Controversies in translations (and the source) of Torah

(Two Revelations and two humanly written compendiums of them)

 

 

Abstract.  Is the most ancient available source of Torah (the Masoretic text) really an exact copy of the God's text true up to a word, or it is a humanly written compendium of the God's original? The answer is NO. What we have available now is a humanly written compendium. This brief analyzes a few controversies in the available translations of the Torah.  


This brief deals with three types of sloppiness in translations of the oldest available Torah script:

 

1.     Logical mistakes;

2.     Differences of sense in various translations;

3.     Obvious contradictions with the hard science.

 

In the time when this writing began (about 2014), I was not yet familiar with a professional analysis of Torah by a linguist of the ancient Hebrew and historian Richard Elliott Friedman in his book "Who wrote the Bible". In it the author traces down to the specific ancient scribes which wrote preliminary parts and versions of the Five books of Moses, and he figured out the editor which compiled them into what has reached us now as the Masoretic scroll of Torah. The author figured out multiple logical and linguistic controversies of that final work, whose human origin is so obvious for him, that a question whether that text up to a word belongs to God literally was not even posed: the text is humanly written. The divinity and spiritual value of Torah comes from the fact that it was written using the then available ancient scripts coming from disciples of Moses, who received the Revelation from God directly, and from the fact that compilation and further writing was made by Prophets, i.e. the prominent humans inspired by God thus conveying His message[3].


Unlike the fundamental study of Friedman whose goal was to decompose and reveal the entire process of emergence of Torah, the goal of this outline was simpler: to figure out just a few controversies in Torah whose mere presence indicates a human factor in our copies of Torah which therefore are not the exact up to a word source of God – the ultimate Author and Creator of the Universe.


This outline therefore is still useful because it analyzes simple logical and physical controversies understood by every lay reader (instead of the deep linguistic analysis of the entire Torah text and structure made by Friedman).

 

I have examined copies of Torah…

 

In English:

 

In Russian: the Evangelical edition translated from English (a book); and…

 

In Esperanto (a book translated from the ancient Hebrew directly by the inventor of Esperanto Dr. L. Zamenhof).

 

The implications of this analysis make serious impact on the Orthodox Judaism, because the Orthodox Judaism claims that the available script of Torah is a true and exact copy of the God's oral presentation to Moses including the content of the first set of the stone tablets written by God.

 

Below follow the examples of the above mentioned three types of controversies.

 

1. An example of a logical mistakes

 

Already the very first phrase of Genesis in Complete Tanah (CT) when honestly translated into English by Chabad appears to be unfinished:

1 In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth.             

.  .  .  .  .  .  ?

2  Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.

 
I knew that this incompleteness had puzzled the scholars for quite a long, however typically the translators smoothened this awkwardness. It's perhaps the first time when Chabad decided to not hide this awkwardness: the puzzle which suggests that a piece of the original text could be even missed[2].

 

In Exodus 14, verses 21 and 22 are mutually exclusive. 

21   ... He turned the sea to damp land with a strong wind blowing all night... and yet ... the water split?

 

Which water on the damp land, if all water was moved away with a strong wind during all night?

22  ... Israelids came within the sea on dry land ... yet the water was a wall for them on their right and left.

 

However, water was moved away with a strong wind during all night and with perhaps a super low tide.

 

The same inconsistency is found also in Esperanto and Russian translations...


In "Who wrote the Bible" Friedman brought numerous examples of similar logical contradictions in Torah, and explained how they appeared in the final compilation by Ezra who merged two different sources. Yet again, in this outline our goal is only to demonstrate a few glitches that nobody expects in the source as ultimate as that of God. 

 

2. Differences of sense in various translations

 

(a) There are a few translation inconsistencies in Torah which distorted the God's message and were wrongly understood for centuries. Even now, if we look into recent English Stone Edition of Torah (still distributed by rabbis): One of the Ten Commandments is worded "You shall not KILL..." (Stone) rather than "You shall not MURDER" (CT, Exodus, 20:13) – the true meaning. In Russian there are no separate words for these notions (though they surely may be accurately expressed in several words), however in English such words do exist, meaning quite different things. How many millions of Jews (and Christians) have been confused by such a gross inaccuracy as KILL vs MURDER? The inaccuracy having such a lot of consequences on what one must not do: not to (legitimately) KILL or not to MURDER? But wait... 



(b) Take a look at this article of Dennis Prager (the head of the Torah University): http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/the-worst-sin/ .

Here is another of the Ten Commandments (!) which was grossly mistranslated and remains unfixed up to this very moment in Jewish editions of Torah! 

It is not "You shall not take the name of Hashem, your God, in vain, ..." (Exodus 20:7). Not only is here the English expression "in vain" inaccurate (as showed below), but even a choice from the two meanings of "in vain" is wrong too! According to Webster dictionary, the expression "in vain" may mean...

 

  1. Without success or good result,
  2. In an irreverent or blasphemous manner.

 

The meaning (2) would be closer to the Hebrew source, however the commentary in the Stone edition gave the meaning (1) as an explanation, and the Russian version directly spells the verse 20:7 with the wrong word "íàïðàñíî" according to (1). The mistaken interpretation is replicated.


However, the expression "in vain" is not what was meant in the source:


"You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God ... "


(i.e. to not commit evil in the name of God) – corrected in the New International Version (NIV).

 

"You must not commit evil in My name, because I will never pardon it" – the translation by Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi (in his lectures on Torah and Science).  


What a difference!

Why am I so sure that Prager and NIV and Mizrachi are right (even though I do not know a word of Ancient Hebrew)?

I checked the Esperanto version, translated by the Master – Lazar Zamenhof himself, who did know well the ancient Hebrew, and who translated Tanach directly from the ancient Hebrew into Esperanto (the language engineered and popularized by him). Now look how Zamenhof translated this Commandment:

Ne malbonuzu la nomon de Eternulo ...     

 

In English, there are only two close meanings of this Esperanto phrase:


Do not use for evil the name of the Eternal one...     or

Do not abuse the name of the Eternal one.

In Russian the only meaning of this Esperanto phrase is:

 

Íå çëîóïîòðåáëÿé èìåíåì Òîãî êòî âå÷åí...

 

Both Esperanto meanings are close to what in NIV and what Prager brought! Yet the wrong translation "… in vain" has become so deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition, that Jews take special care to not mention the name of God in vain omitting or deliberately confusing one letter in this word in writing. Such a misrepresentation of the God's intent in this Commandment is an evil on its own.   

 

 

(c) Here is one more example of gross mistranslation. This example is particularly important in the contemporary discourse about the following issue: at which stage of pregnancy the fruit of the pregnancy becomes a soulful human being whose life is protected by the Constitution of the US?

 

The only verses in Tanah addressing this issue are Exodus, 21, 22-25. However, they are mistranslated so badly, that deciphering of their meaning comes only after Dennis Prager examines the ancient Greek translation of the Bible called the Septuagint – see the full article here.

 

 

3. Contradiction with the hard science.

 

Here we are going to discuss not the miracles in Torah (i.e. not the deliberate violations of the laws of physics committed by God), but the statements (as though by God himself) about the Physical Universe created by God. There are only a few such statements in Torah (mostly in Genesis), and we are to analyze them as they appear in translations.  

 

In Genesis (Stone) we read that God created the sky as a firmament (!) (1:14) containing all celestial luminaries placed on the (spherical?) surface of the firmament where the big one (Sun) was intended to rule the day, and the smaller one (Moon) – the night. This statement presumes that such a heaven is something thin and light, spinning around the resting Earth. (The idea of the resting Earth represents the so-called geocentric view endorsed and enforced by Christian Church for millennia. The scientifically more accurate heliocentric view was considered a heresy by the Church, and the Church had persecuted it with utmost medieval cruelty).  

 

The idea of a thin firmament later reappeared in another book of Torah describing a battle of Joshua, which asked God to stop Sun (!) (Joshua 10:13) in order that Joshua had enough time to complete the battle, and as though God granted that wish (why not, if the Heaven is something thin and light with a Sun fixed to it).   

 

The same pattern later emerges in Isaiah 40:22:

It is He Who sits on circumference of the Earth, with its inhabitants like grasshoppers; Who spreads the heaven like a thin curtain, and stretches them like a tent to dwell in.

 

An idea of geocentric Universe and a perception of the Universe as though a firmament surrounding the Earth, are merely misconception of ancient humans. The fact that these ideas appear in Torah as though the statements of God only indicates that the available copy of Torah was written by humans.    

 

Another contradiction with the hard knowledge concerns the concept of days ruled by the spinning luminaries on the Heaven. Days on the Earth are ruled by luminaries (Sun and stars) only if a beholder rests on the surface of Earth – and rests in the zone of middle latitudes only! Near the North or South poles the concept of a day controlled by Sun does not apply, just as it doesn't when a beholder moves along Earth in a vessel, or flies over the Earth in a plane, or in a satellite, or travels to the Moon.

 

In the contemporary writings (not in Torah!) rabbis did acknowledge and modify this controversy of the Torah's concept of days (in order to determine when to celebrate Shabbat while being in Cosmos or at Earth poles).

 

Also, in the CT version of Genesis the editors (finally!) replaced the embarrassing terms "firmament" (in Stone) or "vault" (in NIV) with much more appropriate expression the "expanse of the heaven". They made this correction into the translation at their will, as though forgetting that for millennia the Hebrew word "rakia" had been understood as "firmament" rather than "expanse of the heaven". And this correction alone is merely cosmetic, leaving the geocentric view or the concept of what controls days still wrong (as proper to the ancient humans). This correction does not make the text of Torah divinely perfect anyway.

 

According to Genesis, the creation of the Universe took merely 6 days (having "mornings" and "evenings" as usual) – even though the Earth and Sun "controlling the days and nights" were not yet created. What was the meaning and length of those God's days of creation? Torah does not spell it out, thus opening an opportunity at least here to interpret those God's days more realistically: possibly as eons, as billions of years. Yet some contemporary rabbis keep claiming as though the God's days of creation were exactly like the contemporary Earth days 24 hours long having mornings and evenings!      

 

Moreover, disregarding the duration of "days of creation", Genesis claims that the creation of the vegetation on Earth happened on the Day Three (prior to creation of the Sun and Heavens on the Day Four!) – a contradiction to the facts of the hard science: the vegetation lives only due to sunlight and photosynthesis.  

 

One more controversy is in that Genesis is written in third person as though by a writer describing what God had done, while the other books of Torah contain direct speech of God in first person typically ending with the formula "I am Lord, your God". Why? (Friedman explained that it was a result of merging of two sources).

 

 

What is there in the available source in Hebrew: The Masoretic scroll?

 

So far, we analyzed a few controversial samples in various translations of Torah into national languages. May it be that those controversies are introduced by translators, while the Masoretic source in ancient Hebrew is free of them?

 

The humanity has not found yet those Stone Tablets (or whichever kind of the Miracle Plates) given by God to Moses and containing His original text. The best approximation of the God's original which had reached us is the Masoretic Scroll dated about 1000 years after Moses (though believed to be copied scrupulously letter by letter, and passed in oral form from generation to generation). Thus we deal with what we have, however what we have (the Masoretic scroll), has problems outlined above, alas.

 

I asked a specialist in ancient Hebrew, Dr. Norman Berdichevsky, and he explained that the Masoretic Text uses about 8000 words of the Ancient Hebrew. Of those 8000, the meaning of near 1000 words is lost, so all the translators must do some guess work in order to produce their translation. To my question if it is possible to reconsider the existing translations, to make some better guesses, and to finally obtain a new translation free of the controversies with Physics and logic outlined above, his reply was a firm NO. Translators end up with controversies in Physics and logic because those controversies are present in the available source itself, which suggests that this available source is a human narration or compendium written down by "students": first – by Moses listening the lecture of God directly, and the by disciples of Moses. Therefore, we have merely a compendium written down and re-written by students rather than the master manuscript of the Professor which gave that exclusive one-time lecture to Moses. 

 

Traditionally, it is only the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) which is believed to represent directly and literally Divine text ever passed down to the humanity. We do not have any direct texts from God in order to compare them and unmistakably recognize the ultimate level of God's style, depth, and accuracy. We can only guess what that ultimately high level of a God writing could possibly be judging by a few best human works, say in mathematics and hard science. God's works must be incomparably better than that indeed.  

 

Given such a frame, Torah clearly looks like a reflection of a mindset and problems of ancient humans rather than the text by God Himself. Indeed, Torah is inspired by God in the sense that God inspired and suggested the humans who had written Torah down. God triggered writing of Torah, so that Torah does contain His deep moral and philosophical lessons and commandments to humanity (among other things). However, the language style, the settings, and even the plot of miracles as though performed by God, look as a reflection of the primitive life concerns and habits of the ancient peoples, rather than a lecture of the Ultimate Teacher for all times.  

  

Two Revelations and two humanly written compendiums of them

 

Even these few examples above demonstrate that the only available ancient copy of Torah (the Masoretic text) …

 

·        Is ambiguous for translation, being translated differently by different scholars;

·        Contains a few statements about the Physical world contradicting the well verified facts of the hard science. 

 

Both these problems are not new, being apparent already for several centuries – yet remained ignored by the rabbinic community up to this very moment. Here are a few possible reasons…  

 

Typically, the orthodox rabbis believing that the available copy of Torah represents the true words of God know no science and are not concerned at all about disagreements with the hard science. Moreover, for them the science is merely a nuisance, which only deflects the Jewry from learning and believing Torah as the ultimate knowledge. Therefore, they ignore the science, and never attempt to discuss anything outside the ivory tower of their own community.

 

However there exist a few orthodox rabbis which do pay some attention to science in attempts to prove for themselves and for others as though there are no contradictions at all between the ancient copy of Torah and the hard science, because… 

 

Because, because… Wherever we see any such contradictions, they are merely mistakes and misconceptions of the Science! (After all, hadn't the science been mistaken[1] many times in the past?) In particular, they vehemently insist as though God's days of creation lasted literally 24 hours as of today! They denounce everything in science which clearly indicates that God's days stood for billions of years!


However, putting aside the "speculative" age of the very remote parts of the Universe, those rabbis are ignorant even about the geological age of something right here as tangible as our Earth (about 4.5-billion-year-old) and the Solar system: the age traceable and verifiable by numerous independent scientific methods.


In their attempts to discredit the science, rabbis and Christian priests who insist on 6000 years since the biblical Creation claim that the evolution concept of Darwin is wrong. In doing so they erroneously equate the Darwin's evolution of species (lasting billions of years) with the scientifically determined age of the Earth and Solar system in billions of years. The Darwin's theory of unaided evolution of species (i.e. without any intervention of the Designer) is really unsubstantiated and wrong. Yet Darwin's ideas have nothing to do with the methods assessing the age of Earth and Solar system, reliably determined in the order of billions of years. 

 

So much obsessed with the issue of the age of Creation, rabbis are silent about even more bizarre ideas slipped into Torah such as the firmament, or the days controlled by Sun. All such oddities could not be passed down by God Himself. Therefore, a claim as though the currently available copy of Torah represents the literal source of God is indefensible.  

 

Indeed, we would wish to have the genuine scripture of God. Now we need it more than ever: particularly in these dark times. However so far it is not available and we must honestly acknowledge this fact. We must merely follow the available compendium of Torah, doing our best in order to extract and follow the original God's message and intent. That was exactly the way recommended by some great spiritual minds of the past[3] (quoted below), which realized that we have only humanly made compendium of God's message.  

 

Pay a particular attention to this famous quote by a great scientist Eugene Wigner (to which we will return in the end of this section):

 

... It is not at all natural that "laws of nature" exist, much less that man is able to discover them... The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.

      

A similar idea was expressed also by Albert Einstein:

 

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.


Louis Pasteur too said that Science brings men nearer to God. ­


For Isaac Newton, which considered himself a scholar of Scripture and a humble student learning the God's creation, such controversies as the Firmament or Geocentric concepts in Genesis surely flew into the face. Yet Newton wrote the following:


I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.


"Written by those who were inspired" by God, rather than by God literally – and that's an unavoidable conclusion of this essay.

 

Following this line of reasoning, the Science must be viewed as an always evolving Revelation of God's wisdom embedded into His Creation. The science therefore is a Revelation and manifestation of God's glory and His benevolence to us. Here is why.

 

The science is possible only because God created the Universe with His laws embedded into the Creation; embedded in such a way, that the Creation is running in accordance with those laws, while He benevolently made those laws knowable for us (see again the quote of Wigner). The humans therefore keep learning those laws and writing them down as a human compendium (the books of Science) of the God's Revelation. And Torah too is a human compendium revealed by God to Moses and the Prophets after him.

 

We have therefore the two God's Revelations, Torah and Science: both in a form of humanly written compendiums – thus deemed to contain some flaws. However, due to the very nature of the scientific method, the Science is the hardest and repeatedly verified knowledge that we have ever had. And the Science is among the most useful human endeavors ever. Therefore, it makes no sense to discredit one verifiable compendium of God's Revelation (the Science) in order to "save the face" of another unverifiable compendium of God's Revelation (Torah).

 

At this late time, it's near impossible to offer a solution for rabbis preferring to keep the belief in authenticity of the available copy of Torah to God's message up to every word. "If they like it, they can keep it" as their personal belief (despite the puzzle). However, every their lecture in public with the claims as though the age of the Universe falls into 6000 years, or dinosaurs walked on Earth about 4000 years ago (before the Deluge), is embarrassing. In the 21st century such lectures can only discredit Judaism and the religious community, rather than recruit more believers.

 

One way of dealing with the discrepancies in Science and Torah is to follow the examples of rabbinic scholars which modified and expended the Talmudic concept of day-counting so that it would agree with contemporary knowledge and time measurement. The same modifications in Talmud may and must be done in respect to all its conflicts with the hard science. The spiritual ground for such modifications is in that science in itself is a Revelation from God no less than Torah.
 

 

Appendix

Outline of interrelations between science and religion in the past and present

 

During early science nobody questioned the Biblical creation scenario. It was presumed that God created this physical world and enacted His laws governing it. Moreover, He bestowed the man an ability to learn (some of) His natural laws – and that was what scientists were doing.

At that early stage, the geocentric view was dominant, and the then science was in no conflict with the Scripture.

However, since the Renaissance and later, not only did the newly discovered fundamental laws of Physics (the celestial mechanics in particular) proved the geocentric view wrong, but those laws also created an illusion as though the then known physical world had always existed (thus being never created). The Darwin's evolution concept emerged in the time when the enormous complexity of life was not yet known at all. That is why the atheism dominated the science of that period.

It was only in the modern time, when the advanced science has made the three most fundamental discoveries that the old paradigm has changed. These discoveries are…


1) The Universe did have a moment of origin – the Big Bang (rather than the Universe always existed);

2) Since the Big Bang the Universe evolved according to extremely fine-tuned laws of Physics and in the specifically ordered stages, which led to this very exceptional kind of reality – our Solar system and Earth beneficial for life. The Universe could have been dramatically different with slightest variation of the fundamental physical constants.

3) An enormous complexity and functionality of a living cell (much more so for the multi-cell life, and even more so for the intelligent soulful life) – all that may be honestly classified only as a creation by an Intelligent Designer, rather than a result of some unaided natural process.  
  

Therefore, the science has made a full circle returning to the initial concept – emergence of the physical world in an act of creation by a Creator, further governed by physical laws.

 

The Science (a part of the World of Ideas or Platonic Universe) happened to be one of the most powerful Revelations of God and His glory: the hardest and verifiable Revelation, the most beneficial for the humanity ever. Moreover…

 

There is a very special part of the Platonic Universe – mathematics.  Mathematics is not connected to the Physical world (though it is used to model it). Mathematics cannot be created. Mathematics has its own eternal existence no matter if any intelligent being learns or discovers it step by step. Mathematics is as eternal as God, and therefore mathematics is perhaps one of many appearance of God.  
 

Alexander Gofen

[1] Science had made mistakes in the past, and science may err in the present (though only at the periphery of knowledge and at the edge of technology). Also, parts of the science may happen to be corrupted and agenda-driven. It suffices to mention the so called "global warming", militant atheism, or the Darwin evolution as though the only explanation of the life. However the science is never totalitarian, so that the truth finally makes its way and prevails. What first was controversial and in a gray zone, it later becomes the clear cut knowledge: becomes the hard science to be never refuted in the future. Such are the examples of controversies in Torah analyzed here: now they all belong to the hard well verified science. 

[2] Here is a guess what was possibly missed after the Genesis verse 1 in the Masoretic copy. What could already exist prior and during creation of the physical world by God?

In philosophy since ancient times it was understood that the "universe of ideas" (or Platonic universe), and some kind of a Mind hosting them and operating with them, ought to exist disregarding the physical universe. All our abstractions, entire mathematics, theoretical science, literary texts, and musics all belong to Platonic universe. And the only Mind containing it all which could exist prior to the Creation ought to be God indeed.

That is our reasonable guess as to what was possibly missed after the verse 1 in Genesis (in the Masoretic copy).   

Now take a look at this quote familiar to many:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made....

Isn't the above paragraph an exact depiction of what we had just independently guessed as a supposedly missed part in Genesis? The Word stands for the Ideas contained in the Mind of God prior to His Creation, and the Word was the only reality before the Creation.

Well, this quote appears as the beginning of .... the Gospel of John:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1&version=NIV

Perhaps in the time when the Gospel of John was written, the author had in possession a copy of Torah more accurate than the Masoretic scroll...     
     
[3]   It's not a question "Who inspired the Bible", or "Who revealed the Bible". (God indeed). The question was only which human being composed it (i.e. received it and put on parchment).


600 years ago the Jewish scholar Joseph ben Eliezer Bonfils disagreed with the verse as though Moses wrote Torah: "Moses did not write this". And he explained:


...insofar as we are to believe in the received words and in the words of of prophecy, what is it to me if Moses wrote it or if another prophet wrote it – since the words of all of them are truth and through prophecy.