The Biblical Hebrew idiom ‘lift the face’ in the Septuagint of Job

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The Biblical Hebrew idiom ‘lift the face’ in the Septuagint of Job
 
Creator Mangum, Douglas
 
Subject History; Cultural Studies; Textual Studies Biblical Hebrew; Septuagint; idioms; Book of Job; translation technique; Translation Studies
Description This study examined the renderings of the Biblical Hebrew idiom ‘lift the face’ (םינפ אשנ) in the Septuagint of Job in comparison with the renderings of the Biblical Hebrew idiom elsewhere in the Septuagint and in other ancient versions including the Peshitta and the Targums. The aim of this study was to determine how the translators of the Septuagint typically handled the implicit meaning of figurative language and to examine whether the translator of the Septuagint of Job followed similar strategies, because Job is known to be one of the books where the Septuagint is more literary than literal. It was hypothesised that the opaque meaning of the Biblical Hebrew idiom would provide an opportunity for the translator of the Septuagint of Job to intervene and manipulate the text for literary or theological reasons. The analysis applied methodology from Translation Studies and linguistics to describe the translation strategies used by some ancient translators to address the communication challenge presented by semantically opaque figures of speech like idioms. The major finding of the study is that although literal translation is the predominant approach to translating this Biblical Hebrew idiom in all the ancient versions examined, the Septuagint of Job used more idiomatic and natural expressions to communicate the meaning of the idiom. The translator of the Septuagint of Job took the use of the idiomatic expression ‘lift the face’ as an opportunity to reframe the theological emphasis of a passage.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor UFS SANRF
Date 2018-07-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Literary analysis
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v74i3.5025
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 74, No 3 (2018); 6 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5025/11433 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5025/11432 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5025/11434 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/5025/11406
 
Coverage Middle East; mediterranean Hellenistic and Roman era Criteria for literary analysis
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Douglas Mangum https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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