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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