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Differences in Languages |
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| It is sometimes rather difficult to translate from one language into another, especially when the text is talking about things that fall outside of ordinary human experience. | ||
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Several interesting differences exist between ancient,
written Hebrew and our English language.
First of all, written Hebrew only had consonants.
When Hebrew was a living language, people simply understood which
vowel sounds to supply as they read the written consonantal text.
But when the language began to cease being the primary, day-to-day
language of the Jewish people, the rabbis became concerned how to preserve
the meaning of the Hebrew text. Since
the Scripture was God’s own word, they understood that even the smallest
letter and the least distinguishing mark between one letter and another
were there by God’s sovereign will.
(Cf. Matthew 5:18.) Therefore, they knew they could not
modify the written letters. But
they also knew that they had to find a way to supply the ordinary reader
with the means to know which vowel sounds went with the consonants of the
written Hebrew text. They came
up with a very clever method: instead of modifying the biblical text, they
placed dots and dashes above and below the letters.
These dots and dashes are called vowel points because they enable
the reader to know exactly which vowel sounds to supply with the written
Hebrew consonantal text. However, God’s proper name, Yahweh, was so sacred to the Jewish people that they never pronounced it and substituted either their generic word for God or their ordinary word “lord” (“sir, master”) instead. When the rabbis copied the Hebrew consonantal text, adding the vowel points above and below the letters, they used the vowel points for God or lord when they came to the word “Yahweh.” They did this to notify the Hebrew reader not to pronounce God’s sacred name, but rather to substitute one of those two words instead. That’s why, were you to translate what a Jewish congregation says when it pronounces Deuteronomy 6:4, you wouldn’t hear: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.” Instead you would hear, “Hear, O Israel: Master our God, Master is one.” Or, as it is written in English translations, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” %&%* If someone were to try to pronounce
the vowels for the substitute word, “master,”
along with the four Hebrew letters that comprise God’s proper name, he
might come up with “Yehowah,” or as it is Anglicized, “Jehovah.”
But Jehovah is not God’s proper name; Yahweh is.
Most English translations, following Jewish tradition, choose not
to render these four consonants (They are called the Tetragrammaton.) with
“Yahweh” but use the word, LORD, in all capital letters. In the Bible, no one ever dared to
name a child God or Yahweh–the very thought was the height of blasphemy–but
throughout biblical history, godly people gave their children names that
reflected God’s attributes and ownership. For example, Elisha, which
combines two words, El (meaning God) and yeshua (meaning
salvation or deliverance), means “God is salvation.” Many times people incorporated God’s
proper name, Yahweh, as part of the name. Elijah is comprised of El
(God), with the first person singular suffix, i (my), and Yahweh
(contracted to Yah): “My God is Yahweh.” Joshua is formed by contracting
Yahweh with yeshua: “Yahweh is salvation,” an appropriate name
for a deliverer, such as Joshua, the son of Nun. Before the Babylonian
captivity, Joshua’s name in Hebrew was pronounced Yehoshua (Yeh HO [as
in no] shoo ah); afterwards it was written Yashua (Ya [as in day] SHOO
ah). In Greek and Latin it is (pronounced YA [as in day] soos),
written Iesus in Latin. It is not surprising that Joshua was
a popular name for Hebrew boys (cf. e.g. the high priest of Zechariah 3),
nor was it unusual when the angel instructed Joseph to name his wife’s
son Joshua (Matthew There are other interesting
differences between ancient, written Hebrew and modern English: Hebrew is
written from right to left, as over against English, which is written left
to right. And Hebrew only has
two tenses, completed action and incomplete.
So if you are talking about an action that took place in the past,
you would use the perfect tense to signify action that had already taken
place. But if you are talking
about action that is taking place now or will take place in the future,
you would use the imperfect tense. How
would you distinguish between the future and the present?
The Hebrew speaker could make that clear in other ways.
That may seem bizarre to us, but ancient Hebrew was very effective
for God’s people to use as a means of communication.
Another interesting difference
between ancient Hebrew and modern English has to do with gender.
Hebrew only has two genders, male and female.
So everything, not only plants and animals, but rocks and dirt are
either masculine or feminine. That
simply indicates that the Hebrew people did not think of these concepts in
exactly the same way that we do. That
would be true of ancient Greek as well.
Even though the Greeks had three genders as we do, masculine,
feminine and neuter, they did not hold to as rigid an understanding as we
do. For example, when the Lord
Jesus addresses Peter (a masculine noun.) in Matthew You and I don’t think of rocks as
having feminine qualities as over against masculine ones.
Neither did the Greeks; it is simply how their language is, and
grammars of ancient languages are descriptive, not prescriptive.
This underscores another point, one related to the biblical
doctrine of the Trinity. The
Greek word for spirit is a neuter noun, but that does not mean that the
Holy Spirit is some kind of inanimate object; again, it is simply the
nature of the Greek language to use gender differently than we do.
Getting back to Hebrew, the word for spirit in the Old Testament is
a feminine noun, but, again, that does not mean that the Holy Spirit is a
female; it is rather that the nature of the ancient Hebrew language was to
use gender differently than we do. |