Interesting WT quote on Jeremiah 29:10 "Seventy years FOR Babylon"

nicolaou

Anyone who is familiar with the Society's tortuous reasoning on the whole 607B.C.E - 586/7B.C.E debate well knows how they consistently render Jeremiah 29:10 as;

"For this is what Jehovah has said, ?In accord with the fulfilling of seventy years at Babylon I shall turn my attention to YOU people,. . .

However, in the infamous 'nightmare' book 'From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained' on page 114 we find the following;

"Thus saith Jehovah of hosts.................After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you..."

Remember, the New world Translation was in existence by then but this was their chosen wording.

Interesting.

peacefulpete

They appear to have been quoting the American Standard Translation in the Paradise book. Remember they aquired the printing rights and were pushing it for a brief while about that time.

Room 215

Still, they published the ``FOR Babylon" rendering, and that seems significant; of course, their chronology was at the time unchallenged (COJ was likely pioneering in those days).

VM44

Cannot translation from Hebrew to English be more precise? --VM44

Narkissos

Cannot translation from Hebrew to English be more precise?

In this specific case I think not. As I tried to explain on the other thread, in Hebrew it is definitely not an adverbial phrase of place, so it is just plain wrong to make it one in English (as the NWT does).

Being more precise than the original is not what translation is about -- although in some cases it cannot be avoided, e.g. if the "equivalents" in the target language have a narrower semantic range and you cannot always use several words to translate one word (for instance, the word seh is usually translated by "sheep", even though it may mean a "goat" as well -- and it would be burdensome to always have "a sheep or a goat," even though that would be semantically more correct).

confusedjw

Society's tortuous reasoning

this was my favorite part of your post.

Nicely put

TheOldHippie

The latest Swedish edition of NWT issued one or two years ago has changed from "70 years at Babylon" to "70 years for Babylon", and it is far more interesting that they have now made that change, than it is to study what they said 50 years ago.

nicolaou

The latest Swedish edition of NWT issued one or two years ago has changed from "70 years at Babylon" to "70 years for Babylon",

Really?!! You couldn't post a scan could you Hippie Dude?

Interesting WT quote on Jeremiah 29:10 "Seventy years FOR Babylon"

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