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@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

@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 god turned the some of the there-water into regular water by splitting them, that's the logic.

@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.

@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).

@ned but, it does? בראשית literally means "in the beginning" or "firstly". It doesn't mean "at the beginning", no, but it does mean some instant inside the duration that is the beginning. The beginning of what, isn't specified, but it is literal.

It's just extremely clunky

@ned saying "god began" is technically inaccurate, but it's ok, it delivers the same implications --- "God began with doing xyz" would be the most accurate, but that's an artistic choice at that point

@laxla It is, but I wanted to start the chapter with Began because it preserves certain kabbalistic interpretations which would be lost without that particular wording.

Sorry, I was looking at other occurrences of heavens/skies. It would be an easy thing to replace later since I could run a find/replace operation to fix it if I favored the other wording. Sometimes that's why I chose such odd wording, as a placeholder.

@ned no yeah I agree with using Began there

@laxla I spent a month researching that first word and months on the first verse, just because of all the various interpretations that exist because of the nominal phrasing. I had notes on Mishna, Talmud, and Kabbalah, as well as various Christian interpretations, but that was several moves ago. No idea where they ended up.

@ned oh damn ouch. That sucks. it's just that I don't see if you're trying to make a literal translation or an accepts-but-does-embrace translation. Both should exist, but these are completely contradictory goals, as naturally, some interpretations are flat out truer to the text due to not relying on translations.

@laxla Ultimately you do have to make decisions when translating. Interpretation is unavoidable. My goal is to be true to the text, and sometimes that means preserving places where the text is vague by translating it in a vague way. I looked at the vast differences in how people have understood that first verse and considered it worthwhile to preserve that ambiguity. Genesis often leaves out details that we really want as readers, like what does it mean that God "took" Enoch when everyone else just "died"? It doesn't say. I try to resist the urge to be truer in any way that isn't to the text. Otherwise I might have said Enoch was "taken up" as some other translators have.

@ned
1. English question, what's the difference between took and taken up, cause נלקח אל אלוהים usually just means died (with differing implications ofc), I don't see how the English tense would affect it?
2. That's exactly what I'm saying tho, that I don't see the consistency in your decisions. There really isn't much ambiguity in the Hebrew text. Like, at all. The only reason you see ambiguity in the first place is that you're used to the English translations. I obviously prefer the literal option, as that'd be useful to me, and an accepting option wouldn't, cause I can read the actual bible. In Began you chose the literal translation. Much agree. But heavens over skys, isn't objective? Like, you're adding ambiguity that doesn't exist in the original text, "created the skys" is ambiguous as to itself after all.

@ned * there isn't much ambiguity in this case. There's a fuckton of ambiguity.

@laxla TLDR, the difference is took reads meaning from the text, while taken up reads meaning into the text.

@ned ohhhhh you mean נלקח השמימה?

I don't know I've always read it as if everyone are "taken up", I didn't know some people believe there's a difference

@laxla What I have in 5:24 is כִּֽי־לָקַ֥ח אֹת֖וֹ

@ned
"Because he took him"?

פרק ה' פסוק כד, רגע

@laxla exactly

@laxla One of my goals is to use the same word wherever it appears. You may notice that in Genesis 1-3 with the words land, ground, and dust. I use them to replace the same words of Hebrew every time. So ultimately I would want to do the same with heavens/skies. I run into problems with skies in Nehemiah 2:4 and 2 Chronicles 6:18. Skies feels very clunky here, though I'll give you it is objectively a better translation almost everywhere.

I'm not a traditional Christian, so I'm not at all concerned about who I offend so long as the translation is correct.

https://biblehub.com/interlinear/nehemiah/2-4.htm

https://biblehub.com/interlinear/2_chronicles/6-18.htm

@ned

(imma intentionally continue to say Skys like Tolkien used Dwarves)

Imo it isn't that clunky in Hebrew at least, god/s of the sky.

But I think "prayed to the god of the sky" would be pretty fitting? After all, the existence of a single god as to itself is an interpretation of the bible. It could also be read as a rogue god leading a personality cult (which is my favorite way of unseriously referring to religion), so what if in this case, the prayer was to another god? The god of the sky?

I see your reasoning though. Don't like it, but I see it.

@ned (bonus point, just realized, "skys" can be used to imply that it is a different meaning to "skies", so it's ambiguous as well, but more similarly to how it is ambiguous in Hebrew)

@ned psalms? (Googling sounds)

Ok then I'll think I'll postpone continuing this Convo until you're done with כתובים

@ned good convo tho, basically a

There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.