Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Svâto-Tihonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta: Seriâ III. Filologiâ (Dec 2019)
Tohu wa-bohu. Translating and commenting on Genesis 1: 2a in european tradition
Abstract
This article gives an outline of translations into European languages of the Hebrew idiom tohu wa-bohu. It is employed in the narrative of creation in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 1: 2a) and describes the initial condition of the newly created earth. According to modern linguistic studies, the original meaning of this expression was confined to the indication of the fact that initially the earth was a desolate, desert area. But the earliest extant Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures, beginning with the so-called Septuagint and followed by the revisions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, demonstrate the tendency to attribute a more abstract and even philosophical sense to this expression. Consequently, the majority of early commentators of the Bible (both Hellenistic Jewish and Christian scholars) saw in Gen 1: 2a either an idea of the basic matter in its primordial chaotic state, or, alternatively, a notion of a procreated noetic model of the visible earth. These commentators relied not on the Hebrew sources, as was the case with the Aramic targumists and the Juwish midrashists, but on the Septuagint version, where tohu wa-bohu is rendered as “unsightly and unfurnished” (English translation by L. Brenton). At the same time, another tradition of the commentary was forming on the Christian basis. It sought to avoid far-fetched philosophical speculations on the topic of the “unsightly and unfurnished” initial state of the earth at the beginning of creation. However, even in this case the commentators followed the Greek text of the Septuagint and confi ned themselves to attempts to provide a naturalistic explanation of the two qualities ascribed to the newly created earth. It was only St. Jerome of Stridonium, who in the late 4th — early 5th centuries was the first to offer the translation inanis et vacua (‘void and empty’), which much better conveyed the intended meaning of the Hebrew expression. Those who translated the Old Testament into new European languages followed a similar strategy. Luther translates tohu wa-bohu as wüst und leer, Tyndale as voyde and emptie. The same principle is seen in modern scientifi c translations of the Jewish Bible, where a combination of two adjectives expresses the meaning of the void and the empty in a variety of ways. But is it totally correct to employ a combination of two independent terms, though adjacent in the meaning, in order to translate the expression tohu wa-bohu? This question may be answered through a semantic analysis of the lexemes contained in this expression (where the meaning of the second component is unclear, which complicates the situation), as well as through the evaluation of its linguistic nature. It belongs to the category of double word combinations where the general meaning is not deduced from the independent meaning of its lexical constituents.
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