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NASB | Genesis 24:9 So the servant placed his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Genesis 24:9 So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him concerning this matter. |
Bible Question:
hi. i bought a Stongs concordance. it said in the begining that words without numbers next to them may have been included by the translators because no hebrew or greek word existed - i looked up the above verse, wrote down evey work, and then crossed out every word which was not listed in the concordance. i came up with the following sentence servant put hand thigh abraham master swore oath my first question: they really spoke like that? my second question concerns how they translators decided that the hand was placed over, under or on? the word on appears, but since it was not used in translation i presume that was NOT the original word used. that leaves over or under - since neither word appears, how did they choose? thanks |
Bible Answer: Dear hic: Your question brings to mind an anecdote about humorist James Thurber and a coquettish young woman he happened to meet at a social gathering. The young woman said to the humorist, "Mr. Thurber, I just adore your writing." And, in an obvious attempt to impress Thurber with her erudition, she added, "It's even funnier in the French." To which James Thurber responded, "Well, one must admit it does lose something in the original." ....... All of which serves to illustrate that apparently some modern translators take the ridiculous position -- which Thurber took with tongue in cheek in reference to his writings -- that Scripture "loses something in the original" and needs to be gussied up, to be monkeyed with, changed, edited, paraphrased, interpreted and otherwise compromised in order to render it in "smooth" English; or, as one version put it, to make it read like today's newspaper. Well, the Bible is not a newspaper; it is the word of God and who in his right mind wants to copy the pedestrian style of an ephemeral newspaper to convey the eternal message of God's truth? ....... Now to your specific question of whether they -- they being the ancient Greeks and Hebrews -- really spoke like that -- that being the example you gave in your question. Without going into great detail, I'll note simply that each language has its own peculiar syntax -- rules of grammar, word order, punctuaion, idioms, etc. For example, the Germans are particularly unkind to their verbs, usually placing them last in a sentence. In English we would say, "He forgot his hat" but the German would say, in German of course, what would be rendered literally, word for word, in English as "He his hat forgot." But this literal rendition, while natural in German, is not natural in English, and in more complex constructions, is not even comprehensible in English. So the Bible translator faces a dual task, that of rendering a translation that is faithful to the ancient manuscripts while at the same time being understandable and grammatically correct in the receptor language. No easy task, that. --Hank |