After watching a show on TV yesterday I noted that there are 2 different meanings. The Douay _ Rheims version says Pharaoh went in on horse back , the other versions say pharaoh’s horse.
The Douay version makes more sense. I am just wondering why they dropped the Pharaoh going in on horse back. For centuries that was the translation, could it be they had read that the Pharaoh died in the Exodus., but they now know the Pharaoh lived to be in his 90’s?,? It makes no sense to me that they would just send in the Pharaoh’s horse. Some versions also translate that to say all the Pharaoh’s horses and Chariots???
According to the original Hebrew, it says “Pharaoh’s horse”, which can mean either his personal horse, or the horses in his army (but not the horse he rode - the Egyptians didn’t ride horses).
Whether or not Pharaoh died is unknown, and largely irrelevant. He’s out of the story as soon as the Israelites cross the sea, never to return.
Dating back to the 1200 BCE, that Douay version was excepted. And Kent Weeks has found the tombs of all of the Pharaoh’s 100 children. His first born lived to be around 30 years old and there is reason to believe( looking at his skull) that he was killed by a blow to the head, no death by some angel.
It’s a version of the Bible used by English-speaking Catholics in earlier centuries (when Protestants would have most likely used the King James Version). Not the first place I’d turn if I was looking for up-to-date accuracy in translation.
And just in case anyone (i.e. “me” ) has never heard the word synecdoche before:
It means
"a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships),
the whole for a part (as society for high society),
the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin),
the genus for the species (as a creature for a man),
or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage) "
The New Revised Standard Version, (which I have found to provide the most literal, yet readable, text*), says:
Exodus 15:19
When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them; but the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground.
The Authorized Version/King James Version:
Exodus 15:19
For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea.
The Jewish Study Bible:
Exodus 15:19
For the horses of Pharaoh, with his chariots and horsemen, went into the sea; and the Lord turned back on them the waters of the sea; but the Israelites marched on dry ground in the midst of the sea.
I am going to go with the suggestion of Lemur866 that the translators of the KJV, (and anyone whose version was based on it), simply used “horse” in the sense of “cavalry” (ignoring the actual lack of cavalry in Egyptian armies of the period), that both “horses” and “horse” permits.
(A literal text may not actually be the “best” translation, but that is a different argument over the best way to convey the meaning of a passage from one language to another.)
Paintings from the time of Ramses II show horses mounted by Egyptians in depictions of battles, so there probably was a cavalry component to the late Bronze age Egyptian military. They’re nowhere near as important or prominent as the chariots though.
Of course, I’m not sure that really matters in any case, since the story in Exodus is what a community of iron age Jews pictured a bronze age Egyptian army would be like. They very well might’ve imagined something with a larger cavalry contingent, but there’s probably no way to know.
Synecdoche is a subset of metonymy. Metonymy is the use of a closely-associated noun for another noun; I agree that “White House” for “executive” falls in this category. Synecdoche is a metonymy where the relationship is part-for-whole, example-for-class, or vice-versa; “sails” for “ship” or “the box” for “the penalty box”.
As informative as that is, there is no chance whatsoever I will remember it for more than ten minutes. Its like the word “stochastic”, ever damn time I read it, I have to look it up.
