Re: Japanese Bible readings/spellings

[Nils Roland Barth <jmdict.nbarth@********>]

To add to, and hopefully wrap up this discussion:
For anyone interested in these old Bibles, there’s a great website:
http://www.babelbible.net/

It has a detailed discussion of conventions (including
readings and spellings) at:
http://www.babelbible.net/lang/lang.cgi?doc=jp_intro&lang=jp
For this discussion, relevant sections are:
2. 漢文訓読文体
3. ルビの芸術

…and allows one to look up and compare passages from various
Bibles in Japanese and English (and German, French, Chinese, Korean …):
http://www.babelbible.net/bible/bible.cgi

Regarding naming of what’s going on, the Wikipedia page for
the Meiji Bible:
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/明治元訳聖書;
refers to it (formally) as 和漢混淆文
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/和漢混淆文;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakan_Konko_Bun
…while the Bible website refers to it informally as 「ルビの遊び」

To elaborate on Jim’s note about historical reasons, per
Wikipedia, the source of the inconsistency is that the
foreign missionaries wanted a simple text (since the goal
was evangelism), while the Japanese advisors wanted fancy
language (since it’s the Bible), hence the hybrid style.

Regarding the ruby, it seems clear that the ruby are meant
to be read: one sees obvious readings:
人《ひと》の光《ひかり》なり
(John 1:4 “…was the light of men.”)
…and the Bible website even has an option to only show the
ruby, not the kanji (it also has options to omit the ruby etc.).

Further, it seems that the reading is primary, while the
spelling is secondary. Looking at:
http://www.geocities.jp/libell8/8meisyou-seisyo.html
…one sees the first word of John 1:1 almost always in
hiragana or ruby as はじめ (one case of ハジマリ),
but the written form varies as
はじめ、初め、元始、太初

I interpret this as:
“太初 as a poetic way of *writing* はじめ,
not はじめ as a way of *reading* 太初”


One can quibble over what to call
“writing 太初 in kanji and はじめ as ruby”
(gikun, ateji, wakan konkō bun, wordplay, ruby-play)
…and that’s a useful introduction to the Wiktionary page
(hence Matt and I will hash it out there),
but, 兎に角 (^.-)v it’s not a good fit for JMDICT and
certainly not what we mean by [gikun] around here.

  ~nils