Let me explain. When I mark the exercise sheets given out to the students enrolled in NT Greek I occasionally need to remind them to use acceptable English so that they demonstrate that they understand not only what each individual Greek word is but understand how the words together make grammatical sense. It is not enough to identify individual words. They need also to identify grammatical constructions. A very simple example is that Koine participles (‘-ing’ verbs e.g. ‘baptizing’ and ‘believing’) change from simple participles when preceded by a definite article (‘the’) so as to imply personal pronouns (‘the person who baptizes’; ‘the person who believes’).
This is why we ask that they use good, acceptable English (“Translate into Good Idiomatic English”) because pronouns and definite articles in Koine affect the grammar, and students need to show that they are learning the grammar, not just the words.
But the opposite is also true: literal translations can be misleading...
Interestingly, the more that a grammatical construction in Hebrew or Greek appears to be relatively easy to transfer into English the more I think we should be suspicious that we have correctly identified the foreign elements in the first place. Ιt is easier to slow down and debate how best to translate a difficult grammatical construction. Less so when the construction appears straight forward.
A biblical example: דבר על לב (‘speak concerning the heart’)
What does the biblical expression ‘speak concerning the heart’ mean? It is a question posed by Carolyn Leeb, “Translating the Hebrew Body into English Metaphor,” in The Social Sciences and Biblical Translation (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 109–125. Leeb finds only nine passages where the exact expression is used, which does not include similar expressions. The 9 occurrences are: Gen 34:3; Gen 50:21; Judg 19:13; 2 Sam 19:8; Hos 2:16; Isa 40:2; Ruth 2:13; 2 Chron 30:22; 2 Chron 32:6.
Leeb is particularly concerned with the first occurrence, Gen 34:3 concerning how Shechem speaks to the girl he has just raped (Dinah).
They way I read Leeb’s overall conclusions is that she is interested in how the speaker in each instance may be using his powerful position to persuade the addressee to do what the speaker thinks is best. She argues that every example involves a powerful male speaker and a powerless hearer (p.114). So in the case of Gen 34:3 Shechem tries to convince her or ‘reason with her’ speaking from a more powerful position (not necessarily: ‘speak tenderly to her’, the Greek OT has ἐλάλησεν κατὰ τὴν διάνοιαν 'he spoke according to the mind [of the unmarried girl]'). Shechem wanted to keep Dinah (the preceding
In reviewing Leeb’s chapter Fika van Rensburg (RBL 12/2009) summarised it as:
A social-scientific examination of the ancient Israelite understanding of the body reveals that in their world the heart was understood to be the seat of reasoning, not feeling. Accordingly, the phrase “speak to the heart” should be rendered with “argued with” or “reasoned with.”Actually this is only half correct, Leeb actually argued: “In my model, the heart is part of the interior of a human being, a locus of both reason and feeling.” (p.121)
Still, it looks like the various English Bibles have mistranslated these passages. And it’s not just those translations that have tried to 'domesticate' the expression into something like ‘he spoke loving/comforting words’ or ‘he spoke tenderly’. Even the translations that have tried to keep the construction foreign and ‘literal’ (‘he spoke to the heart’) also fail to identify what is foreign about the Hebrew expression since English already has this expression but it means something different—the English expression ‘speak to the heart’ identifies a speaker who speaks from a soft/tender place of consideration for what is soft/tender in the addressee with no necessary connection with power asymmetry (a speaker more powerful than the addressee who is of much lower rank and highly vulnerable to exploitation).
So translators have failed to identify that the construction concerns power of persuasive speech by a speaker more powerful than the addressee. Consequently they have overlooked the confrontational nature of the construction (the context of the personal asymmetry of power; the particle על ‘concerning’ ‘against’ following ‘speak’ and preceding לב (‘heart’); and the reasoning/intentional/intellectual quality of the body part ‘heart’).
This has huge ramifications for how we present our English translations as translations, since what counts as foreign needs to be constantly under review. At the extreme we should not presume that a simple biblical expression, for example one that appears to say ‘he went into the house’ necessarily means what it means in English! We would first need to see if there are particular grammatical constructions or patterns associated with a particular type of verbal object ('house') and particular type of subject ('person') who might be expected (socially) to ‘go into’ the house! All this might seem a little too extreme but I feel it makes the point well.
In fact, within biblical studies, there is a whole new field of grammatical investigation being currently developed called ‘verbal valency’ which studies the grammatical patterns associated with particular biblical verbs. I say ‘new field’ because so far it has attracted studies that have been relatively linguistic rather than include the social-scientific background that Leeb brought to bear. I am very excited to see what other studies might reveal about verbal valency.
I recognise that it is more difficult to achieve clear results with biblical verbs than it is with verbs in current languages, since many biblical constructions only occur a few times, which is often not enough to detect clear patterns.
I hope to discuss more examples in future.
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