From: Bill Burks (rwburks@flash.net)
Date: Thu Dec 30 1999 - 13:09:16 EST
Bill Burks wrote:
Bill R. I would agree that all of these speak of a particular person place or thing,
making them proper nouns. However when we use the word Hades and transliterate it
for example, as I have just done, it may require some homework to understand what the
original writer meant when he used the word. What did the author mean? Why did he
use that word as opposed to Gehenna in that particular place?
Perhaps the author was giving a different description of the same thing by the use of
two different words, or he was describing two different things by using two different
proper nouns. Plus if I am a person who knows nothing of Biblical Greek the word
Hades may have aquired different contitations in the secular world in the two
thousand years since the text was written. The reader may read the word and
misinterpret its meaning based on a current secular definition of the word. By
transliterating the term into another language I am not neccessarily carrying the
meaning of the original word over into the text of the second language.
I certainly would not use the same English word "hell" for all three of the Greek
words under discussion. In this we are in agreement. While it may be allowable to
transliterate a proper name into the second language it may not convey the
theological contextual meaning of that word to the reader. I think it is different
to transliterate the name Abraham for example then it would be to transliterate Hades
or Gehenna etc. It may not be necessary to understand that the name Abraham means
"father of many nations," to understand the meaning of a particular text, but it
might be important to know the meaning of Gehenna when reading it in another passage.
Regards,
Bill Burks
Bill Ross wrote:
> <Johnathon>
> True...but it seems the choices of the translator are:
>
> 1. Use an English word that mirrors each of the above words in meaning.
> These words do not exist.
> 2. Transliterate the words. This is not really translation.
> 3. Use the word "Hell", but include a footnote to indicate the original
> word. This does bring it into English, but the footnote is essential to
> grasp the original meaning.
> 4. Include some form of footnote that contains plenty of commentary. This
> can be used to supplement either 2 or 3. It is not really translation, but
> the imagery behind each of these words is rich, and goes beyond what we can
> convey with a single word.
>
> <Bill>
> Hades, Sheol, Gehenna and Tarturus are all proper names and as such can be
> transliterated just like all of the other proper names. The footnotes, then,
> are not essential for consistency with the transliteration of proper names,
> but would be particularly welcome in this situation.
>
> At any rate, "translating" to the word "Hell" for all of those different
> words, with no footnote, is grossly irresponsible as far as I'm concerned.
>
> Bill Ross
>
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