Phrases Analyzed - Round Feet

Keywords: UFO, unidentified flying objects, Bible, flying saucers, prophecy, Paleo-SETI, ancient astronauts, Erich von Däniken, Josef F. Blumrich, Zecharia Sitchin, Ezekiel, biblical prophecy, spacecraft, spaceship, NASA, Roswell, aircraft, propellant, extraterrestrial hypothesis, Jacques Vallee, interdimensional hypothesis, Project Blue Book, Condon Report, ancient history, Jesus, Judaism, Christianity, Middle East, end times, engines, rockets, helicopters, space travel, aliens, abductions, alien abductions, crop circles, extraterrestrials, astronomy, economics, biology, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Space Shuttle, Apollo, stars, planets, solar system, scriptures, design, fuel tank, aerodynamics, fuels, hydrogen, oxygen, wheels

Phrases Analyzed "round feet"

(Blumrich translation) Ezekiel 1:7 Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were round and they sparkled like burnished bronze.

The translations Blumrich used are simply wrong. In the Hebrew, what he has translated as "were round" is "like the sole of a foot of a calf".

New King James Version (NKJV) Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the soles of calves' feet. They sparkled like the color of burnished bronze.

New International Version (NIV) Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze.

Bovine / cow foot

Why bother going into all the "stuff" below about how Hebrew is written and pronounced, k'chaf, ka-pot, etc?

The mistranslated version of Ezekiel Chapter 1 verse 7 is the verse that led Blumrich to mistakenly conclude that Ezekiel was describing spacecraft landing gear.

If Blumrich had realized that the Bible text says, "it looked like the sole of a calf's foot," not "it was round," he would have written the book he originally planned, debunking convicted fraudster von Däniken.
 

1) Doesn't the fact that two Bibles use the term "round feet" prove that it is a valid translation?

No, it doesn't. What proves a translation valid is what the original Hebrew says. The original Hebrew definitely says, "like the sole of the foot of a calf" and it definitely does not include the word "round".
  

2) How could two groups of translators independently make the same mistake?

The mistake is probably not independent. Here again is a problem that arose because Blumrich was writing outside his field of expertise. Professional translators routinely are multi-lingual. With any well-known text that has been translated many times, such as the Bible, the Koran, War and Peace, Goethe's Faust, Shakespeare's plays, translators normally would look at past translations—including translations into a variety of languages. Translation of the NAB began before 1945 and was completed in 1970. It is extremely probable that the translators of the Catholic NAB looked at a variety of modern translations including the 1957 Catholic German translation. They realized the problem the German translators saw—the average modern city dweller will have no idea what a calf's foot looks like or what is important about it. The Germans chose "round" as the most important characteristic. That probably made sense to the NAB translators, so they probably copied the idea from the 1957 Bible.

Ezekiel 1:7 Top: Masoretic text with vowels and singing marks. Bottom: Plain

Literal translations with Strong's Numbers:

Strong	Meaning	Hebrew		Pronunciation
| 7272 |	And feet their	ורגליהם		v'rag-ley-hehm
	[were]
| 7272 |	feet of	רגל		re-gel
| 3477 |	straightness.	ישרה		y'sha-ra
| 3709 |	And [the] sole of	וכף		v'chaf
| 7272 |	feet their	רגליהם		rag-ley-hehm
	[was]
| 3709 |	like [the]  sole of	ככף		k'chaf
| 7272 |	[a] foot of	רגל		re-gel
| 5695 |	[a] calf.	עגל		e-gel
| 5340 |	And they sparkled	ונצצים		v'notz-tzim
| 5869 |	like [the] color of	כעין		k'eyn
| 5178 |	copper (or brass)	נחשת		n'cho-sheht
| 4838 |	burnished.	קלל		ka-lal

1. Vowels are pronounced like Spanish, French or German
2. eh is pronounced like e in get
3. ch is pronounced as in Bach
4. The accent is normally on the final syllable: rag-ley-hehm.
5. Apostrophe is pronounced like "a" in about.
6. Instead of possessive adjectives, Hebrew adds a suffix, e.g., "feet-their".
7. Text in [square brackets] does not exist in the Hebrew but is needed in English.

Compare: Ezekiel 43:7a . . . and he said to me: "Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever."

Ezekiel 43:7 Top: Masoretic text with vowels and singing marks. Bottom: Plain

Literal translations with Strong's Numbers:

Strong	Meaning	Hebrew		Pronunciation
|   559 |	And He said	ויאמר		va-yo-mer
|          |	to me,	אלי		e-li
| 1121 |	Son of	בן		behn
|   376 |	man,	אדם		a-dam
| 4725 |	the place of	את־מקום		eht-m'kom
| 3678 |	throne My	כסאי		ki-si
| 4725 |	and the place of	ואת־מקום		v'eht-m'kom
| 3701 |	the soles of	כפות		ka-pot
| 7272 |	feet My	רגלי		rag-lai
|   331 |	where	אשר		a-sher
| 7931 |	I will live	אשכן		ehsh-kan
| 8033 |	there	שם		sam
| 8432 |	among	בתוך		b'toch
| 1121 |	[the] sons of	בני		b'ne
| 3478 |	Israel	ישראל		Yis-ra-el
| 5769 |	forever.	לעולם		le-o-lam

1. To someone who does not know Hebrew ככף k'chaf (Eze. 1:7) and כפות ka-pot (Eze. 43:7) appear to be totally different.
2. Unlike the Latin alphabet, several Hebrew letters are written differently at the end of a word.
3. The f / p letter is one of these, so פ and ף are actually the same letter.
4. The name of the פ form is pronounced like the English word pay and the name of the final ף form is "pay so feet", meaning " final [letter] pey".
5. As in all languages, the pronunciation of some Hebrew letters depends on surrounding sounds. This is called assimilation.
6. Two letters that assimilate their sounds are כ kaf and ף / פ pey .
7. Sometimes כ kaf is pronounced like an English k and sometimes it is pronounced like ch in the German Bach.
8. Sometimes ף / פ pey is pronounced as a p and sometimes as an f. (Pronunciation does not depend on which way the letter is written.)
9. So, chaf and ka-p are really the same root, meaning "sole" (of a foot).
10. k' at the beginning of a word means "as" or "like", so k'chaf means "like a sole".
11. ot is the plural ending.  ka-pot means "soles".
12. So, although k'chaf and ka-pot seem to be totally unrelated, in fact they are closely related forms and it is fair to examine the Hebrew of Eze. 43:7 to see what the Hebrew of Eze. 1:7 means.