And what does the LORD require of you?

[E]vil was associated with demons rather than with other gods. The gods could be vengeful or malicious (e.g., Ishtar’s response to Gilgamesh’s rejection of her, Erra’s destructive behavior), but the gods were not generally characterized in that way. The gods were interested in justice being maintained in the human realm, but they were not necessarily committed to doing justice themselves. Even so, the retribution principle goes beyond a god doing justice, because it also involves how righteous and wicked behavior that merits the deity’s response is defined. For the gods of the ancient Near East, social order was important, but human ethical or moral goodness was not as highly valued by the deity as cultic conscientiousness.—Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, 2nd ed., page 286

<idle musing>
Pretty stark contrast to Micah 6:8: "He has shown you, O human, what is good. And what does LORD require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your god." But, it would seem that many who even bother to think about a god and what that god might require of them haven't moved beyond the do ut des (I give in order that you give) principle. In other words, I can do whatever ethically, but if I tick the correct boxes by giving money to the right things, or saying the correct things, nothing bad can happen to me and the god(s) will be fine with me.

I think we see that behavior among some christians, whether on the right or left, who will accept the shortcomings (sins isn't too strong a word here) of their favored candidate—as long as they say the correct things and do certain ritual things that fulfill whatever unwritten or written laws govern the subcommunity to which they belong. Or at least that's the only way I can figure that a certain occupant of a white house in Washington, DC, can continue to be morally corrupt in every imaginable way and still maintain a support base among a large group of christians.
</idle musing>

What's with this translation?

I read the NIV2011 of Prov 3:5–6 yesterday that made me do a double take. Here it is; tell me what's wrong with it:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

Hint: it's in verse 6a. Maybe this will help:
Here's the Hebrew:
‮בְּכָל־דְּרָכֶ֥יךָ דָעֵ֑הוּ וְ֝ה֗וּא יְיַשֵּׁ֥ר אֹֽרְחֹתֶֽיךָ׃

and here's the Greek (first half of the verse):
ἐν πάσαις ὁδοῖς σου γνώριζε αὐτήν

Just for fun, here's the Latin:
in omnibus viis tuis cogita illum

And just to complete it all, here's the Syriac:
ܕܥܝܗܝ ܒܟܠܗܝܢ ܐܘܪ̈ܚܬܟ (that font is so small I can barely read it, so it might not have pasted correctly...)

Any of those say "submit"? Hardly! For those of you who can't read the languages, here's a bit of help:
The Hebrew דָעֵ֑הוּ is an imperative from ידע which means "to know" with the object of knowing attached at the end, "him." The Greek is a bit different, coming from the root γνωρἰζω with a meaning of "make known, reveal" which causes some to think the the LXX translator read the Hebrew as a Hiphil (causative) instead of a Qal and that wisdom is what you make known (wisdom is feminine in Greek and the pronoun is feminine) Here's what Fox says in the HBCE volume:

[The LXX translator] uses γνώριζειν only for the H- and A-stems of ידע (or a synonym), never for the G-stem, and there would be no reason for דעהו to throw the translator off track. Once he understood the verb in 3:6a as “make known” rather than “know,” he took the direct object to be wisdom (hence the feminine αὐτήν). The result, “In all your ways, declare [or ‘teach’] it,” accords with G’s assumption that the wisdom mentioned in 3:5 is of the virtuous sort. Proverbs, pages 98–99

What about the Latin? Jerome gets the Hebrew right, using the standard Latin word for "know," cogito. That just leaves the Syriac, which uses the same root as the Hebrew, yd`, which means "know" in Syriac as well. The Targumim in Proverbs are just a translation back into Aramaic from the Syriac, so they are no help.

So where does the NIV2011 get "submit"? I checked my handy old 1978 version of the NIV and it says "acknowledge"—just like almost every other translation. But, when I checked the TNIV, guess what? Yep, here's what it says: "in all your ways submit to him." So where did the TNIV get it from?

That I don't know, but it certainly wasn't from any of these versions...

Subordination (grammatical!)

Among the early Indo-European languages, Ancient Greek and especially Latin present a highly developed system of finite subordination, with embedding and consecutio. Naturally, a distinction should be made among different authors and genres, since consectio is not always respected in popular or unofficial writings. Even Cicero, whose elaborate modus dicendi is largely responsible for the complex organization of the sentence in the literary languages of the Romance domain, does not always abide by consecutio in the letters to his intimates. However, a remarkable difference may be noticed between a text in Latin or Ancient Greek on the one hand and a text in Hittite or Indo-Iranian on the other, since the latter languages make extensive use of adjoining by means of correlative elements, without any obligatory temporal or modal predetermination of the subordinate verb. The Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic languages, as well as Classical Armenian, are positioned somewhere in the middle of the two extremes—Latin and Hittite—since they often attest embedded constructions, but do not have a productive system of consecutio. Latin and Ancient Greek consecutio is probably related to the spread of oratory and rhetoric in these languages. The art of persuading in judiciary and politic discourse needs an attentive manipulation of backgrounded and foregrounded information, as well as a careful distinction among more or less reliable sources and among more and less subjective viewpoints. Such exigency is less cogent in narrative texts.— The Bloomsbury [formerly Continuum] Companion to Historical Linguistics, page 245

<idle musing>
Having studied Classical Greek, Latin, and Hittite, I can vouch for the dramatic difference in the way they express subordination. Hittite is definitely simpler—in that area, anyway!

But it got me to thinking about discourse analysis and Aspect/Actionsart/Tense/Mood and the ramifications this has. No ideas yet, but just food for thought.

By the way, this is a wonderful book. It's making all kinds of stuff that I've noticed in the various languages I've studied over the years fall into place. Of course, there a paragraphs where I get to the end and don't have a clue what they are saying. Sometimes I wonder if it is even English!

[Updated 13:20] I added Mood to the Aspect/Actionsart/Tense because in Greek it is a sequence of mood, not just tense. I hadn't thought of that at the time of writing. So, it gets even more interesting (or less to some) in that you now have the whole TAM spectrum involved...
</idle musing>

What's in a name?

<idle musing>
I've been wondering this for several years now. It just doesn't make sense to me and I don't mean any disrespect to people who do it, but why do some spell God as G-d?

I know it is out of respect and that it is supposed to be a carry-over from not pronouncing the tetragrammaton (YHWH). But, wouldn't it make more sense to write L-RD (small caps)? After all, we don't see in the Hebrew bible:
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אלִֹהים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם
That is, 'elohim without the vowels. God is just a generic, as is 'elohim. YHWH is the name of God, so maybe we should write JSS for Jesus—at least if you are a trinitarian :)

The Greek LXX translators had various circumlocutions; some used paleo-hebraic letters, others wrote κυριος (KURIOS), others wrote...I've forgotten now, but I'm sure someone will remind me in a comment (or I'll remember at about 2 AM tomorrow). The Vulgate used dominus, and the English Bibles have traditionally rendered YHWH as LORD with small caps. So, why G-d?
</idle musing>