Chapter 11
16. The great remedy for ignorance of proper signs is knowledge of languages.
And men who speak the Latin tongue, of whom are those I have undertaken to
instruct, need two other languages for the knowledge of Scripture, Hebrew and
Greek, that they may have recourse to the original texts if the endless
diversity of the Latin translators throw them into doubt. Although, indeed, we
often find Hebrew words untranslated in the books, as for example, Amen,
Hallelujah, Racha, Hosanna, and others of the same kind. Some of these,
although they could have been translated, have been preserved in their
original form on account of the more sacred authority that attaches to it, as
for example, Amen and Hallelujah. Some of them, again, are said to be
untranslatable into another tongue, of which the other two I have mentioned
are examples. For in some languages there are words that cannot be translated
into the idiom of another language. And this happens chiefly in the case of
interjections, which are words that express rather an emotion of the mind than
any part of a thought we have in our mind. And the two given above are said to
be of this kind, Racha expressing the cry of an angry man, Hosanna that of a
joyful man. But the knowledge of these languages is necessary, not for the
sake of a few words like these which it is very easy to mark and to ask about,
but, as has been said, on account of the diversities among translators. For
the translations of the Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek can be counted, but
the Latin translators are out of all number. For in the early days of the
faith every man who happened to get his hands upon a Greek manuscript, and who
thought he had any knowledge, were it ever so little, of the two languages,
ventured upon the work of translation.
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