The people passed over [the Jordan River] in haste.
Now, you might think people could possibly pass over a full-flowing river, but over a dry one? Who'd say that? It sounds like they were spookily levitating over, on a hovercraft or something.
It gets worse:
And when all the people had finished passing over, the ark of the LORD and the priests passed over before the people.
Hang on, first you're saying the people had finished passing over, but then the priests are passing over before the people? It canna be! Oh hang on, you mean THAT kind of "before" - "before their eyes" - the Hebrew kind of "before" which we don't have in English except on very rare and formal (or silly) occasions ("Lo, what manner of thing is this I see before me?").
I challenge you: find one real-life example of a person saying "someone did something before me" - where they mean the person did it in front of them, not before them in time. I wish you well.
This is just one reason why the ESV is only useful if you already know the underlying Hebrew and can understand why on earth the translators would say the priests "passed over" the dry riverbed after the people, before them! And hey, if you know the Hebrew, why bother with the ESV anyway?
(Josh 4:11 - thanks to Derek for the tipoff)
5 comments:
I think you're a little harsh on both the ESV and the general public. I don't know the underlying Hebrew and yet can still find the ESV 'useful'. KM
Hi KM
OK, so I did go too far in saying it's ONLY useful if you already know the underlying Hebrew. Better the ESV than nothing, definitely. But I do hold that the ESV is highly user-unfriendly for those who don't know Hebrew/Greek, as I think those examples show.
Maybe if the readers are bilingual (in any language) it might communicate fairly adequately, because they're used to thinking in "translationese" - but I still think normal English would be better!
What do you mean by "harsh on the general public"?
Call me overeducated, but it makes sense to me and maybe that's what KM means about "harsh on the general public". The use of the phrase "before" to indicate "in front of" isn't all that unusual in literature, is it (to use your example - "it happened right before my eyes")? Would you be more content with the first example if the phrase "crossed over" was used instead of "passed over" - not a great deal of difference there? Can these things really not make sense to an applied reader, albeit one from the general public? Maybe I've just been Bible-indoctrinated enough to understand...its hard to be objective. I also chew over the question of the inherent ancientness of the text and whether its worth retaining that historicity in some ways, such as through language ...I suppose I should doing that chewing in my own time rather than at work! Better go.
Love ya - Sim.
It's true that "before my eyes" is normal English (kind of an idiom) - but that's not what ESV said. If it said, "the priests passed over before their eyes" that would have been more acceptable in my eyes... it's the "someone did something before someone else" construction that's problematic if it's supposed to mean "in front of".
Crossed over is way better than "passed over". When do normal English speakers ever use "pass over" to describe walking? Especially to describe walking over a noticably low place (like a dry riverbed)? It's not that it's gibberish, it's just kinda odd. So why keep it? What's gained? I'm happy for kinda odd translations as long as there's a point to it, but I can't see the point here. If it was a once-off I'd keep my trap shut but I think it happens too much in the ESV.
I don't know if a good translation should try to retain a sense of "ancientness"... I think it will have that anyway just because it's talking about ancient things and times and places and customs. I reck that if the text didn't sound ancient to the original audience we shouldn't try to make it sound ancient to us either. But, I'd be v.interested in hearing the other side!!!
thanks for interacting!
Sorry, I've been on leave so this is probably now out of date but my comment that I think you're 'harsh on the general public' meant that your post implied (to me anyway) that you have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the general public and think they wouldn't be able to work out what the passage means without knowing the underlying Hebrew. KM
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