I am sure that a recent writer spoke for many when, under the title “Overcoming the Leviticus Syndrome,” he wrote: “We find ourselves lost in a maze of laws and rituals that confuse, frustrate and, at times, quite frankly bore us.”1 The publishing house of Simon and Schuster has come up with a radical solution: Eliminate the “boring” passages from the Bible. It has reissued E. S. Bates’s The Bible To Be Read as Living Literature (1936) with “updated scholarship” and a new introduction by Lodowick Allison. The result is a ponderous volume of 1,258 pages containing a grotesquely dismembered King James Bible (KJV) that deletes, among other genres, all legislation—civil and ritual alike. For example, Leviticus is shrunk to a single chapter (19) and Deuteronomy to three (32–34). Mr. Allison’s defense: “Legal codes … [are] irrelevant to anyone but the theologian today … very few of these detailed instructions [in Deuteronomy] … are of any interest to the general reader today” (pp. vi, 147).
Readers of my column are by now fully capable of assessing the irreparable loss incurred by this kind of “textectomy.” As an illustration, look at Leviticus 25, where slavery is abolished for all Israelites. One of its memorable phrases, “You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land” (verse 10), is engraved on the Liberty Bell and inspired both the American revolutionaries and, half a century later, the abolitionists. Thus Leviticus 25:10 is quintessentially part of our American/biblical heritage, which Mr. Allison, having expunged chapter 25, apparently prefers not to advertise.
Moreover, the rest of Leviticus 25 is just as vital. It tackles society’s perennial problem, the widening gap between the poor and the rich (specifically latifundia, land grabbing by the powerful), by instituting the 50-year jubilee at which time all debts are canceled and all land reverts to its original owner.
Deuteronomy’s legal code (chapters 12–26) is nothing less than a constitution that became the law of the land during the monarchic period (end of the seventh century B.C.E.). It defines the functions of the king, the clergy, the prophet, the judge and the supreme court. It legislates rules of war and of inheritance, penalties for seduction and rape, the protection of impoverished debtors, and tithing. The law code is framed by exhortatory chapters (5–11, 27–31), arguably the most elevated prose in the entire Bible, including “You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5), which Jesus proclaimed as the most important commandment in the Bible (Matthew 22:36–37; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–28), but it is excised from this torso of a Bible!
Point two. The Hebrew poet, Haim Nachman Bialik, is reported to have said, “Reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your bride through a veil.” Bialik thus addresses the loss of intimacy through translation. However, it is the French word for translation, traduction, stemming from the Latin traducere, that conveys ambiguity. It means to exhibit, parade, display and at the same time, to expose, dishonor, disgrace, traduce. Translation is therefore treachery. As for the perpetrators of this act, the Talmud pitilessly mashes them between a rock and a hard place: “He who translates literally creates fiction; he who adds, blasphemes” (Tosefta Megillah 4:31). The revered, though flawed, KJV is not free from these dilemmas. To be sure, its glorious cadences still thrill the ear (even as they sometimes dull the mind), and its idioms are imperishably embedded in the English language, almost more sacred and certainly better known than the original.
The KJV may be indispensable to the history of the English language and essential to understanding how English was spoken in the early 17th century. But today its archaic usages and renaissance obsolescence create error and distort meaning, impeding the comprehension of an ancient text. Take for example the lowly conjunction “and.” Of all the gross possibilities, could “and” be a culprit? In the KJV nearly every verse begins with “and.” But the Hebrew letter vov has seven other possibilities: when, so, thus, although, but, yet, however. Observe the difference created by these alternatives in Song of Songs 1:5: “I am black but beautiful” or “I am black and beautiful.” Some other examples: nefesh should not be rendered “soul” when “creature” (Genesis 1:20), “person” (Genesis 46:15), “desire” (Exodus 15:9), “throat” (Leviticus 11:43) or “corpse” (Numbers 6:6) is intended. Hebrew beyom (KJV “in the day”) frequently means “when,” “as soon,” “at the time” (Exodus 6:28; Exodus 10:28; Leviticus 5:24; Numbers 3:1). Hebrew torah, usually translated “law,” is better secured by “teaching,” “instruction,” or “ritual,” depending on context. The expression “peradventure the people repent” (Exodus 13:17) would peradventure make sense to an Elizabethan audience. Moderns would more likely go for “the people had a change of heart.”2
The citations below from Leviticus 19, the one chapter of Leviticus included in Simon and Schuster’s truncated Bible, point up abundant errors in both translation and nuance. Numbers indicate verses; the proper rendering appears in parentheses. (2) congregation (community); (3) fear (revere); (9) every grape (fallen fruit); (12) neither shalt thou (lest you); (13, 15, 16, 18) neighbor (fellow); (14) curse (insult); (15) respect the person (be partial); (15) honor (favor); (16) stand up by against (stand aloof by); (17) suffer sin (bear punishment); (18) children (members); (19) mingled of linen and woolen (two kinds of yarn); (20) husband (another man); (27) shall be for given (may be forgiven); (26) with the blood (over the blood); observe times (practice divination); (31) vex (cheat).
The upshot of this brief inquiry is obvious: A translation, even the best of them, is inadequate. It must be accompanied by explanatory notes. Fortuitously and fortunately, the Harper Collins Study Bible, carrying the imprimatur of the Society of Biblical Literature, appeared at about the same time as Simon and Schuster’s and, mirabile dictu, it even weighs one pound less.
I am sure that a recent writer spoke for many when, under the title “Overcoming the Leviticus Syndrome,” he wrote: “We find ourselves lost in a maze of laws and rituals that confuse, frustrate and, at times, quite frankly bore us.”1 The publishing house of Simon and Schuster has come up with a radical solution: Eliminate the “boring” passages from the Bible. It has reissued E. S. Bates’s The Bible To Be Read as Living Literature (1936) with “updated scholarship” and a new introduction by Lodowick Allison. The result is a ponderous volume of 1,258 pages containing a grotesquely dismembered […]
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