This study investigates the function, utility, and necessity of parenthetical markers within the Old Testament of the New Korean Revised Version (NKRV, 『개역개정』, 1998). While the original Hebrew text does not employ parentheses, the NKRV contains ninety-eight parenthetical pairs in its Old Testament section. Excluding seventy-three instances that enclose the musical term “Selah” in Psalms and Habakkuk, the research concentrates on the remaining twenty-five parenthetical passages, which range from single-word glosses to units spanning four verses. The primary objective is to evaluate these markings by analyzing their immediate literary and syntactic contexts, in order to determine whether their continued use is justified in any future revision. Building upon earlier scholarship concerning parentheses in the NKRV New Testament, this research categorizes the twenty-five Old Testament passages into five functional groups: short explanatory additions, extended explanatory additions, concurrent situations, reasons or rationales, and miscellaneous cases. A central methodological feature of this study is its reliance on formal and syntactic criteria found in Biblical Hebrew discourse analysis—such as anaphoric structures, specific verbal sequences like waw-X-qatal, and the use of the conjunction kî—rather than relying on interpretive content. This includes examining literary techniques like Wiederaufnahme (resumptive repetition), which serves as an ancient equivalent to parentheses. Furthermore, the study conducts a comparative analysis across fifteen different translations, including early and modern Korean versions (『구역』, 『개역』, 『개역한글』, 『공동』, 『공동개정』, 『표준』,『새번역』, and 『새한글』, in addition to『개역개정』), as well as representative English and German translations such as the KJV, ERV, NIV, NRSUE, ESV, and LB. The results show that parentheses often facilitate readability by distinguishing supplementary or editorial material from the main narrative flow. Nevertheless, it is emphasized that parentheses should be used conservatively in translation. The study argues that while parenthesis extended explanatory additions effectively manage shifts in the narrator’s voice and warrant retention, ones for shorter additions are often unnecessary if the text can be integrated smoothly. For concurrent situations, parentheses should be retained only for lengthy or heterogeneous content. For passages providing rationale, the study suggests that explicitly translating Hebrew conjunctions like kî (e.g., “This is because...”) can often remove the need for parentheses. Ultimately, by moving beyond intuition to systematic linguistic criteria, this research provides a framework for refining translation principles in future editions of the Korean Bible.
Dong-Hyuk Kim (Fri,) studied this question.