Not for the first time with SDMB I had massive Bader Meinhof phenomenon with this…
Having never heard of the difference between the traditional Jewish and Christian translations of Isaiah 7:14, prior to this thread. I just rewatched Snatch.
In the opening scene Benicio Del Toro’s character (who is about to pull off a heist dressed as orthodox jew) is bizarrely giving a long monologue on that very subject and how that in his opinion the whole of catholicism is based on a mistranslation.
Of course you could argue it’s not ‘true’ Bader Meinhof phenomenon (whatever that means) as I have seen Snatch before multiple times and not noticed this bit of dialog.
I didn’t say that foretelling the future was not miraculous. I said that if you want a miracle, you can find in the foretelling of the future; you don’t need to insist on a virgin birth to find a miracle here. But I also pointed out that a sign doesn’t have to be miraculous; just significant. So, if you do look for a miracle, be aware that that’s you looking for a miracle, not the text promising you a miracle.
There are a few places in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles (those are the books we read in my Biblical Hebrew class in college) where the text is unclear. Usually, it was a question about the vowels; the Masoretic text was unpointed, and the same three letters can have different meanings, depending on the vowels. Can’t recall any examples, because that was thirty years gone; but I remember the professor discussing it, and why the editors of the edition we were using made the choices they did.
How about kosher animals? Reading the wikipedia entry, there seems to be a lot of ambiguity on what animals the words refer to. Not simply a question of orthography, but more a cultural change or loss of word usage. (Compare the word “robin” in British vs American English, that refers to entirely differently animals.)
Yes, exactly. More to the point of the OP, this is not a situation where Jews translate one way and Christians translate a word differently. Rather, there’s a wide disparity among translations because each translator weighs the available information differently.
In particular, as I understand it there’s exactly one kosher species of insect… but nobody’s sure any more just what that species is, so nobody eats it.
OTTOMH IIRC It was a species of locust. The Torah was oral tradition before it was ever writen down. For a while there was an oral tradition and a text. The oral tradition explaining what ‘kind’ of locust was kosher has been lost.
While not as significant as the difference in translation of Isaiah 7:14, and not necessarily a disagreement but more of an oversimplification are Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11, which lead to a common misunderstanding. The NIV translation of Leviticus 19:19 contains the phrase “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.” This simple translation leads many to think that any mixture of two types of fabric are forbidden by Biblical law. I recall a wise-ass “Letter to Doctor Laura” which circulated over the internet which said that someone had violated that prohibition by wearing cotton-polyester blends. Deuteronomy 22:11 simply says in the NIV “Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.” What both translated verses omits is a Hebrew word “shaatnez” which is a word for specifically a blend of wool and linen, cumbersome to translate but key to understanding the Leviticus verse properly.
But, to be fair, that verse in the midst of a bunch of other restrictions on mixing things. Don’t yoke an ox and an ass. Don’t graft fruit trees, don’t sow different seeds in the same field, don’t mix linen and wool (the only two common fibers for clothing when & where that verse would have been written).
It’s true that as far as I know, no group has extended that restriction to forbid mixing cotton and polyester, but all of Orthodox Judaism has extended “don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk” to mean no milk and meat in the same meal, and not even milk with chicken. So I think it may be a historical accident that the restriction on linsey-woolsey hasn’t been extended.
From the context, Isaiah is telling Ahaz that there are some symbols that he should be on the watch for to know that Isaiah is genuinely seeing the future. Assuming that IIsaiah did not expect Ahaz to live for 800 years, we can say that Immanuel is probably not a reference to Jesus.
I’d probably guess that he’s describing Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, who kicked out Assyrian religion and strongly pushed the worship of Yahweh. (Ergo, he’s the one who brings God to everyone - Immanuel, the one with God). Ahaz’s wife would be the maiden and, as a queen, would be notable for having almost any male child since it would be a king. The current best guess would be that her father was a Levite (e.g. from the priestly class) who helped to care for the Temple, which would mean that she would likely have been a strong supporter of the worship of Yahweh and, potentially, influential in Hezekiah’s devoutness. Isaiah would have felt like she was a special ally.
Even if that were true (rather than being a matter of the Oral Torah tradition), the fact that the word that indicates the specific fabric mixture is omitted from the translations leads very easily to mistaken assumptions, which would not be the case if the translated verses maintained it.
I think it’s odd that some bibles don’t translate it precisely given that there’s actually an English word for it. You will not be surprised that all Jewish translations are precise about that.
It’s been mentioned, but must be emphasized: Christians have been trying to read Jesus into the old testament since day one, and this is the most common disagreement you will find. There are some you can’t blame the Christians for because they’re given an incorrect translation. Like one I saw recently in the NIV or another backwater translation where sons of God will come became a son of God will come, for obvious reasons. Lies to glorify Jesus on your bookshelf? More common than you’d think.