My dad asked me and i have been trying to research it- my other bibles don't show multiple marks at all....also - when a verse has a hyphen (or dash) and nothing else, why was it translated this way. he told me the jw explanation but it didn't make sense to me
bible students - why does the NWT use imbedded quotation marks in Jeremiah?
by sosad 6 Replies latest social current
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Leolaia
Do you have an example?
If its in the oracles ascribed to Yahweh, it may be a convention for designating oracular speech.
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Leolaia
When a verse has a dash and nothing else, it is a sign that the best critical text lacks the verse that formed a part of the received text at the time when the versification system was introduced (by Robert Stephanus and Theodor Beza in the sixteenth century). The Codex Bezae (a witness of the Western Text), for instance, includes many "pluses" not found in the earlier version of the text.
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sosad
jer 27:1 - 11 jer 29: 1-28 jer 29: 30 - 32 the quotations look like this ' " ' " ' " before and after the quote. On bio-crawler when I googled the only them) subject it was obviously a jw who had edited the topic of quotations marks to mention how the NWT uses embedded quotations (but not why only them) and that in quoting these versus in "publications" it requires a further quotation mark series to show this" My New Jerulsalem bible only shows one set while the rheims shows none.
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sosad
Hi Leolia - I feel like a bit of an idiot here but what do you mean "the critical text" vs "received text"? Is this specific to Protestant translations?
And what are "pluses"? Extra text? many thanks-
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Leolaia
I see what you mean with the multiple embedded quotes in Jeremiah...and it could get very confusing to interpret which speakers each set of quotes is supposed to refer to. The situation is complicated in ch. 27 by the double reference to Jeremiah's reception of divine speech in v. 1 and 2, "this word occurred to Jeremiah from Jehovah, saying, 'This is what Jehovah said to me (i.e. Jeremiah, not Jehovah).' " The NWT embeds another set of quotes into another after each quotative formula (i.e. the two verbs of "saying" boldened above), but this is potentially misleading in this case because the "me" refers to Jeremiah, not Jehovah. I think it is much clearer in the Jerusalem Bible, where the first sentence is put into parentheses, letting the second quotative formula do its work without confusion. So we have Jeremiah speaking in v. 2a, and then v. 2b onward represents what Jehovah says. But in v. 4b, we have the message that Yahweh wants Jeremiah to deliver, so this is should also be contained in a quote within a quote. Then, rather pedantically, the NWT inserts another set of quotes in v. 5 to set off what Jehovah says from the rest of the message, tho the rest of the message is only the introductory formula at the outset. The Jerusalem Bible has a much clearer approach, using a colon to set this off: "Give them the following message for their masters, 'Yahweh Sabaoth, the God of Israel, says this: I by my great power and outstretched arm made the earth...' ". It certainly is better to be as sparing in the use of embedded quotation marks as possible, for the sake of clarity. The Jerusalem Bible uses just two sets of quotes here, whereas the NWT has four. Bear in mind too that punctuation is entirely at the discretion of the translator, since the original manuscripts lacked punctuation per se (except for a few devices in the Masoretic text).
The critical text is the text reconstructed through textual criticism that represents the earliest and best form of the text, largely through the discovery of better and older manuscripts than the ones available to Erasmus. The received text is the one that Erasmus edited in the sixteenth century (from the best manuscripts he had available in his day), which in reality was a kind of critical text of his own. But this received text was full of corruptions, additions, scribal errors, and other departures from older forms of the text, and was representative mainly of the Byzantine text family. The NWT and nearly all modern versions was translated from a relatively recent critical text (Westcott-Hort), tho there are more current texts (e.g. Nestle-Aland 27) that take into account the latest manuscript discoveries. A "plus" is a portion of text present in one manuscript that is absent in others. It often represents an addition, tho sometimes it could represent an older portion of the text that was removed in other manuscripts.
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Narkissos
I guess the quotations marks are the work of a particularly obsessive WT translator (or proofreader) who, from half crazy, must have turned full crazy before he was finished with the Prophets.
Imagine hundreds of pages of: Now I say to you: "You will say to them: 'Thus speaks Jehovah: "You have said: 'I am strong,' but I say to you: 'You will fall.' " ' "
This kind of overrationalisation ignores the logical gaps (anacolutha etc.) inherent to the linear or cursory nature of language/writing in general, not to mention the oddities of an ancient text which went through a long editorial process.
-- Btw Leolaia's remarks on the "pluses" essentially apply to the New Testament, which we are used (at least since Renaissance) to translate from a heterogeneous "critical text" instead of one manuscript. This was never the case in the OT which has almost always been translated from a consistent Masoretic text (now from the Codex of Leningrad), with only a few variants from other sources chosen in some versions. It is interesting that modern textual criticism has followed diametrically opposite ways to deal with both parts of the Christian Bible (also for the lack of one "standard" Greek New Testament).