THis has bothered me for years. I don’t recall anyone quoting it in my Catholic school (and they sure wouldn’t have used that King James translation), but it’s inscribed on a statuie in the Boston Public Garden, and I’ve encountered it elsewhere.
The wonderful Internet leads us to explanations that seem to make sense:
But I have to ask – why did the translators of the King James bible produce such an opaquye and obscure translation? This doesn’t seem to be like “the widow’s mite”, where meanings change and obscure the intent. This one seems pretty weird from the start. Did the translators themselves not know what it meant? (There are other cases that I think can only be explained that way. Look up “helpmate” sometime.)
I don’t understand it either. It seems daft from two directions. If you cast your bread on the waters, the gulls or ducks will scarf it up right away. Thou shalt find bird poop. If you are lucky enough to cast your bread when the birds are away, :dubious: and you find it after several days, gack! Who’s gonna want that?
Ecclesiastes said many cool things, but this is just a busted metaphor. A time to be wise, a time to spout bullshit.
I don’t think that’s an accurate statement. The text is at times oblique because it is either mythic or poetic or prophetic or some combination of the above, and translation adds its own complications, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that any ancient text isn’t supposed to make sense. If you’d said, “it’s not supposed to describe reality and create a guide to life based solely on accurate observations of the day-to-day world,” I’d agree 100%, but I’m not sure that’s relevant to the OP.
As to the original passage, I think it’s usually taken as a metaphoric way of saying “pay it forward” or “if you make a sacrifice, you’ll ultimately be rewarded.” I, too, would like an explanation as to how this came about, because it doesn’t make much sense as written.
I propose you posit this question to your clergy. If they do not give a satisfactory answer, then ask them why you are paying them if not to get religious answers. If they still do not give up their secrets, I suggest you stop donating cash, but substitute a soggy loaf of bread. Should be enough to feed 7 plus 8 people, right?
In many biblical texts “waters” is figurative of peoples. (Rev 17:15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. KJV) Bread is symbolic of quite a few things in the bible. (“I am the bread of life”, man does not live by bread alone but by every word…" etc.) In this case the logical association of bread is provision or sustanence.
Which lends weight to the notion of “pay it forward” or “do unto others”.
Seems to me that I’ve heard that the translation tries to make sense of original language that is just not very clear.
[IMHO]Based on the words as written: Don’t be afraid to try something that seems foolish. None of us mortals can tell what the new day will bring; we should properly expect to be surprised.[/IMHO]
Would it have been opaque to people living in Jacobean England? “The waters” aren’t obviously tied to investment and increase in wealth today, but I would think there’s a decent chance that if you used the phrase to an upper class 17th century Englishmen, one of their first thoughts would be commercial shipping and trade. Indeed, the writing of the KJV coincided almost exactly with the founding and rapid growth of the British and Dutch East India Companies.
This is a bit old, but while reading the fourth edition of the “Bible in just language”, the translators had the following footnote:
According to traditional, esp. jewish, interpretations verse 1-2 are about the giving of alms: even if donating sometimes seems to be as useless as if we were casting bread upon the water, it may in the long term benefit us also. Especially if we “invest” the seven or eight fold of the intended sum because the amount of catastrophes can’t be forecast.
The metaphor is not the translator’s doing, it is in the original hebrew. 2500 year old metaphors are occasionally going to be opaque. If you read the context of the verses it is pretty clear they refer to either engaging in trade with foreigners or charity. From the context it seems like the metaphor is about portfolio theory, although traditionally it is interpreted to refer to what we would now call karma.
Why, is English the only allowed language to translate into now? Just because some fundies refuse anything besides the KJV doesn’t mean the KJV is bad.
Moreover, as puddleglum pointed out, the metaphor is there in the original Hebrew. So how could a translation into (modern) English make it clearer, aside from a footnote?
It’s bad because it is a PITA to read. The point of a translation is to make the words more understandable to the reader.
The translater can still translate the postulated meaning of the original Hebrew metaphor into English (or whatever language he chooses). There is no reason to translate something into a meaningless sentence.
That’s not translation, that’s interpretation. The translator doesn’t know the definite meaning of the metaphor; and a metaphor is used because a picture says more than a thousand words in the first place. Fixing one meaning with an obvious explanation and discarding the picture is not done esp. with such a sensitive text like the Bible.
Even when translating poetry like Homers Illias or Odyssey, the standard is to keep the old-fashioned culture-specific metaphors and use footnotes to explain that calling Hera cow-eyed was a compliment because cows were of great value, or that Athena is called bright-eyed and blue-eyed because the Greek word can mean both. But a good translator doesn’t simply replace cow-eyed with a more modern equivalent and call it a translation. If he does that, he re-writes the whole thing and calls it a “Re-writen poem”.
With the Bible, because it’s considered a holy text, most people shrink away from re-writing it.