Re: A question and introduction

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 22:04:32 +1200 Wesley Parish
<wes.parish@...> writes:
> significance into the target language as possible.  (Within limits
> of course
> - the best example being the names in the Bible; by the time the
> texts were
> written I doubt that any of the names of the characters in the Book
> of Ruth
> for example, would've meant particularly much to the
> readers/audience, until
> the bereft widow turns to her two daughters-in-law and tells them to
> call her
> "Naomi" - "bitter", because everything has turned out so bitterly
> for her -
> husband dead, sons dead, no place for her in the Moabi community,
> and the
> traditional hostility to the Moabim from her own kin.)
> Wesley Parish
-

Sorry, just a little nitpicking...
Naomi asks her townspeople to call her "Mara" meaning 'bitter'.  "Naomi",
her original name, comes from the root N3M, meaning 'pleasant'.  I don't
remember the scroll giving any indication that people listened to her,
though.  :P  .  I'm not sure about your conclusionss, though.  Biblical
Hebrew names are generally pretty transparent in meaning, and even when
they aren't, with important figures the text a lot of times gives an
explanation of the name.  I don't remember that happening in the Scroll
of Ruth, though.
Btw, supposedly Oprah Winfrey was supposed to be named after the figure
Orpah in the Scroll of Ruth, but her father couldn't spell.  Or something
like that.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "where you die, i will die, and there will be buried."
     ~ ruth to naomi

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