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This is not intended to be inclusive or even scholarly. No extensive
digressions and no footnotes, period. This is to give an idea of some of the
rather important issues in dealing with modern translations of ancient
texts.
First consider the oldest written languages were not phonetic at all. They
symbols stood for words such as modern Japanese and Chinese. Later a mixture
of symbols and phonetics was used. Finally when everyone in the west was
using phonetic writing "traditional" inscriptions often used the old
non-phonetic versions of the language.
We also do not find our way of expressing words. A relevant example is BT in
Phoenician which is also called proto-hebrew by the pious. For modern
spellings it is Beit. It always means a physical structure which some person
or thing lived. It can also mean a town or a neighborhood or a region. But
modern translators use these. Generically is it any place people live. It is
only the connective word that gives it meaning.
- beit fred = home of fred
- beit david = dynasty of David
- beit solomon = palace of Solomon
- beit yehovah = temple of Jehovah
- beit astoroth = Strato's tower
- beit lehem = Bethlehem
Clearly beit david a dynasty of David is not a legitimate translation. It
comes from a pious translation of the Tel Dan stone which believers what to
use as evidence there really was a king David. It is not a proper
translation. (And it is worse than
that for the believers. The stone actually has only BTDWD. It isn't even DV
or DVD or even two words.)
And there is more. BT is a generic term for place of shelter and is used for
place names. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such place names in
Israel today. I found three in just two days by reading articles in www.haaretz.com. That is the English
edition of the oldest Hebrew language newspaper in Palestine/Israel. One
presumes they know the proper usage of the language.
And in the first week of November 2006 the world news reported Israel
shelled the town of Beit Hanoun and murdered some 18 people in one family.
Faith driven translations are clearly out the window in light of current
events.
But one does not have to go that far afield. The bible says Jesus was born
in Beth Lehem.
With such fluidity of translation all things are possible and many very
faith-driven translations are possible.
In addition there are issues with modern spellings of words.
Our spelling of names is based upon the phonetics created by some usually
long dead scholar who decided how it should be translated. The same word has
different phonetics depending not only on how he thought it should be
pronounced but also how to create that phoneme in his native language. Thus
we wind up with Ra pronounced Rah in English when they accepted
pronunciation is Ray. Consider the difference between how a Scot and an
Italian would phoneticize the same word. Then consider many of the names do
not come from phonetic writing.
A current example
If you follow the news from other countries you have seen this. Using
English as an example you can read about al-Qaida is the US news and al
Qaeda in the British news. If you follow English translations from other
languages you will find additional spellings of the same term. This has to
happen as Arabic does not have a one for one equivalent vowels with English
and within English there is no common agreement on the pronunciation of
vowels. You can hear pronunciations al-kIda, al-kAda and al-KI Eda, where
upper case indicates the name of the letter in standard American English.
Standard American English pronunciation is that on TV and radio and should
not be confused with Southern, New England or Texan pronunciations.
So all the vowels are fungible. asherah is no more than SRH and maybe not
the h as it may be trying to get a Rah rather than Ray pronunciation. S/SH
and T/TH are similarly exchangeable depending upon the language of the
phonetics and the intended pronunciation. Thus Ishtar is really only STR.
Astarte is STRT.
The connection between the names comes from context and description. The
consort of a god is legitimately considered a goddess by association.
Asherah is also phoneticized Astarte from an inscription. Considering the
word to mean consort rather than a personal name is likely due to a similar
pious translation as in Strato's Tower.
BT STRT, house/temple of Astarte, but piously translated Tower of Strato
although a clear reference to a temple. There was also a "Strato's Tower" in
Herod's capitol city but it has five sides. That guy Strato has a lot of
towers or more simply there were several temples to this goddess.
If idols of this goddess were not so common in Jerusalem up to Rome
rebuilding it one might credibly challenge it but they are way too common to
dismiss centuries old active worship.
2006 October 13
So for example one could not write, He visited many palaces. One could only
write, He visited many beits like unto Solomon's. It was only the like unto
what that said what kind of beit it was. The English translation has many
"like unto"s in it. It indicates getting around a limitation in the original
language.
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