Sunday, August 23, 2015

Interesting Scripture Translations

One of the many things I enjoy about reading Biblical Archaeology Review is some authors come up with a new way to translate a word in the Bible. When I studied New Testament Greek and Hebrew I discovered that English translations leave a lot of room for opinions. Language scholars can come up with a variety of ways to translate one word. How a word is translated can make a significant difference.

So it is with the September/October issue of BAR An author questions what really happened in the garden of Eden when Eve was created. She states that the Hebrew word "tsela" in the context of the story does not mean rib as it is usually translated into English. Adam did not give up his rib for Eve to be created but his "baculum" and I will let you look that up.

Part of her argument is that human males still have an equal number of ribs but they do not have a baculum. Just because a male looses a rib in one generation does not mean that succeeding generations will not have that rib as DNA will still create equal ribs. I got a good laugh out of the article and yet she may be correct but it makes no difference to me.

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