gentiles / nations

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The Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin that is often translated as “gentiles” (or “nations”) in English is often translated as a “local equivalent of ‘foreigners,'” such as “the people of other lands” (Guerrero Amuzgo), “people of other towns” (Tzeltal), “people of other languages” (San Miguel El Grande Mixtec), “strange peoples” (Navajo (Dinė) (this and above, see Bratcher / Nida), “outsiders” (Ekari), “people of foreign lands” (Kannada), “non-Jews” (North Alaskan Inupiatun), “people being-in-darkness” (a figurative expression for people lacking cultural or religious insight) (Toraja-Sa’dan) (source for this and three above Reiling / Swellengrebel), “from different places all people” (Martu Wangka) (source: Carl Gross).

Tzeltal translates it as “people in all different towns,” Chicahuaxtla Triqui as “the people who live all over the world,” Highland Totonac as “all the outsider people,” Sayula Popoluca as “(people) in every land” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Chichimeca-Jonaz as “foreign people who are not Jews,” Sierra de Juárez Zapotec as “people of other nations” (source of this and one above: Viola Waterhouse in Notes on Translation August 1966, p. 86ff.), Highland Totonac as “outsider people” (source: Waterhouse / Parrott in Notes on Translation October 1967, p. 1ff.), Uma as “people who are not the descendants of Israel” (source: Uma Back Translation), “other ethnic groups” (source: Newari Back Translation), and Yakan as “the other tribes” (source: Yakan Back Translation).

In Chichewa, it is translated with mitundu or “races.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)

See also nations.

Translation commentary on 2 Maccabees 12:13

A paragraph break is appropriate here since the story shifts from the Arabs to the city of Capsin (so Revised Standard Version, Good News Bible).

He also attacked a certain city which was strongly fortified with earthworks and walls: The meaning of the Greek word rendered with earthworks is unknown. It bears a resemblance to a word that can refer to any of several types of earthworks, but that word does not make grammatical sense here. With earthworks translates a form found in Rahlfs’ Greek text, which is found in only one Greek manuscript, where a scribe was desperately trying to make sense of the passage. Many manuscripts omit the word, and we recommend that translators do this. Goldstein does this, and so does Good News Bible. (Goldstein speculates that the strange word may be a scribe’s mistake for the name Ephron, which appears in a similar context in verse 27.)

And inhabited by all sorts of Gentiles means the city had a population composed of many nationalities.

Its name was Capsin: Caspin is the same city called Chaspho in 1Macc 5.26, 36 (see the comments there). Translators may want to use only one spelling for this city in 1-2Maccabees.

An alternative model for this verse is:

• [Judas] Maccabeus and his soldiers also attacked Caspin, a city *well protected by its walls. People from many different Gentile nations lived there.
* After city the Greek has a word whose meaning is unknown.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on 1-2 Maccabees. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.