Re: Babel 'translation'...

On Apr 7, 2004, at 1:41 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:
>> Hi!
>>
>> I found quite a funny Babel translation here:
>> http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/the_tower_of_babel/gn11_01
>> -03.html
>
> Nice!
> I notice it has God addressing the line 'Come, let us go down there and
> confuse their language, so that they cannot understand each other's
> speech' to
> a couple of angels. I guess I've always thought of it as 1st sg
> imperative,
> the pl form being merely a pluralis majestatis, but of course God in
> other
> texts refer to Himself as 'I'. Anyone Hebraically competent feel like
> clarifying whether the original suggests He is indeed addressing
> someone
> beside Himself?
>                                                             Andreas

One of the controversies of Biblical interpretation :-) .
Both explanations exist, in the Jewish tradition at least.
I believe one version of the "God must be talking to angels here"
explanation goes something like (working from memory here):

'God is discussing with the angels of the heavenly court.  But why
would God do that?  God doesn't need anyone else's advice!  God did it
in order to demonstrate modesty to humanity, that you should just go
around trusting yourself but should check with other people first...'

or something like that.

I don't have my traditional commentaries with me at the moment, but the
'pluralis majestatis' explanation would seem to fit the [p@SOt']
('plain', context-based meaning) more, seeing's as how the only active
parties in the story are God and the Tower-Builders; if God is saying
to someone else "let's go down and kick their butt", you'd expect the
narrative to say something along the lines of "and so God and Someone
Else went down and kicked their butt", but it doesn't -- all the
non-Tower-Builder action is attributed to God, in singular verbs
(except of course for this "let's..." quote).


-Stephen (Steg)
  "i have a little matza, i made it out of wheat
   and when it's dry and crunchy, oh matza i will eat..."
      ~ passover variant on the hhanuka 'dreidl song'