What does that mean?

With part of the Exegesis class from this summer

In July, I (Jennings) co-taught a course on "Exegesis for Translators" to 14 translators from Tanzania, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau. Basically, exegesis means discovering the original meaning of a text in its historical context. In Biblical exegesis, we're trying to understand what the original authors meant and how the original audience would have understood them. Of course our understanding will always be limited, but with study - and the help of the Holy Spirit - we can we understand more than without.

One of the biggest obstacles to understanding (and translating) correctly is assuming that you understand something when you actually don't, because you don't understand the context. This became vividly clear when we studied figurative language. The Bible is full of figurative language: hyperbole, euphemisms, litotes, synecdoche, metonymy and... metaphors.

We looked at several metaphors in Scripture and analyzed what the point of resemblance was and what was being communicated. For example, I Peter 1:24, "All mankind are like grass." The topic (mankind) and the image (grass) resemble each other in that both are short-lived and perishable. So, what is being communicated is that the human life does not last for long.

Then I had them think of common metaphors from their own language, and the rest of us would try to guess what they meant. It came down to what the salient quality is, in our minds, of the thing that something or someone is being compared to. For example, one of the students said that in their language they might say "Women are like sheep." We tried to guess what that meant. In my culture, sheep are meek, they're fluffy, they're followers, they're innocent (ex "wolf in sheep's clothing"). But in this man's culture, sheep are thought of as forgetful. So, "Women are like sheep" means "Women are forgetful." See how easy it could be to create a misunderstanding?

Here are a few others from the class, for fun.

1) "That child is a tortoise."
2) "He goes like water."
3)"This child is a cow."
4) "That man is a solitary monkey."
5) "She is a chicken."
6) "That man is a crow."
7) "Shaasa is a person."

 A couple that are proverbs:
8) "A man is medicine."
9) "To be big is to be a stone."

Answers after the jump.


Here are the answers:
1) Tortoises eat only vegetables. So, "That child eats a lot of vegetables."
2) Water runs quickly. So, "He runs quickly."
3) Cows are foolish.
4) A solitary monkey is selfish and does not share with anyone.
5) Chickens go to bed early.
6) A crow is fearful and runs from people.
7) A person is good (not like an animal).
8) It is important to have a man around the house in case of any emergency.
9) Adults are depended upon by their younger people.

Which ones surprised you the most? I love that the salient quality of chickens is that they go to bed early (not that they're easily scared), and that the important thing about tortoises is that they eat vegetables (not that they're slow and steady).