Doug Moo on translation - compiled

QTC has had the pleasure of hosting New Testament scholar Douglas Moo over the last few days. While probably not the most fruitful of his lectures to have live-blogged, I did take some notes from the exclusive ACT lecture that he did today on his experiences as a member and now head of the NIV translation committee.

You can find them, in order, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

And for those visual learners, here's a snap of Doug with QTC's professional fanboi, Joseph Wee.

Questions for Moo

Wez: Why are there less conjunctions in English NIV than in the Greek?

Doug: They use more conjunctions in Greek than in English, we take into account what it adds to meaning and then put that into the way we translate it.


Ian: Do you take a particular perspective on tense/aspect in Greek, which is the basis of the language? (Or in Hebrew?)

Doug: No particular stance. Waltke is on the committee, so his stances do have a significant bearing on how we see Hebrew things.


Kutz: Any bits where you didn't get your way?

Doug: Any bit that you don't like, that's a vote I lost.


Kutz: Do you kick the Hebrew guys out of the room when translating the NT bits?

Doug: No, we work together as a single committee for everything. No sub-committees or separate work. This is actually really valuable as most of the time is spent on working out not so much what the original language means, but on how to render it in English.


Q: Do you employ an English stylist?

Doug: No. The NIV committee doesn't. The NLT committee did. Not always to the satisfaction of the NIV committee.


Doug: A totally new study Bible is coming, with Carson as the editor.


Jeremy: How is it decided who is on the committee?

Doug: A brief doctrinal statement, similar to NA evangelical association one. Have to sign up to that, have to be an expert in Greek or Hebrew, but after that it's the committee's choice as to who to invite. Try to keep a variety of English spoken, nationality, experts on different parts of Scripture, culture, etc.

They were like us

It was suggested by Doug Green that a possible alternate translation to Genesis 3:22 was perhaps more correct than the traditional one. Traditionally, it reads something like:

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever-- ESV

However, the Hebrew verb rendered there as 'has become' allows for a certain degree of ambiguity in terms of tense. It is simply Hebrew perfect tense of the verb 'to be'. Given the ambiguities of Hebrew, the verse could thus be read as:

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man was like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--

On this reading, the original state of humanity is 'knowing good and evil' and it is only upon the eating of the fruit that their minds were 'scrambled' and that they could no longer distinguish the good from evil.

So, is there any possible way that this could be a good translation? Well, from my admittedly limited Hebrew knowledge, I'd say these two examples make it possible.

Firstly, in the immediate context, you have the same word being used in what appears to be a past tense.

"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field (Gen 3:1 ESV)"

And yet, this isn't so satisfying because you could argue that it's a past-tense of narration, where the language is describing something that was true at the time of the events being described. So what we really need is an example where it occurs in direct speech, as it does in Gen 3:22, and is still rendered as a past state of being. Interestingly, there's one even in Genesis:

They said, "We see plainly that the LORD has been with you." (Gen 26:28 ESV)

The same verb, translated as a state of being that was true prior to the actual speaking of the words.

If Doug's thoughts are right, then the irony of the situation is that the serpent who deceived Eve in telling her that she would become 'like God, knowing good and evil' has in a sense deceived a lot of translators over a lot of years. :P As Doug pointed out, pehaps Eve's response should have been,

"But I'm already like God. I'm in His image. And I know good and evil, God told us what that is."

More thoughts to come...

A little too much, perhaps?

I was at college today, when I overheard a discussion regarding an unnamed theological college student (not at QTC) who had what he thought to be a more culturally relevant translation of Genesis 2:23.

It involved an elegantly subtle translation of "zoth hapa'am" (loosely transliterated) which he rendered "Phwoooaar!!!".

This piece of brilliance was followed by a masterful work of literary art, using wordplay drawn from current Western parlance, substituting the word 'boner' for 'bone'. Sadly, I wasn't able to hear the rest of this 'translation' and so am unable to reproduce it accurately here.

Despite the obvious maturity of this scholarship one could, perhaps, accuse the student in question of having an over-realised sexchatology. I keenly await the publication of this forthcoming translation.