Genesis 1:1

[Dawid]

Greetings Dawid,

Yes, it is easy to be wrong in translating words, and my first instinct for (`eith) on this thread was wrong. But leaving a word out guarantees one to be wrong. For me, it just seems better to try, even to get it wrong along the way, than to not try at all. For 400 years, who has even tried?

You say, "It's the marker of the direct object, so there's no way to translate it in English." How can you be so sure of that? Because others have said so?

Because it only exists in a few contexts in English. Were I to say "look at that dog," "at" operates in almost the same context as "eith," however, it is actually more closely associated with "look." "look at" is a unit and "that dog" is a unit. Verb, indirect object. That's all. No marker in between. Instead, English uses syntax to indicate the object of the verb, hence why we have rules about clear and unclear antecedents.
I say that it is untranslatable because there is no evidence of an object marker in English, there is nothing that can be demonstrated to be an object marker, and because the rules of English point to syntax being used instead of an object marker. This should be quite clear and simple.
I think it is more important to be clear than to translate every single word with a word or phrase. If we have a word for every word, but lose the sense of the passage as a result, what good have we done in translating? We might as well put the Hebrew Bible before our readers, as it will make just as much sense to them.
Would it help if I said that "eith" should be translated syntactically rather than with words? Without "eith" we might be able to translate this "in the beginning he created God, the heavens, and the earth." So the way we translate "eith" is by making "God" the subject and "the heavens and the earth" the direct objects. So, in a sense, we have translated "eith" but with word order rather than actual words.

[Jerry]

Greetings again Dawid,

I am confident that the rationals for an untranslatable object marker are well intentioned and well thought out. But the definition itself, creates a rather constrained box, of which there is little escape. Better I think to say one does not know the translation, than to close the lid on the box.

[Burning one]

Shlama akhay,

i'm not certain there can be a definite answer to this in a language that really doesn't have the means for accurately showing it.

i would, however, offer this thought: eth is indicative of a weak or a "slight" emphasis, so it would appear that maybe to translate it through syntax, as Dawid suggested, it could be rendered:

In beginning Eloheem created; the heavens and the earth.

but even that does not accurately show a "slight" emphasis, at least, not unless you make known the function of eth BEFOREHAND in that regards.

it is a tricky factor that i've pondered for years on how to grammatically deal with. i prefer instead dwelling on the unique symbolism of the term in Genesis 1:1, since there doesn't seem to be a definite method of translation.


Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy

[MMM]

I am completely new to the aramaic, but is this not what for example John's Gospel and the revelation try to explain:

John 1:1-3 (RNKJV)
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with YHWH, and the Word was YHWH.
The same was in the beginning with YHWH.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

Revelation 1:11 (KJV)
"Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last:..."

This is the first and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet in Genesis 1:1?

Does this anyone help in translating it?

Matthias

[Jerry]

MMM, that is an interesting way to look at it.

[MMM]

Dear Jerry,

that was not exactly what I meant.

Our Saviour Himself is claiming to be the first and the last, the first and the last letter of the alphabet (Revelation 1:11, Alpha and Omega in Greek, Aleph and Taw in the Hebrew). So I think these two letters in Genesis 1:1 represent the Son of man, our Saviour. He is the Word and was in the beginning with God and is also Himself God and is represented by the first (Aleph) and the last (Taw) letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Matthias

[Jerry]

Yes, I suspected that I was over-speculating on what may have been the intent of your post. I will retract it for now, so as not to misrepresent the perspective. Yet, it does seem unlikely that such a perspective could be translated into the context of the verse, whereas the notion of "all things were made by him", does seem to have some relevance to it.

[Dawid]

Greetings again Dawid,

I am confident that the rationals for an untranslatable object marker are well intentioned and well thought out. But the definition itself, creates a rather constrained box, of which there is little escape. Better I think to say one does not know the translation, than to close the lid on the box.

Very postmodern linguistic deconstructionist of you. I'm somewhat postmodern myself, but it is impossible to be postmodern and be at all helpful in translation. If we follow your reasoning, it is better to say that we don't know how to translate any word than to actually translate it.

Let me explain it to you like this: without eith in this sentence it would be just as acceptable, grammatically speaking, to translate this verse "In the beginning, the heavens and the earth created God." Hebrew doesn't have a firm syntactic rule about the subject coming before the object, and there are many cases in which the object precedes the subject (generally for emphasis). So we do translate "eith." We translate it, as I said before, syntactically.