Cunning punning in Genesis 3

October 18, 2008 – 7:25 am

The value of a historical-critical study Bible does show itself from time to time. I was reading through the early chapters of Genesis, looking for more “once upon a time…” campfire stories, when I happened upon the study notes in my REB Study Bible for Genesis 3:1:

3.1: Serpent: an ancient extrabiblical story tells how a serpent stole the plant which would have given immortality to human beings. It was believed that when the snake shed its skin, it was rejuvenated. Cunning: there is a pun in the Heb. words for cunning and naked (v.7). Had made: a phrase deliberately used to show that the serpent was only one among God’s many creatures. The idea of the serpent as a primeval adversary of God, indeed, the Devil, arose much later (see Wisd. 2.24); so too the fixing of blame on the woman arose at a much later time (Ecclus. 25.24).

A virtually identical footnote appears in the NEB Study Bible, though with “crafty” instead of “cunning”, as that earlier translation has it. The verses in question are:

The serpent, which was the most cunning of all the creatures the Lord God had made, asked the woman, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?’ (3:1)

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (3:7)

Leon Kass’ book, “The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis“, contains the following note on this text:

The word “cunning,” in Hebrew ‘arum, echoes and puns on ‘arumim, “naked,” [...] The root sense of ‘erum, “naked,” is “smooth”: someone who is naked is hairless, clothesless, smooth of skin. But as the pun suggests, someone who is clever is also smooth, a facile thinker and talker whose surface speech is beguiling and flawless, hiding well his rough ulteriour purposes. (p.82)

With this in mind, we might think about how a “Literary Equivalent” English translation might convey a sense of this linguistic relationship in the original Hebrew:

The serpent was the smoothest operator of all the creatures the Lord God had made. He asked the woman, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?’ (3:1)

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that their naked skin was smooth; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (3:7)

Now obviously “smooth operator” is a very constrained idiom or phrase to use in terms of its historical relevance and one must fight the temptation to begin humming Sade’s song of the same name, but the desired effect is there, drawing the connection between the cunning deceitfulness of the serpent and the nascent self-awareness of the sinful man and woman.

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in bible translation, idioms, scripture study | Comments (14)

I peed my pants!

October 18, 2008 – 7:04 am

Returning to Kevin Sam’s list of interesting idioms in the NEB, I wanted to take a closer look at Ezekiel 21.7, which the NEB translates as:

When they ask you why you are groaning, say to them, ‘I groan at the thing I have heard; when it comes, all hearts melt, all courage fails, all hands fall limp, all men’s knees run with urine. It is coming. It is here.’ This is the very word of the Lord God.

The same expression appears in Ezekiel 7.17, where the NET has this translation note:

Heb “their knees will run with water.” The expression probably refers to urination caused by fright, which is how the LXX renders the phrase. More colloquial English would simply be “they will wet their pants,” but as D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:261, n. 98) notes, the men likely wore skirts which were short enough to expose urine on the knees.

The NETS translation of the LXX renders the phrase in question as “all thighs shall be sullied with moisture.” Most translations from the Hebrew translate the highlighted phrase as “all knees will be weak as water” (cf. NLT, NASB, KJV, etc.) or even more genericly, “all knees will turn to water” (cf. NRSV, REB, etc.).

If we focus on the “caused by fright” aspect of this idiom, then the translation of the NLT, KJV, NASB et al. is more easily understood. To be “as weak as water” implies a knee-knocking experience in which you’ve lost the foundational support of your legs. Atheletes with wobbly knees have to wear braces in order to keep competing or their legs will “go out from under them”.

However, as best as I can understand it, the literal Hebrew is “will flow as water” or “will run with water”. Further, an alternate meaning of the word for “water” is “waters of the feet”, which is a reference to the Hebrew idiom “cover his feet” - that is, the act of pulling down your robes, skirts or pants to go to the bathroom - and opens the door for understanding this phrase as someone who has lost bladder control. This is the more vivid path that the LXX and NEB translators chose, as did the NET Bible and TNIV:

NET: Every heart will melt with fear and every hand will be limp; everyone will faint and every knee will be wet with urine.‘

TNIV: Every heart will melt and every hand go limp; every spirit will become faint and every knee be wet with urine.‘

Whether formal (”as weak as water”) or functional (”be wet with urine”), all of these translations are still grounded in the form of the underlying Hebrew or Greek and have not fully utilized an equivalent English idiom. Or at least I’m not recognizing “as weak as water” as a common idiom, even if we understand what it means.

It seems that if a translation were to render this passage with a modern English idiom, they would have two choices:

Every heart melts and every hand goes limp; every spirit becomes faint and every knee buckles beneath them.’

Every heart will melt and every hand go limp; every spirit will become faint and in fright they will wet their pants.’

Which sounds more likely?

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in bible translation, idioms | Comments (7)

Thrown out of the throne room

October 18, 2008 – 5:57 am

The relationship between Satan and Heaven is an interesting one to dig into. One popular view is that Satan led a revolt of angels in pre-history and was in opposition to the Creator from the start, such that the serpent in Eden was the physical embodiment of Satan. Yet throughout the Old Testament, we see Satan (or “a lying spirit” which we associate with Satan) with access to Heaven (cf. Job 1.6-12, 1 Chronicles 21.1, 1 Kings 22.19-23, Zech 3.1-2, Psalm 82), also depicted as the courtroom of God.

One suspects that for the OT writers, it was not so much that Satan was thrown out of Heaven by God, but that Satan was an agent of God, the one willing to do the dirty work of tempting and enticing humans. The Zechariah passage depicts Satan as standing at the right hand of Joshua the high priest, waiting to accuse him before the angel of the Lord (Jesus?) Clearly Satan seems to have had God-granted authority to affect human action and then accuse them in the courtrooms of Heaven.

We then come to Luke 10.18-20, which records Jesus’ reply to his disciples’ reports of success as witnesses to the Kingdom of Heaven:

I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Which parallels Revelation 12.7-9:

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down-that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

But what’s of interest to me is what’s is recorded in the next verse in the Revelation passage:

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.

John goes on to record that when Satan saw that “he had been thrown down to the earth” (Rev. 12.13), he “went off to make war against [...] those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.” (Rev. 12.17)

Satan, the accuser, has had his access to Heaven’s courtroom revoked! He was cast out of Heaven and lost his authority over humankind when Jesus became a mortal man and established the beachheads of the Kingdom of Heaven. Where before he was free to roam through the earth and go back and forth to Heaven, presenting himself to God whenever he had evidence to accuse humans with, now he is permanently stuck on earth as “the prince of this world”, an impotent potentate without access to Heaven.

Satan has lost his place in the grand courtroom of the Sovereign God. This means that we do not have an Accuser, a Lawyer, a Prosecutor who is constantly seeking to convict us for every misdeed and unrighteous act. We have a temptor who seeks to deceive us and lead us astray from the Kingdom of Heaven, but we are not living in a present state of being accused and convicted of those temptations.

In an earlier post on a modern representation of Satan as the spirit of negation rather than of creation, I included a quote by Ligon Duncan, who sees “a simultaneously increasing opposition to the kingdom [of Heaven] growing alongside an ever advancing and expanding kingdom [of Heaven].” That is, as the Kingdom of Heaven grows and expands from its initial beachhead in the humanity of Jesus Christ, Satan’s kingdom here on earth must also advance and expand. The kingdom of earth feeds on the fruit of the Kingdom of Heaven, poisoning wherever it can gain a hold, but always dependent on a renewing Creation for the substance of its negation. The kingdom of earth is truly impotent.

There will come a time when we are judged as to which kingdom we belong to, but we have the assurance that our sentencing will be by the Just Judge, not a Double-dyed Deceiver, and that we have the Great Defender available, Jesus Christ himself.

* * * * *

HT: Brent Kercheville

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in eschatology, kingdom living, scripture study | Comments (3)

He was a peaceable sort of bloke…

October 16, 2008 – 1:11 pm

HT: Peter Kirk

The last personality test meme I came out as a Mystic… what will it be this time?

Peter has passed along a link to a personality survey by the Enneagram Institute that scores us in nine different categories. Whereas Peter scored highest as an “Investigator”, my results show me to be a “Type Nine: The Peacemaker”.

Nines are accepting, trusting, and stable. They are usually creative, optimistic, and supportive, but can also be too willing to go along with others to keep the peace. They want everything to go smoothly and be without conflict, but they can also tend to be complacent, simplifying problems and minimizing anything upsetting. They typically have problems with inertia and stubbornness.

At their Best: indomitable and all-embracing, they are able to bring people together and heal conflicts.

The more detailed description begins… “We have called personality type Nine The Peacemaker because no type is more devoted to the quest for internal and external peace for themselves and others. They are typically “spiritual seekers” who have a great yearning for connection with the cosmos, as well as with other people. They work to maintain their peace of mind just as they work to establish peace and harmony in their world. The issues encountered in the Nine are fundamental to all psychological and spiritual work—being awake versus falling asleep to our true nature; presence versus entrancement, openness versus blockage, tension versus relaxation, peace versus pain, union versus separation.”

Sounds like the Mystic to me… nice to know that these tests are at least somewhat consistent!

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Signs of the sufficiency of Shaddai

October 16, 2008 – 10:10 am

HT: Suzanne

In 1990, Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994) summarized an interpretation of the meaning of El Shaddai by Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204), popularly known as Maimonides:

[Maimonides] explains El Shaddai in terms of “the God for whom it is sufficient (shaddai lo): the God who is sufficient in Himself, whose essence is Himself, not in functions which He fulfills in relation to the world. That was the perception of our forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of El Shaddai. On this the midrash comments, that our fathers - unlike the generation of Moses - did not demand signs and wonders upon which to base their faith in God. Now though, that Moses was sent to bring the tidings of the redemption to the Israelites, who did not know of God as El Shaddai, there was a need to use names of God that represented His actions in the world.

In slight contrast is a tradition that interprets the word Shaddai as derived from the phrase sh-dai meaning “that which is (sh) enough (dai).”

By knowing God as El Shaddai, the Patriarchs recognized the inherent holiness within everything that God created. It was through this holiness that they were able to connect with God. Moses’s generation, by contrast, failed to see the holiness that existed before them. They required grand gestures, miracles and wonders, in order to sustain their faith.

On one hand, God stands self-sufficient, not defined as “Creator” or “Savior”, but simply “God”; on the other, God is intimately understood by and through the products or functions of Creation. One views God from God’s perspective, the other views God from our perspective. The first embodies the classic proverb of not being defined by your work, the second finds the holiness in the function of using or working with creation, e.g. “work to live, don’t live to work”.

However, this post isn’t so much to compare the two etymological interpretations of El Shaddai, but to focus on the common conclusion in both - that the generation of Israelites leaving Egypt with Moses were unable to recognize and believe in the holiness of God without overt functional signs. Their perception of God had been reduced to seeking “grand gestures, miracles and wonders.”

The slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt epitomizes the subjection of humankind to the curse of sin and the futility of the soil: broken and beaten, men and women are unable to look beyond the physical reach of their lives and will grasp any seemingly miraculous display that offers immediate stimulation and relief, however fleeting. That search began with the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, reached the top of the tower of Babel, flashed in the forging of the golden calf, and so forth and so forth. Racing forward to 2000 years ago, we find echoes of this conclusion at various points in Jesus’ ministry:

He replied, “A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” (Matthew 16.4)

“No one has ever seen God, but the one and only [Son], who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1.18)

“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” (John 3.14-15)

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.” (John 4.48)

We are no different today. In the constant search of new titillation to feed our attention-starved lives, we look for signs of the day rather than accept by faith that God is “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty,” the All Sufficient One. (Revelation 1.8) Without this faith, we fall sway to signs from any source, including those of Satan:

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (2 Thessalonians 2.9-10)

However, despite our wickedness, God loved the world in this way:

He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Jesus is the ultimate sign of God’s holiness and sufficiency, and his death and resurrection is the true assurance of our faith that God is sufficient beyond the limits of Creation and the Curse.

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in bible verses, devotions, quotes, shaddai | Comments (2)

Books I loved growing up…

October 10, 2008 – 3:34 pm

My oldest boy, Samuel, is learning to read this fall. He’s a bright kid and it won’t be long before he’s got “Hop on Pop” down cold (or completely memorized!). Thinking about the grand adventure ahead of him has brought recollections of many, many, many hours of my Alaskan childhood spent either at the library or at home with a pile of books.

I realize that John Hobbins had started a collective blogging project earlier this summer on the book(s) that inspired our childhoods… I figure I’m only four months late to the party!

Two books are coming to mind today - or more accurately, one book and a series of book:

Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea. I know now that Jansson wrote multiple books and there was even an animated cartoon on television, but my portal to the world of Moomin was this book in which the quixotic Moominpappa drags his troll family from their home across the sea to a desolate lighthouse. Followed by the mysterious Groke who freezes everything she touches while craving light and warmth, and sharing the island with a cranky old fisherman and delightful seahorses who dance in the moon light, the Moomins explore the dark and light of relationships and responsibility. I grew up surrounded by the sea and cold, so these themes resonated, as did the children’s pursuit of autonomy and freedom.

Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series. This is like a poor man’s Lord of the Rings: fantasy adventure with a quest, an unlikely hero who must grow up to suceed, danger, monsters, an evil lord bent on destruction, etc. Yet good enough for the final chapter of this five-book series to win the coveted Newbery Award. And perfect for the youth yearning for adventure beyond the frozen windows of his house in the woods.

It’ll be a few years before Sam is ready to tackle these on his own, but his imagination is big enough to jump into the world of the storyteller and listen to them read out loud. Perhaps it’s time for Dad to share a bit of his youth…

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in books | Comments (4)

Bible translation authority revisited

October 10, 2008 – 9:56 am

Peter Lopez has written a “better late than never” response to my post on the authority of Bible translations:

After a good discussion with several links worth checking out, Peter comes to the conclusion that “the only Bible translation that is in the top five in terms of sales and also in the top three in terms of historical objective excellence is the KJV. I suppose this should come as no surprise, but it should confirm what most already suspect.” The NASB, NIV, NLT and NKJV round out his top five.

Peter used CBA sales to determine the “popularity authority” rankings and, ironically, subjectively leans toward scoring formal translations higher in the “objective excellence” category. I wonder if it would be better to establish some criteria for scoring translations against what they pruport to be, e.g. formal or median or functional. That is, a formal translation like the ESV or NASB could potentially get the same “objective excellence” score as a functional translation like the NLT if both were judged against relative criteria.

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in bible translation, choosing a bible | Comments (1)

Ambiguous grasping in John 1:5

October 9, 2008 – 8:54 am

Kraus: Choosing a Bible

I am continuing my survey of Bible Translation books, now reading Donald Kraus’ volume, Choosing a Bible For Worship, Teaching, Study, Preaching, and Prayer. Kraus is Executive Editor for Bibles at Oxford University Press and presents a fairly even-handed review of translation philosophies, from strict interlinear to cultural paraphrase, though most of his time is spent in the space between the NASB and The Message.

I wanted to note one passage from the book: his consideration of the opening verses of John. Kraus considers the RSV, NIV, NJB, NLT, Moffat, TEV, CEV, The Message and Phillips translations for this passage. After discussing the various treatments of the Greek logos, he turns to “the verb katalambano (katelaben in the text - a past tense).”

This verb means “to take (as in the hand) in such a way as to hold firmly or fully.” By extension it means “to understand, comprehend.” [...] In the final phrase of this extract, “the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not katelaben it,” there is a classic translator’s dilemma. The writer probably meant both “hold so as to extinguish” and “understand the nature of” — the darkness has not extinguished the light, and the darkness has not understood the real nature of the light. In English, however, it is not possible to convey both of these meanings at once, and therefore it is necessary to choose.

For reference, here are a handful of translations of the verse in question, John 1.5:

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (NIV)

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (NASB; cf. KJV)

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. (NLT)

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (ESV; cf. TNIV, HCSB)

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never mastered it. (REB)

Is Kraus correct in that there is an inherent dual meaning or ambiguity in the original Greek that cannot be represented in English? Perhaps not. In the same discussion as above, Krauss notes that “a similar overlapping meaning occurs in English with the verb ‘grasp’, which can mean both ‘hold physically’ and ‘understand’.” If we lean toward the REB’s choice of “master” instead of “extinguish” or “overcome”, then we might allow that the semantic range of “grasp” includes having control or holding firmly. Certainly the traditonal sense of “understand” or “comprehend” is included in “grasping an idea or thought.”

With that in mind, perhaps another way of translating this verse is:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has been unable to fully grasp it.

I suppose the ultimate question is, when faced with a scenario of ambiguous dual meaning, is it better to translate to a word that naturally communicates the full sense of one of the meanings, but not the other (and presumably footnote the alternate meaning), or translate to a word that communicates some of the semantic range of both meanings? And if the latter, can we add a modifier, like “fully” above, that strengthens  meaning while still retaining the ambiguity?

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in bible translation, books, quotes, scripture study | Comments (7)

Idiomatic indiscretions

October 8, 2008 – 9:38 am

Be sure to check out Kevin Sam’s latest post on various idiomatic indiscretions of the NEB (and REB)…

Anyone for “loose livers”?

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in bible translation | Comments (9)

Pondering Peleg and the partions of the earth

October 5, 2008 – 2:19 am

Opening my Bible to First Chronicles, I began perusing the listing of the generations of mankind. Mostly my eyes glaze over when confronted with these tables, but there are narrative fragments in there like Nimrod (1.10), Archar (2.7) and the infamous Jabez (3.9-10) that hint at broader stories not more explicitly told to us in the Bible. One of these is the “story” of Peleg, descendant of Shem, son of Noah:

The sons of Shem: Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram. The sons of Aram: Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshek. Arphaxad was the father of Shelah, and Shelah the father of Eber. Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan. Joktan was the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan. (1.17-27, TNIV)

Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah and Abram (that is, Abraham).

So Peleg falls nearly halfway between Shem, the son of Noah, and Abram. Footnotes indicate his name means “division”, as suggested in the text. But what exactly was divided about the earth? The vast majority of translations I looked at have no more than what’s been provided above.

However, the New Jerusalem Bible contains the added information that “it was in his time that the earth was divided into districts.” Okay, so we have some sense of regions of influence or common characteristics being established. The NLT goes even further: “The first was named Peleg (which means “division”), for during his lifetime the people of the world were divided into different language groups.”

There’s a definite echo of Genesis 11 (the story of Babel) and, looking back at the texts, in fact, Peleg and his brother, Joktan, are the last generation of Shem’s descendants listed in Gen. 10, immediately before Babel. Certainly the division of the world by language was the primary outcome of Babel - families were divided and countries were formed with new language relationships (that’s one way for God to assure genetic diversity!).

That would probably be enough to confirm the NLT’s expansion of the Chronicler’s text; however, I was also reading in the Book of Judith (Apocrypha) and came across the following summary of Abram’s family history:

Then Achior, the leader of all the Ammonites, said to [Holophernes, the Assyrian commander-in-chief], ‘My lord, if you will allow your servant to speak, I will tell you the truth about this nation [Israel] that lives in the hill-country near here; and no lie shall pass my lips. They are descended from the Chaldaeans; and at one time they settled in Mesopotamia, because they refused to worship the gods their fathers had worshipped in Chaldaea. They abandoned the ways of their ancestors and worshipped the God of Heaven, the god whom they now acknowledged. When the Chaldaeans drove them out from the presence of their gods, they fled to Mesopotamia, where they lived for a long time. Then their god told them to leave their new home and go on to Canaan. They settled there and acquired great wealth in gold, silver and livestock. (5.5-9, NEB)

We know that the Chaldaeans were the dominant tribe of Babylonia and existed with a number of other tribes (source). Presumably “Mesopotamia” means Harran, where Abram first settled after leaving Ur. According to the genealogy recorded in Genesis 11, there were approximately 400 years from the birth of Shem to the birth of Abraham, a time period during which all of the ancestral family (Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah) were still alive. Shem lived for 600 years, 502 years after the flood - that means that Shem was still living when Abram was born! (This, of course, assumes that we read the genealogy literally and not as a stylized history of many more generations that populated the earth.)

The text in Judith is explicit that the fathers worshiped other gods in Chaldaea - this is after the flood (again, reading the text literally in terms of global flood), so “their fathers” has to refer to the ancestral line quoted above. The question is whether the “abandonment of the gods of their fathers” as recorded in Judith refers to God’s calling of Abram or instead perhaps to the Babel episode and Peleg’s “division” from the rest of the world.

That is, could a remnant of Babel, led by Peleg, have chosen to worship the God who “scattered men all over the face of the earth” (Gen 11.9)? And was this the division that his name refers to? Keeping in mind that Peleg’s father’s name, Eber, is the traditional root of the word, “Hebrew”, is it possible that Eber named his son after a split in the family? How likely is it that the predominant worship of other gods would have been established in 100 years after the flood (Arphaxad to Peleg)? Are there implications of Abram already having known the “God of Heaven” at the time of his call in Gen 11.12? Certainly the Bible text assumes some familiarity, as Abram’s first response isn’t “who are you?!” Or at least it’s not recorded as such…

By ElShaddai Edwards | Posted in scripture study | Comments (2)