Hebrew Bible English translations are English translations of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) according to the Masoretic Text,[1] in the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim. Most Jewish translations appear in bilingual editions (Hebrew–English).
Jewish translations often reflect traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible; all such translations eschew the Christological interpretations present in many non-Jewish translations.[2][3] Jewish translations contain neither the books of the apocrypha[4] nor the Christian New Testament.
- ^ For basic information regarding the masoretic text as the Jewish canon and text of the bible, see the concise Britannica article[permanent dead link].
- ^ The motivation for specifically Jewish versions in English is summed up in the Britannica as follows: "Though Jews in English-speaking lands generally utilized the King James Version and the Revised Version, the English versions have presented great difficulties. They contain departures from the traditional Hebrew text; they sometimes embody Christological interpretations; the headings were often doctrinally objectionable..."; see "Jewish versions".
- ^ "The repeated efforts by Jews in the field of biblical translation show their sentiment toward translations prepared by other denominations. The dominant feature of this sentiment, apart from the thought that the Christological interpretations in non-Jewish translations are out of place in a Jewish Bible, is and was that the Jew cannot afford to have his Bible translation prepared for him by others." "Preface" to the 1917 JPS Translation
- ^ The books of the apocrypha became part of the Greek scriptures of Hellenistic Jews (the Septuagint) and eventually of the Church, but were not included in the Hebrew proto-masoretic tradition of the Pharisees and the early rabbis. With some minor exceptions, these books were not preserved at all in the Jewish tradition, and their survival is due to their preservation by the Church. The classic scholarly study of Jewish canon as reflected in the Jewish sources, focusing on the background for the selection of books found in the masoretic tradition, is Sid Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence, 2nd edition. New Haven, CT, Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991. An online summary of some of Leiman's findings appears online here.