Syriac tidbit

The term marí (“my lord”) is frequently used in Syriac literature to refer to holy people.—David Eastman, The Deaths of the Apostles: Ancient Accounts of the Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, Society of Biblical Literature, forthcoming, chapter 4, note 13.

<idle musing>
Cool! I didn't know that...
</idle musing>

Fonts on an iPad

I'm probably way behind the curve here, but I just discovered over the weekend how to add fonts to an iPad...

Why would I want to do that, you ask? Well, for one thing, I'm sick of Syriac displaying as square boxes : ) For another, now that Dropbox integrates with M$ Word—and you don't have to pay them a fee!—it would be nice to have the option to edit manuscripts containing Greek and Hebrew on the iPad.

But the iPad already displays Greek and Hebrew, you say. Indeed, it does. But, when I'm editing, one of the things I need to do is make sure that the Greek and Hebrew are in the proper font. In most cases, that is SBL Greek or SBL Hebrew. Neither of those are included in the iPad's default fonts.

By now you are probably wondering how to do it, right? I've whet your appetite by giving you good reasons and you're sick of my delaying. Well...

Last night I did a handy-dandy Google search for "adding fonts to an iPad." The first hit was the Mac Observer from last June. He recommended a little app for $1.99. So, I went off to the App Store and did a search for it. Low and behold, there was also a free app called iFont that seemed to do the same thing. (Note: you need to look for iPhone apps to see it; for some reason it doesn't show up under iPad searches.) I figured I'd give it a try.

iFont allows you to access the desired fonts in various ways, but for me the easiest was Dropbox. I opened up Font Book on my MacBook, copied the desired fonts over to Dropbox, and waited for them to synchronize. Then I opened up Dropbox on my iPad, found the first font, SBL Hebrew, clicked on it, chose Open in, and then selected iFont (it was the first option). I clicked User Fonts, and there it was, listed as uninstalled. I clicked on install and wham! I was sent through a dizzying array of apps opening and switching until I was in Settings. OK, that's an exaggeration, but it seemed that way...I don't remember what else I did, but it was very straightforward. When I got back to iFont, it listed the font as installed. I repeated the procedure for SBL Greek and Estrangelo Edessa (Syriac).

Now for the test...I switched back to Dropbox and clicked on Final_Corrections_HBCE_Proverbs.doc. This file is loaded with Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. Bummer! The text in Dropbox didn't show the Syriac font. Well, let's see what it looks like in Word. Hey! It's there! Sweet! The Syriac displayed correctly! I checked the font on the Greek and Hebrew. Sure enough, it was correct. Even better, I didn't get the notice at the beginning saying that the requested fonts weren't available.

So, now I can edit on the iPad. I'm not sure how much I will—I usually have too many windows open on too many desktops for the poor iPad—but it is nice to have an alternative. I can see using it for quick changes, too. By the way, about 6 months ago I bought a great keyboard for the iPad, the Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. I had been eyeing it for some time, but there was no way I would pay $100! But one day I saw it for $25.00—now that was a price I could justify. So, I ordered it and have been using it ever since. I've only had to charge it once, so it's easy on the battery life. Highly recommended. And it makes the iPad look like a small MacBook Pro with the metal casing on the keyboard.

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...