hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) (05/26/91)
Someone quoted a version of the Bible that said that if a man hit a woman in the stomach, and the baby was miscarried, but the woman was not injured, then a fine would be paid. But if they woman was injured, then eye for eye and tooth for tooth was to be extracted. In the NIV it says that if the baby is born prematurely, but there is no injury, then a fine is to be paid, but if the baby is injured then eye for eye and tooth for tooth is to be extracted. There may be some ambiguity in the Hebrew passage. Can anyone help clear this up? Link Hudson. [NIV doesn't really say "if the baby is injured". It simply has premature birth instead of miscarriage (with miscarriage as an alternative in a footnote). It's not clear to me who the injury is to in this case. I can't comment on the Heb, but I have looked it up in a number of translations and a commentary, and the NIV is alone on this one. --clh]
cctr114@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (06/02/91)
In article <May.26.03.12.55.1991.14622@athos.rutgers.edu>, hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) writes: >Someone quoted a version of the Bible that said that if a man hit a >woman in the stomach, and the baby was miscarried, but the woman was >not injured, then a fine would be paid. But if they woman was >injured, then eye for eye and tooth for tooth was to be extracted. > >In the NIV it says that if the baby is born prematurely, but there is >no injury, then a fine is to be paid, but if the baby is injured then >eye for eye and tooth for tooth is to be extracted. There may be some >ambiguity in the Hebrew passage. Can anyone help clear this up? Link >Hudson. The Hebrew Scriptures contain very little on pregnancy, birth, care of small infants and the various problems that might be faced by the mother. Thus any words related to this time of life must remain, at least in part, ambiguous in their meaning because they occur so rarely in the Hebrew Scriptures. Another factor which you must consider is what I call the translating principles of the version you are using. Some versions have aimed at a very simple vocabulary, others have a particular theological viewpoint it wishes to push. I do not have an NIV myself but I understand that it was intended to be accessible to young readers. The translators may have felt that a phrase like ``baby born prematurely'' was more understandable to more people than a word like ``miscarriage''. To someone who has no knowledge of Hebrew the sometimes contraditory translations which various versions give can be very confusing to say the least. Anyway to the passage at hand. In this case the text does not use either a single word or a technical word to describe the miscarriage. So it is possible that there was no single word for miscarriage. A very literal rendering of the two words would be ``and-they-came-forth her-babies''. We must be on guard against trying to impose our understanding back onto the people of Biblical times. We know about eggs and sperm, ovum, zygotes, feotuses, trimesters of pregnancy, and so on. The understanding portrayed in the Bible is on the level of ``Adam knew his wife Eve and conceived and bore a son''. To us whether we call something a miscarriage or a premature birth would depend on whether the child lived after birth or had not yet reached the age of viability. To them it would seem that there was no such distinction. So how best to translate these words. Because the clear intention of the text is unintended termination of pregnancy through accident, I would agree with the majority of the translators and say that the best modern equivalent is miscarriage. One could use some variant of abort, but the word is so emotionally loaded today that it would be unwise to do so. Premature birth implies a viable child which does not cover the full meaning of the situation. You have titled your article ``abortion'' and I suspect you have heard the argument that because the penalty was less than for either murder or manslaughter that an unborn child is regarded as less than human. I would point out that often in Biblical law, as in modern law, the intentions of the guilty party are considered when passing a sentence. Here it is clear that the two men were fighting, which they should not have been, and a third party is injured as a result of their actions. Clearly the mother is regarded as more important than the miscarried baby but it is quite a leap to go from there as say that the baby was less than human. Those who say that the baby was less than human are reading their own value judgements on the humaness of the baby back into the text. -- ___ Bill Rea (o o) -------------------------------------------------------------------w--U--w--- | Bill Rea, University of Canterbury, | E-Mail b.rea@csc.canterbury.ac.nz | | Christchurch, New Zealand | Phone (03)-642-331 Fax (03)-642-999 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Thanks for the details. I'd like not to continue the discussion on abortion. That should be done on talk.abortion. As far as I know, the NIV is not a "controlled vocabulary" translation. My suspicion is that they avoided miscarriage because they felt it had degree of apparent precision unjustified by the original. The NIV, although not perfect, tends to be fairly free from doctrinal biases. (I speak as one whose doctrinal biases would be in opposition to the NIV translators'.) --clh]
hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) (06/04/91)
Whose injury or death is being refered to in this passage. In the NIV, the reader gets the impression that if the child is born dead, the man is put to death. In another version, if the woman is killed, the man is put to death.