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Friday, September 1, 2017

Fact-Checking the Torah -- translations

Even though mischsprache is useless as a pillar for DH, it has a hidden assumption that has to be discussed.
Can you analyze Torah that has been translated?
That’s an absurdity. If language layering in Hebrew supposedly helps identify the various documents by placing different verses at different times in Jewish history, then the only valid analysis has to be directed against Torah in Hebrew.
You’re asking, “but if the translation was done by somebody really good, why is it still a problem?” That is, you’re asking if you’re new here. I just spent 50 posts giving you evidence that the translation of a word is not its meaning, which can only be determined in the context of the material where it appears, and the context of that material within the culture (which is a time-limited phenomenon as the Kings List shows), and the context of the transmission format – oral or written, and the context of its grammatical and idiomatic formulation.
But I left one thing out.
I said of dictionaries that lexicographers use prior sources.
The same is true of grammarians of Biblical Hebrew. None of their sources wrote based on the 21st century understanding of BH. Everybody who has ever written a grammar to use in reading or translating Torah relied on an outdated understanding of the grammar.
So as well as copying historically bad translations like “Ohozath”, translators have been victims of historically bad grammatical explanations.
On top of the fact that verbal expression develops to express the culture. Pretending that this expression records the divisions DH wants to make in Torah is a case of a circular argument. I’ll show evidence later that two of the founding writers in DH did just this: decided where to put the divisions, and then made up reasons why they were right, when the text doesn’t support them.  I’ll also discuss a situation where expression is a diagnostic to authorship and how its procedures differ from DH.
I’ll give more evidence later that grammar makes DH infinitesimally probable. For now, let's look at some of the terminology.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved

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