The Bible Translator: Volume 64, Issue 1

In recent decades, scholars in the fields of anthropology, social psychology, cognitive linguistics, and neuroscience have contributed several key complementary insights related to the negotiation of meaning in communication. The first is that the way our bodies experience the world forms the way we think about everything. Another is that the negotiations of social identity and interpersonal relations are precursors to the rest of our negotiations of meaning. Finally, cultural reproduction accounts for a good deal of what we believe are our own ideas, thoughts, and experiences. View Less

Cross-culturally the left hand is considered the lesser member of the right-left pair, giving rise to right- and left-based linguistic expressions favoring the right hand. In West Africa, left-handedness has positive and negative connotations: while often evoking virility and military prowess, it also connotes impurity, weakness, awkwardness, and sometimes stupidity. After exploring literal and figurative uses of the right and left in the OT, we ask, How does/can an African audience interpret the favoring of the right hand in biblical texts? What are possible readings of the lefthanded Benjaminites in the Book of Judges? What are the implications for translation and translator helps? View Less

This article describes translation problems found in Acts 13.1–12 in nine very different languages (four from Russia, two from Thailand, and one each from Morocco, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands). The most widespread problem encountered was the handling of personal and place names, and other problems included the rendering of symbolic religious actions and the choice of appropriate verbs of motion. View Less

A large number of questions in the New Testament are not in fact requests for information, but emphatic positive or negative statements. A literal translation of them may be misunderstood, and the article explores making the intended meaning clear. View Less

This article discusses the interpretation of the “portion one of nostrils” that Elkanah gave to Hannah in 1 Sam 1.5. The paper analyses several ancient and modern suggestions against the text itself. A look at the way the Hebrew word אפים is used by the biblical authors reveals that there is only one logical interpretation of the verse. A “portion one of nostrils” must mean an angry portion. View Less

This article examines recent commentaries and translations of 1 Thessalonians 2:14–15, especially the issue of whether the clause describing the Jews is restrictive or not. The author argues that some recent scholarship shows that the clause should be taken as restrictive, but that a number of recent commentaries and translations—although with some encouraging exceptions—have failed to take this into account. This interpretation, which entails punctuation without a comma at the end of v. 14 (in English and Greek), clarifies a number of exegetical problems. View Less

This article considers the question of what may qualify as “epic” in the Hebrew Bible. Against Cross, we argue that certain prose narratives can be termed epic in themselves, although Judges 5 and Exodus 15 show that Israel could produce epic poetry. Hector and Nora Chadwick claimed that epic is a cultural rather than literary phenomenon and does not demand poetic form. For Parry and Lord, epic poetry has its origin in oral singing of tales, with no Urtext ever existing since every performance was a new creation. Israel’s epic must be considered secondary, in C. S. Lewis’s terminology, because it does not look back to a heroic past, but assumes a progression in history. View Less