A quick look at the Bible
For years I've been hearing talk of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I've had doubts. To me, evil implies intent, but the danger seemed more fundamental. We lost paradise just by building shelter against the next storm, having decided that the effects of the last one were bad. No moral complexities necessary. Besides, ancient Hebrew wasn't that rich a language: it couldn't have had separate words for bad and evil.
I don't know what took me so long, but this morning I finally looked it up. My best translation is, "The tree of knowledge of good and bad." Four words in Hebrew. The third and fourth translate real easy: Good. And bad. The and is represented by a single-letter prefix on the fourth word. The first two words require more experience to translate, though there's never really any doubt as to the result. The first word is best translated as the tree of, though tree of and tree are also possibilities. Hebrew is an inflected language. There's a word for house and there's a word for the house of and they're pronounced differently. There's a word for tree and there's a word for the tree of and they're spelled and pronounced the same. The second word translates as the knowledge of. Unlike in the first word, the definite article is explicit. The function of the definite article is to make it clear that what's being discussed is the one and only tree of knowledge, rather than any old tree of knowledge. To one accustomed to the way sentences are built in English, the definite article seems misplaced, but that's the way Hebrew works. The article does have more meaning than that which customarily precedes the name of a ship or a river in English. Not that it matters, though, seeing as how the tree is a metaphor.
But for those of you who care about such things, the original text doesn't say, "knowledge of good and evil;" it says, "knowledge of good and bad."
I don't know what took me so long, but this morning I finally looked it up. My best translation is, "The tree of knowledge of good and bad." Four words in Hebrew. The third and fourth translate real easy: Good. And bad. The and is represented by a single-letter prefix on the fourth word. The first two words require more experience to translate, though there's never really any doubt as to the result. The first word is best translated as the tree of, though tree of and tree are also possibilities. Hebrew is an inflected language. There's a word for house and there's a word for the house of and they're pronounced differently. There's a word for tree and there's a word for the tree of and they're spelled and pronounced the same. The second word translates as the knowledge of. Unlike in the first word, the definite article is explicit. The function of the definite article is to make it clear that what's being discussed is the one and only tree of knowledge, rather than any old tree of knowledge. To one accustomed to the way sentences are built in English, the definite article seems misplaced, but that's the way Hebrew works. The article does have more meaning than that which customarily precedes the name of a ship or a river in English. Not that it matters, though, seeing as how the tree is a metaphor.
But for those of you who care about such things, the original text doesn't say, "knowledge of good and evil;" it says, "knowledge of good and bad."