Which is literally And the Lord God caused sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept (וַיִּישָׁ֑ן) and he took (וַיִּקַּ֗ח) one of his ribs…
“and he slept” and “and he took” are right next to each other, both waw consecutives, no?. Following this “rule” that the subject of the second verb “has to be” the same as the first, you’d have either…
… * the Lord God caused sleep to fall upon the man, and God slept; and God took one of his ribs…
or,
and the man slept; and the man took one of his ribs…
I would think it obvious that the language is more fluid than that, and authors are free to shift subjects mid sentence when they think context would make it obvious what is happening.
When I attended the Acme School of Swell Translation, my Hebrew instructor said there are really only three rules for correctly translating a verse:
Context is the most important
Context is the second most important
Context is the third most important.
In your example (Gen 2: 18) while the antecedents are ambiguous, the context is pretty clear. Adam was put to sleep (a better translation is “trance”) and God performed the surgery. Moreover, the verse is a classical Hebrew narrative (4 wayyiqtol clauses) terminated by the first clause of the next verb, a perfect clause
2:21 (vayyiqtol, wayyiqtol, wayyiqtol, wayyiqtol)
2:22 perfect.
In Genesis 15:6, the antecedents are ambiguous as 2:21-22 but, like 2:21-22 there is context to inform the antecedents of its two clauses. The antecedent subject of the second clause is given by the narrative structure of the verse (a perfect clause following a wayyiqtol clause):
“and he believed this and he stopped” the first clause is a wayyiqtol and the second is a perfect and therefore terminates the narrative. In this case subject continuity wins because there is no context that would override this rule.
Yes. It gets confusing and one only has only to listen to the Youtube video of a translation committee hashing out the meaning of eved (slave, worker, etc.,)
agreed, except that in chapter 15, unlike ch 2 which is quite obvious, the intent of the larger context is clearly in dispute. You are arguing, given the linguistic ambiguity, for a certain interpretation based on your own particular read of the context and theological interpretation. And that is fine, you are well within your rights to do so. But plenty of other scholars read the context and theological implications quite differently, including plenty of modern scholars both Jewish and Christian, as well as both Paul and James.
Moreover, though, since it sounds like we agree that the antecedents are indeed ambiguous in Genesis 15… Why was there a claim that the LXX “mistranslated” it there (by moving to passive voice), when they also kept the pronoun ambiguous just like in the original? Even in the paper, if I read it properly, it seemed to acknowledge that the LXX maintained the same ambiguity?
Except Paul’s Letters and associated books, although considered instructional and valuable, because they do not directly reflect the teachings or the Words of Jesus, are not considered Christian doctrine, even if they are canonical.
First a couple of points: I try (but often fail) to advance textual interpretations, not theological ones. For example, I make no claim for or against the use of Genesis 15:6 as a proof text for justification by faith.
Second, the subject antecedents of Gen 15:6 are ambiguous only if one doesn’t consider the structure (and grammar) of the biblical narrative, one part of which is how do we resolve antecedents. That is, given two independent clauses, if the first clause is a perfect, and the second is the beginning of a narrative (a wayyiqtol) then the subject of the second clause is the same as the first (the perfect).
What do I mean by narrative? A biblical narrative structure has specific grammar - it’s not just any old story. A biblical narrative narrative is one or more wayyiqtol clauses terminated by a non-vayyiqtol (in this case a perfect). In a Hebrew narrative the subject of the first wayyiqtol clause is the subject of all subsequent wayyiqtol clauses unless a specific name is given and the final concluding clause. For example, given a narrative of 3 wayyiqtol clauses ending with a perfect we have,
John spoke to ...
Then he blessed them ...
The he turned aside
and laid down..
John is the subject of all four clauses. But let’s change it up.
John asked Micah to bless his house.
Then Micah blessed the house.
The he turned aside
and laid down..
John is the subject of the first wayyiqtol clause
Micah is the subject of the next 2 wayyiqtol clauses and the final non-wayyiqtol clause.
Now, I am impressed with your example from Gen 2:21. It captures the need for context but also illustrates subject continuity. Let’s explore that one.
So the LORD God caused a qdeep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
Gen. 2:22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made8 into a woman and brought her to the man.
Stripped of everything except the clause structure we have
God caused to fall (wayyiqtol)
he slept (wayyiqtol)
took (wayyiqtol)
closed (wayyiqtol)
taken (perfect)
The subject of the second clause is determined from context because Adam was put to sleep. Similarly, the subject of the 3rd clause must be YHWH because He is the only one left awake. The subject of the fourth clause is similarly determined from context. The fifth clause, is the termination of the narrative and YHWH is the clause’s explicit subject.
Finally, if you have access to biblical Hebrew text you can play around with a tool I designed to help elucidate much of the confusion around biblical narratives in the Hebrew Bible.
JBL is not “The Beaurocracy,” it’s the most respected biblical scholarship journal, show some respect.
This topic is not new. Debates in the New Perspective crowd have turned on interpretation of concepts of righteousness, faith, faithfulness, allegiance, and obedience for decades and people have been advocating reworking the Reformed interpretation of justification for a long time. A good argument isn’t going to hinge entirely on grammar or word studies though, because theology depends on cognitive processing and you can’t recreate cognitive environments using linguistic analysis alone. But good verse-level investigations can be helpful, and we need scholars to get in the weeds in service of larger arguments. Some of you cannot tell the difference between the self-published nut-jobs who come on here to share their delusional magnum opi and Bible scholars who actually know things and do their homework.
Michael was saying something accurate and well-established when he was talking about the Septuagint translation of Gen. 15:16. Although the inerratists will forever be proposing their “handlings” of things, it’s pretty obvious to everyone that the NT incorporates some Septuagint texts that contain translation errors and/or were not translated from the Hebrew text that is now considered the authoratative MT. This is not being out in left-field, it’s being aware of modern biblical scholarship.
Thanks Christy for the additional clarification. However, I feel compelled to add that my article has not been accepted by JBL (but nor as it been yet rejected) and there is no guarantee that it will be. If it does get accepted I’ll likely be required to rewrite the thing with 53 additional citations. (I’m told the reviewers can be brutal) along with some appropriate genuflections to others who have published in this area.
In any case, if I implied that it had been accepted I sincerely apologize. I only mentioned JBL because the people who have reviewed it to date thought it met JBL’s requirements.
Reading this thread has been like watching the ones where Steve Schaffner tries to explain vaccines or genetics to people who got their science degree on YouTube University and assume he did the same.
To the rest of you know-it-alls, take a seat for a minute and try to learn some things.
If they sent it out for review, it met a basic editorial standard and they thought there was potential. People who don’t try and publish have no idea what JBL consideration entails, and people who have done academic writing (in less prestigious outlets) know how intimidating the process is. Best of luck to you and I hope they don’t make you cry.
There may (or may not) be good examples of this, but this simply isn’t one of them. In his own paper, he readily acknowledges that the LXX remained ambiguous; all the LXX did was to shift into passive voice, but they kept the very same ambiguity that they found in the original in their translation, a rather mature translation choice, keeping ambiguous in the translation what is ambiguous in the original.
In his paper, he rightly noted that “the Greek… provides no subject for the verb, no object for what is reckoned, and no grammatical means to trace the antecedent of the action.”
If I am following him rightly, @mtp1032 is wanting to insist that grammar and context indisputably demand that “Abram” is the subject of the second clause of 15:6…, and on that basis he is suggesting the LXX errs by remaining ambiguous, as it conflicts with his opinion that the MT is unambiguous. I respectfully demur, among a myriad of scholars both Jewish and Christian. His own opinion is his to embrace, but as I pointed out by Gen 2:21 (and there are other examples), grammar alone simply does not require his interpretation. It is a general rule, but certainly not a hard and fast rule.
(Just like in English, pronouns generally refer back to the most recent noun that preceded them in a sentence, but try to make that a hard and fast rule and then try to interpret everything you read in the news or online according to that unwavering rule!)
Neither does the context demand his interpretation. Again, there are plenty of both Christian and Jewish scholars that would similarly demur based on their understanding of both the grammar and the context.
Point simply remains, strictly speaking, the Hebrew of the MT is indeed ambiguous, and the LXX translation remains similarly ambiguous, and context rules the interpretation of both. The LXX shifted to passive (for apparently stylistic reasons?), but in such a manner as which caused no significant change in core meaning.
If you are looking for errors of translation in the LXX that made their way into the NT, I humbly recommend you look elsewhere?
True, there are places where the NT citation comes from the LXX and noticeably differs from the Masoretic. But the point that I was trying to make is that quoting the LXX is not misquoting the Masoretic; it’s quoting the LXX. Usually the Masoretic seems to be the most reliable tradition. However, even though the exact wording is sometimes noticeably different, the concept is usually similar. If Paul’s goal was not to reproduxe the exact text of the (not yet finalized) Masoretic text, then he can be faulted for misquoting. But many of his Diaspora Jewish rivals, as well as most of his Christian readers, would have relied on the LXX. He’s not the only NT author to cite OT verses at times in a way that seems odd to modern academic citations (Matthew is particularly obvious). But Paul certainly had the background to know how rabbinic teaching handled Scripture. If he thought that was a good argument, it probably was not easy to criticize his citation by the standards of the day.
I don’t indisputably demand anything. I would love to have a discussion with someone who could explain to me how or why my argument(s) are wrong. I have every reason to believe that there are innumerable scholars who have forgotten more about the interpretation of Hebrew texts than I will ever know. But, if you were to take time to evaluate my thesis in the context of the scholars I cite we might be able to have a productive conversation.
Not quite: I claim, do not suggest, that the LXX errs because the authors made two mistakes in translating the Hebrew of gen 15:6: First, the LXX does not represent what the Genesis author wrote – in 2 ways. 1) The LXX errored when he failed to translate the antecedent of the second clause correctly. 2) He changed the voice of the verb of the second clause. Both of these errors give rise to a completely different meaning.
My hope is that for anyone who finds my thesis in error, then explain how the traditional interpretation is supported grammatically or by context. There are a multitude of studies that advance the traditional interpretation and I think I’ve read the majority of them. Very few recognize the change of voice problem and even fewer translate the subject antecedent correctly.
Help me to understand what I’ve missed? What problem haven’t I addressed. I would be most grateful for such feedback.
If you read my response, I tried to explain (and show) that 2:21-22 was an elegant example of wayyiqtol narrative sequences as a tool to determine the antecedents of indefinite subjects.
We have to remember that texts functioned differently in the ancient world though. There probably wasn’t any such thing as an authoritative text. There were a bunch of variants and translations of variants in circulation, and people relied much more on rabbis who had memorized texts teaching the texts orally, not reading. Jesus may not have even been literate in the modern sense. So many arguments motivated by modern inerrancy concerns and made by people who cannot imagine how things worked in societies that were not text dominant like ours are anachronistic and impose different cultural standards on the ancient context.
Michael, I sincerely appreciate the respectful discussion. But to be straightforward, my objection truly is more about the underlying reasoning… let me break down the logic of your argument, and see if you can follow my objection:
The LXX errored when he failed to translate the antecedent of the second clause correctly.
or rephrased, "The LXX erred when it failed to translate the antecedent of the second clause as I think it should be understood.
Do you see that you are using “correct” there to be synonymous with “in accord with my opinion”?
put another way: on what basis are you making this rather absolute claim that the LXX objectively erred and failed to properly translate the antecedent of the second clause?
-The unanimous and undisputed scholarly consensus among all Christian, Jewish, and secular scholars about the correct antecedent in the MT of Gen 15:6?
-Or the fact that the LXX failed to follow your (minority?) opinion on what the correct antecedent is, a view that is disputed by myriad Jewish and Christian OT scholars?
It’s doesn’t really matter if the ambiguity remained in the translation if the interpretation picked a lane though, does it? I didn’t read the article. But people conflate translation and interpretation all the time. If Paul was using the translation in an argument, you can make assertions about how he interpreted and Greek speakers of the time interpreted it. Of course context doesn’t demand one interpretation, that’s why there is debate about ambiguity in the first place. Making an argument for one way over another is just how scholarship is done. You don’t get publlished for saying the same thing everyone else has said. But you also don’t get published for saying things that are totally implausible. I don’t think the whole point of the exercise was to “look for errors of translation in the LXX.” I think it was to offer further support to challenges to the traditional Reformed view of justification, something many people have already done, with a full catalogue of arguments, not a single verse.
No thanks, people have written whole books on it. There is a rather long thread from a while back on the forum. Orality in the ancient world is understudied, but it’s a broad topic you are welcome to read up on. People were generally not literate in the way we post-Gutenberg moderns think of it. I certainly don’t have time to give a class, and it would derail the discussion here. It’s just always good to keep in mind that the ancients were usually not referencing written texts in their teaching or writing, they were referencing texts that they had encountered first by listening and could recite orally. And many authors of NT texts used scribes to “write” and their texts were read aloud and explained orally by someone who had the text taught to them first.
No. The LXX erred when the Lxx author(s) failed to properly represent the subject of the second clause as dictated by grammar of the Hebrew narrative structure. It is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the Greek Jews living in Alexandria weren’t that facile in their understanding of Hebrew.
There is no unanimous and undisputed scholarly consensus on this matter. Even Rashi back in the tenth century read the subject of the second clause a Abram. Rambam disputed Rashi’s interpretation but Rabbinic tradition holds that Rashi had the best argument.
My interpretation is surely a minor one, but one that, unlike most of the others, conforms to context (the story Abram from Ur to the Aqedah) and syntax.