Fred, you are entitled to your opinion, though I suspect that many will disagree with you about language being unable to capture cultural conceptuality. Yes, there is always some loss, but this is not complete loss. It seems you are implying wholesale change of meaning when translation occurs, perhaps because you are equating culture with language directly. This may be the way Islam views translation of the Qur’an, but it does so on the basis of a belief in the divine origin and unalterability of the words, syllables, and sounds as delivered directly to Muhammad. While Second Temple Judaism viewed the biblical texts as divine in origin, they evidently had no insuperable objection to translating them (perhaps because their concept of divine inspiration was not identical to the way Islam later viewed inspiration of the Qur’an).
I’m not sure this thread is going to deal with Biblical Hebrew in any significant way. Let’s give it to the end of Monday and then leave it there. GEORGE ATHAS Co-Moderator, B-Hebrew (Sydney, Australia) _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
