Kamran
14th April 2007, 17:02
Apikorus:The KJV translators were anything but naive. Their "sincere belief" often manifested itself in deliberately mistranslating the Hebrew in order to repair corruptions or harmonize inconsistencies in the Hebrew text. Here's an example which I've described in an earlier thread:
...Let's move on to another example of a textual corruption in the MT, and concomitant harmonizing mistranslation in the KJV. This comes from 1 Sam 1:24, in the story of Chanah, the mother of Samuel. The KJV reads:
And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bullocks, and one ephah of flour...
This is a good translation of the Hebrew. "with three bullocks" is a direct translation of the Hebrew b'forim shloshah. In the next verse, we read:
And they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli.
Here we have yet another example of a harmonizing and deliberate mistranslation in the KJV. The Hebrew of 1:25 says vayishchatu et-hapor = "and when they had slain the bull" (singular, definite article). So the Hebrew contains a disagreement between the forim shloshah = "three bulls" in 1:24 and the singular hapor of 1:25. Of course, KJV readers would never know this, because the KJV deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew here, by neglecting to translate ha = "the".
Once again, the KJV translators were forced into this sleight of hand due to corruption of the underlying Hebrew text. The Septuagint, the Syriac, and, most importantly, the Hebrew text 4QSama from Qumran instead read "three year old bull" in 1:24 rather than "three bulls". Emanuel Tov proffers that the common text originally read bprmsls, before the advent of word division and the matres lectionis. Eventually the text was parsed differently, with the MT (and the Targum and Vulgate) being witness to a division bprym slsh (the y and h being matres), and the DSS, Syriac, and LXX witness to a division bpr msls. This seems quite sensible.
This is admittedly a minor issue from the perspective of the the story of Chanah as a whole, but it does expose the harmonizing nature of the KJV translation.
To anyone knowledgeable of the Hebrew and familiar with the KJV, this sort of harmonization is common. Another example is Gen 4:8, where the Hebrew reads :
vayomer qayin el-hevel achiv
which means "And Cain said to his brother Abel." End of verse. Whatever Cain said is not quoted. The very next thing we read is, "And YHWH said to Cain, where is Abel your brother?" (Gen 4:9). So it seems that either the second half of Gen 4:8 has dropped out of the text, or the author slipped and wrote vayomer (he said) when he should have written vayidaber (he spoke). Incidentally, the LXX provides the missing dialog ("let us go to the field"), although this itself is likely a corrective insertion.
What does the KJV say in Gen 4:8? "And Cain talked with his brother Abel." But talked/spoke is daber and not amar, which means "said".
Yet another second deliberate mistranslation comes with rendering the remainder of 1 Sam 13:1 and the beginning of 13:2. The KJV of 1 Sam 13:1-2 reads smoothly:
(1) Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, (2) Saul chose him three thousand [men] of Israel...
The KJV deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew of 1 Sam 13:1, since the plain sense translation is absurd. However, in doing this, it becomes necessary to meddle with the second verse, so as to grammatically attach it to the first.
The Hebrew of 1 Sam 13:1 reads, ben-shanah shaul b'malkho ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael
A literal translation of this verse would be,
A yearling was Saul in his reigning and two years he reigned over Israel.
The construction ben-X shanah has been used to describe chronological age in Hebrew from the Bible through modern times.
There are actually two mistranslations by the KJV here, both deliberate. First, the KJV translates ben-shanah shaul b'malkho = "Saul was a year old when he began to reign" as "Saul reigned one year." The construction b'malkho, which everywhere else (38 other instances) is rendered as "when he began to reign" is here translated instead as "he reigned." But whenever the HB wishes to say "he reigned" it does so differently, either with malakh or vayimlokh. So the KJV translators cleverly and deliberately mistranslated b'malkho to avoid the absurdity of Saul being one year old upon taking the throne.
The second deliberate mistranslation comes with rendering the remainder of 13:1 and the beginning of 13:2,
(1) ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael (2) vayivchar-lo shaul shloshet elofim miyisrael...
as (1) and when he reigned two years over Israel, (2) Saul chose him three thousand [men] of Israel...
It is clear that the Hebrew ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael is a separate clause, meaning "and two years he reigned over Israel." The KJV inserts the word "when" which is uncalled for.
Verse 2 should begin "And Saul chose for himself three thousand from Israel...". The "and" at the beginning comes from the Hebrew letter vav in the opening word of vs. 2, vayivchar = "(and) he chose". Grammatically, this construction is known as preterite plus vav-consecutive, and it is very common in biblical Hebrew. The meaning is not seriously affected by failing to translate the vav -- vayivchar could sensibly be translated simply as "he chose," although the vav is of course there. So perhaps it should not be too surprising to find that the KJV fails to translate this vav. Except, that is, for one inescapable and damning observation: in virtually every case in which a verse in the Hebrew begins with a vav (whether or not it is a so-called vav-consecutive), the KJV translators directly translated the vav, either as a conjunction, adjunction, disjunction -- whatever. If you look at the KJV of 1 Sam 13 and compare to the Hebrew, you'll see this immediately. Every single verse in the chapter except for verse 1 begins with the letter vav -- 22 out of 23 verses -- and each and every one of those vavs is translated ("and," "but," "now," etc.). A cursory inspection of the rest of 1 Samuel -- which must have at least 650 verses, over 80% of which (conservative estimate) begin with the letter vav -- reveals that 1 Sam 13:2 is the only instance in which the KJV translators failed to translate the vav. This is quite peculiar, and I am aware of only one other example in the entire Hebrew Bible (there are grammatical differences -- see here).
We are left with the following hypothesis. The fact that the opening vav in 1 Sam 13:2 was left untranslated -- something virtually unheard of in the KJV -- provides strong evidence that the KJV translators recognized a problem with the underlying Hebrew in 1 Sam 13:1. It is no accident that this verse is corrupt in all surviving witnesses. One plausible reconstruction of this verse would be :
ben-X shanah Shaul b'malkho v'Y ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael
which is to say
Saul was X years old when he began to reign, and he reigned Y+2 years over Israel.
In the NASB and NLT, for example, X=30 and Y=40. In the RSV, X and Y are left blank, as ellipses.
As an added bonus for KJV lovers, here is a KJV qere list page, which identifies all the places where the KJV fails to translate the written text of the Hebrew Bible but instead translates the qere, or spoken form, which is written in the masorah. Which words are God's words -- the ketiv or the qere? Or both??
...Let's move on to another example of a textual corruption in the MT, and concomitant harmonizing mistranslation in the KJV. This comes from 1 Sam 1:24, in the story of Chanah, the mother of Samuel. The KJV reads:
And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bullocks, and one ephah of flour...
This is a good translation of the Hebrew. "with three bullocks" is a direct translation of the Hebrew b'forim shloshah. In the next verse, we read:
And they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli.
Here we have yet another example of a harmonizing and deliberate mistranslation in the KJV. The Hebrew of 1:25 says vayishchatu et-hapor = "and when they had slain the bull" (singular, definite article). So the Hebrew contains a disagreement between the forim shloshah = "three bulls" in 1:24 and the singular hapor of 1:25. Of course, KJV readers would never know this, because the KJV deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew here, by neglecting to translate ha = "the".
Once again, the KJV translators were forced into this sleight of hand due to corruption of the underlying Hebrew text. The Septuagint, the Syriac, and, most importantly, the Hebrew text 4QSama from Qumran instead read "three year old bull" in 1:24 rather than "three bulls". Emanuel Tov proffers that the common text originally read bprmsls, before the advent of word division and the matres lectionis. Eventually the text was parsed differently, with the MT (and the Targum and Vulgate) being witness to a division bprym slsh (the y and h being matres), and the DSS, Syriac, and LXX witness to a division bpr msls. This seems quite sensible.
This is admittedly a minor issue from the perspective of the the story of Chanah as a whole, but it does expose the harmonizing nature of the KJV translation.
To anyone knowledgeable of the Hebrew and familiar with the KJV, this sort of harmonization is common. Another example is Gen 4:8, where the Hebrew reads :
vayomer qayin el-hevel achiv
which means "And Cain said to his brother Abel." End of verse. Whatever Cain said is not quoted. The very next thing we read is, "And YHWH said to Cain, where is Abel your brother?" (Gen 4:9). So it seems that either the second half of Gen 4:8 has dropped out of the text, or the author slipped and wrote vayomer (he said) when he should have written vayidaber (he spoke). Incidentally, the LXX provides the missing dialog ("let us go to the field"), although this itself is likely a corrective insertion.
What does the KJV say in Gen 4:8? "And Cain talked with his brother Abel." But talked/spoke is daber and not amar, which means "said".
Yet another second deliberate mistranslation comes with rendering the remainder of 1 Sam 13:1 and the beginning of 13:2. The KJV of 1 Sam 13:1-2 reads smoothly:
(1) Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, (2) Saul chose him three thousand [men] of Israel...
The KJV deliberately mistranslates the Hebrew of 1 Sam 13:1, since the plain sense translation is absurd. However, in doing this, it becomes necessary to meddle with the second verse, so as to grammatically attach it to the first.
The Hebrew of 1 Sam 13:1 reads, ben-shanah shaul b'malkho ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael
A literal translation of this verse would be,
A yearling was Saul in his reigning and two years he reigned over Israel.
The construction ben-X shanah has been used to describe chronological age in Hebrew from the Bible through modern times.
There are actually two mistranslations by the KJV here, both deliberate. First, the KJV translates ben-shanah shaul b'malkho = "Saul was a year old when he began to reign" as "Saul reigned one year." The construction b'malkho, which everywhere else (38 other instances) is rendered as "when he began to reign" is here translated instead as "he reigned." But whenever the HB wishes to say "he reigned" it does so differently, either with malakh or vayimlokh. So the KJV translators cleverly and deliberately mistranslated b'malkho to avoid the absurdity of Saul being one year old upon taking the throne.
The second deliberate mistranslation comes with rendering the remainder of 13:1 and the beginning of 13:2,
(1) ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael (2) vayivchar-lo shaul shloshet elofim miyisrael...
as (1) and when he reigned two years over Israel, (2) Saul chose him three thousand [men] of Israel...
It is clear that the Hebrew ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael is a separate clause, meaning "and two years he reigned over Israel." The KJV inserts the word "when" which is uncalled for.
Verse 2 should begin "And Saul chose for himself three thousand from Israel...". The "and" at the beginning comes from the Hebrew letter vav in the opening word of vs. 2, vayivchar = "(and) he chose". Grammatically, this construction is known as preterite plus vav-consecutive, and it is very common in biblical Hebrew. The meaning is not seriously affected by failing to translate the vav -- vayivchar could sensibly be translated simply as "he chose," although the vav is of course there. So perhaps it should not be too surprising to find that the KJV fails to translate this vav. Except, that is, for one inescapable and damning observation: in virtually every case in which a verse in the Hebrew begins with a vav (whether or not it is a so-called vav-consecutive), the KJV translators directly translated the vav, either as a conjunction, adjunction, disjunction -- whatever. If you look at the KJV of 1 Sam 13 and compare to the Hebrew, you'll see this immediately. Every single verse in the chapter except for verse 1 begins with the letter vav -- 22 out of 23 verses -- and each and every one of those vavs is translated ("and," "but," "now," etc.). A cursory inspection of the rest of 1 Samuel -- which must have at least 650 verses, over 80% of which (conservative estimate) begin with the letter vav -- reveals that 1 Sam 13:2 is the only instance in which the KJV translators failed to translate the vav. This is quite peculiar, and I am aware of only one other example in the entire Hebrew Bible (there are grammatical differences -- see here).
We are left with the following hypothesis. The fact that the opening vav in 1 Sam 13:2 was left untranslated -- something virtually unheard of in the KJV -- provides strong evidence that the KJV translators recognized a problem with the underlying Hebrew in 1 Sam 13:1. It is no accident that this verse is corrupt in all surviving witnesses. One plausible reconstruction of this verse would be :
ben-X shanah Shaul b'malkho v'Y ushtei shanim malakh al-yisrael
which is to say
Saul was X years old when he began to reign, and he reigned Y+2 years over Israel.
In the NASB and NLT, for example, X=30 and Y=40. In the RSV, X and Y are left blank, as ellipses.
As an added bonus for KJV lovers, here is a KJV qere list page, which identifies all the places where the KJV fails to translate the written text of the Hebrew Bible but instead translates the qere, or spoken form, which is written in the masorah. Which words are God's words -- the ketiv or the qere? Or both??