Hebrew-English Bible

[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

SheitlQueen Wrote:intentionally patterned after the KJV: The first JPS translation was completed in 1917 ... literary form was consciously based on that of the King James Version;

There was some toning down of the Messianic prophecies from the proper AV expression.

In later translations Jewish Bibles from JPS and others did this to a greater degree, more deliberately. Also later JPS did new translations with many errors of words and inferior style and form. Even among Jewish translations the later JPS editions are decidedly inferior.

The Ben Hayim is the general main source of the Authorized Version. However, not 100%, that is a common error in English Bible literature, since in some cases the AV took the proper minority reading that was not the Ben Hayim text, including two specially important cases, Joshua 21:36-37 and Psalm 22:16. Actually Joshua 21 was in the majority of Masoretic Text manuscripts but had been referenced only in a margin note in the Ben Hayim. Also the qere/ketiv decisions were done individually, verse by verse, in the AV.

The Christian Hebraist movement was very strong and informed in that era. The number of grammarians and writers and commentaries, Jewish and Christian, was large, editions of the Masoretic Text were plentiful. The learned men of the AV went over every single verse individually, with multiple study and checking committees, to make the proper, providential decisions.

The phenomenon of today, lexicon scholars, was unknown. The concept of that day was to read, study, speak and converse fluently in the Biblical languages. Not an atomistic grammarian approach. This distinction is especially noticeable in the NT language mastery, where the learned men of Cambridge would have public debates directly in Biblical Greek. Remember, publish and perish on arcane topics was unknown, the classics and early church writers were appreciated, they worked in an extremely strong and supportive univerisity environment, the best in the world, and there was not a lot of movie and TV diversion away from reading Cyrprian, Kimchi and the word of God.

The common technical error in the literature of asserting the AV is 100% based on the Ben Hayim has reasons and cautions on both ends. Some AV defenders want to make the AV only an uninspired derivative text from the inspired Hebrew, thus they want one particular Hebrew text to lift up. Similar to what is done with the Scrivener Greek NT. And an AV opponent, James Price, wanted to accuse the AV of "emendations" whenever it departed from the Ben Hayim text. Which is a scholastic absurdity that led to calling the inclusion of the majority MT reading of Joshua 21:36-37 an "emendation".

Shalom,
Steven Avery