Author Archives: Rich Rhodes

Richard Alan Rhodes (born 1946, Abington, Pennsylvania) is an American linguist specializing in indigenous languages of North America and Mexico. He has done extensive fieldwork in Ojibwe (an Algonquian language), in Métchif (a.k.a. Michif) (a mixed language), and Sayula Popoluca (a Mixe-Zoquean language). He is best known for his work on Algonquian which includes a major dictionary encompassing the two dialects Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwe (Rhodes 1985) and many articles on points of syntax. He is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and has had visiting positions at the University of North Dakota, at the Karl-Franzens Universität, Graz, Austria, and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Five works that changed how I read the Bible

June 21, 2009 – 6:38 am

Since no one over here at BBB is likely to get tagged by the theologically oriented Bible bloggers on the meme of books that influence how we read the Bible, I’m going to jump in on my own. With some justification, literature types view us linguists as mere word-mechanics. We’re excited by the details of [...]

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What’s in a name?

May 3, 2009 – 2:09 am

If you’re anything like me, you shudder as you remember your parents yelling out your full name. Richard Alan Rhodes, come here this very instant! Vocatives—those expressions used to draw the attention of the intended addressee or to direct an utterance at a particular addressee—are not well understood by linguists. Vocatives can take the form [...]

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Seek ye first the kingdom of dog

February 18, 2009 – 11:36 pm

The Rhodes family acquired a new dog about four months ago. It had been about a year and a half since Whiskey died and Mary declared it time. Pixie is a 15 month old Lab mix. We got her from the Hayward Animal Shelter after a couple of weeks of to-ing and fro-ing. It turns [...]

Posted in Bible Translation, idiomatic, natural English | Comments (15)

Lost in translation

January 4, 2009 – 7:27 am

A year ago I was sworn in as a county planning commissioner. It has been an adventure. I’ve had years of practice as a dean making decisions that affect people’s life options — decisions that can cost people thousands of dollars. But the kinds of decisions I have participated in as a member of the [...]

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Do we need Biblish?

December 14, 2008 – 4:55 am

As everyone knows, I’m against Biblish in Bible translations — with one exception which I will address here. It has always been my contention that all English translations, from at least the KJV on, are monotonic. It doesn’t matter if they are essentially literal, dynamic equivalent, or paraphrase. By monotonic I mean that a single [...]

Posted in Bible Translation, idiomatic, translation equivalence | Comments (19)

Date and time

December 8, 2008 – 5:32 am

In a post reacting to Wayne’s Eye Opening post, Wezlo comments: It caught my interest because I mentioned the phrase, “No one knows the day or the hour”  of the Son of Man’s return in my sermon yesterday, and how people mistakenly believe that this means the year is still open for us to figure [...]

Posted in Bible Translation, biblical idioms, grammar, idiom | Comments (21)

The Lord’s Prayer (reprise)

November 16, 2008 – 7:46 am

Last Sunday the sermon at Berkeley Covenant was on the Lord’s Prayer. (Find it here.) Pastor Andrew has been working through Matthew, pretty much verse by verse, and it’s been very profitable. From time to time he hands off a passage to one or another of the church leaders when he or she has something [...]

Posted in Bible Translation, TNIV, translation equivalence | Comments (5)

On The Message

October 3, 2008 – 6:30 pm

As Wayne pointed out yesterday, El Shaddai Edwards has blogged about the significance of The Message here. I will not quibble about its impact at all. There is a parallel NIV/Message version sitting on my night table. It makes great reading. And as anyone who has read this blog regularly knows, I’m a great cheerleader [...]

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What does the Lord’s Prayer mean?

September 23, 2008 – 6:21 pm

As David has just pointed out, there is a post about an error in the Lord’s Prayer at New Epistles. I commented on that “error” there, but I think that the issue warrants a posting here. The problem arises out of our understanding of Οὕτως οὖν προσεύχεσθε ὑμεῖς (Matt. 6:9a)“After this manner therefore pray ye:” [...]

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Scholarly Legends

June 30, 2008 – 7:59 pm

Well, I guess I’ve been tagged by David. Even though I’m supposed to be packing for the first of my summer travels which start tomorrow, I’ll hold forth on something that has been bothering me for the last week. In 1991 the most eloquent curmudgeon in the field of linguistics, Geoffry Pullum, a professor at [...]

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