Talk:Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Apologetic/A Treatise on the Soul/Chapter XXVI

I wish to defer on some of the translation

Please see my explanation in Hebrew.

I translated a small section of the book for a friend reading the Latin and the English translation knowing the Biblical text in the original Hebrew.

Here are a few issues:

...opinor spirans plantam, fratris inuaserat,

opinor - in my opinion

spirans plantam - a spirit plant - vegetation with a fragrance

IMHO the three words mean "clearly" (like the smell of a plant) or "as expected".

so the sentence is: "as expected, the brother was stopped."

Here's the whole section, translated back from Hebrew to English:

...There is no end to the uncertainties and the unusual ideas of man, as far as God allows them to reach.

I will now leave the discussion while I am still in line here and will stay standing by my own convictions as I have proved to the philosophers and the physicians.

Brother! Base your beliefs on your own basis: Think about the saintly woman who feels the life inside her and her baby has not yet breathed air but has already been anointed with prophetic intuition. See how Rebecca's intestines where churning (Vayitrotzetzu Habbanim- and the boys where running, or: and the boys were smashing), although the time of birth, was still far away, and there was no mark of breath yet. "And behold there were twins in (the) stomach" of the mother, although the twin nations had not shown any sign of coming. It seems surprising that he had a struggle even before he was born or took his firth breath *), even if it only bothered his mother with his unrest inside her. But when her womb opened, and the number of her offspring was seen, along with their initial knowledge as sages already at that age, we had been presented not only with the souls of the (two) babies (explaining the unusual behavior inside her) but also to the clash between them.

He was delayed before he came out to the world, and only his hand came out.

Whether he chose to hold the Platonian (world) view, or the more stringent Stoic one,

(the question is:) What is with the expected one, the one that is still delayed inside but is already delaying the one outside.

And immediately afterward, the brother is caught up, still warm from his mother as before.

Oh, the baby will exercise, and race, and be ready for the contest, I believe. My life! (Swearing in his life that this is true).

• ) Please notice the play on Latin words: Animosa - animosity, and Animeta - animation - life.

Pashute (talk) 22:06, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

@Pashute: It's not our translation; it's Peter Holmes’s translation. We do have a process for original translations by Wikisource contributors, but prefer previously published ones and these we do not correct or amend. --Xover (talk) 07:51, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

OK, so it's here on the talk page for anyone who needs it. Pashute (talk) 11:20, 24 June 2021 (UTC)