The Book of Hebrews in Greek Photo: Photo: nyello8/flickr CC:BY.
The language of the Bible and its use
Eva Pinthus looks at the languages and translation
All religious language is metaphor and symbolism. The Bible is a collection of stories originally orally transmitted over some 2,000 years. They tell of diverse experiences of many Semitic tribes living in what we now call loosely the Middle East. The Bible is neither a history nor a scientific book, though some incidents may well have occurred. People then as now reflect on what has happened to them and try to make sense of their experiences both good and bad. The stories reflected the past and the present and often hopes for the future. The first part of the Bible we call Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The much smaller later part, we now call New Testament, was mainly written in Greek though some may have had Aramaic origins. Those of us who have worked in more than one language know how difficult translating can be. One needs to know the cultural, geographical and ethnic backgrounds in which these languages are or were used.
Classical Hebrew thinks in pictures, and has no philosophical words. Greek on the other hand is a philosophical language. Ten classical Hebrew verbs have no present. One either does some things once only or many times. The root of any word has three consonants. To these three can be added, before or after, pronouns, articles and so on. It is written without vowels. One needs to know the content and background of what is meant in order to pronounce classical Hebrew, as in speech, of course, vowels are used. Nowadays, alas, there are few Friends familiar with classical Hebrew, and not that many more with a knowledge of biblical Greek. All languages change somewhat over the centuries. Modern Hebrew and Greek are different from the classical languages of the Bible.
A literal use of parts of the English Bible, mostly taken out of context, is a false way of understanding the Bible. So-called fundamentalists use it in this way. It means one need not think. For some it gives security. When it comes to the vexed question of Israel/Palestine, Britons need to accept that it was the Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917) that declared Palestine as the national home for Jews. Under the Palestine Mandate this was then internationally accepted. (See my article in the Friends Quarterly issue 4, 2009 on the complexity of Israel‑Gaza‑Palestine and the whole question of Zionism.)
For a Quaker attender to write (‘“No” to the Old Testament’, 29 January) that it is ‘unlikely for the (Old Testament) to have been written by God’ denies the awe‑inspiring Otherness that addresses us and makes ‘God’ in man’s image in contrast to the writer of Genesis 1:27. A Transcendence does not write. To assert that ‘the Old Testament is a rather distasteful work’ encourages anti‑Semitism, which is not in accord with Quaker Testimonies nor with the United Nations declaration of human rights. This adds only to the pain Holocaust survivors have to live with. I cannot imagine this was the intention of the writer but shows how dangerous the spoken or written word can be.
