Thursday, August 04, 2005
Horses of a Different Color
In the current issue of The Bible Translator, D. J. Clark examines the adequacy of translations of the colors of horses in Zechariah and Revelation. He says:
There are four places in the Bible where horses are described in terms of their colours. These are Zech 1.8 and 6.2-3, 6-7, and Rev 6.2-8 and 19.11, 14. Some of the terms chosen for these colours in English Bibles can be rather misleading ... The basic problem arises because different languages divide up the spectrum in different ways, so that words that at first sight seem to be equivalent may turn out not to be when examined in context.
Clark concludes, for example, that in Zech. 1:8, the three colors adom, saroq, and laban should be brown, gray, and white.
Here’s what various versions have:
red horses, speckled, and white KJV
red, brown and white horses. NIV
red, sorrel, and white horses. ESV
red, sorrel, and white NRSV
a red, a chestnut, and a white. Message
Clark says red is a questionable choice in Revelation 6, too.
Other recent dabblings in biblical languages:
• In his presidential address to a 2000 meeting of the ETS, reprinted in JETS under the title “The Messiah and the Hebrew Bible,” John Sailhamer says that the last word of 2 Chronicles—which is actually the last book in the Hebrew Bible, is implicitly messianic:
There is a direct link, in other words, between ... the end of the OT and the beginning of the NT. ... The last word in the Hebrew Bible can also be understood as the first word in the NT. It is a verb without a subject ([ve-ya-al], 2 Chr 36:23, “let him go up”). Its subject could very well be taken from the first chapter of Matthew in the NT. It is a call for the coming of that one “whose God is with him,” and who is to build the Temple in Jerusalem. In Chronicles (and the post-exilic prophets) this one is the messianic (priestly) son of David. Matthew’s Gospel, which follows immediately after this last word, begins like Chronicles, with a genealogy identifying Jesus as the Christ (Messiah), the son of David, who is Emanuel, “God with us.”
• In an old issue of New Testament Studies, Mark Fairchild looks at the word zelotes as Paul uses it:
The article explores Gal 1.14 and Acts 22.3, two statements where Paul is said to be a [zelotes]. The term is a noun, meaning ‘Zealot’. However, interpreters and commentators have always interpreted the term as an adjective, meaning ‘zealous’. By understanding Paul’s statement as an adjective, interpreters and commentators have dissociated Paul from the Zealot movement which was emerging during this period of time within Judaism. However, Paul appears in these passages to claim that the Zealot movement was a powerful influence upon his formative Jewish life and theology and was a motivating factor in his persecution of the Christians. This article proposes that we seriously consider Zealot influences in the formative years of Paul.
MARK R. FAIRCHILD . PAUL’S PRE-CHRISTIAN ZEALOT ASSOCIATIONS: A RE-EXAMINATION OF GAL 1.14 AND ACTS 22.3. New Testament Studies, Volume 45, Number 4 (October 1999), pp. 514-532,
http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=7N7NQMTP5VGJA3C5XX9N>