Open a New Translation
As people grew less familiar with Hebrew it became necessary to translate the Bible into the vernacular. The earliest effort is the Septuagint, a Greek translation authored in the third century BCE.
In the second century CE Targum Onkelos translated the Hebrew into Aramaic. In the fourth century, Jerome authored the Latin Vulgate. And then, in 1611, King James published the first English translation of the Bible, rendering, for example, the words of the Psalmist into the well-known, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23)
The Hebrew for “shadow of death” is unusual and is a poetic term for darkness. Robert Alter, who offers exquisite translations of Biblical Hebrew suggests instead “vale of death’s shadow,” but we often find ourselves beholden to the familiarity of earlier translations. We bristle at alternatives. We become angered when the familiar is altered.
The music of familiarity offers comfort.
Translation is interpretation. And we are dependent on centuries of interpreters who have rendered our sacred texts into our familiar language. In recent years, more English translations have appeared. Many have cast aside the “thee’s” and “thou’s” of prior years. Others have removed masculine references to God. English does not have to be gendered. God is not a masculine noun and need not be translated as “He.”
This week we open the fourth book of the Torah: Numbers. Even its name is dependent on centuries of translation. It was the Septuagint that named it for the census which is described in its opening chapters. The Israelites are counted by tribes. Males over the age of twenty years are tallied. 603,550 is the extraordinary number.
The Hebrew name, however, is Bamidbar—in the wilderness. It’s not about counting. It is instead about where the events occur. Then again, the Hebrew name is more about finding the portion’s location in the Torah scroll rather than describing its contents. The name of the book is the same as the name of the book’s first portion. The Hebrew names are location guides.
Numbers suggest things are quantifiable. The Bible, and the interpretations it invites, cannot be measured. We think otherwise. Everett Fox in his landmark translation of the Torah notes, “Everyone who has ever taken the bible seriously has staked so much on a particular interpretation of the text that altering it has become close to a matter of life and death.”
As we begin a new book of the Torah, I find myself wondering. How are we to find ourselves back to the joy of interpretation and away from seeing each and every word as matters of life and death?
We find ourselves again in the wilderness.
Open a new translation. Invite new interpretations.
We forever wander and search.
We welcome the discoveries the wilderness affords.