Transliterated Hebrew Alphabetical Labels in NETS Lamentations Need to Be Moved

[Abram K-J]

I am reporting this as a correction, too, but it's widespread in the NETS translation of Lamentations and worth noting here, especially if anyone ever searches forums to figure out what's going on.

 

First, the context, from the NETS intro:

 

>> "I have departed from the critical text of Ziegler in four instances. First are the alphabetic labels. The Hebrew book of Lamentations is comprised of five poems. The first four are alphabetic acrostics: each verse (or triplet of verses in the case of chapter 3) begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. While the fifth poem is not an acrostic per se, the number of lines (22) does correspond to the Hebrew alphabet. This acrostic structure is clearly represented not only in the Hebrew manuscript tradition by spacing techniques but also in the Greek (as well as in the Peshitta and Vulgate) tradition by including the Hebrew alphabet letters in Greek transcription as discrete labels heading each unit. Neither Alfred Rahlfs’ Handausgabe (1935) nor Joseph Ziegler’s critical edition recognizes these alphabetic labels as original text. Albert Pietersma has recently shown that they are indeed from the hand of the translator.¹ The alphabetic labels, therefore, are included in the NETS translation."

 

SOURCE: Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, eds., NETS Notes, 1st, Accordance electronic ed. (Winona Lake: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Inc., 2007), paragraph 6511.

https://accordance.bible/link/read/NETS_Notes#6511

 

 

 

These letter labels, then, are headers to corresponding verses. So Lam 1.1 (which is complicated in the LXX/NETS, but that's another story!) has a heading of "alph" (not sure why not "aleph," but print does have "alph"), Lam 1.2 has a heading of "beth," Lam 1.3 has a heading of "gimel," and so on. Same with chapters 2-4. (Though in chapter 3, of course, there are three verses per letter, not one.)

 

In the Accordance rendering of NETS, however, the headings are placed essentially as footers, with the effect that the verse is mismatched with the alphabetical label from the following verse.

 

So Lam 1:2 reads in print:

 

beth

² Weeping she wept in the night,

and her tears were on her cheeks;

of all those who love her

there is no one to comfort her.

All that were her friends dealt treacherously with her;

they became enemies to her.

 

But instead Accordance has:

 

Lam. 1:2 Weeping she wept in the night,

and her tears were on her cheeks;

of all those who love her

there is no one to comfort her.

All that were her friends dealt treacherously with her;

they became enemies to her. 

 

  gimel

 

 

(I've confirmed this is the case by setting context slider to 0.)

 

This likely has little impact on anyone's actual study of the acrostic nature of Lamentations in Hebrew, and what that looks like in translation, since the user will quickly figure all this out anyway. But for the sake of accuracy, I believe this should be corrected throughout Lamentations 1-4 in NETS.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Abram K-J

[Abram K-J]

To add: this actually looks fine when reading through a whole section of Lamentations in the NETS (see attached), but context slider and verse highlighting confirms that the alphabetical headings aren't in the right place.

 

[Mark Allison]

Working on it now.

[Abram K-J]

Awesome. Thanks, Mark!

[Mark Allison]

Updated NETS is ready to go.

[Abram K-J]

Thanks, Mark!