Question:
Where can I find the most accurate translation of the Old Testament?
Nerdlinger ~
2008-12-23 20:05:41 UTC
....or rather, the Tanakh? I am interested in looking at the bible to see for myself what it's all about, but I want to find an accurate version. Specifically, I'm looking for a direct translation of the original Jewish Tanakh.

Please give me a link to a good online translation, if possible. Thanks
Seventeen answers:
✡mama pajama✡
2008-12-23 20:20:39 UTC
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/63255/jewish/The-Bible-with-Rashi.htm

http://bible.ort.org/books/torahd5.asp < line by line translation and transliteration of Torah with english translation and you can even hear it

EDIT: To help clear up some of the incorrect comments about Tanakh, I'll provide a long edit here. The Christian “Old Testament” is an adaptation and alteration of The Jewish Bible. Tanakh, is an acronym for the three sections of the Scriptures, the Torah (Pentateuch, first five books of Moses, Torah meaning teaching/law) the Neviim (Prophets) and Ketuviim (Writings or scriptures)

Tertullian, early in the third century CE named the Christian amended version of the Tanakh the "Old Testament" *specifically* to designate it as having been superceded and done away with in contrast to the "New", despite the assertion within it's texts well over a dozen times from Genesis forward that it is an eternal testament (covenant).



The Christian Bible's Old Testament (it’s adaptation of Tanakh) reveals that in many places there are significant translation differences rendering the meanings of the passages quite different. Not only are the books rearranged so that the books are not in the order of Torah, Prophets and Writings, but Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah are divided. The Protestant Old Testament contains roughly the same books; the Vulgate has additional texts added to the canon that were originally written in Greek. The Greek Septuagint (meaning 70) was originally referring to the Torah portion only, and in fact, that is the only portion that was translated by 72 scribes whose translations matched. The rest of Tanakh was translated from the Hebrew to the Greek over the course of about 300 years and scholars cannot tell who or when exactly any of them were translated. Yet the common name of Septuagint is now generally applied to the whole Greek translation. By the beginning of the first century CE, there were many different versions of each text that appeared, some of them with less accurate Hebrew to Greek, and during this time, many other texts appeared being originally written IN Greek such as the books of the Maccabees. By the time of the beginnings of Christianity, some of these texts of Tanakh had become so changed through the Hellenization (introduction of Greek philosophic concepts through language) that they were no longer adherent to Torah precept. The Hebrew Bible canon had been more or less "closed" since the time of Ezra/ Nehemiah (around 423 BCE) but of course, Jewish scribes still penned what was going on in Jewish life in Judea and wrote and discussed how to apply Torah to their lives. It has been debated by many Jewish scholars that if the Books of Maccabees had originally been written in Hebrew they may have been more readily accepted by Jews as Jewish texts..but as a part of Talmud, since the Tanakh was already formed..not as a part of our Bible.



****The Greek Septuagint called the Old Testament is not a Jewish document, but rather a Christian one. The original Septuagint, created 2,200 years ago by 72 Jewish translators, was a Greek translation of the Five Books of Moses alone. It therefore did not contain prophetic Books of the Bible such as Isaiah. The Septuagint as we have it today, which includes the Prophets and Writings as well, is a product of the church, not the Jewish people. In fact, the Septuagint remains the official Old Testament of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the manuscripts that consist of our Septuagint today date to the third century C.E. The fact that additional books known as the Apocrypha, which are uniquely sacred to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church, are found in the Septuagint should raise a red flag to those inquiring into the Jewishness of the Septuagint.

The fact that the original Septuagint translated by Jewish scribes more than 22 centuries ago was only of the Pentateuch and not of prophetic books of the Bible such as Isaiah is confirmed by countless sources including the ancient Letter of Aristeas, which is the earliest attestation to the existence of the Septuagint. The Talmud also states this explicitly in Tractate Megillah (9a), and Josephus as well affirms that the Septuagint was a translation only of the Law of Moses in his preface to Antiquities of the Jews. Moreover, Jerome, a church father and Bible translator who could hardly be construed as friendly to Judaism, affirms Josephus' statement regarding the authorship of the Septuagint in his preface to The Book of Hebrew Questions.



In fact, Dr. F.F. Bruce, the preeminent professor of Biblical exegesis, keenly points out that, strictly speaking, the Septuagint deals only with the Pentateuch and not the whole Old Testament. Bruce writes, "The Jews might have gone on at a later time to authorize a standard text of the rest of the Septuagint, but . . . lost interest in the Septuagint altogether. With but few exceptions, every manuscript of the Septuagint which has come down to our day was copied and preserved in Christian, not Jewish, circles."*****



The accuracy of the words we see now in the Hebrew Bible was confirmed with the findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls where fragments of each book except the book of Esther (the last book to be included in the canon) match quite well with the Tanakh's Jews use today. The majority of the Dead Sea scrolls were written in the Hebrew Language (approximately 90-95%) with Assyrian Block script. From this majority there are a few cases in which the scribes used Paleo-Hebrew (see for example 4QPaleoExodus).

Modern Hebrew is different from the ancient Paleo Hebrew, but the Hebrew of 2000 years ago is closer to modern Hebrew than the English of the 1700’s is to the English we speak today.



There was a council of rabbis and scribes at Jamnia in 90 CE who worked hard to rid the Tanakh of the Hellenized versions of scripture that were being spread. Christian apologist scholars often try to claim that this was when the Jewish Bible's canon was FORMED in response to Christianity, but that ignores that their very own writings refer to it as a formed work already. Some of the texts that Judaism never considered as a part of Jewish scripture were early apologetic attempts to tie in Christian dogma to the Tanakh. Others show pre-Christian attempts to Hellenize Judaism. These texts known as Pseudepigrapha were largely written between 200 BCE and 100 CE and included great amounts of Greek philosophy.



You can discover on your own with comparative reading where key passages stand out to change meanings. One well-known portion is in Isaiah. The word lucifer does not appear at all in the Hebrew Bible. It is only in the Christian Bible’s translation from the LATIN..lucifer means morning star in Latin. The Hebrew word Isaiah wrote is heylel, meaning star. In the English translation of the Christian Old Testament they make the Latin word lucifer into a proper name ( Lucifer) and then personify the word referring to the planet Venus in a passage that Isaiah slams Nebuchadnezzar for styling himself the god/man representation of Venus (the morning star) on earth. Isaiah is condemning a human for calling himself a god. There is no fall of angels in the Hebrew Bible. There is simply no such thing as a Lucifer who became a demi-god of an underworld hell to be found in the Tanakh. Therefore, mistranslation can change things around quite a bit.



Most of the book of Daniel and portions of Ezra and a single sentence in Jeremiah are in Aramaic, a related language using Hebrew letters. All else in the Jewish Bible was written in Hebrew.



Torah never made claim that God is exclusive to the covenant of Israel, but that the people who embrace it are exclusive to God alone.



The righteous of all nations merit the world to come. All humans are equal before God and may connect to God directly.

That is what the ETERNAL Testament teaches within its pages. Shalom.
hudsongray
2008-12-23 20:16:07 UTC
Hard to say, it was in old Aramaic which is a tonal language (different ways of saying the word changes the meaning) and it's also a 'dead' version, not spoken anymore.



You'd have to look at not only the older forms of the bible WAY pre-dating the King James version, plus also know about the culture and ethnic backgrounds that would put a certain slant on what was written. Seeing it all with modern eyes pulls us too far from the way it was originally written. So many things have been 'fudged'. That line about not suffering a witch to live was actually originally about what to do with people who poison the town well. It got shifted in Medieval times. This happened to so many passages, tweeked here, adjusted there, stuff taken out....



Are there any sites on biblical scholars? They may have something linked to those websites that could help you.
Gershon b
2008-12-24 06:57:54 UTC
The translation most purchased by Jewish people is probably the Stone Tanach sold at www.artscroll.com .



In Hebrew, there is no word for translation as translating is possible. The word Targum means interpretation. Without a commentator who completely understands the language, any translation is lacking.



Rashi is the probably the best commentator for the "simpler" levels.



You can get it here:



http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/63255/jewish/The-Bible-with-Rashi.htm
Achmed
2008-12-23 20:22:57 UTC
I am looking for the same thing. The other day I heard someone mentioned the subtuagians. It is not the correct spelling but the pronunciation is about right. He said these were transcripts made a couple of hundred years before Christ. He also said they were translations from Hebrew into Greek and they mentioned the birth of a child by a virgin. Unlike the Tanakh. He suggested that when the older transcripts were written before Christ they had no prejudice. But, afterword in the tanakh the were prejudice against Christ so it was written differently.
2008-12-23 20:13:01 UTC
Two good links are The New International Version of the Bible and The New American Standard Bible. You can't get an accurate translation. The true meaning of the scriptures is lost in any translation. The closes thing to it is a transliteration showing the true meaning of the original scriptures.
Sincere-Advisor
2008-12-23 20:21:49 UTC
Much of the Old Testament was lost during the Babylonian Captivity and was rewritten from memory during the time of Ezra. That is why there appears to be disjointed passages and the text is not fully consistent. At that time, changes might also have been made by scribes for political reasons. For example, there is a strong bias against Ishmaelites [Ishmael is called a donkey of a man] which may not have been present in the original, since Moses himself had married an Ishmaelite woman, Jethro's daughter. Also, Moses could not possibly have written about his own death.
2008-12-23 20:14:32 UTC
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/



http://www.hareidi.org/bible/



You'll notice the books are in their original order and some translations in the Christian OT are with a Christian slant or were mistranslated - like "virgin" instead of "young woman"



# # #



He's talking about the Tanakh.



The Christian bible isn't the Tanakh. Christians know the Tanakh as the "OT" though that isn't accurate.



# # #
Hodaya
2008-12-24 03:33:35 UTC
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0.htm



That's the Tanakh.



If you're Catholic, then not all books that are in the Cathoic Old Testament form part of the Tanakh. For instance, 1 maccabees and 2 Maccabees are not part of the Tanakh, but part of the catholic OT.
Pastor Art (((SFECU)))
2008-12-23 20:37:37 UTC
NIV was translated directly without going thru any other languages.



There is also a Jewish translation called the Stone translation.



The Material is the same although it is organized differently.



The Old Testament in NIV has 39 books.



Stone has 24, but those 24 contain the very same material.



The sixteen prophets in the NIV are contained in one book in the Stone and in all Jewish versions.
Melli
2016-02-09 08:55:28 UTC
find accurate translation testament
Aunt Trudy
2008-12-23 20:10:47 UTC
Any of the standard versions are word for word. If you speak Hebrew and Aramaic then you would want the original text untranslated. Strongs makes great study guides if you want the original text.
Kosher Ninja Chick JPA
2008-12-24 03:26:51 UTC
I recommend the Artscroll Stone translation; they do both a Torah/Chumash and also a complete Tanakh.



There are also some online versions, I'll go and find you a link - here are two http://www.mechon-mamre.org/



http://www.hareidi.org/bible/



For anyone who wants to buy an actual translation, these are very good indeed:



http://www.artscroll.com/Categories/stn.html





I've heard good things also about 'The Living Torah' by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan:

http://www.aryehkaplan.com/product/LT.htm



Hope that helps :)
dervish
2008-12-23 20:12:13 UTC
the American Standard Version bible is often closest to the original language



but no matter what text you use you should also employ an exhaustive concordance, a greek dictionary, and a hebrew dictionary, as well as commentaries
oldguy63
2008-12-23 20:10:18 UTC
Probably the Masoretic text, although the Jewish people say they have better translations now.
sego lily
2008-12-23 21:12:10 UTC
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0.htm
† Gabriel †
2008-12-23 20:13:47 UTC
This site is very helpful: http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Scripture/scripture.html
Gecko's Reincarnate
2008-12-23 20:08:08 UTC
the bible?


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