A snippet about translation and theology

Having done just 4 chapters of Amos to the music, it becomes clear to me that my whole translation needs reanalysis phrase by phrase to fit it to both pulse and accents. The English must follow the Hebrew word order whenever possible, even if like Yoda-speak it sounds, or a fast-moving sports announcer using a proleptic pronoun and then clarifying the reference. Singers of the underlay shrewd in their interpretations must be.

It's clear too that on sounds-like translation I failed in a number of areas. I governed concordance with an algorithm, but I left myself more degrees of freedom than necessary sometimes. There are intractable problems with prepositions of course. Some of my early decisions, made somewhat in jest, need revisiting. Perhaps I will eliminate the earthling for adm and use groundling instead to sound like the ground (admh) that it reflects. (And perhaps not.)

And the mismatch between syllables in the two languages is sometimes impossible and sometimes fits like a glove. It's all very strange to think we base our thoughts about God on such a history.

Here's an example that illustrates the reason as much alignment of text is important.

Ruth 2:6 showing the word-painting around "the lass is Moabite".

Note how the lass is emphasized, and her history is sung at a low pitch, perhaps almost a whisper.

Ecclesiastes 3 at evensong I read recently and I noted that verse 11 contains a double negative that is ignored by all translators except Young's literal. So I read the assigned translation that was put before me (not a great translation) till verse 11 and then put verse 11 back together. The phrase mbli awr is a hapax. The word mbli is a negative and it is followed by a negative la-imxa hadm. 

אֶת־הַכֹּ֥ל עָשָׂ֖ה יָפֶ֣ה בְעִתּ֑וֹ

גַּ֤ם אֶת־הָעֹלָם֙ נָתַ֣ן בְּלִבָּ֔ם מִבְּלִ֞י אֲשֶׁ֧ר לֹא־יִמְצָ֣א הָאָדָ֗ם אֶת־הַֽמַּעֲשֶׂ֛ה אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים מֵרֹ֥אשׁ וְעַד־סֽוֹף

To me it renders easily as without which the sentient humus would not find out etc. Qohelet is not all hopeless. This preacher identifies here the very things that our 'sense of time' allows us to discover: i.e. what God does. The word for age, time past, eternity and obscurity, ylm, is also somewhat difficult to render. The translation put in front of me rendered it as a sense of past and future. Well, that was a bit of a surprise. I reverted it to the eternal. But I prefer the obscurity in this case. I should throw out the words ever, never, everlasting and so on since time is trickier than we suppose. Our four-dimensional hologram gets subsumed in a larger frame- so that we can say:

The whole he has made beautiful in its time,

even the obscurity he has given in their heart without which the human would not find out the doings that this God has done from beginning and to conclusion.

The point is - we do find out what God is doing. Even our limited vision is beautiful. As Amos says, For my Lord Yahweh will not do any thing, except he uncovers his deliberation to his servants the prophets.

The scientists are revealing the doings of God through their work, whether it be the astronomers or the geneticists or the lawyers. These are the prophets of our time. And some of them are specific, hard-nosed, hard-working, coordinated, and determined.

Books to read: The End of Everything by Katie Mack; East-West Street by Phillipe Sands; and The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee.