Rather, I was wanting to agree with Kenneth Pike (a) that language is N-dimensional (i.e., iNfinitely dimensioned) and (b) that persons using language are above “either /or” formalism (i.e., the kind of logic that requires “accurate” to mean that there’s a single “best” English equivalent of a word such as kidron). Pike, when discussing “substantial ambiguity (or range of meaning)” in language, notes that “[m]ultiple alternative translations are possible from one language to another, with different emphases.” Accuracy, he seems to suggest, “is not dependent upon the exact degree of precision obtained if the generalizations are acceptable (Pike 1961:3f) [... i.e., general] coherence with background pattern expressed, implicit or intended….” (Talk, Thought, and Thing pages 11-13). What is not clear from the NET Bible translator is how “[i]n this instance, [one given meaning among several in] HALOT has the more accurate information.” (And to be very clear: I am not accusing the translator of failing to have integrity. Rather, I’m saying he’s choosing only one of his possible meanings available, is limiting the range of meanings. And I’m wanting to say, in contrast, that “better” English Bibles can keep open the various meanings in the words of the original languages.)

Sometimes the biblical languages are ambiguous or vague. In English, then, how can one be “more accurate” than Hebrew?

Well, obviously, no Bible translator who has integrity would ever want to try to make a translation “more accurate” than any of the biblical language texts. When better data is available, we must follow that to direct our translation.

Thanks, J.K., for contributing more to the discussion of the data that bears on the translation question in the NET Bible.

“In Yigael Yadin’s book ‘The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness’ (Oxford Univ. Press, 1962), he makes the case that the ‘belly’ of the kidon that is mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls is really referring to the sword’s scabbard and not to a curve in the sword as some scholars had suggested. But the NET translates it as “curved sword.”

Did the translators reject Yadin’s interpretation? If so, do you know why?”

Burer confesses, “I do not know the answer to this, but I’ll ask around and see if I can learn anything about it.”

Rodriquez asks important questions. They are questions that some challenge your point about the “accuracy” of the NET Bible translator.

Sometimes the biblical languages are ambiguous or vague. In English, then, how can one be “more accurate” than Hebrew?

For example, referencing Yadin’s The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands*, Philip King and Lawrence Stager talk about the “more than four hundred” references to “sword” and “sheath” in the Bible. They go on to explain that “Hebrew makes no distinction between the straight sword and the sickle sword, so called because of its curved shape. The cutting edge on the outside (convex) of the curved portion of the blade was used for slashing. The sickle sword was known as khopesh (foreleg of an animal) in Egyptian, and perhaps kidon in Hebrew*” (fn 43, pg 224, Life in Biblical Israel).

The Williams article (mentioned in my earlier comment) remarks that “With the exception of Josh 8 the weapon [i.e., kidon is not recorded in the hands of Israelites.” Williams goes on to conjecture: “This may suggest a foreign weapon.” What this means, perhaps, is that the Hebrew language under specifies what the NET Bible wants to over determine in English (if in Joshua only).

Putting the foreign “curve” in kidon in the hands of the Israelites may seem “accurate” on the part of the NET translator. But might it also be committing what Robert Alter calls the translator’s “heresy of explanation”?

http://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/CARTS/SAHD/kidonUNI.pdf

Especially interesting is the often cited study by G. Molin, “What is a kidon?” (JSS 1 [1956]: 334-37). Molin gets at the various decisions by LXX translators to render the Hebrew word into Jewish Hellene.

I see that a NET Bible commentator has cited Molin at Job 39:23, where he (or she) translates כִּידוֹן as “javelin.” It’s also “javelin” at NET Bible 1 Sam 17:6 and 17:45. But at Job 41:29 in the NET Bible, it’s “the lance.” Furthermore, at Jer 6:23 and 50:24, the NET Bible has “spears.”

Will Michael Burer’s new (limited) reading of the not so new HALOT make the other translators change the English consistently to “curved sword”? (Which edition of HALOT?) Can the translation really be so definitively determined?

What of the note by J. P. Fokkelman and Ineke Smit (in their Major Poems of the Hebrew Bible fn 34, pg 314) that the writer of Job “rhymes” kidon with riqqabon? The point is that at least one Hebrew writer seems to suggest a wordplay, something literary, that a translator might want to consider.

That idea that “accuracy” and “word meanings” must reduce to an either / or choice (i.e., “spear or sword”) seems problematic.