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# Optimality Grammars of Ancient Translations: Descriptive Translation Studies, Optimality Theory, and Targum Jonathan 2 Sam 11:1

**Authors:** [Jeremy M. Hutton](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/jeremy-m-hutton/) · **Year:** 2015 · **Venue:** Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 15, article 6 **Link:** [jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/view/29347](https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/view/29347) · **Licence:** copyrighted — summary only (JHS open access; no licence statement on this article page)

[**1** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2525701704) openalex · 2026-10-18[Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 15](https://openalex.org/S2764683527)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7)
- [PDF](https://jhsonline.org/index.php/jhs/article/download/29347/21367)
- [DOI 10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2525701704)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Jeremy M. Hutton](https://openalex.org/A5042495282) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9495-9022) · h 10 · 394 citations · 132 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

Studies of how the ancient versions (Septuagint, Targums) translate the Hebrew Bible describe "translation technique" in incompatible ways, so results cannot be compared across corpora. Hutton combines Toury's Descriptive Translation Studies (translations follow the norms of the target culture) with the formalism of Optimality Theory: a translation choice is the winner among candidate renderings under a ranked set of violable constraints. He proposes faithfulness constraints between Hebrew input and translated output (syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological, lexical identity) and shows on Targum Jonathan to 2 Sam 11:1 how ranking them predicts the Aramaic rendering, with "hierarchy anomalies" flagging places where the translator added theology or context. For the Targum, syntactic and semantic faithfulness rank highest, lexical and morphological lower. Sub-constraints (tense–aspect–mood, gender, number) are suggested for future work.

## Ideas

- I1. Describe the JPS 1917 English, which Mova uses as the reference reading of the Torah, by the same kind of ranked faithfulness checks: per aligned verse, does the English keep the Hebrew number, gender of pronouns, person, tense (qatal/wayyiqtol → past), mood (imperative/jussive → imperative/"let")? The rate of violation per constraint is a profile of the translation, and the verses with violations are where `prag`'s agreement with the English should not be expected.
- I2. Use the "hierarchy anomaly" idea as a filter: verses where JPS departs from the highest-ranked constraints are candidates for interpretive renderings, to be listed rather than learned from.
- I3. The same profile for Targum Onkelos against the Hebrew, when the Aramaic manual and an aligned Onkelos exist.

## For Mova

I1 and I2 are measurements on the Torah trees with the JPS alignment, reported in [13. Biblical Hebrew in Mova: the tools](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/13-mova-tools/) (the pragmatics measure and its limits) and used to explain disagreements of `tools/macula/src/prag.rs` with the English reading. I3 belongs to the future `languages/arc/` manual.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7](https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7)

```
@article{hutton2015optimality,
  title = {{Optimality Grammars of Ancient Translations: Descriptive Translation Studies, Optimality Theory, and Targum Jonathan 2 Sam 11:1}},
  author = {Hutton, Jeremy M.},
  journal = {Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 15},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5508/jhs.2015.v15.a7}
}
```

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