Question on Genesis 34:3 LXX
Maurice A. O'Sullivan
mauros at iol.ie
Wed Nov 6 10:39:08 EST 2002
The book reviews in the current edition of the CBQ [ 64/2 April 2002 ]
include one of:
John A. Beck, _Translators as Storytellers: A Study in Septuagint
Translation Technique ( Studies in Biblical Literature 25) Frankfurt Am
Main/Berne/New York: Lang 2000
[ pp.368-9 ]
The reviewer begins:
>> John A. Beck's thesis is that a translator is not simply a mechanical
encoder of words in a foreign language but, given the complexity of human
communication, someone who brings far more to the text, producing a new
text. This high view of the translator as artist leads to other questions:
How did translators view the status of the text they were translating? How
sensitive were they to its forms, and how sensitive were they to its
literature?
(snip) He notes that the legal material is translated more literally, and
the narrative more dynamically, and that the LXX is also a ' commentary
which reflects the interpretation of its time' <<
All points, I would suggest, to be borne in mind by anyone suggesting that
a single word in one language "emphatically means" an equivalent word in
another language
Interestingly, one of the twelve test cases the author chooses is Gn. 34:1-31
Maurice A. O'Sullivan [ Bray, Ireland ]
mauros at iol.ie
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