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hybrid search strategy


c. stirling bartholomew

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The [CONTENTS x] argument is inherently 'fuzzy' because it looks for verses. While running several test scenarios on Israel as a translation equivalent in the Old Testament I used NOT [CONTENTS HMT-T] to eliminate verses where it appeared that Israel  was an equivalent of Hebrew/Aramaic ישׂראל, ישׂראל־0, ישׂראלה knowing full well that this wasn't a bomb proof method of identifying a translation equivalent with certainty.    

 

Rather than wading through 2500 examples, NOT [CONTENTS HMT-T] gave results that helped me focus on a subset of the 2,500 where I could take a close look at what was going on.

 

I decided on Ezra as a test case. The numbers worked out. I used Bible Gateway to find Israel (several permutations) and found 40 examples in 36 versus. Interestingly that is precisely the same number I came up with in Accordance. I don't have the ESV in Accordance (don't need it). But I ran this test on several formal equivalence versions (RSV, NASB, NRSV). 40/36 was exact or close to exact.

 

Armed with this preliminary stage of exploration I decided to confirm the ESV samples, to insure that in Ezra  NOT [CONTENTS HMT-T] gave valid results. I did this just for laughs. I was dabbling in Ezra while working on my Daniel project.

 

This is only tangentially related to the project Kristin is working on.

 

 

 

 

Edited by c. stirling bartholomew
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Hi @c. stirling bartholomew,

Thanks for the post, and you are correct that it is not the same, but close to what I have been doing. As I have been going through this by hand, I have had some time to think, and I can see that the CONTENTS is just simply not designed for what I was trying to do, specifically matching the Hebrew / Aramaic words with the English to find discrepancies in either direction.

The reason why it is not designed for this is because the CONTENTS is comparing "verses" and I am trying to compare words. I have in fact found discrepancies, but they are ALL in verses where the word actually occurs. For example, the ESV lists "Israel" twice in a verse, such as "Israel did this and that, then Israel did something else" while the Hebrew just says "Israel did something then THEY did something else." This example is fictitious and not actually in the ESV, for the record :D. In any case, such an example does not register in a CONTENTS search, since the verse matches.

 

I have discovered that that moral is that if someone wants OCD accuracy, they need to do it by hand.

Kristin

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5 hours ago, Kristin said:

I have in fact found discrepancies, but they are ALL in verses where the word actually occurs. For example, the ESV lists "Israel" twice in a verse, such as "Israel did this and that, then Israel did something else" while the Hebrew just says "Israel did something then THEY did something else." This example is fictitious and not actually in the ESV, for the record :D. In any case, such an example does not register in a CONTENTS search, since the verse matches.

 

I found examples of the same pattern looking in NRSV & NASB. The translators seem to have an occasional problem with anaphroic reference. The repetition of Israel might have poetic value in some contexts but it also reduces textual cohesion[1]. 

 

[1] Cohesion in English M.A.K. Halliday, Ruqaiya Hasan, c. 1976

 
   
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13 hours ago, c. stirling bartholomew said:

found examples of the same pattern looking in NRSV & NASB. The translators seem to have an occasional problem with anaphroic reference.

Gen 46:28 NRSV Israel sent Judah ahead to Joseph to lead the way before him into Goshen. When they came to the land of Goshen.

 

ESV, RSV, NASB all use a pronoun.

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