@nedPlease consider supporting my translation of the Bible. It may very well be the first translation by a trans translator (is that a pun? no regrets).
But more importantly, it is a translation that does not seek to impose a theology on the Bible, but read it with an open heart and open mind to what the scripture really means when we listen to the Spirit of Truth instead of letting publishers write over the Word out of a profit motive (Jeremiah 8:8).
I long ago came to realize that I do not stand condemned before God because of a close reading of the scripture. Now I want to share that experience with as many as I can, as many as need to hear that God loves you. It's in God's Word of Life. I'll help you find it.
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@nedPlease consider supporting my translation work. It's free (libre), released under a cc-by 4.0 license, and can help reduce radicalization, because while Christian Nationalists don't listen to reason, they do (supposedly) read the Bible. A properly translated Bible is much more difficult to weaponize, which is why they tend to cluster around the ESV and CSB.
Even so, all translations currently being published have the stated goal of aligning the Bible to certain dogmas.
I fully intend to let the Bible speak for itself, without censorship. I have always held that, "where the Bible speaks, we speak, where it is silent, we are silent;" add to that, where it is vague, weird, or even self-contradicting.
@ned is it accessible somewhere? I'd like to see how accurate it is, because every single translation I've seen so far is just wrong, constantly
@ned@laxla The first two chapters of Genesis are currently available publicly on the Kofi, chapters 3-4 come out next week. Subscribers have access to the epub as far as I have translated, to Genesis 7.
You can also join in the discussion as a subscriber and I'm happy to prioritize different passages out of order by request.
@ned ok what it actually feels like a translation instead of derivative work
Why heavens instead of sky though, it says sky
"began" is an elegant solution (literally means, "in the beginnings", or כשהתחיל/ו/ה, "when they started"), though technically somewhat grammatically inaccurate
@ned@laxla Began was a compromise, I would have preferred "once upon a time," but I'm aiming for a formal equivalence. It's "heavens" because "ha'shamayim" (excuse me, I'd have to copy/paste hebrew) is dual and I'm trying to keep as close as I can to the original words. Same as "waters," which are dual in Hebrew.
@ned
"Once upon a time" itself is kinda a terrible translation imo, it's the first word, and it says "in the beginning" as in T=0, not "sometime in the middle of time", so I do understand why you chose Began. It has the same implications though in a slightly different way.
Wait, what? "sky" isn't dual. It's שמיים as in שם מים, "the water over there". And מים is, at least in modern Hebrew, not sure about biblical Hebrew, is an always-plural, not a dual (and even if it is a dual, point stands). God created a single form of water, as they only split it into two (the water over there and the water over here) after the fact. See: להבות, as in, blades of fire. It's an always-plural of fire. Though in this case it's also a regular plural of a singular blade of fire.
@ned@tech.lgbt@laxla Sky and water are always dual in Biblical Hebrew. It's just one of those differences like tannyn being a crocodile in Modern Hebrew, but a dragon in Biblical Hebrew. There are some who believe this is because it foreshadows the separating of the waters and of the heavens. I'm not reading into it though, just translating it as it says to leave those interpretations up to the reader.
breshit is not necessarily T=0, because of the bet "prefix." It makes it a nonspecific beginning. That's why I didn't say "the beginning" because it isn't hareshit. I wanted to leave it up to the reader as to whether to interpret it as A beginning or THE beginning since that debate is still very much open.
@ned then if sky is always dual, wouldn't it make more sense for it to be "the skys" than "the heavens"? It's just a much less christian wording.
The classical translation is "in the beginning", which, works. And by T=0 I referred exactly to the word ראשית, beginning, not to the entire wordlet, which once upon a time lacks completely.
@ned@laxla I see what you mean. I chose heavens because it leaves open the possibility that the passage is referring to both the natural world as well as the supernatural (not in the dogmatic Christian way, but more generally). Whereas skies would imply, at least as I read it, that the writer meant only the natural and nothing supernatural.
@ned but there's no mention of the supernatural. If you're translating literally, translate literally: skys. Putting supernatural stuff into the word sky is a purely christian invention cause someone decided to use the same word for the Garden of Eden and the sky.
There's no place, in the original Hebrew bible, to put any supernatural meaning to the word besides a conspiracy theory that holds less evidence than that one Rabbi that managed to find the word covid in the page with bats in it (which is ok as it is religion; you don't really need evidence for it, but it just isn't literal).