Book of Jonah - Tolkien's 'Translation'??? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

William Cloud Hicklin · 05-20-2009, 02:52 PM

Three things:

One: Is this Tolkien's translation as he delivered it, or the reworked version that was published? "For a small number of Old Testament books, the first draft of the English translation was made directly from the French, and then the General Editor produced a revised draft by comparing this word-for-word to the original Hebrew or Aramaic." Tolkien was not a Hebrew scholar; he worked from the French.

Two: That Tolkien or part-Tolkien version has not been widely available for the last forty years; it only appeared in the original Jerusalem Bible (1966) and was replaced in the New Jerusalem Bible (1985).

Three: All you American Catholics: get one or the other JB edition! It has the cruddy New American Bible beat all hollow, both in scholarly and literary merit.

05-20-2009, 02:52 PM	#4
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	Three things: One: Is this Tolkien's translation as he delivered it, or the reworked version that was published? "For a small number of Old Testament books, the first draft of the English translation was made directly from the French, and then the General Editor produced a revised draft by comparing this word-for-word to the original Hebrew or Aramaic." Tolkien was not a Hebrew scholar; he worked from the French. Two: That Tolkien or part-Tolkien version has not been widely available for the last forty years; it only appeared in the original Jerusalem Bible (1966) and was replaced in the New Jerusalem Bible (1985). Three: All you American Catholics: get one or the other JB edition! It has the cruddy New American Bible beat all hollow, both in scholarly and literary merit. __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.