyone who has a different view of the text (particularly the Ordinary Day Interpretation), but this one seems to me to be the most plausible view if you give the text a careful reading.

The dislocation of the creation of the sun thus tells us that the text is using a non-chronological ordering, and the recognition of the two phases of creation (distinction and adornment) proceeding through the same three spheres (day & night > sky & sea > dry land) tells us what ordering system is being used.

And none of this is predicated on modern science. It was all there "in the beginning."