21st Century Bible Hebrew -- the last chapter

After three and a half years of posts, there are gaps in this grammar presentation. As you go forward in your studies, you will find them. But what’s more important, you are going to have vocabulary problems.

Dictionaries will not help. Dictionaries are based on their sources, unless they are the OED; the OED foundation does basic research into the use of English language. There’s no OED for Biblical Hebrew.

Most dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew are ultimately based on Gesenius. There are revised editions of Gesenius, but they haven’t incorporated 21^st century grammar, and they are far too heavily invested in the horrible Septuagint.

I have a study of Septuagint and Biblical Hebrew on my blog called “Lost in Translation”. It will show you both examples and theory (in the scientific sense as a tested hypothesis) on why the Septuagint is horrible. Most translations owe far too much to the horrible Septuagint.  That’s why learning Biblical Hebrew in its 21^st century description is so important.

The mantra on my blog is “translation is not meaning” and it should be your mantra as well.

But there’s another part to the mantra: context is king. Most translations ignore the context of the vocabulary of Torah, not only in terms of the text, but also in terms of the culture. The first law of Sapir Whorf Linguistic Theory is that languages use words to express the culture, and cultures behave in accordance with their understanding of their own language. (It’s sort of the same thing as the Einsteinian “Space-time tells matter how to move; matter tells space-time how to curve”.)

So your translation mistranslates a lot of words because the translator didn’t understand their role in Jewish culture. I discussed this a long time ago when I ranted about melakhah.

I discuss the cultural meanings of words such as eved, tameh, and tahor on my blog. I go into greater detail in my book Narrating the Torah, which brings together everything I have learned in a period of more than 40 years up to the High Holy Days that begin the Jewish calendar year 5781. I will not be posting the contents of Narrating online.

So you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. A dictionary is useful to you only as a crutch if you won’t spend the time studying Torah in its cultural setting. But it’s hard to understand that culture unless you go on to study Mishnah and Gemara (Talmud). The hard place is that you won’t get much out of Mishnah unless you know Torah thoroughly. Rabbi Yehudah ben Tema is quoted in Mishnah Pirkey Avot 5:21 as saying, “At five years of age the study of Scripture; At ten the study of Mishnah; At thirteen subject to the commandments; At fifteen the study of Talmud…” Jewish boys were immersed in Torah for five years; they studied it, they lived the culture. Only then were they ready to learn Mishnah. I’m slow, I had to go over Torah something like 20 times before I got much out of Mishnah.

You have to decide for yourself whether you want a deep understanding of Torah. I highly recommend that you read my Fact-Checking blog to see what kind of urban legends have arisen out of not understanding Torah deeply. It covers issues I don’t address here, including what I have learned about the relationship between Jewish and Samaritan scripture (in two places).

When you finish, you should understand more about what is wrong with translations of, commentaries on, and interpretations of Torah. It will give you more time to decide how far you want to go studying Jewish scripture. And that decision is totally up to you. To help you make it, look at the resource links, particularly Sefaria. You may find it inspiring.

Next week I'll post an intro to a new topic which I will post about on Tuesdays. If you thought this stuff was insane, you ain't seen nothing yet!