Re: The Original Bible Project

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 24 1999 - 06:11:42 EST


At 5:39 PM -0800 3/23/99, Eric Cohoon wrote:
>Hi group,
>
>I took a look and am greatly puzzled. What possible reason would one want
>to transliterate ELOHIM and ADONAI? It seems to me we have quite enough
>transliterations already. On the plus side it is a lot easier to see YHVH
>than filter out the lower case caps in God and Lord.

My guess is that this is the sort of version that will endeavor, among
other things, to reveal to the Hebrew-less and Greek-less 'critical' reader
all the overtones and undertones and implications that 'only' the
sophisticated Hebrew-competent or Greek-competent reader/interpreter can
observe in the original texts. In this instance, it makes it easier for
those who are willing to accept that there are J, E, D, and P strands (and
Jr, Er, Dr, and what-not) to discern where the seams are and retrace the
steps that led to the Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis. I can see how
this might be very interesting to some sorts of inquiring readers of the
Bible, although it could also serve to focus more attention on what's
trivial (relatively speaking) than upon what's important (again, relatively
speaking) in the text.

At any rate, I find the rationale underlying this kind of translation far
more interesting and hopeful than some others I've seen (like the
'Concordant' version with its to-me very curious--and dubious--and
radically divergent philosophy of translation. My guess, however, is that
we're not ever likely to see a Biblical translation that is really
bias-free, which reminds me, I really do want to read Rolf's book that
Amazon.com says is back-ordered.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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