lpetrich

Does anyone know of a good discussion of these?

The best-known is the "virgin" in the supposed "virgin birth" prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, where `almah (young woman) got mistranslated in the Septagint as parthenos (virgin).

But I recently came across another notable one: yam suph, literally "Reed Sea", is translated in the Septuagint as he eruthra thalassa, "the Red Sea".

Any other such notable mistranslations?

Other discrepancies between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Hebrew version?

Huon

This is not exactly a mistranslation. I have found on a french page this explanation :
From :
http://bible.archeologie.free.fr/departexode.html

If you can read french, you will have in this page some "rational" explanations of the miracles which happened during the Exodus. The great wave which drowned the army of Pharaoh was a tsunami created by the explosion of the volcan Santorini (~ 1600 BCE), which pushed the water of the Mediterranean Sea to the coast of Egypt. If this is true, the Reed Sea is not the Red Sea, but a succession of lagoons near the delta of the Nile. Small problems, Moses around 1600 BCE, and the tsunami drowns only the Egyptians, and no Hebrews. And it is not the road mentioned in Exodus.

Another possible variant : The winds of the eruption of the Santorini lift up the water on the Bitter Lakes, which are now very near the Suez canal. And it is the road mentioned in Exodus.

Third hypothesis : Gulf of Aqaba.

On this page, you have links to some other pages written in english.

The Red Sea (or Reed Sea) in mentioned in Exodus 10, 13, 15 and 23.

mg01

Another famous one is in Deut 32 in a verse relating to the partitioning of the lands by "Elyon" ("most high god"). Greek versions based on the Septaugint has "sons of angels", the Masoretic traditions has "sons of Israel", and texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls have "sons of El".

Because of the limited Hebrew vocabulary found in the Bible, English translations may use multiple words for the same term to imply different connotations depending on the usage. For instance, the same Hebrew word "shamayinm" may be translated as sky, if talking about birds, but heaven, if taking about YHWH. Sheol, the Hebrew equilivient of Hades, is translated as "grave". "Mal'ak", which is Hebrew for messeger as in reference to simply lesser deities, was morphed into English as angels through Greek and Latin. "YHWH" is translated as "the LORD". This completely changes the tone of the text. Hebrew has multiple words for God that get rolled up into a single English word which obscures the fact that Hebrew conceptions of the divine were more complex than we see when reading in English. Sometimes these things are noted in footnotes, sometimes not.

Check out http://www.bibleone.org/BibleCompare.aspx which allows you to hover over the text and gives you Strong's Hebrew defintions.

lpetrich

Here is what I am saying about "Red Sea" vs. "Reed Sea":

Common English translations of the Bible, like the KJV, the NASB, and the NIV, refer to "Red Sea" in all these passages:

Exodus 10:19, 13:18, 15:4, 15:22, 23:31, Numbers 14:25, 21:4, 33:10-11, Deuteronomy 1:40, 2:1, 11:4, Joshua 2:10, 4:23, 24:6, Judges 11:16, 1 Kings 9:26, Nehemiah 9:9, Psalm 106:7,9,22, 136:13,15, Jeremiah 49:21, Acts 7:36, Hebrews 11:29

Using the Blue-Letter Bible, I checked them against the originals. All the Old Testament references are translations of yam suph, the "Reed Sea":

yam - sea - Strong H03220
suph - reed - Strong H05488

However, the Septuagint translators used "the Red Sea" (he eruthra thalassa) for all the references between Exodus and Judges, with worse discrepancies in the other OT passages. But 1 Kings 9:26 has "the last sea" (he eschate thalassa), and I could recognize no word for "sea" in the Septuagint versions of the Nehemiah, Psalms, or Jeremiah passages.


I checked on translations into some other languages, and many of the Septuagint translators' successors have followed in translating yam suph as "Red Sea". Aside from all the English ones, the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin version) has Mare Rubrum, and I've found Spanish Mar Rojo, Portuguese Mar Vermelho, French Mer Rouge, Russian Chermnoye More, etc. However, German Schilfmeer is literally "Reed Sea"; Martin Luther was a bit more careful.

But some "Red Sea" translations, like the NASB and the NIV, do footnote Exod 10:19 as saying that the original is literally "Sea of Reeds".

Huon

All the english or american Bibles speak of the Red Sea. Same with the french Bibles, except the recent Jerusalem French Bible, which speaks (correctly) of the Reed Sea (Mer des Roseaux). I suppose that the first mistranslation goes back to the Septuagint (Hebrew --> Greek). I do not know if the translator(s) of the KJV used the Masoretic, but I doubt very much. If he used the greek translation, the explanation of a mistake by a copyist is of zero value.