The Hebrew Bible. David M. Carr

The Hebrew Bible - David M. Carr


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      First, as discussed above, every translation builds on a number of decisions about which Hebrew text to translate. There is no single authoritative ancient copy of the Hebrew scriptures, even in the original Hebrew. Instead, we have several different sorts of ancient Hebrew manuscripts and ancient translations that used old Hebrew manuscripts, all of which are the products of centuries of hand‐copying and occasional miscopying. Scholars preparing to do translation must engage in the practice of “textual criticism” or (more often) build on textual criticism by text‐critical experts (see box). Biblical verses are preserved differently in the different ancient manuscripts, and it is not always easy to decide which manuscript reading of a given section to translate. Nevertheless, such decisions must be made, for each verse and chapter, in order to even begin the process of producing the translation you now have.

      More on Method: Textual Criticism

      “Textual criticism” is not general study of a text. Instead, textual criticism studies the diverse ancient manuscript copies of biblical texts, analyzing their development and providing data that can be used to choose which reading of a biblical text to follow. Over the centuries, scribes have introduced tens of thousands of minor changes into biblical texts as they have copied them by hand. Some changes were introduced by accident, as when a scribe might accidentally copy a given line twice. Other changes seem more intentional, where a scribe seems to have added a clarification of a place name or a theological correction or expansion. The ancient copies are often termed manuscript witnesses because they “witness” to diverse forms of these hand‐copied texts.

Photo depicts scholarly edition of the same text as in Figure 0.2, below. In contrast to that early manuscript this edition has chapter and verse numbers along with scholarly notes at the bottom about alternative Hebrew readings to the ones given in the body of the text.

      In search of the best reading

      On occasion, a biblical scholar may judge that all of the manuscript witnesses preserve an error. In such cases, that scholar may propose a reading that is not preserved in any manuscript. This second method of correction is called conjectural emendation.

      Second, each contemporary translation must build on its translators’ philological knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, or (in a few cases) Aramaic. None of these languages is spoken today in the form in which it is found in the Bible, and scholars often must depend on comparisons of biblical expressions with similar expressions in related languages. For example, medieval Jewish scholars such as Ibn Ezra made much progress in understanding certain aspects of Hebrew through comparing rare Hebrew expressions with similar words and grammatical formations in Arabic. Then, in the past one hundred fifty years, scholars of biblical Hebrew began benefiting from analysis of more ancient languages similar to Hebrew, such as Akkadian and Ugaritic, as texts in these languages were discovered, deciphered, and analyzed. Insights from comparison with these latter languages are not reflected in older translations, but they are incorporated to varying extents in many recent ones.

      These advances in knowledge about the text and language of the Bible mean that academic study of the Bible requires use of an up‐to‐date biblical translation. The King James Version (also known as the KJV or “Authorized Version”), though beautiful and cherished by many, is not up to date. It was completed four hundred years ago. Scholars then knew far less about Hebrew and Greek than they do now. Moreover, the KJV translation is based on unusually corrupt manuscripts with more errors and expansions than the higher quality manuscripts used for translations today. This is why you need to acquire and use a more recent translation of the Bible for this introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, rather than the King James Version.

      Translations also vary in religious perspective. The New Jewish Publication Society translation (NJPS) obviously comes out of a tradition of Jewish interpretation of the Tanakh. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) and New American Bible (NAB) were produced by Catholic scholars. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV; preceded by the Revised Standard Version – RSV) aims to be an ecumenical translation, but it is part of a line of Protestant revisions of the King James Version. The New International Version (NIV; now available in updated form as Today’s New International Version) is also Protestant and was conceived as an evangelical alternative to the RSV/NRSV.

      One more way that contemporary Bible translations vary is in the extent to which they aim to use gender‐neutral language, such as “humanity” instead of “mankind.” Though older writing conventions endorsed the use of “man” for “human” or “he” for “he or she,” many now argue that general use of such male‐focused language reinforces male domination


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