>But the Bible offers deep spiritual truths and psychological comfort in ways that aren't expected of other works of literature. *That* is why past biblical translators have been so keen to pick over every word and try to glean the "best possible" meaning out of every thought-unit. It's true that better translators should work to convey a greater sense of the Bible's literary power.... yet not, I pray, at the expense of its deeper meanings. And again, it's hard to find those meanings in such an ancient language, without making interpretative guesses.
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> Anyway I believe that you know all this already; I'm rehashing the obvious. I suppose my response is a roundabout way of asking: Yes; so what are you really getting at?

I guess nothing especially profound; just that I disagree with the assertion, which both Gabby and you are making, that interpretative guesses are necessary during translation. I think it's far more difficult, certainly, and perhaps in isolated places impossible, to do a good translation without explaining away difficult passages. But I think anything less is selling the text out. I don't think an honest conveyance of the Bible's literary power will ever be at the expense of its deeper meaning, because much of its meaning is translated through literary technique. *shrugs* I guess my point is that anything but an almost entirely literary translation becomes more of an interpretation, and good translators of religious texts do that as little as possible. Whenever we can we need to ignore whatever "connotations" we think are there, because somebody else is going to think there's another one.

Tom "One of these days I'm gonna get into an argument about something non-biblical around here" Schmidt
tmschm@wm.edu