21st Century Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:26-27, a shocking binyan mixup

Genesis 1:26-27

כו וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֔ים נַֽעֲשֶׂ֥ה אָדָ֛ם בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ וְיִרְדּוּ֩ בִדְגַ֨ת הַיָּ֜ם וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם וּבַבְּהֵמָה֙ וּבְכָל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וּבְכָל־הָרֶ֖מֶשׂ הָֽרֹמֵ֥שׂ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ:

כז וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ זָכָ֥ר וּנְקֵבָ֖ה בָּרָ֥א אֹתָֽם:

Translation: SEE NOTES

Vocabulary in this lesson:

נַעֲשֶׂה	SEE NOTES
אָדָם	Man, people
צֶלֶם	Image, form
דְמוּת	Likeness, similitude
יִרְדּוּ	They shall subjugate
דָג	fish
זָכָר	male
נְקֵבָה	female

Verse 26 above has been translated the same way for many centuries, and we don’t know who did it first.  The horrible Septuagint did it, for one thing. Later in Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b) Rabbi Yochanan said “whenever you’re told there’s a reference to polytheism in Torah, the answer is right next to it.” He was talking about verse 27 with its opening singular verb.

But the people using verse 26 to claim polytheism were committing a mistake that inexperienced translators easily make.

Biblical Hebrew spells and pronounces some words the same, when they have different grammatical categories.

For millennia, naaseh has been categorized as a qal 1^st plural imperfect.

But the same spelling is used for the nifal masculine singular progressive aspect of this verb.

When nifal is viewed as simply the passive of qal, it is far more likely for a translator to grab the qal and ignore the passive. But as I will show (Verse 2:1 will be another example), Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have “passives”, it has “agentless verbs”, each with a specific use.

Now that naaseh has been identified as a nifal, you can see that verse 26 parallels verse 9. Verse 9 has yiqavu, a nifal plural. Why a plural? Because the grammatical subject, maim, is grammatically plural.

Verse 26 has naaseh, which has a grammatical subject of adam, which is a masculine singular noun. 

There are other examples of this pattern in Exodus and Leviticus. I’m in the middle of rewriting Narrating the Torah and I’ll probably find examples in Numbers and Deuteronomy, now that I’m sensitive to it.

It’s no surprise to me that the Septuagint would make this mistake. The Aristeas letter that claims it was done by 72 rabbis, 6 from each tribe, is not only a forgery but a fraud. There were not 12 tribes in the 200s BCE. There were mostly four, the kohanim/Levites, the Judeans, and the two lineages among the Samaritans which are probably Efraim and Menasheh. Other things I’ve read in the last ten years lead me to think that Septuagint was a product of political hacks. I have an essay on that which I can let you read if you want.

Rabbi Yochanan lived around 200 CE.  That leaves about four centuries of experience with non-Jews (let alone enemies of the Jews) misunderstanding Jewish scripture and trying to get rabbis to “teach them the Torah while they stood on one leg”, in the phrase of a famous story.

By Rabbi Yochanan’s time, Biblical Hebrew had not been spoken for over 500 years and no grammars were left to point out what the agentless verbs really do. It’s also no surprise, therefore, that he wouldn’t come back with “you’re translating it wrong.”

This is why translations of Torah always miss the point. The same is true with Quran and probably other ancient literatures. But we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that translations really are the equivalents of the source document, and so the urban legend keeps getting passed along.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2020 All Rights Reserved