Religion: The Changing Word

Anyone invoking the Bible these days is always well advised to double-check his quotation; in the current flurry of Biblical revision and retranslation, it might have suddenly become archaic or incorrect. Last week two more additions to the changing Bible were announced.

New Torah. In Philadelphia, the Jewish Publication Society of America announced a milestone in its gigantic Biblical scholarship project. After eight years, Jewish scholars led by Hebrew Union College’s Harry Orlinsky (who was the only non-Christian on the committee that produced the Revised Standard Version) have completed a new translation of the Torah, the five books of Moses, which will be published in January. They hope eventually to finish the entire Old Testament in a 20-year project that has the backing of all branches of American Judaism—and the best scholars from each.

Traditionalists who read new Bibles mainly to be outraged can make short work of the new Torah. Its first words are not “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Scholars decided the passage should read instead, “When God began to create the heaven and the earth …”

An uncompromising work of scholarship, the new Torah has something to antagonize everybody. Singers of spirituals will note with dismay that the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds rather than the Red Sea. Moralists may be chagrined at the retranslation of the Third Commandment, which now reads, ”You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God; for the Lord will not clear one who swears falsely by His name”—a dictum against perjury but not profanity. From increased knowledge of ancient Hebrew, the scholars translated the Hebrew nefesh to mean “the man himself” rather than his soul—since the Biblical Hebrews had no concept of soul. They also decided that the first paragraph of Genesis describes primeval wind, rather than the spirit of God, sweeping over the water.

Translated directly from the Hebrew Masoretic text, the new Torah leaves out Elizabethan thees and thous, shuns traditional Biblical prose. Says Translator Orlinsky: “Our constant goal has been to render the original Hebrew as accurately as contemporary understanding will permit into modern, readable English, discarding the errors and the obstacles which, through misunderstanding or a misplaced traditionalism, have stood between modern man and a clear knowledge of God’s Word.”

Argument Settler. In another momentous attempt to clear up misunderstandings, Nashville’s Abingdon Press has published what may be the greatest argument settler since the Guinness Book of World Records — a four-volume, 4,000-page Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.

The dictionary, billed as “by far the most comprehensive Bible Dictionary ever published,” is the first major definer of Bible terms to be published in 50 years. Its 8,000 entries include “every person named in the Bible or Apocrypha; every town and region, hill and stream; every plant, animal and mineral; every object used in daily life; every Biblical doctrine and theological concept.”

It was put together by a board that gathered articles from 253 scholars—including Harry Orlinsky. Thoroughly cross-referenced, it includes nine pages on Moses, 7½ on the Mediterranean-area city-state of Ugarit. Subjects range from salvation to a man named Shapham, identified as the second in authority in the tribe of Gad.