From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 27 1996 - 20:47:35 EST
I'm writing a response that I have no business writing, inasmuch as I'm at
home and without a text of the LXX or of the BHS either.
On 1/26/96, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
> First, on the KJV and Dt 6, I believe the word in question is PERIKUKLWi
> (why it's dative I don't know). LSJM say it means "round about". That sounds
> like they borrowed this definition from the KJV, rather than offering an
> actual definition. Even if they didn't, that's a gloss if I'ver ever
>seen one.
I still don't know where this is--I don't have a KJV handy either, only an
NEB, but it looks like you might have read that PERI KUKLWi in Dt 6.15
where the references is to "gods of the nations that are around you." If
so, then I still don't see your problem: PERI is adverbial here and KUKLWi
is an instrumental dative, so that it could be translated "around in a
circle." If KJV has "round about" and LSJM have "round about," that doesn't
mean LSJM got it from KJV (although it could conceivably be a long-lasting
influence of the English of the KJV) but rather that the English idiom that
still best expresses the sense of PERI KUKLWi is "round about." You may
call it a "gloss" if you wish, but what you're being given is the idiomatic
English equivalent.
> Now, I've noticed in 1 Sam 1 that the translator often transliterates
You've read pretty rapidly, Ken, all the way from Deuteronomy 6 to 1 Samuel
in a couple days!
> divine titles, rather than translating them like KURION SABAWQ. I'm wondering
> if list members think the LXX in these cases would similarly be transliterated
> (and this makes me doubt the Hebrew knowledge of the LXX translator, along
> with other things he/she did) or whether it is preferable to render words
> like ELWAI and SABAWQ with a real translation of the Hebrew word?
By "the translator" I assume you mean the LXX translator, not the KJV
translator. Don't we often in the English versions also keep a word like
SABAOTH or ELWAI? My guess, however (and it is only a guess; I've read a
fair amount of LXX but not studied it), is that it is the
by-then-established Jewish reverence for the name of God (such as even
makes one say "ha Shem" instead of pronouncing "Yahweh") that accounts for
the transliteration of ELWAI and SABAWQ and the conversion of YHWH to the
Greek KURIOS which represents the Hebrew word "Adonai" which is
_pronounced_ when the word YHWH is encountered in the Hebrew text.
> In 1 Sam 1:8, we read hINA TI. Dana and Mantey says this regularly
> means "why?", though I think it could very reasonably be taken to mean
> "what's the matter, so that you....". Would this be the geerally
> accepted view, that it means "Why?" ?
Ken, I thought we went over (a thread, infact) the matter of hINA TI pretty
thoroughly when you raised it a couple weeks ago with regard to your
problem in the Didache. It's pretty well established that the two words
have become a single phrase meaning "for what?/why?"--and I argued that the
hINA certainly appears to have taken on the function of the preposition DIA
in the phrase. At any rate, the hINA TI is exactly the same here as it was
in the Didache passage.
> Also in the same verse, Elkana says OUK AGAQOS EGW SOI hUPER DEKA TEKNA.
> Now I understand this to be a comparision, but I would have expected
> KREITTWN and I am not aware that hUPER means "more than". Am I missing
>something
> here? First, this shows me the translator didn't understand MiN very
>well as it
> regularly is used for "more than" or other comparitive and is translating
> in an overly wooden way, and second, why not a preposition
> or something that actually means "more than", like EPANW?
This is in fact another Semitism and it looks to me like the Greek probably
follows the Hebrew idiom very closely. I think you're right that the
translator doesn't know literary Greek very well: he's clearly THINKING in
Hebrew when he writes Greek. I'd think that the hUPER here means "over and
above." And Hebrew doesn't really have the comparative form that Greek has
but expresses the comparison with the different construction. As I noted
the other day, I've personally found the old Conybeare & Stock grammatical
introduction to their Selections from the LXX (Zondervan has published that
intro separately, I think, under the title of "LXX Grammar" or something
like it) very useful. They go over the more common circumlocutions used by
the LXX translators for Hebrew idioms very nicely, and as I recall, the use
of hUPER is one of them.
> Finally, I'm struggling with 1:6 TA PEWRI (typo) PERI THN MHTRAN
> AUTHS. LSJM and BAGD both say MHTHR means mother but that doesn't
> make sense here. So I'm wondering if the alternate meaning of "source"
> should be used or if we should render it as "motherhood", even though no
>one gives
> that as the correct translation? In looking at BHS, I even wonder if
> the translator had a different text because I can't see how he/she could have
> totten (typo) gotten MHTRAN from RXM.
It's a different word altogether: hH MHTRA (obviously a cognate of MHTHR)
means "womb."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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