Posting at BLTnotjustasandwich.com

I have started a group blog with J. K. Gayle, Suzanne McCarthy, and Craig smith over at BLTnotjustasandwich.com.  I have a post up about the forthcoming Oxford Jewish Annotated New Testament and racism in translation.

Here is my introductory post on that blog:

Welcome to the blog named BLT. It is not just a sandwich.  It stands for a set of topics that we hope to discuss:  Bible, Literature, and Translation.  We’ll talk about the Bible as literature and the literature of translation and the translation of Bibles and the translation of literature and literature of translation and Bible as a translation and literary translations of Bibles and so on.  And we are certain to throw in the arts, the sciences, philosophy, mysticism, religion, and pretty much everything else.

The initial crew of bloggers represents a diverse set of viewpoints but one that is unified in our openness to new ideas and a fundamental belief in the dignity of all humans.  This blog is open to all: Jews, Catholics, Mainliners, Evangelicals, Eastern Christians, Atheists, Theists outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, etc.  For me a strong underlying theme of this blog is that  everyone has a voice — especially people that have been traditionally marginalized.

I’ll let my co-bloggers (currently J. K. Gayle, Suzanne McCarthy, and Craig Smith) introduce themselves, but I’ll simply mention that I am a professor at a US university with strong interests in applied issues in linguistics.

There won’t be any bacon or other treif meat in my posts, but there will be lots of substance.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Norton does King James

Although I have not seen it yet, I am cautiously optimistic about the new Norton Critical Edition of the English Bible (KJV) forthcoming later this year (ISBN 039397507X and 0393927458). Perhaps you are familiar with the Norton Critical Edition series — it is a standard series of annotated volumes used in literature classes. The editors working on these volumes are top-notch, and the blurbs are impressive at least:

Robert Alter: “The Norton Critical Edition of The English Bible, King James Version, appearing on the four hundredth anniversary of the great translation, is a real gift to the English-reading world, making this classical version freshly accessible. The introductions to the different biblical books are apt and often illuminating; the generous annotation clarifies archaic terms, corrects translation errors, and provides insight into the texts; and the appended critical and historical materials give readers a wealth of relevant contexts for both Old and New Testament.”

Harold Bloom: “Herbert Marks demonstrates in this work that he is now the foremost literary exegete of the King James Bible and of the Hebrew Bible that it translates.”

If the work is up to the standard of the better volumes in the Norton Critical Edition series, I expect this will become the standard secular teaching text on the King James Bible, and because of its explanation of archaic terms and phrases, may prove useful for ordinary readers as well.

(I should mention that additional materials and notes included in the Norton Critical Edition of the Writings of St. Paul [ISBN 0393972801] make it the best secular one-volume guide to the subject, although it uses the TNIV translation of the Epistles and Acts and Elliott’s translations [ISBN 0198261810] of the apocryphal works related to Paul.)

In honor of Rev. Terry and his used furniture business

I cannot brook neo-Nazis.  So when news came of the for-profit used-furniture e-Bay church called “the Dove World Outreach Center” (someone with a sense of irony chose that name) burning Talmuds and Qur’ans, I felt I had to do something.

I’m not a big fan of Koranic studies.  Worse, the most popular English translations of the Qur’an are financed by the Saudi government (often with wildly anti-Semitic commentary) – so it is not easy to find decent translations.  But Rev. Terry pushed me over the edge – I decided to order the recent shiny nice new bilingual translation published by Oxford (with a revised translation).  I trust it will be a nice supplement to my other translations (my current favorite) the bilingual Princeton Qur’an translation, the Arberry Koran, and the liberal American translation by Laleh Bakhtiar. 

Plus, as a bonus, I decided to get Oliver Leaman’s encyclopedia (because who can’t love a Qur’an commentary edited by a Jew?)  to supplement my copy of the “Westerner contributors only” of the Cambridge Companion.

So thank you, Reverend Terry. Without your ravings and ability to attract an incredible amount of publicity for acting like a fool, I’d have more space on my bookshelf.

A story of two Rashi Tehillim

There are now at least two major editions of the Psalms with commentary by the medieval master Jewish commentator Rashi. One is published by the Jewish Publication Society (reprinted by Brill) and is by Mayer Gruber of Ben-Gurion University. It is a 900 page paperback volume and you can buy it from Amazon for $34. The second is also 900 pages but in two hardcover volumes in a slip case published by the Feldheim published by Rabbi Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg (who teaches at two traditional yeshivos in Israel: Yeshivos Yesodei HaTorah and Lev HaTorah. You can buy this set from Amazon for $36.

Physically the Herczeg volumes are much nicer -- they have better and larger paper and they are larger, smyth-sewn bindings with dust jackets, in a nice case. On the other hand, they are much larger, as these photos show (please click on the photos to see larger images -- and click on the magnifying lens to read the individual text):

Lying side by side -- the R' Herczeg volume is much larger.

The R' Herczeg boxed set is almost twice the thickness of the Gruber, even though both have about 900 pages.

But the biggest difference is with the format of presentation. In Gruber, the texts of the Psalms is not presented (in English or Hebrew.) The Rashi is given in block format at the end of the book (here is the Rashi to Psalms 1 and 2, and the first part of Psalm 3) (remember to click to see a larger, more readable image):

And here is his English translation of Rashi, followed by notes:

Now in contrast, here is Rabbi Herczeg's text for the same psalm -- you'll notice that the Hebrew psalm, the English translation, the Rashi in Hebrew, the Rashi in English, and the notes are all on one self-contained page (again, click to see a zoomed in view.)

A couple of notes:

The most obvious difference is formatting.  The R' Herczweg volumes integrates Rashi (in both pointed Hebrew and English), the super-commentary, and the actual text of the Psalms (again, in both pointed Hebrew and English) on a single page.  Gruber omits the text of the Psalms, separates Hebrew Rashi (unpointed), and even separates notes and translation.  There is little doubt that R' Herczweg has both more beautiful typesetting and the more useful layout.

The versions of Rashi's manuscripts used is slightly different in places. For example, Gruber has Rashi making a comment on Psalm 118:5. In the case of R' Herczweg, he demotes the comment to his supercommentary notes -- making full note of the source of it, and and its exegesis, before explaining why it is probably spurious. In general, R' Herczweg treats his Rashi text critically and applies it to integral whole psalms, while Gruber is content to split up psalms with "Interpretation A" and "Interpretation B" (e.g., see pp. 671-675).

R' Herczeg provides full pointed text for the Psalms and for Rashi -- and gives a phrase-by-phrase translation (sometimes with explanatory interpolations, clearly marked typographically). As opposed to Gruber who is willing to shift around Rashi's text (and make a note in the footnotes), R' Herczeg respects the integrity of Rashi's text.

Gruber has some 170 pages of introductory material; in contrast, R' Herczberg's introductory material consists of approbations, a brief preface and Introduction, and the traditional prayer (presented side-by-side in both Hebrew and English) before reciting Psalms.

For some reason Gruber does not often address the Old French terminology used by Rashi -- for example, in Psalm 1 above, Rashi uses three old French phrases: Gabors, Fleistre, and Come bale. R' Herczeg deals with all three; Gruber only with Fleistre (and then, only in Modern French.)

In general Gruber has a less literal translation of Rashi than R' Herczeg.

Gruber has some much longer notes than R' Herczberg, but they do not necessarily contain substantially more information. As an example, here is the supercommentary note to Rashi's תשובת המינים (translated as "heretics" by R' Herczeg and "Christians" by Gruber. Recall that the former has the actual Hebrew on the page, so there is no possibility of missing it.

R' Herczeg: That is, to Christians, who interpret the psalm as referring to their false messiah.

Gruber: Heb. tesubat hamminim; so correctly Signer, p. 274; see the extensive evidence that in Rashi's commentaries minin (or minim) means "Christian" in Awerbuch, Christlich-judische Begegnung im Zeitalter der Fruhscholastik, pp. 101-139. E. Touito, "Concerning the Meaning of the Term tesubat hamminim in the Writings of our French Rabbis," Sinai 99 (1986) pp. 144-48 (in Hebrew) demonstrates on both linguistic and historical grounds that in the writings of Rashi and his disciples tesubat hamminim often means "a challenge to the Christians" rather than "a reply to the Christian". The rendering here "Jewish converts to Christianity" found in Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars [sic., Gruber does not properly format the title name], p. 60 is no longer tenable. Solomon Zeitlin, "Rashi," American Jewish Yearbook 41 (1939-1940), p. 124 writes as follows: "I examined a manuscript in the library in Moscow in which the reading of this passage is as follows: 'Many of the disciples of Jesus apply this passage to the Messiah, but in order to refute the Minim this passage should be applied to David.' " This version of Rashi demonstrates conclusively that Heb. minim here can only mean "Christians". Moreover, it supports the idea tha thte search for the literal meaning [pesuto] by Rashi and the real, original meaning [pesat] by Rashi's disciples was motivated by the belief tha the Bible understood on its own terms would demonstrate that Judaism rather than Christianity is the only legitimate heir to the legacy, which is commonly called "the Old Testament"; see, in addition to the important literature cited by Signer, p. 273, n. 3, Touito, "The Exegetical Method of Rashbam Against the Background of the Historical Reality of His Time," pp. 48-74; Sarah Kamin, Rashi's Commentary on the Song of Songs and the Jewish-Christian Polemic," SHNATON 7-8 (1984), pp. 218-48 (in Hebrew); Shereshevsky, Rashi: The Man and His World, pp. 119-32. Rashi here suggests that it was not science for science's sake that led him to point out that in Biblical Heb. masiah is not an allusion to the eschatological "King Messiah" of late Second Temple era and later Judaism but simply a synonym of the noun melek "king"; see Rashi also at Ps. 105:15. That Rashi should have found it necessary to differentiate the Christian belief that mesiho in Ps. 2:2 refers to "His Messiah" can be explained as follows: in the LXX masiah, lit., "Annointed One is christos (similarl in the Vulgate, christus). Moreover, the New Testament Book of Acts 4:25-27 declares explicitly that Ps. 2:1-2, which asks, "Why did the Gentiles rage ... against the Lord and his christos," refers to there having been "gathered together against ... Jesus ... both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the People of Israel" (Acts 4:25-27; RSV). While a comparison of eisegetical tradition may be serviceable in interfaith dialogue, the defense of the contention that Jewry rather Christendom was the legitimate child of Hebrew Scripture made it necessary for Rashi and his disciples to seek out the primary meaning of the biblical word and to show that this supported the Jew's adherence to the ancestral faith rather than the adoption the Christian faith. Note that Rashi's demonstration that mesiho in Ps. 2:2 denotes "HIS ANNOINTED KING" resets upon 2 Sam. 5:17, which refers to David's having been "anointed ... king."

As this example shows, Gruber is rather expansive in his comments (although they are riddled with serious and not so serious typographic errors -- I found two or three on every page). Herczeg just gives a more basic comment that let's you understand what Rashi is saying.

However, if you desire to read Gruber, I strongly suggest reading Gruber in conjunction with R' Herczeg -- since this allows you to at least follow the Hebrew wording of Rashi.

The books are nearly the same cost, and I think there is no contest in terms of physical quality or content -- R' Herczeg's is the one to get.

Happy studying of the Tehillim.

No comment necessary

Bishop Giacomo Babini blames Jews for attacks on Pope

A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto, was quoted by the Italian Roman Catholic website Pontifex as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the Pope, given that it was “powerful and refined” in nature.

Bishop Babini denied he had made any anti-Semitic remarks. He was backed by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), which issued a declaration by Bishop Babini in which he said: “Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me.”

However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof.

Monsignor Babini’s reported comments follow a series of statements from senior Vatican cardinals blaming a “concerted campaign” by “powerful lobbies” for accusations that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in covering up cases of clerical abuse both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican.

None has explicitly blamed Jews or any other group. However Bishop Babini, 81, said Jews “do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies”. He added: “Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are deicides [God killers].”

He was quoted as saying that Hitler was “not just mad” but had exploited German anger over the excesses of German Jews who in the 1930s had throttled the German economy.

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said Monsignor Babini was using “slanderous stereotypes, which sadly evoke the worst Christian and Nazi propaganda prior to World War Two”.

Giovanni Maria Vian, the Editor of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said there was a media campaign against the Pope but suggestions that Jews were behind it were ridiculous.

Speaking to the foreign press corps in Rome, Mr Vian pointed out that L’Osservatore Romano had reprinted remarks made in the Jerusalem Post by Ed Koch, the Jewish former mayor of New York, in which he said that continuing attacks by the media on the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI were “manifestations of anti-Catholicism”.

Mr Koch said that he disagreed with the Catholic Church on abortion, homosexuality, divorce and contraception. But the Church had a right to hold such beliefs, and “much of the attack on it today stems from opposition to those teachings”.

He added: “Many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the Pope today clearly do it with delight and some with malice.

“I believe the Roman Catholic Church is a force for good in the world, not evil. Enough is enough.

“Yes, terrible acts were committed by members of the Catholic clergy. The Church has paid billions to victims in the US and will pay millions, perhaps billions, more to other such victims around the world. It is trying desperately to atone for its past by its admissions and changes in procedures for dealing with paedophile priests.”

There were Jewish protests at Easter when Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, compared attacks on the Pope to the “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism” in his Good Friday reflections before Pope Benedict in the Vatican.

The Vatican later said the Pope had not been aware in advance of Father Cantalamessa’s remarks, which did not represent the Vatican’s views.

Today Mr Vian said Father Cantalamessa’s observations had been innocent in intention, though whether it had been prudent to make them in the current climate was another matter.

Pope Benedict, who visited the Rome synagogue in January, has sought to mend Catholic-Jewish relations since last year, when he offended Jewish groups by rehabilitating Bishop Richard Williamson, an excommunicated ultra-conservative prelate who denies that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

The Pope said he was unaware of Bishop Williamson’s views and demanded that he rescind them.

However, the pontiff has also angered Jewish leaders with his continuing support for the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime Pope who is charged by critics with having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. Beatification is the step before sainthood.

On Friday Benedict watched a preview of a forthcoming programme to be shown by RAI, the state broadcaster, which praises Pius XII for his role in helping to save Jews behind the scenes in wartime Rome, and is said by aides to have expressed his approval.

Joel Hoffman’s “And God Said” (preliminary thoughts)

I received my copy of Joel Hoffman’s well-intentioned And God Said:  How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning today (I had ordered it before Amazon started boycotting all Macmillan products) and opened it up to a random page – p. 234 as it turned out, and spotted errors immediately (Hoffman appears to be ignorant of that both Everett Fox and Robert Alter translated Shmeul [the books of Samuel] into English).  And no footnotes.  Not a good sign.  Sigh.

Hitler’s Bible

HT:  Tzvee

Pravda: Hitler rewrote the Bible and added two commandments

An institute, founded on Hitler’s command, rewrote Bible texts, eliminating all mentions of the special role of the Jewish people. According to Hitler’s version, Christ was an advocate of Aryan ideas. Sections from the Nazi Bible will be published by German publication Bild on Thursday.

In May 1939, on the Furher’s command, a theological institute was founded in Eisenach with the purpose of contributing to “dejewification”. Its employees edited biblical texts, removing non-Aryan passages. Dozens of works printed by the institute were published in over 100 thousand copies of the new Holy Scripture. It was assumed that this work would become a standard household book amongst Germans.

For a long time, almost nothing was known about Hitler’s Bible, since believers burnt almost every copy. However, a few copies were discovered in German churches at the end of the 1980s, but this was kept hidden from the general public at the time, writes Izvestia.

German biblical archivist Hansjorg Buss has summarized the dubious achievements of Hitler’s myrmidons for Bild newspaper.

“Germans with the Lord – the German book of faith”: the renewed version of the Holy Scripture contained 12 edited commandments instead of 10, as follows:

1. Honor your Fuhrer and master.
2. Keep the blood pure and your honor holy.
3. Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly.
4. Seek out the peace of God.
5. Avoid all hypocrisy.
6. Holy is your health and life.
7. Holy is your well-being and honor.
8. Holy is your truth and fidelity.
9. Honor your father and mother -- your children are your aid and your example.
10. Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers.
11. Be ready to help and forgive.
12. Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice.

In the new edition of the psalms, words of Jewish origin, such as messiah and halleluiah, were altered and the city of Jerusalem was referred to as Eternal City of God. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was presented as resulting from a battle he fought against the Jews.

In the 1940 edition, the following words can be found: “The Evangelical Jesus can only become the savior of our German people, because it does not incarnate the ideas of Judaism, but fights against them mercilessly.”

“The German people fought against the destruction of their life and essence by the Jews”, wrote the director of the institute Walter Grundmann. Hitler personally signed the decree on the appropriation of the awarding of the title of professor to him.

And finally, Jesus’ ancestors, according to the Nazis, came from the Caucuses, therefore there was no way that the savior could have been Jewish.

Meir Shalev on the love stories in Bereishis

I think that anyone interested in literature would enjoy novelist Meir Shalev’s discussion of the Genesis love stories – quite different than conventional Biblical analysis.

Other speakers in the SFJCC speaker series who may be of interest to those interested in religion include Rachel Elior and Moshe Idel.  You can find the complete list here.

 

Strange allies

I like the KJV too (although I like Tyndale more). 

But I just don’t feel tempted to attend this pastor’s (and what a nice touch to be interviewed in his overalls) barbeque – even with the promise of meeting most of his 14 church members. 

You see, I’ve never done [and never plan to do] the Fahrenheit 451 thing – too many bad memories.

(HT: Craig Smith)

PS:  This is the first time I’ve broken my design rule and posted in color.  So you know the clip must be worth watching.

Barnstone’s “Restored New Testament”

I wish to bring to your attention Willis Barnstone’s Restored New Testament.  I have ordered, but not yet received this book, so I cannot personally comment on it, but I think some of you may be interested in it (particularly those of you familiar with Barnstone’s translations, including his Other Bible and Gnostic Bible).

Here is the review from Library Journal:

The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels, Thomas, Mary, and Judas. Norton. Oct. 2009. 1152p. index. trans. from Greek by Willis Barnstone. ISBN 978-0-393-06493-3. $49.95.

In an achievement remarkable by almost any standard, and surely one of the events of the year in publishing, renowned poet and scholar Barnstone has created a new and lavish translation—almost transformation—of the canonical and noncanonical books associated with the New Testament. In part a continuation of his work in The New Covenant, Commonly Called the New Testament (2002) and The Other Bible (2005), and in many ways the completion of the pioneering efforts of other modern translators like Robert Alter, Reynolds Price, and Richmond Lattimore, The Restored New Testament offers a completely new version of familiar and unfamiliar texts, restoring the likely Hebrew forms of names, and strongly emphasizing the poetic and almost incantatory passages that have been obscured within the New Testament. Barnstone also substantially reorders the traditional arrangement of books for reasons he ably expounds in an extended and learned yet accessible preface. The high bar Barnstone has set for himself is the creation of an English-language Scripture that will move poets much as the 1611 King James Version moved Milton and Blake. Only time will tell if Barnstone has achieved his goal, but his work is fascinating, invigorating, and often beautiful. Essential.

Here is an interview from Library Journal:

Readers may be familiar with your work as a translator, poet, and editor, but it seems that in the last several years, more of your attention has gone toward religious texts. What accounts for the change?

I don’t want to abuse the catch-all word “spiritual,” but there is a spiritual or metaphysical obsession with most of the work I’ve done. In the early Sixties, I translated The Poems of Saint John of the Cross, who was Spain’s and the world’s foremost mystical poet, whose work is based on the biblical Song of Songs, which I also translated into English. I began The Restored New Testament (RNT) nearly two decades ago, and in the last several years I’ve been doing these monstrous editions and translations of diverse Biblical literature, from The Other Bible, a book of intertestamental scriptures including Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnosticism, and Apocrypha, to Poetics of Translation: History, Theory, Practice in which the Bible is the main paradigm of translation. We live in a world of impossible-to-answer questions about all the great ideas, beginning with consciousness. So begins the meditation. I think there is a common thread in my work, and less change than may appear.

What was the field of New Testament translation like when you began your project? What differences should we expect from your version?

Oh gosh! A revolution. Briefly: a restoration of the probable names of persons and places to their Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew originals; a book that avoids Biblespeak, the half-lovely archaized speech that most translations fall into after the King James Version, or really infelicitous lowbrow talk that floats like lead when the scripture is gold. I attempt to translate the Bible as others have translated Homer or Virgil. Why not? I also show that the name changes—Elizabeth for Elisheva, James for Yaakov, Mary for Miryam—are an attempt to mask the fact that all the characters, big and small, except for the Romans, are Jews. Jesus was a circumcised rabbi who died during the Passover days of the seder. I also show by translating much of the book into verse that like all the world’s religious scripture the book was meant to be chanted as it is today in Greek Orthodox churches. We read the Song of Songs, Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and many of the prophets as lineated poetry. We should do the same with the New Testament, which, like the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), was half in poetry, including Revelation, the epic poem of the Bible which I did in blank verse. As prior translator Richmond Lattimore did, I change the order of the gospels, making them chronological by beginning with Mark, then Matthew, then Luke and John.

What sort of reader do you picture for the RNT? The scholar in the tower? The family in the pew? The poet under the tree?

I hope for a general reader, lowbrow, highbrow, even nobrow. Conservative Christians took to my New Covenant, a translation of the four gospels and Revelation, because they are interested in the meaning of Biblical words and they saw my work as about as faithful one can be to the original words, which cast the Bible in its morning light. I surely hope for literary readers too, who esteem Hemingway or Twain (so much like the Gospel of Mark’s racing plain narrative) or Whitman (who reminds us of Ecclesiastes). I hope for church and synagogue readers—it’s the last great biblical work by a Jew, about Jews, for Jews, as bishop John Shelby Spong points out. It should speak to the general reader, as did the earliest—and in my opinion best—translation into beautiful demotic English by William Tyndale in 1525. He wrote his Bible for the ploughboy of the fields, and even for Scots, women, Saracens and Turks. Where he translated Greek correctly into the equivalent for his time, as in “He was a luckie fella,” the King James Version pumps it up to “He was a fortunate gentleman.” I have also taken out the artificial pomp by translating student as student rather than Latin disciple, and messenger as messenger, not apostle. An apostle stays at home and admires his robes, but Paul’s apostles, many of them women, hit the road for the cause.

What could or should a restored New Testament mean for today’s world? How could it be put to use?

In a world of hatred, especially tribal religious hatreds everywhere, I hope that the book may bring peace, or further peace among Jews, Christians, and Moslems. I hope the reader feels that the restored scripture reveals the commonality of the Abrahamic sects of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I hope the faithful and secular see a work closer to the original scripture and not bathed in the propaganda of bias and willful persuasion, a fascinating read, with verve and freshness. Unlike most scripture it has whimsy and humor for a world drowning in gravity and fear and misunderstanding. Surely laughter is part of our life and not a sin against seriousness.

R. Soloveitchik on innovation in liturgy

Haganos HaRav 67 (Soloveitchik RH Machzor):

The Rav objected in general to the introduction into the service of new prayers not included in the traditional liturgy, noting that Chazal, well aware of the paradox inherent in insignificant man approaching God to pray for his comparatively trivial needs, were thus determined to confine the performance of prayer to rigid, standardized texts based upon Biblical sources (Community, Covenant, and Commitment, p. 115)

He stressed that man’s entire right to pray to God for anything is based upon the fact that the Bible is replete with examples of people praying and petitioning god for various needs, and their actions therefore serve as a precedent for us (Divrei Hashkafah, p. 122).  Consequently, no ordinary person can have temerity to compose his own formula of prayer, given that he lacks the necessary רוח הקודש, the Divine inspiration, which the Biblical figures had.  The Rav further explained that it is for this reason that the Gemara in Megillah (17a) points out that the אנשי כנסת הגדולה, the Men of the
Great Assembly, who established the texts of our prayers and blessings (see Berachos 33a), included several prophets, because a level of Divine inspiration is necessary in order to properly formulate prayers.  The Rav stated that he was unimpressed with various prayer texts composed by contemporary authors (MiPeninei HaRav, pp. 127-128).

Indeed, he held that no contemporary author has all the qualities that are indispensable for writing prayers.  Nobody today has the inner ability, the depth, the breadth of experience, and the purity of soul that would authorize him to compose a prayer (The Lord is Righteous, pp. 298-299.)

Philip Davies on Jewish knowledge of the Bible

From an essay by Philip Davies:

. . . A recent National Biblical Literacy Survey in the UK carried out by the Centre for Biblical Literacy Communication at St John’s College, Durham (http://www.dur.ac.uk/codec/about/cblc/) found that as few as 10 per cent of people understood the main characters in the Bible and their relevance. Figures such as Abraham and Joseph were unknown: hardly anyone could name even a few of the Ten Commandments. . . .

I know a lot of secular Jews . . . . Very few of them can demonstrate the degree of ignorance of the Bible that Christians do. For them, being Jewish means knowing the Bible, even if not accepting its religious authority. Secular Jews are nearly all proud to be Jewish and know that their Jewish identity is defined by the Bible. There is no equivalent commitment among Christians because they share no ethnic identity. . . .

(HT:  James Davila)

Codex Sinaiticus

From Arts Beat  (quick summary – much of the Codex Sinaiticus published at codexsinaiticus.org):

The pages of a Bible more than 1,600 years old have been published on the Internet, The Associated Press reported. Nearly 800 pages from the Codex Sinaiticus, a Christian Bible dating to the 4th century, written in Greek and containing the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, were posted Monday at the Web site codexsinaiticus.org, coinciding with a conference on the book at the British Library in London. The original manuscript, containing about 1,460 pages written on prepared animal skin, was discovered in 1844 at the Monastery of St. Catherine, a Greek Orthodox shrine in the Sinai Peninsula, by the German Bible scholar Constantine Tischendorf. Its pages were split among Britain, Egypt, Russia and Germany. Scholars from the four nations worked on the restoration of the Bible, which also includes substantial portions of the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Forty-three pages of the manuscript are at the University Library in Leipzig, Germany, and six fragments are at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg.

Why I don’t like most study Bibles

I became interested in contemporary study Bibles because of my interest in pedagogy.  I wondered if a study Bible could be used as a self-study tool or as a resource used by a teacher.

Here, I make a distinction between a merely annotated Bible (e.g, the celebrated [RSV] New Oxford Annotated Bible – which explains difficult passages and includes summary of the pericopes, but makes for a reading text – not a teaching or study text) and a true “study Bible” intended to serve as a full teaching presentation of the Bible with commentary as well as annotations.

My conclusion is that all contemporary study Bibles I have seen are poor for teaching without substantial – often very substantial – additional materials.  They may or may not be useful as reference works, but by and large they are poor for pedagogy.

Most contemporary study Bibles suffer from the following pedagogic problems: 

(a) They attempt diversity in their selection of annotators and essayists, but if the Bible is read chapter-by-chapter, the reader has no chance to directly compare views on a single book (or even a single topic).  In this way, they are far weaker than a typical Norton Critical Edition volume which will typically include an anthology of essays which directly debate each other, providing a plurality of views that enriches the student.   In contrast, contemporary study Bibles are both wildly uneven (because of the different commentators) and also present opinions, often contentious opinions, as fact.

(b)  The physical dimensions of a study Bible necessarily limit the depth of commentary.  This is not necessarily a disadvantage for a lightly annotated Bible, but it makes for a reading text – not a teaching or study text.  (To be fair, the classic editions of the New Oxford Annotated Bible, as the title clearly indicates, claimed to be “annotated” and not “study” texts.)  In this way, I regard the Oxford Jewish Study Bible as slightly stronger than its Oxford cousins The Catholic Study Bible (2nd ed.) or the contemporary (ecumenical) New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd Augmented ed.) – since it the JSB covers only the Hebrew Bible, it covers about 3/5ths of the material in roughly the same total dimensions (and, most promisingly, has room for much more essay material). But the JSB still suffers from the many of shortfalls of its cousins.

(c)  Evangelical study Bibles, in particular, are largely produced by a single company, the Livingstone Corporation, which has most recent apologetic study Bibles (including almost all of the recent study Bibles published by Zondervan, Tyndale, Broadman and Holman, and Thomas Nelson).  This has imposed a level of uniform mediocrity of these volumes (although they are often magnificent specimens of modern computer typesetting).

(d)  With a few significant exceptions (scholarly commentaries, most Orthodox Jewish study volumes, and the NET New Testament diglot), most study volumes include no or only superficial engagement with original language materials. 

(e)  Similarly, with a few significant exceptions, most text critical issues are avoided.  In this way, most study Bibles are significantly inferior to a typical single-volume annotated teaching text for Shakespeare.

(f)  Even “academic” study Bibles often include substantial apologetic material.  The New Interpreter’s Study Bible is, perhaps, among major “academic” study Bibles the worst offender, but it creeps into all of them.  While this is is not necessarily a bad thing, it should be noted and the student should be given a perspective of different views.

What I wish is that we could see a study Bible – in multiple volumes if necessary – where different commentators could directly engage with and debate each other, in the fashion of the Rabbinic Bible.  Such works are common in English literature (e.g., the Cambridge Companions, the Norton Critical Editions, Bloom’s Modern [or Classic] Critical Views, among many, many others).  Some of these are only mediocre, but the best of these are outstanding.

Moreover, anthologies of different opinions they can easily be found for classic interpretation of Scripture (e.g., the Rabbinic Bible, the Catena Aurea).  I fail to see why it is so difficult to produce a study Bible with contemporary opinion focused on pedagogical principles.

I have seen a (mostly successful) attempt to do this with a study edition of the Jewish prayer book; where ten different commentaries (from a full spectrum of opinions) are included with full engagement of the Hebrew.  A completely different style which also succeeds is the Norton Critical Edition Writings of Saint Paul (first edition, second edition) which includes a wide array of extra-Pauline materials as well as ancient, 19th century, and modern criticism.

For the time being, I am unable to recommend a self-study volume for serious engagement with the Bible.  This strikes me as odd given that many excellent examples exist for secular literature.

KJV in sermons, redux

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The KJV in sermons

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Books that influenced my reading of the Bible

There is one of those memes going around in which people volunteer a list of books that influenced their readings of the Bible.  The rules say that works are not limited to Biblical studies literature, but can include religious works or works of literature.  The list is nominally set at 5 books, but that is obviously an arbitrary number, and I have more than 5 books to list here.

Now, no one has actually nominated me for this meme, but I am going to nominate myself.

Ramban (Nachmanides) - Commentary on the Torah – by far my favorite medieval commentary – one that directly engages the commentaries of Rashi and Ibn Ezra and treats mysticism as a first class return.  My preferred edition is here.  A fantastic older translation is this one.  A translation with more support and matching Hebrew is here.  See also Michael Carasik’s beautiful presentation; Exodus and Leviticus are now (or soon will be) available.

John Milton – Paradise Lost – a poem that creates an entire world, and that comments intelligently on esoterica drawn from Jewish and Christian tradition.  My favorite edition is here (which I greatly prefer to the Riverside Milton.)  A very clean presentation is here.  There are a vast number of commentaries on Milton – I like the older (Elledge) Norton edition (the newer Norton Teskey edition is inferior but still useful) and Fish’s first book on Milton (presenting a powerful reader-reception approach) shows his young genius; his later works have less attraction to me.

Dante – Divina Commedia – another poem that comments on everything in the world, in the process, revealing a great deal of the author’s approach to Scripture.  There are many fabulous translations to choose among; Hollander’s (Inf, Pur, Par) is a nice bilingual diglot presentation; one of my friends did a nice translation of Inferno (in a bilingual diglot presentation); Ciardi’s is highly poetic and easy to read (but does not include the Italian text); Laurence Binyon’s translation is probably the most faithful (but hard to read); Singleton has the most detailed commentary in English as well as the Italian and literal translation; and the California Lecturis Dantis (Inf, Pur) series is my favorite extended discussion in English.

Augustine – Confessiones – a profound meditation on the personal response to Scripture.  I recommend O’Donnell’s Latin edition for its excellent commentary (Amazon has it listed currently out of print, but you can find this for about $100 if you look around).  If you want an English translation, Chadwick’s is standard (try to get it in the original handsome but unpretentious hardcover).  There are many other translations to choose among; I thought Gary Wills four volume translation was well done (1, 2, 3, 4) (this has been republished in a one volume edition but missing some of Wills extra material).

Rambam (Maimonides) – Moreh Nevuchim (Guide of the Perplexed);
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) – Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence); and
Thomas (Aquinas) – Summa Theologiæ – a great trio of deep works, discussing the links (and, the absence of links) between religion and theology, with many illuminating discussions and excurses on Scripture.  The first two works also inspired me to study Arabic.  The standard edition of Moreh Nevuchim is available online (vol. 1, 2, 3); my favorite English translation is by Shlomo Pines (with an intriguing long introduction by Leo Strauss) (vol. 1, 2).  Standard editions of Tahāfut al-Tahāfut are here and here; the leading translation of Tahāfut al-Tahāfut is Simon van den Bergh, available online here (be sure to refer to the translation notes here).  There is a nice bilingual edition of the book Tahāfut al-Tahāfut refutes, al-Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers.  For Thomas there are many editions available; my own preference is the bilingual diglot Blackfriar’s edition because of its extensive notes and commentary.

Thomas (Aquinas) – Catena Aurea – Thomas’s standard collection of early Church fathers on the meaning of the Gospels – a rich and often allegorical set of meditations.  I have only read this in Newman’s English translation.  See also Toal’s Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers for a more recent and somewhat similar approach.  Kevin Edgecomb brought these books to my attention.

Schneur Zalman – Torah Ohr and Likkutei Torah – A collection of the great 18th century Chassidic teacher’s kabalistic explanations of Torah parshos (as well as the Song of Songs and Esther) as collected by his grandson, the Tzemach Tzedek.  Hebrew editions of Torah Ohr and Likkutei Torah (vol. 1, 2) are readily available.  I am unaware of English translations.

Shimon bar Yochai and his school – The Zohar – a vast collection of mystical exegesis on Torah written at the start of the Common Era.  Some scholars claim this is a 13th century work by Moses de Leon.  This is easily available in Aramaic from any Judaica shop.  My friend Danny Matt has been establishing a critical text and his translation (in progress) is fascinating (although, in many ways, the Zohar is not translatable.)  The Tishby anthology (which I have only read in English translation) is a standard introduction with many passages translated.

Louis Ginzburg – Legends of the Jews – I am a bit embarrassed by this book now, but as a child, this was one of the first books I read on the aggadic Torah.  While I now think there are better introductions, it is still valuable for non-religious Jews and gentiles.

Alter & Kermode – The Literary Guide to the Bible – by far the best college level introduction to the Bible I have seen – taking a literary approach to understanding Scripture.

Gerald Hammond – Making of the Hebrew Bible – a wonderful, careful examination of 16th and 17th English translations of the Bible – reminding us of all the important points that are missed in modern translations.

James Kugel – Traditions of the Bible:  A Guide to the Bible as it was at the Start of the Common Era – a wonderful modern presentation of different interpretative traditions of the Bible – both Jewish and Christian.  I think this work is much stronger than Kugel’s more general work (which I do not care for) on how to read the Bible.

OK, now the fun part – picking individuals who can continue this meme.  I nominate Tzvee, Kevin, Judy, David, Rachel, and Craig.

Criticism made easy

If you look at a contemporary New Testament translation, you’ll see numerous footnotes on textual variants.  These range from 500-1000 (with the NKJV and New Jerusalem Bible having the most such textual notes.)  Unfortunately, these footnotes are nearly useless, since there is no explanation of the relative merits of the different versions.

And thus readers are the victims of textual criticism.  In other literary contexts, text criticism (the often quixotic search for the “perfect original text”) has gotten a bad name; with parties now preferring diplomatic texts to critical texts.  In Shakespearean studies, for example, the great synthesized plays, incorporating features from both the quartos and the folio, are on the way out – the Arden Shakespeare has now expelled the Jenkins critical Hamlet in favor of three versions: folio and the 1603 and 1623 quartos; the Oxford Shakespeare has two King Lears; while the Norton Shakespeare has three.  Similarly, who can forget the “scandal” of the Gabler Ulysses as it was played out in the pages of the NYRB (e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here).  Today, we can buy the Gabler critical edition, the 1934/1961 edition, the 1922 edition, and a first edition facsimile (my favorite).  (With Bloomsday right around the corner, now is the time to complete your collection.)

But for New Testament studies, there is a certain snobbery from some advocates of the latest critical editions (currently the 27th edition of Nestle-Aland [NA27] and the 4th edition of the United Bible Societies).  There are many reasons one may wish not to use these:  (a) many of the decisions behind these editions seem arbitrary; (b) the German Bible Society has expressed its intention to enforce its copyright on these editions and disallow their use in web sites (I suspect these copyrights are not enforceable, but someone who challenges the German Bible Society must be prepared to fight it out in court); (c) one may interested in variants that reflect versions known to the ancient Christian authorities, e.g., to match up quotes with the Patristic literature; (d) one may just want to understand what those 500-1000 footnotes mean.

The problem is that until recently, there was no work in English that explained the critical choices; one could refer to the apparatus of UBS4 or NA27, but these were in Greek; and Metzger’s guide also presumed prior knowledge of the Greek variants.

Well, fortunately, there is a solution for that now – Philip Comfort has written an amazing resource, the New Testament Text and Translation Commentary.  This is, without a doubt, the best book I’ve ever seen published by Tyndale House Publishers.  The bulk of Comfort’s 944 page tome is a verse-by-verse listing of every contested passage in the New Testament – some three thousand entries.  For each entry

• Comfort gives all variants (in both Greek and English).
• He lists the manuscript evidence for each reading.
• He lists which readings are found in which manuscripts, the Textus Receptus (basis of the KJV and NKJV); Westcott and Hort (the earliest and arguably the best of the critical editions); or Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies (currently the favorite of most translators, but a flawed critical edition).
• He lists which readings are found in major translations (ESV, HCSB, KJV, NAB, NASB, NEB, NET, NIV, NJB, NKJV, NLT, NRSV, REB, RSV, and TNIV).
• He also lists which readings show up as alternatives in the notes of translations.
• In places, he also comments on the readings in the GNT-TEV, RV, Goodspeed, Moffat, Phillips, and Williams translations.
• He then gives at least a paragraph long explanation (sometimes much longer) discussing the relative merits of the different readings.

He also has an extensive introduction (which is an introduction to text criticism), a glossary, a number of useful appendices, and a bibliography.

This is such a useful work that I hope it is widely used and consulted.  With this work, even a non-Greek reader can meaningfully understand the different textual variants, can decipher footnotes in Bible translations, and can receive an excellent overview of the textual issues with the Greek Testament.  Perhaps its only drawback is that the book is quite large – the size of a large history book.

If you own Comfort’s book, you can be your own critic.  Or, alternatively, you can justify the readings of your favorite diplomatic text.  I recommend it.

Judge me

In Psalm 26:1, David asks God to judge שפטני him.

In Psalm 143:2, David asks God not to enter into judgment במשפט with him.

The tension between these two requests has been the source of interesting exegesis, (e.g., see Rashi and Midrash Tehillim; see also Augustine on Psalms).   Those who argue for translations which use different root words in Latin (judicare, vindicare) have missed the tension entirely.

Wright says “Jews” keeping him from Obama

From AP:

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) -- President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is blaming "them Jews" for keeping him from speaking to the president.  Wright, the former pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, said he hasn't spoken to Obama since he became president.

"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office," Wright told the Daily Press of Newport News following a Tuesday night sermon at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference.  "They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

Obama was a longtime member of the church but resigned from it and cut ties with Wright after videos surfaced during the presidential campaign showing Wright's sometimes provocative sermons. Wright's incendiary comment included shouting "God damn America" and accusing the government of creating AIDS.

Update:  If you want to hear the recording of Wright’s comments, click here (it is less than two minutes long.)