Was the Bible Translated Correctly?

PIKESVILLE, Maryland — Unfortunately, there are many instances of well-meaning, intelligent people misinterpreting the Bible. Sometimes, they did it intentionally to teach a lesson, and sometimes, they got it wrong. I will give two examples of each.

An example of the first kind is that the Hebrew word nefesh in the Torah means a person. Later, post-biblical Hebrew also defined the word “soul,” but this is not the meaning in the Torah. Nefesh occurs 754 times in the Torah. The first four times it describes animals: Genesis 1:20 sea life, Genesis 1:21 great sea life, Genesis 1:24 land creatures, Genesis 1:30 birds and land creatures. Later, Genesis 2:7 describes people.

The biblical term always denotes physical life, as in Genesis 2:7 when it states, “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living nefesh,” meaning a living being. The word never implies a soul, a concept not mentioned in the Torah.

Some rabbis, knowing this, nevertheless interpret some verses containing nefesh as soul in sermons to teach people how to behave. They should train themselves not even to think evil thoughts about other people.

Another example is the word ger. In the Torah, the term means “stranger,” a non-Israelite. It appears 36 times, to emphasize its importance, where it tells us to treat non-Jews, who are also like us, children of God, as we want them to treat us. The decree is articulated in many ways: “You shall not wrong nor oppress the stranger, remember you were strangers in the Land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20). “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens” (Leviticus19:34). Also, Deuteronomy 10:19, 23:8, and dozens more.

However, when Jews began to convert non-Jews to Judaism, and our ancestors feared that Jews who were born Jewish might not treat new Jews as fellow Jews, they used the term ger to refer to a proselyte and said that the Torah tells us 36 times to love the proselyte.

There is no mention of a need for conversion or even any ceremony in the Torah for non-Jews to join the Jewish people. Jews began accepting converts to Judaism only around the 2nd century BCE, when the Hasmonean leaders converted some conquered people. The apocryphal book Judith, written around that time, portrays a non-Jew becoming circumcised to be Jewish.

The following are two examples where the translator may have misunderstood the Bible.

Rashi, Maimonides, and I interpret the Torah introduction differently from how most commentators translate it. The often-appearing translation from the Hebrew is two sentences: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was unformed, and the spirit of God hovered over the water.”

The three of us and others see the introduction as a single sentence: “When God began to create the heaven and the earth, the earth was unformed, and God’s spirit hovered over the water.”

Maimonides notes that it is possible to read this first verse as Aristotle does. Before God began to create, matter existed, and although God made new things, He formed them from preexisting matter. I agree with Maimonides that this possibility exists, but I translate the final clause differently.

The Hebrew is ruach Elohim, which is generally translated as the spirit of God (hovered over the water), which makes no sense to me. I recognized that ancient Israelites and non-Israelites used el to mean “powerful” and applied it to designate their god. I think the plural form Elohim was used by Jews to denote the Jewish concept of God because, as the plural suggests, the Jewish idea of God is that He is more potent than the idols.

I also noticed that Elohim is used in the Torah to indicate God and powerful human figures such as judges and brilliant people, as in Genesis 6:2, Exodus 21:6, 22:8-9, I Samuel 2:25, Psalm 82:6, and elsewhere. Therefore, I translate the final clause in the first sentence as, “and a mighty wind blew over water.”

When I graduated with a Ph.D. from Saint Mary’s Seminary and University, I already had at least some familiarity with six languages. I had also spent two years in high school learning Latin, so I decided to take a course in Greek at the University. During the first day of the class, which taught Greek using the New Testament book John, I noticed a massive mistake in the translation in the first sentence.

The first sentence in John in Greek is “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.” In English, this translates to “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The term translated Word is λόγος, “logus” in English letters.

John was composed between 95 and 110 CE, when many early Christians still held on to some Jewish ideas. The translation to English was done later.

I knew Hebrew and Aramaic then and was writing my major works on the Onkelos Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible. I explained in my writing that the Aramaic translator did not like to portray God like a human and avoided doing this by using the Aramaic word memra, which means both “word” and “wisdom.” I also knew a few words in Greek before I started this course, and knew that the Greek “logus” was just like memra, and had this dual meaning.

The translator of John made two mistakes.

First, the Hebrew Bible does not say that the beginning of creation was a single word. The rabbis point out that God created or formed the world with ten statements. A simple reading of Genesis 1 reveals this.

Second, not only does “logus” mean word, but also wisdom. Many Jewish sources indicate that God created or formed the world with wisdom, and the author of John may have been reflecting their ancient idea, which his translator did not realize.

The Aramaic translation of Genesis 1:1, Targum Neophyti, is a paraphrased version of the Hebrew Bible in Aramaic. It translates Genesis 1:1 as: “From the beginning with wisdom, the memra (word and wisdom) of the Lord created and made the heavens and the earth.”

Proverbs 8:22-31 also portrays God creating or forming the world with wisdom. Wisdom is personified, existing before creation and participating in making the heavens and earth. This idea is also in other wisdom literature, such as Psalm 104:24 and The Wisdom of Solomon.

Thus, we may have two mistranslations of the Bible — one Jewish and one non-Jewish — and there are many more.

We must pay close attention to what we read and be prepared to question what seems wrong. This is how we improve ourselves and help others.

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Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps and the author of more than 50 books.