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Preface Introduction Chapters Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Appendices Appendix I Appendix II Appendix III Appendix IV Appendix V Appendix VI Appendix VII Appendix VIII Appendix IX Appendix X Appendix XI Appendix XII Appendix XIII Appendix XIV Appendix XV Appendix XVI Appendix XVII Appendix XVIII Appendix XIX Appendix XX Appendix XXI Indexes References Names Biblical References General Bibliography |
THE RULE APPLIED WITH
ILLUSTRATIONS. Robert Young, the author of that most valuable research tool, An Analytical Concordance
of the Old and View Testament, also produced a Literal
Translation of the Bible. In his Introduction he sets forth very
carefully with support from various authorities certain views regarding
the use of tenses in Hebrew. He then applies these rules rigidly. The
resulting narrative, while perhaps more precisely correct from the
view of Hebrew syntax and grammar (assuming his
"rules" are valid), is difficult indeed to read cursively with profit. The English is stilted and does not
"flow". The sentences are staccato and
just occasionally hardly seem to make sense at all. The lesson one learns from this is that
translation demands a certain amount
of freedom. In order to make literature live, a translator is justified
in taking some liberties not on linguistic grounds but for dramatic
reasons, though the dangers of doing this are very considerable. Now, my reason for using this example is simply to emphasize the need for caution in
insisting on obedience upon all occasions to some rule that has, after
all, only been established by reference to pg
1 of 9 general usage. In
language, this is the only way that rules can be established. But when a
translation is made for reading (as well as for study), then some
departure from the rules sometimes has to be allowed. Thus I would not argue that
occasions be rendered
"become" or "became" or even "come to be" (ie. , "happen")
whenever it is found in the present or past tense. The fact is that there are
sentences even in English where the word "be" really means
"become" and yet we commonly accept the word "be". For
example, "I refuse to be a party to it" really means "I refuse to become a
party to it". So one should not always translate according to the letter of
the law. In the opening words of
his Preface, Driver, after noting that Hebrew is particularly
careful in distinguishing between the sense of "being" and
"becoming" and after pointing out how little attention we are apt to pay to this
difference, remarks: "So cumbrous is the
mechanism which has to be set in motion in order to express
the difference, so palpable is the strain to which our
language is subjected in the process, that we feel irresistibly
tempted to discard and forget it." And again: "On the agreement of a verb with its subject in number, a point to which in certain
cases the ancient Hebrews attached no importance whatever, we
ourselves are sensitive and precise: on the other
hand, the difference between being and becoming, seyn and werden,
been fully appropriated or
naturalized in English...." The only time one ought to
be particularly careful is when there is a possibility of a real
misunderstanding as to the sense, when there is an ambiguity that it is
important to avoid. It is an important issue with respect to Gen. 1.2
whether one renders the Hebrew as "But the earth became...." or
merely "But the earth was...."
In such a case, to my mind, the true
sense must be clearly established by reference to the rules of
the language and rendered into English in such a way as to make that
sense unambiguous. In a few cases it will not
matter at all: mothers it may be critical. In a large number of cases
which fall between these extremes, there may be considerable gain
in rendering it correctly and unambiguous- ly. Let me give a few illustrations, in none of
which is
by
"became" or
"had become", etc. In Gen. 3.1, the Hebrew should be rendered, "Now the serpent had become more subtle than
any beast of the field".* I
believe this indicates that some
circumstance had changed its character rather than that God had created
it so from the beginning. In Gen. 3.20, it would be
more proper to render the passage as Driver does, "Eve
became the mother of all living". It is virtually certain that at that time
Eve was not yet a mother. The development which subsequently
establishes her as the mother of the human race is here recorded in
retrospect and it seems likely that Adam's first name for Eve was simply Ishah,
or Woman. This kind of retrospect observation surely applies
to Gen. 2.23 also, for Adam could not possibly have said that a
man should leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, since
such a thought would at that time be quite foreign to his experience.
I do not mean by this that the saying is not divinely inspired.
Adam may very well have renamed his wife Eve after she began
to beget sons and daughters and they in turn begat children. In Gen. 21.20, there is a
nice instance of precision in the use of the verb
came to pass (
grew and dwelt in the
wilderness and became a drawer of the bow". The Vulgate has factusque
est, ie., "and he became...."
And the Septuagint has
of Gen. 4.2 (except for
the inverted word order found there) which according to Driver
(perhaps guided in part by the LXX)is rendered "And Abel became
a shepherd of the flock, while Cain had become a tiller of the
ground". A particularly delightful
passage is to be found in Gen. 29.17 which I would render more
exactly from the Hebrew (and yet quite literally too!), "Now Rachael
had become sparkling eyed and beautiful, but Leah always was weepy
eyed". I realize that this sounds far-fetched at first sight, yet the
fact is that the actual use of the verb the word order) in the
first instance justifies the use of "had become" in the pluperfect: and its
absence in the second case implies a static situation-which I have
expressed somewhat paraphrasically but not unreasonably by the words
"always was". And whereas the original * Pusey so renders this
passage. does suggest "sparks"
when speaking of Rachael's eyes, it also suggests
"wateriness" when referring to Leah! The Authorized Version is perhaps gentler
with Leah than the Hebrew original. It is quite true that the change
in word order could merely be to contrast with what precedes. But
this contrast is not really specific in the text, and I think it is
quite reasonable to say that Rachael as she grew to womanhood had become a
strikingly beautiful woman, whereas Leah may have been
watery-eyed from childhood. An excellent illustration of how some translators heeded and other did not heed the
sense of "becoming" in the verb
connection with Joseph's
dream and the fate that intervened before it was fulfilled. In Gen. 37.20,
I would render the Hebrew "Let us see what will become
of his dreams". Both Driver and the Revised Standard Version have
adopted this rendering. But the
Septuagint have understood the
meaning of Gen. 37.20 rather differently for they rendered it
be... The Septuagint translators evidently took
the text to mean that the brothers wanted
to cast Joseph into the pit and leave him there - to dream dreams of
a somewhat less promising kind! This could be the meaning since the
tense is future and therefore would be required in the
appropriate form since the circumstances are viewed as being
changed - or at least the nature of his dreams! Yet I think the real significance
of their remarks is that they wished to thwart the
"promise" of the dream he had already told them about. In Gen. 2.18 ff., we have
another striking case where precision in translation is
revealing. First, it is stated that
it was not a good thing that Adam
should be alone. He needed
company of some kind. So, as I interpret the occasion, the Lord
brought to the man various animals
whose nature and habits (and size, presum- ably) might suggest to
Adam that in these he would find the answer to his loneliness. It would not be so exceptional if he had
done so, for many both young
and old people today find greater pleasure in the company of some pet
animal than they do in the society of their fellow man. Adam's response to each creature, thus presented for his consid- eration as a companion,
was at once reflected in the "name" he gave to it. In this process of
naming, I do not think there was anything arbitrary at all. He was
not merely providing a dictionary label for each creature so that it
could be referred to thereafter without am- biguity. He was identifying
its nature. The text says: "What- soever he called (each
animal) that (was) the name thereof". Now in the original the verb
sense of the text would then have been
"that became its name" - and superficially this is
exactly what we might have expected the text to say. The usual interpretation of the passage
is that he gave each animal a label and that the
label "stuck": ie. , that became its name thereafter. But from the way the Hebrew has actually
stated the matter, I think the meaning
is much more profound. This was a case of precise
"identification". Adam identified each creature as to its nature - and that
really was in fact its nature: in short, he was absolutely right in his
assessment. This, in fact, is why not one of them appeared to him
to be a sufficient companion. In his unfallen state, his
judgment did not deceive him. What
he said of each animal was true: he
marked each one for what it was, a creature far below himself whose
nature was quite unlike his own. His own name was Ish, a word
in some way describing his very nature. The woman he correctly
identified as Ishah for he recognized her as his own counterpart: but not
so, any of the other creatures. Thus what appears as a naive fairy
tale turns out to be a record of a profound exercise inhuman judgment,
an exercise which may indeed have ex- hausted him and prepared
him for the very deep sleep which followed. By thus observing the rule
with greater care, one may discern in this simple record an event
of far greater significance than a mere invitation to engage in a
game of attaching labels to animals.
The story as so understood
tells us some very important things about Adam's mental capacity at
that time as well as about his relationship to the animals that shared
his paradise. As we are told in the New Testament (I Tim. 2.14),
Adam was not deceived in anything he under- took - even in eating the
forbidden fruit. Thereafter his judgment undoubtedly began to suffer
the noetic effects of sin and it seems unlikely that after the
Fall he could any longer have identified with such perfect precision the
kind of creature that each was by nature nor recognize his own true
nature except by revelation. Our own judgment easily misleads us
now into imagining that man is not funda- mentally different from
certain forms of animal life which, assuming that they existed, would
almost certainly have been among those brought for his assessment. One of the better known passages often
appealed to by those who share the view presented
here is Jer. 4.23-2 6 which reads, "I beheld the earth and lo, it (was)
without form and void; and the heavens, they had no light.... and, lo,
there (was) no man.... and the fruitful place was a wilderness....
etc." The passage is an important one in the present context for several
reasons, both for what it does say and what it does not say.
The overall picture reveals some striking similarities with the situation in Gen. 1.2, the ruin and devastation,
the darkness, and the absence of man. That Jeremiah is referring not to
the first stages of God's creative activity but to a historical
situation which faced him at the time of his vision is clear. But this does
not lessen the force of his words nor the significance of the
fact that his terms are precisely those employed in Gen. 1.2. Skinner freely admits that we must see here a picure of a scene "from
which life and order have fled.... a darkened and devastated
earth". Yet, like many others, he maintains that the very same terms when
used in Gen. 1.2 must mean something quite different! There is a difference, an interesting one, between Gen. 1.2 and Jer.4.23,
and that is in the omission of the verb
is not a vision of the occurrence of the
event in which he sees first a beautiful, inhabited, and fruitful land suddenly
becoming a devast- ation.
What his vision encompasses is the after effect, the fait accomplis; in short, simply a scene of total
destruction. Hence the verb
But since the term
the earth in Gen. 1.2 are here applied to a scene of devastation, it
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is the
correct meaning of those two terms when juxtaposed in this
alliterative way. Possibly, when used independently, the meanings may be slightly
less dramatic, having merely the sense of "vanity" (at
least in the case of Tohu): but when employed together, the meaning of each seems
to be strongly reinforced in the destructive sense, not merely
negatively "in vain" but positively destroyed. For a better assessment of the meaning of Tohu,
the reader will find a full list of references in Appendix XVI.
While Tohu will not always be found to signify "destruction"
but rather that which is not approved or is to no good purpose, it does not
appear to equate very well with the classical Greek concept of Chaos
which has the sense of something not so much mal-formed, as
un-formed. Thus, while Jer.4.23 is not (by reason of its omission of the
verb
parallel to Gen. 1.2, the terms it uses are
certainly stamped with a meaning that conveys the sense of devastation and
ruin in JUDGMENT rather than mere incompleteness. This naturally leads to another critical passage
in the Old Test- ament in which the word Tohu occurs twice,
namely, in Isa.45.18 and 19.
Verse 18 is often quoted by those who support the view I hold because it seems so clearly to determine the
correct sense of the same word in Gen. 1.2. Now Isa.45.17-18 reads
as follows:
"But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be
ashamed nor confounded world without end. For thus saith the Lord that created the
heav- ens; God Himself that
formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created
it not in vain (Tohu), He formed it to be inhabited: I am the
Lord; and there is none else." It is customary to point
out that in this passage it is expressly stated that the Lord did not
create the earth a Tohu. It is
therefore argued, reasonably enough,
that Gen. 1.2 cannot be a direct contin- uation of Gen.1.1, since
this would imply that God did create the earth a Tohu. I believe
the argument is a strong one and ought to be given due weight. But it is not compulsive, much as one
might wish it were, because the word Tohu
may legitimately be rendered "in vain" by treating it as an
adverbial accusative. The propriety of adopting the Authorized Version
rendering must be admitted in the light of verse 19 which reads
"I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto
the seed of Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain (Tohu)". Certainly in verse 19 the
translation is much more reasonable than it would have been
had Tohu been rendered "a ruin", for then the sentence would have
read, "Seek ye Me, a ruin" - which is non- sense.* If one must render Tohu "in
vain" in this passage, it cannot be altogether unreasonable
to so render it in verse 18 where such a rendering does, after all,
make very good sense. There are, however, two
points worthy of note here. First, that the sentence structure in
verse 19 forces one to render the noun adverbially and thus to
read it as "in vain". To
do anything else makes nonsense of the
sentence. By contrast, this is not
true in verse 18. Either
rendering is equally sensible. Thus some other consideration must settle
the issue or at least tip the scales in favour of one rendering as
against the other. And here I think
there IS something to be said in
favour of rendering the noun as a noun. The burden of the passage is
that Israel has suffered a serious setback as a nation. Yet, says the prophet, all is not
lost. Israel shall yet be saved, and next
time it will be for ever. For the Lord once created a world which He
beautifully appointed as a habitation for * However, the RSV has
"a chaos" in both verses, verse 19 reading, "seek me
in chaos", which is allowable enough, but an odd sentence.
man, which He established
with that end in view. And it is
true, Isaiah seems to be saying,
that the earth fell into ruin and was utterly devastated in
judgment, but that is not the way in which it was created: nor was it the end
for which God had formed it. He intended it as a habitation for
man; and God intended Israel as a people for Himself. Both goals will yet be achieved, even as
the first goal has already been. Seen in this light, the
passage might well justify the two different renderings of Tohu,
the first as "a ruin", the second as "in vain", each sentence being
structured differently to convey the difference in meaning. There is nothing forced or strange about
this kind of literary device. Yet - for
all this - there is no absolute certainty, and each reader must decide
the issue for himself, pending further light. As we have said
previously, a good case is not made stronger by an appeal to a passage,
the sense of which is not unequivocably clear, and to my mind, Isa.45.18
is a strong witness only to those who already accept the
alternative rendering of Gen. 1.2.
Some have argued that the command to
Adam to "re-plenish" the earth tells in our favour also, but
unfortunately the Hebrew word
both here and in Gen. 9. l
as "re-fill") does not necessarily bear this meaning: it is the normal verb for the simple idea of "filling", though it was also used on
occasion to mean "refill". Many passages in the Bible
have been interpreted as having ref- erence to the
circumstances surrounding the devastation of Gen. 1.2, but the case for an
alternative rendering cannot be rested upon them. Granted that there was
such an event, then such passages may well shed light on the matter,
but the basic point at issue must be settled on other grounds first. In conclusion, then, it is my conviction that the issue is still an open one, that all the
objections raised against it thus far are not really valid, that the
rules of Hebrew syntax and grammar not only allow this alternative
rendering but positively favour it. The sense of "becoming" is
not foreign to the verb
common meaning that is to
be allowed under certain rather limited circumstances: it is the
basic meaning of the verb, the simple copulative sense being
exceedingly rare, and the existential sense (though not rare) a
special sense which really arises from the more basic meaning of living.
Added to this is the word order inversion which can only be
accounted for in one of two ways, while one of these (a change of subject)
certainly cannot be argued very forcibly in view of the fact that the last
word of verse 1 is the first word of verse 2. There is no requirement
for the following lamedh where the "con-
version" of one thing to another is a real conversion and not merely an analogous one; and
therefore there is no need for it here.
And the descriptive terms in
the sentence are none of them such as one would expect to find applied
to something that has just come from the creative Hand of God. Nor is it easy, in the light of its use
else- where in Scripture, to
equate Tohu with the un-formed Chaos of Greek mythology. By and large, therefore, I
suggest that the rendering, "But the earth had become a
ruin and a desolation", is a rendering which does more justice to the
original and deserves more serious consideration as an alternative than it
has been customary to afford it in recent years. It is, after all, quite conceivable
that some catastrophe did occur prior to the appearance of
Man for which we do not yet have the kind of geological evidence we
would like. Only twenty years ago uniform - itarianism reigned supreme
- but recently the Theory of Continental Drift has shaken this long
established doctrine to its foundations. There could be other
surprises yet in store for us. For
myself, in the meantime, the most
important thing of all is to know as precisely a sit can be known, exactly
what the Word of God really says.... even if for the time being it
does conflict with current geological theory. All we can hope to do is
to contribute light; to minds of greater precision who may thus be
enabled to hit upon the exact truth.
Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights reserved
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