The Hebrew text uses the cardinal number for the first day and ordinals
for the remaining days. It is not until one gets to the sixth day that the
definite article is used. Gesenius only allows 'echad to mean first for
the first day of a month or in certain situations in modifying year. Also,
English grammar does not apply to Hebrew. In English a cardinal number
becomes an ordinal if it follows the noun it modifies. In Hebrew it is
quite normal for the adjective to follow the noun.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Stephen J. Krogh wrote:
> Looking at the word-for-word translation of the Hebrew text, one finds this
> phraseology: “and was evening and was morning day Xth.” The NIV renders the
> time markers in this way: “And there was evening, and there was morning —
> the Xth day.”
>
>
> Stephen J. Krogh, P.G.
> The PanTerra Group
> http://panterragroup.home.mindspring.com
> --- __o! --- __o -- __o -- __o
> --_~\<,_ ----_~\<,_ _~\<,_ _~\<,_
> _(_)/_(_)______(_)/_(_)_(_)/_(_)_(_)/_(_)_
> ==========================================
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> > Behalf Of Wendee Holtcamp
> > Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 10:43 AM
> > To: asa@calvin.edu
> > Subject: RE: NIV people can't translate
> >
> >
> >
> > Jim wrote:
> > > (NASB) "And there was evening and there was morning, one day."
> > > (NIV) "And there was evening and there was morning-the first day."
> > >
> > > I've been thinking about this recently. What would possess the NIV
> > > folks to take the leap from "one day" to "the first day."? The RSV
> > > also uses "one day."
> >
> >
> > I don't know Hebrew but perhaps the way the language works it transposes
> > words (like Spanish does compared to English) so that even though the
> > literal translation would be "one day" the "correct" Hebrew translation
> > would be "day one." We'd have to get someone who knows Hebrew to
> > answer this
> > one. That's just what popped into my mind.
> >
> > Wendee
>
>
>
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