The first three verses of Genesis might be a particularly good place to illustrate the philosophy of translation that animates this project. The goal, in part, is to produce a translation of the Hebrew Bible which is in reasonably modern English, and which hews closely to the best of modern scholarship. If this were the whole goal, I should give up now — there are already fine translation that accomplish this goal, produced by much better-qualified people. I don’t pretend to have any special insight into the Bible that can’t already be found in the mainstream literature.

But if I do have an excuse for taking on a project like this, it is that this translation will be in the public domain. And within the realm of translations in the public domain, I do think I can make a fair contribution. To my knowledge, all translations in reasonably current (post-thee and thou) English are sectarian in nature.

The field is wide open.

Ideally, on every question of substance, I would most prefer to take the top dozen experts on the question, poll them, and adopt the majority position. However, anyone producing a translation of the Hebrew Bible is going to have tens of thousands of decisions to make in the process, and it is simply impossible to carry out such a procedure.

So, for now, my plan is to carefully compare the texts of the ASV and WEB, verse by verse, with the Hebrew text, and try to come up with something that approximates the text as understood by most qualified scholars. I will not do this perfectly. Except on certain matters of style, which I hope to discuss further at a later date, my plan is generally to follow the ASV and WEB where they agree. Where they disagree, I will try to make the best call I can, and where they both seem deficient I will try to improve upon them.

Ideally, I would like to note every place where I disagree with either translation, and lay out the reasoning in detail, but this will not be possible. I hope to get as close to this ideal as practical. For the first few chapters of Genesis, I plan to be especially thorough in documenting my decisions, even at a trivial level, so that the reader can work out my general approach and decide whether this translation is of interest to them.

The first three verses of Genesis, as found in the American Standard Version, read as follows:

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

The World English Bible reads like so:

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.

3 God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

I have gone in a somewhat different direction.

When God began to create the sky and the earth — now the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss, and a wind from God sweeping across the face of the waters — God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

Some explanation is in order. First, the whole structure has changed, from a series of sentences to one long sentence covering stretching across the first three verses. For a defense of this overall way of reading Genesis 1:1-3, I would recommend Baasten (2007) and Holmstedt (2008). And though I do lean toward the position they and many others hold on this question, that is not the main reason I’ve adopted it. The main reason is that, as far as I can tell, this seems to be the dominant view in scholarship over at least the past four decades, perhaps more.

“Heaven”, in the modern imagination, is often a place of infinite bliss, an eternal dwelling-place, the better of two possible destinations to which the deceased must go. The problem with translating the Hebrew shamayim as “heaven” is that no such concept was known to the authors of Genesis.

For this reason, I cannot follow the NEB or NJPS in reading “heaven” here. Some translations, such as the NJPS, NABRE, and NRSV, read “heavens” in Genesis 1:1. This is better. If we talk about “the heavens” in English, we think more of the sky than of the afterlife. I cannot recall hearing of anyone who went to heavens after death. But I suspect still that this may be motivated more by a pull toward the traditional reading of Genesis 1:1 than by any clear notion of what the shamayim was to the first readers of Genesis.

Verses 5 through 8 spell out just what the shamayim was and what it was for. God made a dome-like structure over the earth, which — strange as this may sound to modern ears — made human life possible by separating the waters above it from the waters beneath it. Unfortunately, English does not have a perfect equivalent for shamayim, but we have to translate it somehow, and it seems to me that the shamayim is more “sky” than “heaven”. The “sky”, at least, is the wide blue well-known part of the universe above our heads, just as the shamayim was for the Israelites.

We come next to the expression tohu wabohu, which the ASV renders “waste and void”. A review of the contexts in which tohu appears shows that it carries a set of meanings such as desert, destruction, futility, and nothingness, while about bohu we can say little more than that it is a synonym of tohu. And so the ASV’s “waste and void” strikes me as a very good translation. The WEB’s “formless and empty” seems a step backward. An honorable mention must go to the REB’s “a vast waste”, which somewhat like the Hebrew preserves the repetition of two similar words.

Where the ASV has upon, the WEB has on, and at first glance one can see the logic in what the WEB has done. If the goal is to make the translation sound as recent as possible, then yes, “on” is better than “upon”. However, we should not exaggerate how uncommon “upon” is in today’s English. Google’s Ngram viewer indicates that in recently printed books, the word “upon” appears about three hundred times as often as the word “gullible”, and no one imagines that “gullible” is passing out of existence.

Even so, should the translator of the Hebrew Bible automatically choose the most current word available? Part of this depends on the nature of the Hebrew Bible itself. When it reached its original audiences, was it written in the most current words possible, or did it at times sound dated? I would suggest to you that it did at points sound dated, as compared to spoken Hebrew. This is especially true in passages of poetry, and is likely true in a passage like Genesis 1, which, while prose, approaches poetry at points. So I think there is no simple, automatic way to choose between “upon” and “on”, and in matters of style there is much that is subjective here. I lean toward “upon” in this case. It is a trivial thing, I suppose, but there it is.

Next we come to the Hebrew pᵉne, which is a word which can refer to the outside part or exterior layer of a thing that might be visible to a viewer, or to the part of a human being which includes the eyes, nose, and mouth. Luckily, English has a word which can cover both these meanings. That word is “face”. Sure, in this context “surface” is also equivalent, but where possible I would like to use an English word whose range of meanings covers an area similar to that of the Hebrew word which it represents. Here I agree with the NRSV and NEB in reading “face”, as opposed to the NJPS and REB, which read “surface”.

A particularly interesting term is tehom, which the KJV and many subsequent translations read as “the deep”. It refers to the primeval ocean, and in later passages either to the oceans or to a great reserve of water beneath the earth. NEB and NABRE read “abyss”, which might have some of the right connotations, but an “abyss” does not necessarily contain the idea of water, which is absolutely vital to sense of tehom.

The ruaḥ ʾelohim, we are now told, was doing something over the face of the waters. The ASV’s capitalized “Spirit of God” suggests Trinitarian theology, which is alien to the Hebrew Bible, while the WEB’s “God’s Spirit” seems to me a more awkward way of implying the same thing. However, the term ruaḥ can mean “wind”, as in Genesis 8:1, where the world is re-created after the destruction of a flood — “and ʾelohim caused a ruaḥ to pass over the earth …” As in Genesis 1, the dry land will soon appear, and humans will be given the task of governing it. As for ʾelohim, the term usually refers to God, but some scholars hold that it might be an expression of intensity. Thus, those who read ruaḥ as “wind” may read either “wind from God” (NRSV, NJPS) or “a mighty wind” (NEB, NABRE).

And just what is the ruaḥ doing? The Hebrew mᵉraḥefet, here a piʿel verb, used only here and in Deuteronomy 32:11. The contextual evidence does not give enough evidence to say definitively exactly what meanings the verb might express. Perhaps, some think, the spirit of God is “hovering” over the water, or the wind of God is “sweeping” across it. Whether one reads the word ruaḥ as “spirit” or “wind” will influence how one interprets mᵉraḥefet.

Finally, there is the matter of quotation marks. The WEB adds quotation marks throughout, while the ASV leaves them out. I will be swimming against the grain of modern style here, but I think the best approach is to leave them out, for several reasons. First, and perhaps most trivially, the Hebrew text itself does not have them. This is not sufficient reason in itself — the Hebrew text also lacks commas, periods, and capitalization, but I use all of those freely.

More importantly, there is something about the use of quotation marks which can tend to import modern ideas about quotation into an ancient context. For one thing, quotation in a modern context tends toward the exact — one expects that, if something is found within quotation marks, the quoter has access to the exact words of the quotee and is reporting them verbatim. To this we might add that in casual speech, English tends to default to indirect quotation when the exact wording is not available. For example, if we do not remember in what words someone said they were going to buy groceries, we might say, “Mark said that he was going to buy groceries”. We would be less likely to say, “Mark said, ‘I will go buy groceries'”, unless we are indicating that this is more or less exactly what he said.

Hebrew, on the other hand, defaults to grammatically direct quotation even in cases where the wording cannot be exact.

Consider, perhaps, Ruth 4:1 —

Then Boaz went up to the gate and sat there, and there passed by the close relative of whom Boaz had spoken. And he said, Come sit down here, such and such. And he came and sat down.

Or 2 Kings 6:8

And the king of Aram was at war with Israel, and he took counsel with his officials, saying, At such and such a place will be my camp.

We are surely not to imagine that either Boaz or the king of Aram would have said, literally, “such and such” in either instance. Doesn’t this work better without quotation marks? I think it does.

Another reason in favor of omitting quotation marks is that it places the reader in a similar position to the reader of the Hebrew text — in both Hebrew and English, when quotation marks are not used, it is usually obvious where direct speech begins, but the end of direct speech must be figured out by context clues. By not using closing quotes, this translation will try to avoid dogmatically making decisions for the reader about where a quote ends.

Another reason to omit quotation marks is that in some cases the Bible quotes for long chunks of text, and it nests quotations in a way that makes marking quotes awkward. This becomes especially acute in some prophetic texts, where the point of view flits back and forth rather unpredictably between the deity and his prophet.

None of these reasons weigh particularly heavily on Genesis 1:3. But whatever policy I adopt, I will need to carry out consistenty, and so I will leave quotation marks out of it.

And so this long-winded explanation of the translation choices in Genesis 1:1-3 comes to an end. I hope it helps explain how this project will be carried out.

When God began to create the sky and the earth — now the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss, and a wind from God sweeping across the face of the waters — God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

The post Genesis 1:1-1:3 — And an Introduction to the Project appeared first on My Blog.

I do not have such a gaggle of scholars at my disposal, but I do want to produce a public domain translation that sticks as closely as possible to the kind of text that would result by consulting experts in such a way.

The first procedure that I plan to use to ensure that I’m somewhere in the right ballpark will be to use the American Standard Version as a base. This text was a revision, made by a committee of American scholars, from another revision, the Revised Version, produced by a committee of British scholars, which in turn was a revision of the famous version of 1611, which was similarly produced by a committee of scholars.

In other words, using the 1901 American Standard text as a base will ensure that we start with something that at the least was at least generally acceptable to the mainstream of scholarship at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The simplest way to find what the majority of qualified scholars say is to find the testimony of a qualified scholar about what his peers are saying. For example, in the Masoretic Text, the words “and it was so” appear at the end of Genesis 1:7. In the Septuagint, however, they are missing from 7 but found at the end of verse 6.

According to Westermann, “the majority of modern exegetes follow [the Greek] here”. Excellent! Now we have tentatively located a majority opinion. I say “tentatively” because it could turn out that something has changed since Westermann wrote, or because Westermann could have been mistaken. But we do not have the luxury of perfect evidence in all cases.

Another way to form a rough idea about a majority position is to start collecting the opinions from all the scholarly sources available to me, and seeing what shakes out. I attempted this with the question of whether bᵉrešit in Genesis 1:1 in the construct form — I seem to have found that the majority of interpreters since about 1980 are clearly on the side of it being in the construct state. But this procedure is limited by the possibility that my reading selections might not accurately reflect the majority position of the most qualified interpreters.

Another possible method is to look at several translations produced by committees of mainstream biblical scholars. On the Protestant side, this includes the NRSV. Catholics have produced the NAB and NABRE. Reform Judaism has produced the NJPS translation. The NEB and REB, produced jointly by Cambridge and Oxford, are worth a look.

This method should be used with caution, however, for several reasons. First, when it comes to the Hebrew Bible, the great majority of translations are not an attempt to translate “the original text”, whatever that might be. Instead, they are generally attempts to translate the Masoretic Text, except here and there where some piece of the Masoretic Text seems particularly problematic, at which point the translators may rely on text-critical insights on an ad hoc basis.

Consider, for example, Westermann’s statement that most “modern exegetes” place “and it was so” at the end of Genesis 1:6, rather than at the end of 1:7 as the Masoretic Text has it. The NAB follows the Greek, while NABRE follows the Hebrew. The NEB and REB both follow the Hebrew. And so we certainly cannot automatically imagine that the majority of these translations will reflect majority of scholarly opinion about the “original text” of a given biblical passage. Indeed, not all scholars are concerned with the idea of an “original text”, and many either explicitly or implicitly content themselves with studying the Masoretic Text as their primary text.

In any case, I will muddle along, as best I can, and always with the hope in mind that someone more familiar with the scholarly literature might come along and clean up any messes I will make.

References

Westermann, Claus (1984 [1974]). Genesis 1-11. A Continental Commentary. English translation from the original German by John Scullion.

The post On the difficulty of finding the scholarly majority on obscure biblical questions appeared first on My Blog.

Dillmann, August (1897 [1892]). Genesis. 1897 translation into English by William Stevenson of an 1892 edition. Volume 1. Volume 2.

Driver, Samuel Rolles (1904). Genesis. Second Edition.

Skinner, John (1910). Genesis. International Critical Commentary.

Ryle, Herbert (1921). Genesis. Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.

The Newer Stuff

Bandstra, Barry (2008). Genesis 1-11: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text.

Baker, David W. with Jason A. Reilly (2014). Genesis 37-50: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text.

Blenkinsopp, Joseph (2011). Creation, Un-creation, and Re-creation: A Discoursive Commentary on Genesis 1-11.

Cassuto (1961 [1944]). A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Part 1: From Adam to Noah, Genesis I – VI 8 . Translated by Israel Abrahams.

Fischer, Loren (2000). Genesis: A Royal Epic.

Rad, Gerhard von (1972). Genesis: Revised Edition.

Sarna, Nahum (1989). Genesis. The JPS Torah Commentary.

Speiser, Ephraim (1963). Genesis. Anchor Bible Commentary.

Wenham, Gordon (1987). Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary. 1987.

Westermann, Claus (1984 [1974]). Genesis 1:11. A Continental Commentary. English translation from the original German by John Scullion.

Translations Often Consulted

ASV, WEB, NRSV, NJPS, NAB-RE, NEB, REB

The post Reference Materials on Genesis appeared first on My Blog.

Above: an illustration of Genesis 1:1-3 as found in Christian David Ginsburg’s Chamisha Chumshe Torah, here.

Controversy about the meaning of the Bible begins no later than the first verse of the Bible, shown above in Hebrew. The great mediator of the Hebrew tradition to Western Christianity was Jerome, whose Vulgate for these three verses reads as below. (The image is from the 1590 edition of the Sixtine Vulgate, here.)

For those who don’t read Latin, the Latin Vulgate reads about the same way as the famous English King James Bible, shown below in Scrivener’s famous edition:

In other words, the materials in verses 1, 2, and 3 constitute independent sentences. This has been the dominant reading among Christian readers throughout most of Christian history.

There is more than one way to construe these three Hebrew verses, however. The prominent medieval commentator Rashi, whose commentary is still one of the standard references in Orthodox Judaism, read verse 1 as a temporal clause, and 1-3 as an extended sentence in which the main clause is in verse 3. Following Rashi’s lead would yield something like what one finds in the 1927 Old Testament: An American Edition, published by the University of Chicago Press:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth being a desolate waste, with darkness covering the abyss and the spirit of God hovering over the waters, then God said,

“Let there be light!”

Let us call the Vulgate/KJV reading Option A. We’ll call the Rashi/America Translation reading Option C. What are we skipping over?

In Option A, Verse 1 is a main clause unto itself. In Option C, verse one sets up a long sentence, the main clause of which appears only in verse 3. There’s also a reading where Verse 1 is a subordinate clause and the main clause is in verse 2. This is what one finds in the NRSV-UE:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth, ² the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³ Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

We’ll call this last one Option B. It is probably less common than A or C.

On to the Meat of the Post

The intention of this post is not to trace out all the arguments in favor of the various options, nor is it to tell you which option I favor. (I favor Option C at the moment, but who am I? I might be convinced of something else by the time I finish writing this post.)

My intention here is simply to record the opinions of as many significant voices on the issue as possible, to try to get a picture of how scholarly opinions on the question are and have been distributed.

Sadly, I do not read German. Perhaps I should do something about that, as a lot of the early history of biblical scholarship is only accessible in German. On the other hand, AI is racing along so fast that I don’t know how long it will be until I can have any German work I want translated pretty easily as cheaply. So who knows?

1885

It appears that Rashi’s Option C found favor in the eyes of Heinrich Ewald. In 1885, T.K. Cheyne posted a note against C, and in favor of A, in Hebraica, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Oct., 1885), pp. 49-50, in “NOTES ON GENESIS I., 1, and XXIV. 14.” His defense of Option A runs about a page, and seems just to be a quick introduction in English to what is perhaps a more substantial conversation in German — Cheyne rejects the view of German scholar Heinrich Ewald in favor of the view of German scholar Karl Heinrich Graf.

1890

Perowne (1890), in the Expositor, published some “Notes on Genesis”, in which he analyzes Genesis 1:1 in terms of Option A, and clarifies that he rejects B and C on stylistic grounds:

¹ Other renderings which carry on the construction into the next verse, such as, “In the beginning, when God created the heaven and the earth, then the earth was,” etc. or, “In the beginning, when … and the earth was, … God said, Let there be light,” are grammatically unnecessary, and quite out of harmony with the simple style of the document.

1892

Happily, I do manage to get a peek into what is going on in the German-speaking world through a translation of Auguste Dillmann’s 1892 commentary on Genesis. You may see this translation here. On pages 54-55 he explains why he prefers C. In line with the purposes of this post, we will not dwell on his reasons here, but for our present purposes I’m very interested in his avowal that C is a decidedly minority opinion (p. 53):

According to the ancient translations, the Masoretes, and most expositors: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1899

In 1899, Wellhausen’s Composition der Hexateuchs appeared, including this footnote on page 185:

I do not sprecken the slightest bit of Deutsch, and will have to rely on ChatGPT to get me some kind of sense of the passage:

‘In the beginning [God] created’ — before the first day? ‘And the earth was desolate‘ — this implies an extended period of time preceding the first day, and yet still lies within the beginning. One might appeal here to Rashi’s construction, but this seems improbable. The idea of creation emerging from eternal chaos is contradictory — indeed — yet it fits Hebrew paganism. The phrase heaven and earth does not otherwise denote chaos but rather the cosmos. How, then, would the Hebrews have referred to chaos? As a potential world? Rather, as a world that did not yet exist — simply world. To forestall any misunderstanding, the description in verse 2 is provided. The grammatical objections to an absolute reading of the construct form בְּרֵאשִׁית (bere’shit) are entirely mistaken. The Jewish tradition already understood the passage as ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν (en archē epoiēsen), i.e., it was understood that one should read bere’shit as an absolute, not “she spoke bere’shit” (cf. Jerome, Quaestiones on Genesis 1:1). If one were to attempt to correct the Syriac adverbial to a proper construct form — for instance, suggesting בּראשתא instead of בראשיתא —Even so, one would not be justified in deriving the Hebrew form from Aramaic. For in earlier Hebrew, בְּרֵאשִׁית did not mean the beginning but rather the first part, the prime portion — and Genesis 1 still reflects this usage, along with many later traces of language and Aramaic influence, such as ברא (bara’, “to create”), מינ (min, “kind”), קימא (qima, “standing”), את ימי השביעי (et yemei hashevi‘i, “the days of the seventh”), נפש חיה (nefesh ḥayah, “living being”), and כבש (kavash, “to subdue”), where one finds the use of independent words rather than verbal suffixes.

It is enough to note for now that this constitutes a rejection of Option C in favor of Option A by an extremely prominent scholar.

1904

S. R. Driver, Genesis, 1904 relies on Perowne, and interprets the verse in terms of Option A:

In the beginning. Not absolutely, but relatively: at the beginning of the order of things which we see, and in the midst of which human history unfolds itself (Perowne, Expositor, Oct. 1890, p. 248).

However, Driver notes that “many moderns” favor B or C:

¹ Many modern scholars, however (including Dillmann), construe vv. 1–3 in this way: ‘In the beginning of God’s creating the heaven and the earth,—now the earth was without form, &c. [v. 2],—God said, Let there be light,’ &c. So already the celebrated Jewish commentator Rashi (A.D. 1040–1105), and similarly Ibn Ezra (1092–1167).

1910

John Skinner’s 1910 commentary on Genesis notes a preference for Option C, while noting that Option A is very common. However, there has been perhaps a shift toward C, or perhaps I am simply over-interpreting a subtle shift in wording. Where Dillmann claimed that “most expositors” favor A, Skinner p. 12 says that “all ancient V[ersio]ns and many moderns” favor A. Is it perhaps telling that he says “many” rather than “most”?

1914

Ryle, Herbert (1921 [1914]). Genesis. Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. Ryle favors Option A, but notes of Option C:

the heaven and the earth] These words express the Hebrew conception of the created universe. They do not denote, as has of late been suggested, “matter” in the mass, or in the rough. They embrace sky, earth, and ocean: cf. xiv. 19, 22, xxiv. 3; Dt. iii. 24.

Attention should be called to an alternative rendering of this verse, preferred by many eminent commentators. It turns upon the grammatical point that the first word of the verse, B’rēshîth, means literally “In beginning,” not “In the beginning,” which would be Bārēshîth. Consequently, it is contended that B’rēshîth, being grammatically in “the construct state,” should be translated “In the beginning of,” or “In the beginning when”; and not, as if in “the absolute state,” “In the beginning.” If this contention, i.e. that b’rēshîth is in the construct state, be correct, verse 1 will be the protasis; verse 2 will be a parenthesis; verse 3 will be the apodosis: “In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth (now the earth was waste, &c. … upon the face of the waters), then God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

1924

Next we hear from W. F. Albright on the question, in Volume 43, 1924, issue 3/4 of the Journal of Biblical Literature, in an article entitled “Contributions to Biblical Archaeology and Philology”, pp. 363-393. He makes the fascinating claim, which I have not seen elsewhere, that the Masoretes deliberately punctuated Genesis 1:1 to read half-way between Options A and C:

As is well-known, there are two alternative explanations of the syntax of Gen. 1 1 f., both of which were recognized by the Masoretes as valid, and indicated by them implicitly in the vocalization of the first two words. They thus left it open to their successors either to read bereshit bero elohim, “in the beginning of God’s creating,” or bareshit bara elohim, “in the beginning God created”. The Greek transcriptions Bareseth and Bareseth indicate that the second alternative triumphed in ordinary exegesis, a fact established by the versions. On the other hand, ancient oriental parallels, especially from Mesopotamia, show that the first possibility is more original.

1927

As I mentioned briefly above, in 1927 the University of Chicago published a new translation of the Old Testament, with its text of Genesis done by Theophile J. Meeks. It gives Option C.

1928

In 1928, we come to “The Syntax and Meaning of Genesis 1:1-3” by J. M. Powis Smith in The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 44:2, pp. 108-115.

While Cheyne held to Option A, Albright held C to be original, but left some space for A as a legitimate interpretation of the Masoretic Text as it stands, Powis Smith more definitely insists that Option A is correct.

Still, Smith makes a curious statement, indicating that he is working against a trend:

In all of these cases it may be noted that the construct is made definite by the clause depending upon and defining it. So we may, without fear, translate Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” This view has been held b some scholars, e.g. Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Ewald, Dillmann, Holzinger, and Skinner. But since Wellhausen, Composition der Hexateuch, page 185, note 1, it has been more commonly passed over in favor of the treatment of verse 1 as a complete sentence. So, e.g. Gunkel, Procksch, Mitchell, Ryle, following Calvin and all the versions.

Wellhausen wrote his note in 1899, so Powis Smith is alleging that the single footnote has cast a three-decade shadow over the interpretation of this passage.

1944

From the 1961 English translation of Cassuto’s 1944 A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Part 1: From Adam to Noah, Genesis I – VI 8 . Translated by Israel Abrahams.

On pages 19 and 20, Cassuto argues in favor of Option A.

1957

Harry M. Orlinsky, “The Plain Meaning of RU^Aḥ in Gen. 1.2“. The Jewish Quarterly Review. Vol. 48, No. 2, Dropsie College Jubilee Alumni Issue (Oct., 1957), pp. 174-182 (9 pages)

On p. 182, Orlinsky gives a translation of Genesis 1:1-3 which indicates a preference for Option C.

1963

von Rad, Gerhard (1963). Genesis. On pp. 6-7, it can be seen that von Rad prefers Option A.

1963

William R. Lane wrote a fascinating article, “The Initiation of Creation“, in Volume 13, Fascicle 1 (January 1963), pp. 63-73 of Vetus Testamentum. In it, he remarks on the constant push and pull between Options A and C. He alleges that most commentators are motivated by considerations more theological than grammatical, and then mounts a very interesting argument that the two translations do not in fact reflect different theologies.

1964

Speiser (1964). Genesis. The Anchor Bible.

Speiser favors Option C (pp. 3, 12).

1974

Westermann, Claus (1984 translation, 1974 original). Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary. P. 94 favors Option A.

1975

Bruce Waltke, in 1975, mounted a sustained defense of Option A in Bibliotheca Sacra, “The Creation Account in Genesis 1:1-3”, part III, issue 575, pp. 216-228. The interested reader who can track down part I will find an interesting view into how Waltke is approaching the whole subject.

1983

Orlinsky, Harry M. “Enigmatic Bible Passages: The Plain Meaning of Genesis 1:1-3“. The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 207-209. The American Schools of Oriental Research.

Here Orlinsky goes for option C, just as in 1957, but it noteworthy to me just how quickly and decisively he dispenses with Option A:

In view of this approach to translation, one might think that ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, King James Version) is a literal rendering of the Hebrew. Yet this is not what the Hebrew means at all. The very first word, bereshith, as every student of biblical Hebrew knows, means ‘In the beginning of, “with the word or phrase that follows indicating the object (as in ‘In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah” Jeremiah 26:1, King James Version).

1992

Jack Sasson. “Time…to Begin,” pp. 183-194 in “Sha^carei Talmon”: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon. Ed.by M. Fishbane, E. Tov, and W.W. Fields. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Jack Sasson, p. 187-188:

Although there are competent philologists who still defend the traditional translation, I personally think that this exegesis is really beyond dispute: first, because it is supported by grammar and syntax; second, because other creation narratives similarly open with temporal or circumstantial clauses; and third, because the first of God’s creative injunctions does not come until v. 3.

1996

Robert Alter’s ground-breaking translation of Genesis appeared in 1996, and he translates in terms of Option C:

When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said, “Let there be light.”

2000

Fischer, Loren (2000). Genesis: A Royal Epic, p. 63:

"When Elohim began to form the heavens and the earth,
The earth was devastation and desolation,
Darkness was over [the] deep,
The wind of Elohim was storming over the waters,

"Elohim said:
           'Let there be light.'
There was light."

I would count this as a vote for Option C.

2005

Noort, Ed. “The Creation of Light in Genesis 1:1-5: Remarks on the Function of Light and Darkness in the Opening Verses of the Hebrew Bible”, pp. 3-20. In van Kooten, George H., ed., The Creation of Heaven and Earth: Re-interpretations of Genesis I in the Context of Judaism,

Although uncertainties remain, there is no compelling reason to translate v. 1 in another way than ‘In the beginning Elohim created heaven and earth’, understanding it as the heading and summa of the whole Priestly account of creation. This makes vv. 2 and 3 separate verses with the act of creation starting in v. 3.

2007

Baasten, Martin. “First Things First: The Syntax of Gen 1:1 – 3 Revisited”. In Studies in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture Presented to Albert van der Heide on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, edited by M. F. J. Baasten and R. Munk, 169 – 87. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought 12. Dordrecht: Springer.

2008

Bandstra, Barry (2008). Genesis 1-11: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text. Bandstra prefers Option A.

2008

Robert Holmstedt, in Vetus Testamentum, writes “The Restrictive Syntax of Genesis i 1”. He sides with Option C, although his analysis is not the same as Rashi’s.

2009

Wolde, Ellen van (2009). “Why the Verb ברא Does Not Mean ‘to
Create’ in Genesis 1.1–2.4a”. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament.

Van Wolde makes a very interesting care for reading ברא as ‘separated’ instead of ‘created’. But as far as our current question is concerned, she accepts Holmstedt’s analysis: Option C.

2010

Mark Smith, in The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1, favors option C (pp. 43-6).

2011

Blenkinsopp, Joseph (2011). Creation, Un-creation, and Re-creation: A Discoursive Commentary on Genesis 1-11. On page 30, Blenkinsopp offers an unequivocal endorsement of Option C.

This parsing [Option C] of Gen. 1:1-2 may be unfamiliar but is linguistically and exegetically justified as an alternative to the translation which became standard in Judaism and Christianity …

… it has been known at least from the Middle Ages — for example, in the commentary of the eleventh-century Jewish scholar Rashi — that from the linguistic and exegetical point of view this reading [Option A] is not the preferred option in strictly exegetical terms. This conclusion is acknowledged in several major modern translations (NRSV, JPS, NAB, NEB, but not REB).

2013

Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden (2013). Option C:

In the beginning of God creating the heavens and the earth–and the earth was unformed and void and darkness over the face of the deep and a wind of God [or “a powerful wind”] hovering over the face of the waters–and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

2021

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948) produced the translation of the Torah that appears in the Koren Tanakh, Magerman Edition. It appears that he favored Option B.

When God began creating heaven and earth, the earth was void and desolate, there was darkness on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved over the waters. God said, “Let there be light.

2022

Wyatt, Nicholas (2022). “Distinguishing Wood and Trees in the Waters: Creation in Biblical Thought”. pp. 203-252 in Watson, Rebecca S. and Adrian H. W. Curtis, Conversations on Canaanite and Biblical Themes: Creation, Chaos and Monotheism.

The post Genesis 1:1-3 — A Counting of Heads appeared first on My Blog.

It is when I come to topics like this one that I am most acutely aware of my status as an amateur. I am in no position to speak definitively about a topic as complex as the origins of the Pentateuch, but if I’m going to try to read and understand the Pentateuch, I must have at least some concept of how it was written. Is it, for example, the product of a man named Moses, writing directly about his own experiences for the benefit of people who are following him about in the wilderness? Or is the product of much later authors, whose various works were in some way edited and combined over time to produce the thing we now recognize as the Pentateuch?

Think of what follows not so much as an argument for a particular view of the Pentateuch, but as a simple disclosure of how I am reading the Pentateuch, as of 2025. I think I am on very firm ground in agreeing with the overwhelming consensus of modern scholarship that the Pentateuch was written long after when Moses lived, if there was a Moses who in any way resembled the primary human character in the Pentateuch. It is equally safe to say that the text of Genesis is the product of multiple human hands, borrowing from the stories common in their cultural world, compiled together over a long period of time.

Matters become more contentious when we try to speak in more detail about who these authors were, when they lived, what they individually wrote, and how the whole thing came together to create the Pentateuch we know today.

Although it is immensely controversial, so far it seems to me that the most reasonable explanation for how the Pentateuch came into existence is something like the Documentary Hypothesis, especially as understood in a book like Joel Baden’s The Composition of the Pentateuch or Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? I won’t try here to make the case for this — it seems to be one among several viable options, and I’m not here to convince people that the Documentary Hypothesis is correct. Indeed, I’m not sure that it is.

But here’s how it looks to me. If you look across the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy stands out. It has a distinctive viewpoint, distinctive vocabulary, and a distinctive style. It makes sense to think of this as a distinctive self-contained work, and we might call it source D. There doesn’t seem to be much if any D stuff in Genesis through Numbers.

Then if we take the remaining four books, Leviticus stands out quite a bit. It has a certain outlook, where it’s concerned with the priesthood, ritual performance, ritual cleanliness, and lists. It delights in a certain repetitive style that any reader of the Pentateuch will have noticed. Let’s use P to denote this sort of material.

As you look around through the rest of the Pentateuch, there seems to be a lot of other P stuff. In fact, even folks who do not subscribe to the Documentary Hypothesis itself generally recognize the existence of discernible P-stuff in the Pentateuch, and they tend to view it as an issue of different authorship from the non-P stuff.

So let’s tentatively think of D as an “author” or “source” — even if it might contain materials from multiple hands, it would seem that those materials have been pulled together into a strongly coherent whole with what seems like a singular point of view. We may think of the P-stuff in the same way.

So now we’re left with the non-D, non-P material. The further subdivision of this material is more controversial than the identification of D and P.

Purveyors of the Documentary Hypothesis believe that it is indeed possible to divide this remaining material into two broad swaths, which one might call J and E. To my eye, the division of Genesis 37 performed at the beginning of Baden’s The Composition of the Pentateuch seems to provide a fairly convincing demonstration that such a thing can be done, even independent of the differing names of God used in the sources.

However, I haven’t gone all the way down the rabbithole — I have not followed all the dissections of passages to see whether this stuff really does seem to be as convincing all the way throughout the Bible. I would not be surprised if it turns out that one or more major details of the Documentary Hypothesis are incorrect.

Nevertheless, the DH is the most convincing way of looking at the authorship of the Pentateuch that I have come across yet. I say this not as someone who has immersed himself fully into the required literature — I say this as an amateur simply describing what he has seen so far. It is quite possible that somewhere out there, someone has demonstrated that the Documentary Hypothesis is dead. Perhaps I’ll find them.

But for now, although I am skeptical on any number of minute details, it broadly appears to me that the DH does a pretty good job of explaining many otherwise puzzling features of the Pentateuch.

The post A Tentative Stance on the Origins of the Pentateuch appeared first on My Blog.

Genesis begins with the broadest possible subject: the origin of the entire universe, spoken into existence in an orderly fashion by a deity who created human beings as his image-bearers. The first humans find themselves in conflict with the creator, and as humanity reproduces and fills the earth, the humans find themselves in conflict with one another. Fed up with human’s evildoing, the deity floods the earth, destroying all but a single family, who begin again the task of populating the world. The descendants of this family grow into the various nations of the world. Turning from the universal to the particular, the deity calls a man named Abram, calling him to leave his native land and set out for a land he is promised. Abraham has a son named Isaac, who in turn has a son named Jacob, who is traditionally regarded as the progenitor of the Israelites. Jacob’s roughly twelve sons become the roughly twelve tribes of Israel, and Genesis pays particularly close attention to Joseph, the progenitor of the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Joseph is enslaved and sold into Egypt, where he rises into great prominence. As Genesis draws to a close, the Israelites have moved into Egypt, where things seem to be going well for them.

Exodus begins, and the family of Jacob grows into a large ethnic group. They are enslaved by the Egyptians, until God raises up a deliverer, Moses, who confronts Pharaoh and initiates a series of plagues against Egypt. The Israelites are set free from Egyptian control, and exit Egypt into the Sinai, where they encounter their deity in a terrifying burning mountain theophany. The deity gives them laws, and provides for the establishment of a central cult centered around a large tabernacle, or tent, maintained by priests.

The book of Leviticus is almost entirely what we would call “legal” material, but it is still embedded within the over-arching story. Repeatedly, God speaks to Moses, saying, Tell the people of Israel … and then we find ourselves looking at a few verses or a few chapters of legal material. This book overwhelmingly concerns itself with priestly matters: the proper order of sacrifices, ritual purity, the various feasts of the Jewish calendar, the qualifications and duties of the priesthood, and related matters.

The Israelites have left Egypt in Exodus 15, and it would appear that all the action from that point occurs during, and all the laws of Leviticus are given within the space of little more than a year. For Numbers begins “on the first day of the second month of the second year”, with God commanding the taking of a census of the Israelites. The people are numbered, their encampments described, and the roles of various Levite groups spelled out. A variety of legal material appears. On the twentieth day of the month, the Israelites leave the Wilderness of Sinai and set out for the Wilderness of Paran. After a preliminary excursion into Canaan results in the people displaying a lack of trust in God, God announces that this generation will not inherit the land of Canaan, but must die off in the desert, at which point the next generation will enter the land. The narrative of Numbers concludes as the Israelites conquer kingdoms in the Transjordan and prepare to enter the land of Canaan.

Next is the book of Deuteronomy, which is mostly a law code, presented as a speech given by Moses on the eve of the invasion of Canaan. While Leviticus is more concerned with priestly matters, Deuteronomy is more concerned with what we might call “civil” law, though there was no hard distinction between “religious” and “secular” matters for the writer of Deuteronomy. The book presents the divine law as the key to national flourishing, and toward the end has a dramatic recitation of blessings and curses, blessings for those who follow the law, and curses for those who forsake it. The book ends with the death of Moses, who passes his authority to his successor Joshua.

The book of Joshua does just what it says on the tin: it tells the story of Joshua, who affirms the importance of the law of Moses, leads the Israelites into the land of Canaan, defeats the local rulers, and apportions the land among the twelve tribes.

After the death of Joshua, the Book of Judges depicts the Israelite tribes as living in a stateless society, alternating between domination by foreigners and periods of independence under local warlords traditionally known as judges. Looking back toward Deuteronomy and Joshua, the book portrays the changing fortunes of Israel as a function of changes in the relationship between the Israelites and their deity. Looking forward, the book laments, In those days, each one did what was right in his own eyes, because there was no king in the land.

The book or books of Samuel begin with the birth narrative of Samuel, a judge of Israel who functions in a manner much like both a priest and prophet as well. During Samuel’s time, the people of Israel begin to clamor for a king. Surprisingly, to those who have read Judges, both Samuel and God are displeased with this request, but God obliges the people, and has Samuel anoint Israel’s first king, Saul. Saul’s performance as king is unsatisfactory, and as a result, God chooses David to be king instead. Saul, however, is still alive and ruling, and their complex and dramatic relationship provides some of the most dramatic narrative material in the Bible.

Repeatedly, David turns down opportunities to kill Saul, and escapes from Saul’s attempts to kill him. Eventually, though, both Saul and his son Jonathan meet their deaths. After Saul’s death, the kingdom splits — the north under the kingship of Saul’s son Ishbaal, the south under David. Ishbaal is assassinated, and David becomes king over a reunited twelve-tribe kingdom of Israel. Later, David’s son Absalom rebels against him, attempting to take control of the kingdom, but David’s troops rally and Absalom dies. The book of Samuel draws to a close as David nears his death.

Kings begins with the death of David, who is followed by Solomon, after whom the united kingdom of Israel is split into a northern and southern kingdom — the northern called Israel, and the southern called Judah. Kings then follows the succession of kings in both kingdoms, evaluating them in the same sort of moral categories found in Deuteronomy, tracing their story beyond the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722 and to the destruction of the southern kingdom in 587/6. The book ends with the Judahite elite in exile.

The post A Very Short Introduction to the Primary History appeared first on My Blog.

Nevertheless, I figure I should have some sort of brief sketch of the Hebrew Bible’s contents to accompany the upcoming Boring Bible project.

In terms of the canon as viewed from the lens of Judaism, the core of the Hebrew Bible is the Pentateuch, or Torah, consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These tell a narrative beginning with the creation of the earth and leading to the ethnogenesis of the Israelite people, leading to their rescue from slavery in Egypt by Moses, who leads the people through a period of wandering for forty years in a wilderness, during which time he gives them laws. The Pentateuch ends with Moses’ giving a final speech, almost a sort of constitution for the Israelite people, which makes up the bulk of Deuteronomy.

Generally speaking, modern scholarship treats the events of Genesis through Deuteronomy as mythical, even if some details may trace back to distantly remembered historical realities.

Next, there is a section that Jewish tradition identifies as the books of the “Prophets”, though there is a very important subdivision between the books known as the “Former Prophets” and the “Latter Prophets”.

The Former Prophets are the books known to modern scholarship as the Deuteronomistic History, because their storyline, outlook, and vocabulary effectively make them a series of sequels to the book of Deuteronomy. These are the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.

As these books tell it, after the death of Moses leadership of the Israelite people fell into the hands of his deputy Joshua, who then lead the Israelites on a campaign to conquer the land of Canaan and to kill off and expell its inhabitants. For the next several hundred years, the book of Judges tells the tale of the Israelites living without a king or centralized state, alternating between oppression by foreigners and rule by ad hoc warlords traditionally known as “Judges”. The last of these judges is Samuel, and it is he who reluctantly appoints the first and second kings of Israel. Under the kings Saul and then David, followed by David’s son Solomon, Israel exists as a single national entity including all twelve of its tribal groupings.

Then, in the late tenth century, the kingdom was split in two in a tax revolt, in which the majority of the kingdom, the northern portion, seceded from the rule of the Davidic monarchy. From then on, the larger Northern Kingdom was known as Israel, and the Southern Kingdom as Judah. In 722, the Northern Kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire, after which it ceased to have a national existence. This left only the Southern Kingdom existing under its Davidic kings for approximately another century and a half, until its destruction by the Babylonian Empire in 587. The book of Kings ends during the Babylonian Exile of the Judahite elite.

The whole sequence from Genesis to Kings, which are in traditional Jewish terms the Torah and the Former Prophets, have sometimes been called the Primary History by biblical scholars. Together, these nine works make up about half the bulk of the Hebrew Bible, and present a more or less continuous narrative from the creation of the world to the end of the Judahite monarchy. Exactly how much of this is “History” in the sense of relating events that actually happened is much-debated, although generally speaking we might say that there is not much actual history before David, while we can say with pretty good certainty that the kings referred to from then on actually did exist.

The next section is what Judaism calls the “Latter Prophets”, a collection consisting of three large and twelve small works. Generally speaking, the prophecies of the Bible are delivered in poetry, and the prophets foretell a variety of better and worse futures to come as a result of the variously better or worse behavior of the people in their relationships to God and to each other. The three large works are Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Isaiah writes in the second half of the eighth century, although a large amount of material written later is also found in the book in its present form. Isaiah’s speaks to the period immediately before and after the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Jeremiah prophesies in the first part of the sixth century — that is, before and after the fall of the Southern Kingdom. Ezekiel’s ministry is a little bit later, though partially overlapping with Jeremiah’s. Finally, there are twelve smaller works, traditionally counted as a single “book” in Judaism: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

The final section is given a very general name in Hebrew, “The Writings”, and true to its title it contains a wide range of works. Some of its works, like Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, rewrite and extend the narrative of Genesis – Kings. Daniel does this sort of thing in its own way as well — extending the biblical narrative from the Babylonian exile through to the time of the Maccabees. Like Daniel, Esther and Ruth are relatively short prose works, each telling — in very different ways — the story of a marriage which would prove important to the history of Judah.

The Song of Songs is a collection of ancient Israelite love poetry — it is not entirely clear how it found its place in the biblical canon. Another relatively short prose work that may puzzle readers is Qoheleth, or Ecclesiastes, a set of often bleak reflections on the nature of life on earth. Similarly bleak is Lamentations, a short set of poems bewailing the fall of Jerusalem.

Like Lamentations and Ecclesiastes, Job is a tough read, a meditation on why some very bad things have happened to a very good man. Job is often considered “Wisdom Literature”, as is the Proverbs, a rather larger work which dispenses various forms of advice. Like Proverbs, the Psalms are often added into printed New Testaments — the Psalms are a hymn-book of ancient Israelite religion.

I have heard it said, though I can’t say about the quality of the evidence, that the books of the Hebrew Bible entered the canon in three tranches — first the Pentateuch, then the Former and Latter Prophets, and finally the Writings last of all.

The post A Ridiculously Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible appeared first on My Blog.

Given that I’d like to create a translation of a Bible in the public domain, which Bible to do? All of them would be ideal, of course. On the other hand, who knows how much time I will have for the project?

It seems smartest to begin by doing the Hebrew Bible. Should I finish that, then the New Testament. Should I finish that, the Catholic Deuterocanon. Should I finish that, other books treated as canonical by the Eastern Orthodox. Then … who knows? Perhaps a crack at some Ethiopian books or some other books associated with the Old or New Testaments.

The plan is to start with the smallest canon and work my way out from there.

A Question of Text

As I see it, it does not make sense to start completely from scratch. It would be a more efficient use of time to choose the English text that comes closest to my desired goal and then revise it.

As stated on the About page, there are three things I am aiming for: (1) a public domain translation, (2) in reasonably current English, (3) in line with the findings of mainstream biblical scholarship. There is already a translation, the World English Bible, which fulfills the first criterion perfectly and is a reasonable start at the second. It does stray a bit from the conclusions of modern scholarship in some ways.

Now, the world English Bible was created essentially by a senior editor, Michael Paul Johnson, with the assistance of some volunteers, beginning with the text of the ASV and updating its language, and at some points attempting to improve on its understanding of the meaning of passages. In many cases, the resulting text is what I’m looking for. However, in some cases, misunderstandings of Greek or Hebrew, insufficient attention to English style, or the use of idiosyncratic understandings of textual criticism have lead to some readings that I think could use improvement.

It seems to me that the best way to proceed is verse by verse, comparing the ASV, seeing how the WEB has changed it, and reviewing those changes. Extensive notes will document the translation decisions.

Some of the legwork, especially for Genesis, I’ve already done. I’ll be carefully going over that work and reposting it here, piece by piece.

The post Which Bible to Use? appeared first on My Blog.

People talk about something they call the Bible, as if they were referring to a singular, well-defined object in mind. But it would be more accurate to speak about Bibles.

The Hebrew Bible

The story of how we got the Bibles begins back in the ancient Levant. Many of the details are a bit murky, and as an amateur in this field I may get some things wrong in the following summary — qualified scholars continue to argue back and forth about the details of these things.

It is possible that some portions of the Hebrew Bible, particularly a few poems, were composed in the latter part of the second millennium BC, but the bulk of its contents were written in the first millennium, when monarchies in Israel and Judah were organized, and later crushed: Israel by Assyria in 722, and Judah by Babylon in 587. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, effectively ceased to exist after 722, and did not recover. The elite of the Southern Kingdom were in large part exiled to Babylonia, and some of them returned to re-found Judah as a province within the Persian Empire, after the Persians conquered the Babylonians in 539. Judah remained a province within the Persian Empire until it fell into Greek hands in 332.

Over centuries, and through the hands of many writers and editors, a variety of works were produced and revised, many of them grappling with the questions raised by this history. Who were the people of Israel and Judah, and how were they to relate to their god? Why did their states fall, and how should the Judahites live in their diminished circumstances? What kind of future could they look forward to?

Within this collection of books, some were more important than others to the emerging Judahite, then Judean, then Jewish community — all three of these terms are etymologically related, and used to refer to different stages in the history of Judaism and its antecedent communities.

Most central to Judaism is the Torah, or Pentateuch, which is today divided into five “books”, known as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in English. They present a mixture of narrative and legal material — the narrative material painting a portrait of Israelite origins and identity, the legal material providing a sort of constitution for its audience.

In Hebrew Bibles as they exist today, the Pentateuch is followed by the Deuteronomistic History, or “Former Prophets”, a collection of four books which interpret the history of the Israelite nation in terms of its fluctuating relationship to its god and his laws. These are Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.

Next are the prophetic books, known traditionally as the “Latter Prophets”, which consists of three major prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel — followed by a collection of twelve smaller prophetic works, the “minor prophets”. Mostly written in poetry, the prophets deliver various messages from God about how the Israelites and Judahites are to act, along with threats and promises concerning God’s responses to their behavior.

Finally there are twelve other works which have found their place in the canon of rabbinic Judaism, a section known simply as the “Writings”. It contains Psalms, a collection of hymns, along with Proverbs, full of life advice, and Job, a reflection on the difficulty of seeing justice in the calamities that befall the righteous. The Song of Songs and book of Ruth, in very different ways, tell stories of love. Lamentations poetically bewails the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. Ecclesiastes is a difficult piece of wisdom literature, while the Book of Esther tells a tale of Jews finding their place within the Persian Empire.

The book of Chronicles retreads much of the ground covered by Genesis – Kings, and is followed chronologically by Ezra-Nehemiah, which tells of the establishment of Judah and its Temple within the context of the Persian Empire. Finally, the book of Daniel, through coded language, tells an apocalyptic story of Judean history culminating in the Maccabean rebellion.

Now, these are simply the books which made it into the Hebrew Bible. While some sort of Hebrew canon existed in the time of Josephus, and it was likely identical or very close to the collection of books now known as the Hebrew Bible, it does appear that different communities of Jews had somewhat different collections of sacred books, and the full listing of the current Hebrew canon does not appear until the time of the Talmud in the fifth century AD.

Originally, the books that make up the Hebrew Bible circulated as independent scrolls. It was in fact not until about 920 AD, when the Aleppo Codex was created, that we have any evidence for the existence of the Hebrew Bible as a physical single-volume book.

As we will learn shortly, Christian Bibles were bound into single-volume books quite a bit earlier, but I’ve started with the Hebrew Bible because its contents would become universal in Bibles. The Hebrew Bible is the smallest of the Bibles, and all the various larger Christian Bibles contain all the contents of the Hebrew Bible, plus various other books.

The Deuterocanon

As mentioned above, the earliest surviving articulation of the Hebrew Bible that lists all the books in it comes from about 400 AD. Earlier, it appears that many Jews used a collection of Scripture much like the Hebrew Bible, if not perfectly identical to it.

But there are other indications that the situation was more complex for some communities. For example, the scrolls found at Qumran include not only almost all the books of the Hebrew Bible, but also some of the books that later found their way into other canons, including Ben Sira, Tobit, and the Letter of Jeremiah.

When Christianity arose, Christians initially used as scripture books that are now known as part of the Old Testament, and we find some variation among the books included, and indeed, Christianity wound up with a variety of canons. All these canons contained the books of the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament, and most of them contain additional works. The term deuterocanon, from “second canon” has been used to describe these works.

The deuterocanon of the Roman Catholic Church includes Tobit, Judith, the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Ben Sira, and Baruch. In Eastern Orthodox Churches, one finds 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, 3 and 4 Maccabees, and a 151st Psalm. Here and there one goes even further afield: the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and others appear in the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church.

Protestants for the most part don’t accord any official status to Deuterocanonical works, Anglicans being a notable exception.

The Production of Christian Canons

From its beginning, early Christianity was deeply concerned to justify in teachings through Scripture, which for the earliest Christian communities appears to have consisted of the same books that were being used as Scripture by Jews. The writers of the New Testament, for example, quote most of the books of the Hebrew Bible, but there is also a quotation of 1 Enoch.

The first few centuries of Christianity have produced an extensive literature, and it simply does not appear that nailing down the exact boundaries of a canon was a major concern of the first three centuries. In the fourth and fifth centuries, we find the codices Alexandrinus, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus, three relatively complete Bibles that have survived to the present day.

Alexandrinus contains books much like one would find in a Roman Catholic Bible today, but additionally contains 3 and 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and 1 and 2 Clement. In Sinaiticus, much of the Old Testament is now missing due to damage, but what is left shows that Tobit, Judith, 1 and 4 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Ben Sira were all included in the Old Testament. The New Testament contains the 27 conventional books used today, along with Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. Vaticanus has none of the Maccabees, but otherwise contains the usual complement of deuterocanon. Its New Testament is missing the Pastoral Epistles and Revelation.

Another way to look at the development of Christian canons is to read Gallagher and Meade’s The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity, where the interested reader can see the gradual process as early Christianity worked its way toward a fixed canon.

Implications

To sum it up, it appears that Second Temple Judaism saw the growth of a collection of literature that was treated as authoritative for Jews, although it appears that the exact borders of that collection were not formally and totally defined until some time after the destruction of the Second Temple. When the Jesus movement began, its believers picked up the somewhat-undefined set of sacred Scriptures that various Jewish groups were using, and began adding their own literature.

Judaism — with the exception of Beta Israel — wound up settling on a well-defined canon by Misnaic or Talmudic times, while as Christianity spread far and wide, it never did settle on one single canon. We are left with a situation where there is a smaller Protestant canon, a larger Catholic canon, and a variety of even larger Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox canons.

The post What is a Bible? appeared first on My Blog.

Here is a bit of transliterated stuff: bᵉrešit baraˀ

Another bit: bᵉrešit baraʾ

Here’s a bit of Hebrew: בראשית ברא.

Here’s a bit of Hebrew with diacritics: בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א.

⅏

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