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Torah: The Five Books of Moses PDF

638 Pages·2001·5.43 MB·English
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<< Chapter >> Home | TOC PREFACE quickly became apparent. It is, however, the hope of all those who have had a share in the work that the translation of the other two parts of the Holy Scriptures—the Prophets and the Writings—will be completed within a reasonable period of time and that the results of our labors will find favor with God and man. The Jewish Publication Society of America „"΢˙ ‰�˘‰ ˘‡¯ ·¯Ú September 28, 1962 x The Tor ah ä ø å ú the five books of moses Electronic edition of a new JPS translation of the holy scriptures according to the Masoretic text VARDA BOOKS skokie, illinois, usa 5762 / 2001 COPYRIGHT © 2001 BY VARDA BOOKS COPYRIGHT © 1962 BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA THIRD EDITION © 1992 BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY first paperback edition 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. Designed and typeset by VARDA Graphics, Inc., Skokie, Illinois Print edition, which served as a basis for this ebook, has been catalogued thus: Library of Congress Catalog Card information Bible. O.T. Pentateuch. English. Jewish Publication Society. 1963, 1992. The Torah: the five books of Moses. 3d ed. ISBN 0-8276-0015-1 A new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text. First section. BS1223 1963 222'.1'052 62-12948 New ISBN 1-59045-501-0 Library PDF << Chapter >> Home | TOC PREFACE quickly became apparent. It is, however, the hope of all those who have had a share in the work that the translation of the other two parts of the Holy Scriptures—the Prophets and the Writings—will be completed within a reasonable period of time and that the results of our labors will find favor with God and man. The Jewish Publication Society of America „"΢˙ ‰�˘‰ ˘‡¯ ·¯Ú September 28, 1962 x << Chapter >> Home | TOC preface The Jewish Publication Society of America produced its first translation of the Bible in 1917. It was quickly accepted by English-speaking Jews the world over; it is still in use and will no doubt continue to be widely favored. Nevertheless, the need for a new translation has been obvious for years. For one thing, it is possible—and therefore nec- essary—to improve substantially on earlier versions in rendering both the shades of meaning of words and expressions and the force of grammatical forms and constructions. This can be done partly with the help of neglected insights of ancient and medieval Jewish scholarship, and partly by utilizing the new knowledge of the ancient, as well as of the more recent, Near East. For significant advances have been made during the past half century in biblical archaeology and in the re­ covery of the languages and civilizations of the peoples among whom the Israelites lived and whose modes of living and thinking they largely shared. In accuracy alone we believe this translation has improved on the first JPS translation in literally hundreds of passages. v << Chapter >> Home | TOC PREFACE Secondly, because the Bible is an eternal book, it must be made intelligible to every generation. The King James Version, upon which almost all English trans­ lations of the Bible have hitherto been based, had an archaic flavor even for its readers in the year 1611, when it was first published. Moreover, it rendered the He­ brew to a considerable extent word for word rather than idiomatically, a procedure which nearly always re­ sults in quaintness or awkwardness and not infre­ quently in obscurity. A translation which is stilted where the original is natural, heavy where the original is graceful, or obscure where the original is perfectly intelligible, is the very opposite of faithful. These were the primary reasons why the Trustees and the Publication Committee of the Jewish Publi­ cation Society decided to have a new translation pre­ pared. Dr. Harry M. Orlinsky, Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, who had urged this undertaking upon the Society, was asked to serve as editor-in-chief. To serve with him as fellow editors, the Society invited two eminent schol­ ars: Dr. H. L. Ginsberg, Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Dr. Ephraim A. Speiser, head of the Department of Semitic and Oriental Lan­ guages at the University of Pennsylvania. The Society further associated with them three learned rabbis fa­ miliar with the use of the Bible in the synagogue and vi << Chapter >> Home | TOC PREFACE home: Rabbis Max Arzt, Bernard J. Bamberger, and Harry Freedman, belonging to the three sections of or­ ganized Jewish religious life. Subsequently, Dr. Freed­ man left the United States to assume a rabbinic post in Australia; but, despite his inability to attend sessions, he has participated actively in the committee's work. Dr. Solomon Grayzel, editor of the Jewish Publication Society, served as secretary of the committee. Messrs. Louis E. Levinthal, Sol Satinsky, Edwin Wolf, 2nd, and Lesser Zussman, by virtue of their po­ sitions in the Society, participated in the solution of the committee's problems. The committee carried on its work through meet­ ings and correspondence. Dr. Orlinsky prepared a draft translation which was circulated among the seven working members, each of whom made comments and suggested changes. These were in turn circulated among the members who then, at periodic meetings, arrived at decisions by majority vote. While the committee profited much from the work of previous translators, the present rendering is not a revision, but essentially a new translation. A few of its characteristics may be noted. The committee un­ dertook faithfully to follow the traditional (masoretic) text. There were certain points, however, at which footnotes appeared necessary: 1) where the committee had to admit that it did not understand a word or a vii << Chapter >> Home | TOC PREFACE passage; 2) where an alternative rendering was possible; 3) where an old rendering, no longer retained, was so well known that it would very likely be missed, in which case the traditional translation was given in the name of "others," usually as found in the Society's version of 1917; 4) where the understanding of a passage could be facilitated by reference to another passage elsewhere in the Bible; 5) where textual variants are to be found in some of the ancient manuscripts or versions of the Bible. Obsolete words and phrases were avoided; and He­ brew idioms were translated, in so far as possible, by means of their normal English equivalents. For the sec­ ond person singular, the modern "you" was used, even when referring to the Deity ("You"), rather than the archaic "thou" ("Thou"). A further obvious difference between this translation and most of the older ones may be noted in the rendering of the Hebrew particle waw, which is usually translated "and." The Hebrew Bible style demanded its frequent use. But in that style it had the force, not only of "and," but also of "how­ ever," "but," "yet," "when," and any number of such other words and particles, or of none at all that can be translated into English. Always to render it as "and" is to misrepresent the Hebrew rather than be faithful to it. Consequently, the committee translated the par­ ticle as the sense required, or left it untranslated. viii << Chapter >> Home | TOC PREFACE The chapter and verse divisions found in the printed Bible are indispensable as a system of precise reference, but they do not always coincide with the organic di­ visions of the text. The chapter divisions, whose origin is neither ancient nor Jewish but medieval Christian, sometimes join or separate the wrong paragraphs, sen­ tences, or even parts of sentences. The verse divisions, though considerably older and of Jewish origin, some­ times join together parts of different sentences or sep­ arate from each other parts of the same sentence. It is not surprising that Rav Saadia Gaon, the brilliant scholar who translated the Bible into Arabic in the tenth century, paid no attention to the chapter divi­ sions, since they did not exist in his day. More note­ worthy is the readiness with which he joined separate verses of the masoretic text (whose authority he did not question) into single sentences when the sense re­ quired it. Thus, in joining Gen. 7.24 and 8.1 into a single sentence, the present translation is merely following the example of Saadia. The attentive reader will dis­ cover other instances in which the translators have not hesitated to follow what they considered to be the log­ ical units of meaning even when they do not coincide with the conventional chapters and verses. These, how­ ever, are marked and numbered throughout. Neither the trustees of the Society nor the translators suspected that the task was of such magnitude as ix

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