tree_and_leaf | (no subject)

I had my New Jerusalem Bible out early today to compare how a passage was translated (normally I use the NRSV, though the NJB's not bad, apart from its irritating habit of writing 'Yahweh' for the Divine Name, rather than 'the LORD'*). However: I was glancing through Job, as you do, and noticed they'd translated the names of Job's daughters.

So instead of Keren-happuch, we got:

Mascara.

Keren-happuch is not, perhaps, what the ear of a native English speaker would consider particularly beautiful, but still, I'm not convinced Mascara is an improvement. It sounds more like a Discworld joke than anything else (a wannabe teenage witch, possibly?)

* I wouldn't mind so much if they'd write YHWH, though even then you'd have the problem of people reading it out as 'Yahweh', and that seems wrong in the context of worship. If you want to remind people of the Jewish provenance of what we call the OT, great, but don't do it in such a religiously insensitive way.

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We now return you to our regular scheduled essay crisis (last one of term, yays!)

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*boggles*

Is that what Keren-happuch actually means? Even so, it really does show a ridiculous blindness to how it would sound to modern ears.

I believe it literally means something like 'a ray of eye-paint', which either means a cosmetic palette, or is a somewhat odd way of saying 'lovely eyes'.

You're right, though, it sounds daft to modern ears.

Intrigued I pulled my *old* Jerusalem off the shelves to compare, and indeed it is so there too.

Thing is, as you may or may not know, "they" in respect of Jerusalem Job is largely one JRR Tolkien. Though to be fair he was never happy with it and the editors hacked his work about. His own version was going to be published sometime soon, don't know what became of that.

Vaguely wondering what the immediate sources (ie Vulgate and French Jerusalem) have there.

PS part (but not all) of why UK Romans are to have a new lectionary trans (prob Anglicised edn & tinkered with NRSV) "sometime soon" is the YHWH issue (why they couldn't sort it out at the same time as the new missal trans. Lord knows). There was a direction from the Vatican about Not Doing That. And the chaplain of the London Lay Dominicans (I recently started a period of inquiry with them) was quite irate when someone used a Jerusalem and said Yahweh, though I think it's a bit much to complain when it is still what is used in our official lectionary. Unless and until someone goes through every one with a big red pen.

Yes, I knew about that. A good thing, too, although I agree that it seems unreasonable to get cross with someone for reading what's on the page in front of them.

Best wishes and prayers for your period of inquiry!

Frankly, I think Horn of Antimony would be better than Mascara!

May I ask why you like the NRSV and the NJB? I'm pretty much a hardcore KJB person myself, but I'm always looking for a good non-biased Bible with a sonorous tone to it.

Yes, it would. Not great, but better!

The NRSV's my default, because it's the standard translation used by the Church of England (and also generally by university theology departments); it's a well-done translation with sound scholarship behind it, and no egregious theological axes to grind (unlike the NIV), and it reads aloud well. The NJB is the Roman Catholic translation; it's also a good translation and it's phrasing seems to me to be often a bit closer to the Greek than the NRSV, though that sometimes means it reads less well.

The KJB sounds magnificent, of course, but it's not satisfactory for serious study, IMO - the translators didn't have the advantage of such good manuscripts, and the fact that the language is so remote from everyday speech removes it a bit too far from us for me to be happy using it as the default (though I would be happy to use it in worship in some situations).

Expand upon the problems with the NIV? I am not fond of my own personal copy, but this is because it is a 'Share the Word' edition with handy hints on evangelism at each end (and helpful verses to throw at homosexuals, grr).

Deeply tendentious translation of Paul - I'll let NT Wright explain...

Okay, I'll look up a version of the NRSV.

You can have a browse round it online at http://bible.oremus.org/

Surely that approach could get very silly very quickly. I mean, does Peter get called Rock all the way through? And what about all the significantly-named sons of Jacob?

Peter remains Peter, and Jacob's sons keep their names. Inconsistent, really!

When I compiled the materials for a modified Morning Prayer which I'm using a Lenten devotional practice, I used The Inclusive Bible for my translations; it's useless for most purposes, since it deliberately decontextualizes the Scriptures, but for my purposes it worked. It uses "YHWH" for its translation of the Tetragrammaton; I left it as is, but added a footnote after the first usage: "Pronounce as 'the LORD' or 'Adonai'" and I use the "Adonai" pronunciation when I'm praying it myself.