The Bible Translator: Volume 36, Issue 3

The Targums are not paraphrastic or interpretive; traditional material is inserted into a literally translated text. There is elaboration or alteration but never deletion. Examples: great sea monsters, handmade sanctuary. The Targums include mnemonic devices which in turn trigger a full sermon text. View Less

Naomi refers to Boaz rather than Yahweh in Ruth 2:20. (1) The syntactic correspondence is almost identical to that of 2 Sam 2:5. (2) The situational context refers to a specific instance of kindness to the living (Ruth, Naomi) and the dead (their deceased husbands). (3) Boaz is the focus of the dialogue in 2:19–22, and (4) he is the beneficiary of the praise. (5) Naomi, aware of his kinship, speaks of his hesed (kinship responsibilities) and (6) she does not vindicate Yahweh until chap. 4 and so her blessing in 2:20 must refer to Boaz. View Less

Zech 7:1–8:23 is not an appendix to chap. 1–6 but has a structure of its own. Direct quotations introduced by quotative formulae mark paragraph boundaries. Repetition, parallelism and syntactic anomalies are noted. View Less

Luke adds “and just his disciples followed him” in 22:39 to indicate that more than just the 12 apostles (but not the whole crowd) followed Christ to Gethsemane. Luke’s account and that of Mark are thus in agreement. View Less