(BA) Capitalization

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For example, there is a widespread practice in English of using "he" for human beings, but "He" for God, and likewise of capitalizing words referring to deity, as in, "Yahweh is a Warrior". In ambiguous or debated passages, this can produce an effect in English in which the translator decides for the reader whether the referent of a sentence is divine.

Take, for example, Micah 5:2. In the KJV, we read

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.

However, in the NKJV, we read:

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, / Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, / Yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, / Whose goings forth are from of old, / From everlasting.”

Now, for someone who has habitually read things written that way, it might not seem like much, especially because it doesn't affect the way the text sounds when read aloud. But marking every word referring to God is actually fairly invasive. It's similar to rendering Micah 5:2 like so:

"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, / Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, / Yet out of you shall come forth to me [I'm God] the one [he's God too] to be ruler [and God] in Israel, / Whose goings forth are from of old, / From everlasting."

The version with brackets, at least, has the advantage of being open with the reader about what is being added to the text.

So I think we'd best do without reverential capitalization. The KJV got that one right.

Now, while avoiding reverential capitalization has a long pedigree in English, and shouldn't cause many problems, the word "God" or "god" is a trickier matter. Again, there is no difference between the two in speech, but the distinction forms a subtle form of commentary. The word "God" is used for the monotheistic God, while "god" is used for the God's of polytheism. But in Hebrew, the common term elohim is used for both, without distinction by capitalization.

So, for example, if someone wrote, in Hebrew, "Yhwh elohei yisrael, we-dagon elohei pelishtim, he would be saying that Yahweh is the elohim of Israel, while Dagon is the elohim of the Philistines. But, if translated in the traditional English fashion, we would read:

Yahweh is the God of Israel, and Dagon is the god of the Philistines.

This is about as invasive as writing:

Yahweh is the True Monotheistic God of Israel, and Dagon is the false polytheistic god of the Philistines.

So, if we were to read that Hebrew statement on a shard of clay, we would risk reading later religious notions about monotheism and true and false gods into the words of an author who may or may not have shared anything like those later views. So I think we should simply read:

Yahweh is the god of Israel, and Dagon is the god of the Philistines.

Here, I am reminded of what N. T. Wright wrote in the preface to his The New Testament and the People of God:

Second, I have frequently used 'god' instead of 'God'. This is not a printer's error, nor is it a deliberate irreverence; rather the opposite, in fact. The modern usage, without the article and with a capital, seems to me actually dangerous. This usage, which sometimes amounts to regarding 'God' as the proper name of the Deity, rather than as essentially a common noun, implies that all users of the word are monotheists and, within that, that all monotheists believe in the same god.

On the other hand, while elohim is often clearly used as a common noun, sometimes it is a proper noun, as in "And God said, Let there be light". So I am working toward, at least when translating Hebrew texts, a capitalization practice based around whether the word is being used as a proper noun, not on theological concerns.

There is also a practice of avoiding the use of the divine name YHWH, commonly reconstructed as "Yahweh". So, in most Bibles, where the Hebrew says, "Yahweh said", the English reads "The LORD said." This is fine if the primary goal is to help the reader follow certain traditional religious norms regarding the name. It is not so good if the goal is to transparently show what is actually there in the Hebrew (consonantal) text. As a result, on this site, when giving my rendering from the Hebrew, I try to preserve the name, and do not substitute a common noun, in all caps or otherwise, for it.

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