This week has been more KJV updating. I finished Mark. Counting Jude and Matthew that makes three books. I did a dash of Philemon, but it was harder than it looked. Not being a Greek translator, I'm trying to limit myself to updating and not trying to translate, although there was one place I stretched myself a little, but more on that in a second. What is Greek like? Pretending to be sober, Yoda, on drugs. It's kind of like that. It's like Yoda but worse. Yoda is fun and understandable. Greek is neither. It takes some time to get used to.
Back to where I stretched myself. Matthew 15:26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
That word dogs is not quite correct and could be translated as puppies, so I updated that. The problem word was meet. I already knew it meant proper, but that didn't really fit the Greek lexicon, which had multiple ways to translate it, although proper was a word of last resort sort of. None of the other words really matched except suitable. I started substituting words to see how they sounded and whether they made sense in the sentence. As I was going through the list, it suddenly occurred to me what the word should be. Kosher. It's not kosher to take the children's bread and give it to their puppies. Unfortunately, kosher isn't one of the lexicon words for this, at least not the lexicons I'm using so far(Thayers, Strong's, LSJ and online resources). Inner conflict. I wanted to use kosher, but I'm limiting myself to the lexicons. That would be translating.
This problem pops up sometimes. The lexicons are not at all complete. On occasion the right word is not in a lexicon, and I can't use it. This verse and the matching one in Mark was the one place I made an exception. Suitable is in the list. The word fit means suitable. Fit is also another way to say kosher. So, I translated meet to fit. It's correct while still giving extra meaning to people who know what kosher means.
In other news, I bought a new laundry hamper. At the store I narrowed it down to two. They had different dimensions, so I couldn't tell which one held more. When I checked the labels, I found a surprise. I expected them to be in liters. They were in bushels! What? One held 2 bushels and the other 2.5 bushels. How can people still be using bushels in 2017? Am I sheltered? Am I unobservant? Is this going on all around me, and I've never noticed? Why are garbage cans in gallons/liters but laundry hampers in bushels? The world's gone mad.
Have a great weekend.
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