Subsequently, when God generically speaks about man – women are included.
This should not be used as an argument to “create” a gender neutral bible. If God had wanted one He would have written it that way from the beginning.

The only other thing I’d like to emphasize is that language (even any given word performed in Chomsky’s sense) has a range of meanings, not because of some inherent binary property of language but because we human beings are (perhaps like God) above human logic and even translation formulas. Isn’t it amazing that an acclaimed scientist like Alan Lightman would write novels and still wants his novels, when translated (into 30 languages so far), to be translated not only scientifically (i.e., with respect to formulas of meaning transferrence) but also artistically (i.e., with respect to the L2 translator’s own believable emic categories)? Isn’t it amazing that purely-Jewish bible translations today (i.e., AST, JBK, JPS, JPT, SPT, JPCT) restrict the range of meaning of עלמה – so that Barnstone can imagine that the Jewish Matthew using Jewish Greek (albeit παρθενος) would also restrict the range of meaning of the referent to “young woman”? Is the translator (or the text examined) ever really without his or her own emic categories with their own range of meanings?

My question is whether you and Matthew are translating the same text (Is. 7:14).

No, not likely the exact same text. I think Matthew is probably quoting from the LXX which is a translation of what Isaiah wrote. A translation, by definition, is not the same text as what it translates. Good translators make their translations as close as possible, but because languages differ, a text and its translation are never the same text.

Is Willis Barnstone’s translation of Matthew’s translation accurate, or not?

Sorry, but I don’t have Barnstone’s translation. But if you can copy his translation of Matthew’s translation and post it here, I’d be happy to look at it. It is not an easy question to answer whether something is an “accurate” translation or not. An easier question to answer is whether or not a translation is within an acceptable range for the gumbo stew created by a translator or different translators who have done translations of the same text. By gumbo stew I am referring to the many different factors which enter into translation of a text, including the original syntax, lexicon, lexical meaning at the time of the original writing, figures of speech, target language syntax and lexical issues, etc.

OK, now if I am translating Matt. 1:23, I am translating a different text.”

LOL.

My question is whether you and Matthew are translating the same text (Is. 7:14). Is Willis Barnstone’s translation of Matthew’s translation accurate, or not? That you bring up centuries and time is just brilliant. REally, this is some of this issue, I think. When it a text the same, when different? It doesn’t matter whether I wear the hat of a Greek scholar, Hebrew scholar, linguist, theologian, feminist, or translator – the basic question is where / when / do you and I draw the lines? (I love D. A. Carson’s chapter title in Gagging of God: “On Drawing Lines, When Drawing Lines is Rude.”). Seems to me we stand from our own emic perspectives, drawing lines. When does the grain become of heap? When does the fetus become a baby? When does a Greek masculine word (not grammatical masc) become inclusive of women? When does the Hebrew maiden become a virgin? To try to reconstruct a dusty text (as if it’s one author could intend, once upon a time, just one meaning) seems pretty simplistic. So is Barnstone, in translating Matthew, a worse or better translator of Isaiah than Matthew? It’s not a trick question. Rather, I’m asking how you (or I) or any translator can know exactly what Matthew intended by his choice of Greek words. If Matthew had written in Hebrew, how would he have written his quotation of Isaiah? The Sappho stuff I bring in because sometimes the Bible is so threatening, so predetermined by “several centuries” of viewing language a certain way and no other. Sometimes a lesbian Greek poet can help us maintain a distance from the text that a “disciple of Jesus” (like Matthew for example) can’t so easily.

I’m wondering if how “translation accuracy” can yield two different results when there’s ostensibly the same “referent” in the Bible. I’m wondering if both the LXX translator and if Matthew also as a translator have “translation accuracy.”

Firs, Kurk, I do not believe that Is. 7:14 and Matt. 1:23 must necessarily have the same referent. Many believe that they do, but I don’t think that belief is logically necessary. We are dealing with two different texts, one from the O.T., one from the N.T. Now, obviously, Matthew is quoting Is. 7:14. But that does not mean that the two authors had the same referent in mind when they wrote what they did. Jewish hermeneutics, including that found throughout the New Testament, is famous for changing the reference of some original text, to fit the purposes of the interpreter. It is not too different from how evangelical and fundamentalist preachers often proof text the points they make by using some verse (or even just a part of a verse) from the Bible. The point they are proof texting sometimes has little, if anything, to do with the meaning of the original biblical text, as its original author intended its meaning within its original context.

OK, back to the translation of each passage. If I am translating Is. 7:14, I must translate Hebrew almah accurately to English (or any other language).

Stop. Pause. Breathe. Wait several centuries.

OK, now if I am translating Matt. 1:23, I am translating a different text. I must translate this different text accurately to English (or any other language).

What text Matt. quoted from is irrelevant to how I must translate each of those two original texts.

I do not know why you have been referring to Sappho, the LXX, views on gender, or theology in your comments. It’s not a problem of either of us that I don’t understand. We may be *referring* to different things in our messages. Our referential meanings may, therefore, be different.

I don’t understand how these other issues (each important), such as Matthews source text, relates to the job of a Bible translator. My job as a translator is to accurately translate a text in front of me.

My job is not to include interpretations of that text which people have suggested sometimes centuries after that text was written. My job is not to be concerned about theology. Theology is the concern of theologians. My job as a Bible translator is translation of biblical texts.

Now, I am *not* saying that Bible translators must be ignorant of theology or textual matters or interpretational issues. All I am saying is that when an author references something in what they say, I must translate what they reference. I must not change the author’s meaning to any other referent. If I did so, I would be changing the meaning of the original author, and that is not my job as a translator.

Let me illustrate. As you know, there have been a variety of interpretations of the book Song of Solomon (SoS). Some in the Church through the ages have been embarrassed by that book, by its sensuality and sexuality. Some have suggested that SoS is not at all about what it sounds like it is talking about, namely, a man and his lover admiring each other, especially physically, longing for each other. As you know, some suggest that SoS is *really* about Christ and the Church and their love for each other. Well, maybe they are right. As a Bible translator, it is not for me to say what a text is *really* about. It is only my job to translate the original text. So, when the original text speaks about the breasts of the beautiful woman lover, I must not translate the Hebrew word for breasts with some English word such as “doctrinal canons of the Church” or “the twin beauties of the Nicene Creed and the Westminster Confession”!

The author of the SoS wrote the Hebrew word for “breasts”. And so the accurate translation is the English word “breasts”.

My job as a translator is a linguistic one, to try to translate as accurately as I can what the original authors referred to. If they used a metaphor such as “the sons of Israel” and it referred to the entire nation of Israel, not simply the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel, then I must make sure that my English translation of the original Hebrew metaphor is clear that I am not talking only about Israel’s 12 sons.

I leave all the rest to theologians, literary critics, et al.

Phew! I’m glad I don’t have their job. It’s much too big for me! Even Bible translation is too big for me. But somebody has to do it and I’m willing to do my best. Fortunately, I don’t translate alone these days. I’m part of a team effort and we have an increasing number of good resources to help us understand the *linguistic* meaning of the biblical texts so that we can translate that meaning into other languages.

I’m wondering if how “translation accuracy” can yield two different results when there’s ostensibly the same “referent” in the Bible. I’m wondering if both the LXX translator and if Matthew also as a translator have “translation accuracy.”

You explain, of Isaiah 7:14 and Matt. 1:23, One uses a Greek word which accurately translates to English “virgin.” The other uses a Hebrew word which probably (?!) most accurately translates, in its original context, to “young woman.” I must not change the intended meaning of either author during the translation process.

Similarly Cal Habig, speaking of “translation theory,” says this: A good translation attempts to take the Hebrew and Greek words of the Bible and put them into the same meaning in English (or whatever language is the target language). . . . We want modern day hearers to “hear” what the original hearers heard.

But the Hebrew word of issue in Isaiah 7:14 is עלמה (`almah) translated by the LXX and by Matthew as παρθένος (parthenos). You’ve already noted the difference in meaning in those two words, although clearly there is one referent for the Hebrew, accurately (as you put it in English) a “young woman.” The LXX translators elsewhere in the Bible do use a perhaps “more accurate” Greek term for the same Hebrew word: for example, in Exodus 2:8, Ps 68:26, Prov. 30:19, Song of Songs 1:3 & 6:8. Respectively, the “better” Hellene noun used for the Hebrew term is νεᾶνις (neanis, with respective variants and cognates νεανίδων [neanidon], νεότητι [neoteti], νεάνιδες [neanides]).

Does “translation theory” as you and Cal understand it assume that the LXX translator of Isaiah 7:14 and that Matthew himself (as translator) did not translate how you would translate the Hebrew? You say they use a term that can mean “virgin” in the Greek but not so much in the Hebrew. (And Matthew is translating, making clear, in actual translation, the LXX transliterated word Ἐμμανουήλ (i.e., עמנואל [`Immanuw'El]): “ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον, Μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός”).

Is the “translation theory” assumption that the English translator using “young woman” actually does a better job translating than either Matthew or the LXX translator who both use “παρθένος” (parthenos)?

And, even though Matthew and the LXX translator do a poor job of translating, the English translator of the New Testament translator must change Isaiah’s referent for Matthew’s, and keep the bad translation then as “virgin”?

Not to belabor this too much, I think it’s no coincidence that Jews translating into English have consistently translated the Hebrew word of Isaiah 7:14 as “young woman.” And Willis Barnstone, a Jew not a Christian, translating Matthew has 1:22b-23a as follows: “… to fulfill the word of God uttered through his prophet Yeshayah, saying, / ‘Listen, A young woman …’.”

It’s interesting to note how contemporary Jewish scholars of Hebrew translating the Bible are consistently “accurate.” The NRSV, having one Jewish scholar on its translation team, actually follows the “accuracy” of the Jewish only teams of JPS and JPCT. On the other hand, many (though not all) Christian Bible translator teams without Jews on the team follow the LXX or Matthew in making the referent to “almah” sometimes “virgin” as with “parthenos”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah#Comparison_of_Bible_translations

I’m wondering, Wayne, whether “translation theory” and “accuracy” often bends toward the “referent” that supports one’s own views on gender and / or theology.

Does Matthew translate the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23? Or does he have the second meaning “virgin” which Isaiah doesn’t necessarily have? In other words, is he using the LXX, a translation with secondary meanings (i.e., a maiden is a virgin here also)? Does Matthew not hold to the original Jewish referent, which doesn’t necessarily mean “virgin”?

Kurt, I don’t have the answer to any of these questions. But I don’t need to know them to translate both Is. 7:14 and Matt. 1:23 accurately. One uses a Greek word which accurately translates to English “virgin.” The other uses a Hebrew word which probably (?!) most accurately translates, in its original context, to “young woman.” I must not change the intended meaning of either author during the translation process. Whether Matthew quoted the LXX or the Hebrew Bible doesn’t matter for the purposes of making an accurate translation of either passage. It matters for discussion of Judaic hermeneutics, “double prophecy”, views on inspiration and inerrancy, LXX vs. Masoretic text issues, and likely other issues, but not, as far as I can tell, for translation accuracy. Or am I missing something about translation accuracy for these two verses that you can see?

Thank you, Wayne, for continuing and for revisiting the conversation here! You are patient with me.

Does Matthew translate the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23? Or does he have the second meaning “virgin” which Isaiah doesn’t necessarily have? In other words, is he using the LXX, a translation with secondary meanings (i.e., a maiden is a virgin here also)? Does Matthew not hold to the original Jewish referent, which doesn’t necessarily mean “virgin”?

What do you think about C. S. Lewis’s discussions of “second meanings” even in “a specific speech context”?

Kurk, you bring up interesting points. I think you might be referring to things such as messianic interpretations of Old Testament passages for which the original writer was originally *referring* to something in his local context.

If I’m understanding you right (that is, your referential meaning!), then we have had this discussion previously on BBB. And it is an important topic that needs to be revisited periodically.

My answer would be that the *translator* should only translate the meaning that the original writer intended, not any secondary meanings that later interpreters of their text got from it. In other words, the job of the translator is different from that of a literary analyst.

I have stated before and will say again now, that I now believe that translators of potentially messianic passages in the Hebrew Bible should not give any indication in the translation itself that the text is messianic IF there is indication that the original author was referring to a local context. Instead, second meanings should be extratextual, placed in footnotes, commentaries, noted by Bible teachers, etc. I believe, for instance, that when translators of modern Bible versions capitalize “His” in some Hebrew Bible passages which we Christians believe *ultimately* refer to the Messiah, they are doing what they accuse translators not following Formal Equivalance of doing, namely, limiting the interpretation of the text by how they translate.

If there is such a term for translation (I know that there is for those who work with the U.S. Constition), I guess you would call me an originalist. Translators should translate the meanings intended by original authors, not meanings which later interpreters find in the text. Those later meanings are interesting and may be very important. In some ways they may even be more “accurate” than the original meaning if the original author did not realize how the Holy Spirit or later events would show that he was writing prophetically as well as to a local context. But later interpretations belong outside of the translated text itself, but close at hand so that those who read the translation can access them easily but not confuse them with meanings that the original author intended.

Mine is not a philosophical position, Platonism, whatever. It is an acceptance that we are translating a text that someone else wrote or spoke. We are translating their thoughts and meanings, not the thoughts and meanings of those who came later and found other possible interpretations of the original text. Such later meanings are the business of hermeneutics and exegesis, theology, etc.

So, in summary, I agree with you that secondary meanings are important. But I believe that they should not be part of the translated text itself if they were not intended by the original author. Instead, they should be placed near the translated text for easy access, but not within the text to mislead readers into thinking that they are part of the original meaning.