(I so wanted to title this post “Torah torah torah,” but I’m pretty sure a pun like that would just add to my time in Purgatory.)

Anyway, here’s a review of a new translation of the Torah. Some really interesting tidbits about the challenge of translating from the Hebrew:

Less obvious a challenge to the translator, but at least as important because of its subtlety, is the distinctiveness of Hebrew as a language when compared with our various Indo-European languages. It does not quite share their traditional system of voice and tense, but employs “aspects” such as qal, pi’el, and hip’il with nuances of meaning that are often difficult to reproduce in English. Not only is Hebrew often more rich in its vocabulary, with, for example, “four synonyms for lion…whereas English, alas, has none,” but it lends itself to puns. Some of these it is possible to imitate in English…. but for others, above all in Exodus 9:3 with its “spine-tingling effect,” the “fearsome pun on the divine name YHWH,” there is “no obvious English equivalent.”

There seem to be puns everywhere I look today.