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Michael: Well, it turns out that we're not the only ones that get questions from cyberspace, Area 51 and beyond. Also, Nehemia Gordon gets these questions - and so Nehemia is back with us, and Nehemia, you have a question from one of your viewers out there.

Nehemia: So, Lou Rempel wrote in, he said, "What Bible translation would you recommend, and is there one with the real name of YHWH?" I get this question all the time. "What Bible translation do I use?" And often, the way that the question is described is, it’s like this, it's often described as, "I want a translation that's a word-for-word from Hebrew and not an interpretation." And the reality is, no such thing, by definition, can ever exist.

Michael: It's impossible.

Nehemia: It's impossible. Every translation is by definition someone's interpretation. What I recommend people do is use at least two translations and compare them. Now, when they agree, that doesn't mean you have no work to do, but when they disagree, that's a good place to start. I could tell you what some of the really bad translations are, and when I'm done, I want to hear your opinion, Michael, but from my experience, the worst translations out there are, for example, the NIV, the Nearly Inspired Version.

Michael: I call it the Non-Inspired version!

Nehemia: Yeah! And then on the Jewish side is the Stone Edition, which is one of the worst translations ever made. In the Stone Edition, when it gets to the Song of Songs, it doesn't translate it - it gives you the Rabbinical allegorical interpretation. That it’s speaking about the Written Law and the Oral Law in one passage – and that's in the translation!

Michael: Right, it leaves it. It leaves the actual Hebrew itself completely…

Nehemia: Right, going behind into their allegory, which is unforgivable in my view. And then there are some better translations, like the New Revised Standard Version on the Christian side, and on the Jewish side, the JPS. That doesn't mean…

Michael: JPS? Jewish Publication Society?

Nehemia: The Jewish Publication Society.

Michael: That's a bad one.

Nehemia: Well, no, it's a good one; it's a pretty good one. It doesn't mean it's perfect though. There are places where the JPS will translate according to the Septuagint. Or, it'll translate something different than what it says in Hebrew because they didn't like what it said in Hebrew.

Michael: Really?

Nehemia: Every translation does that. I have a secret for you – every translation does that!

Michael: That's true, that's true; the King James does it as well!

Nehemia: Every translation does it, and the point is that no translation is perfect. What I like about the NRSV and the NASB and the JPS is those at least were done by scholars; the NIV was done by scholars, but scholars with a very clear agenda. So, yeah. What do you have here, Michael?

Michael: Well, as we talked about translations here, for someone that's not real fluent in these things, and this is my second one, the first one ended up without any covers on it. But when we go to a translation, "Now therefore, anyone let judge in eating and in drinking, or in respect of a feast of a new moon of Sabbath, which things, a things of coming shadow, the body is of Christ." That's a direct translation; that's a word-for-word translation.

Nehemia: Right, yeah.

Michael: So, "Therefore let no man judge you concerning eat and drink, on the respectable holy day of the new moon of the Sabbath, which are a shadow of things to come." That's what it says in Colossians, yet a word for word translation, you see that the syntax has to be reworked. And you have to be able to define exactly what the relative pronouns are, and where they go back to. If you don't see that, you can miss it sometimes.

Nehemia: If you translate too literally, you'll often mistranslate. Sometimes things are missed in translation because they were translated too literally. I'm looking for an example here in Mark 7 – oh, here it is. So, it's in Mark, and this is the King James. "Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats." I'll bet most of our listeners don't know what a draught is; it's a toilet.

Michael: Right!

Nehemia: And when you look at the Greek, you find it's very different than what you have in some translations. So, for example, the New Revised Standard Version, which I said was a good translation, it doesn't mean it's always right. Here's an example where it completely changes what the Greek says. The King James wasn't too far from the translation; what it's talking about is you eat food, and that food is cleansed from your body when you go to the toilet; it's a parable.

Michael: Right, right.

Nehemia: Okay, so Mark 7:19 in the New Revised Standard Version, "Since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?" And that's a question mark, end of sentence. Parentheses, "(Thus he declared all foods clean.)" And the words, "thus he declared", were added by the translator - they're not there! And that's a key concept obviously for the translators, because they need Jesus himself to say all foods are permissible and clean.

The NIV goes even further, it says, "(In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)" So they've added the name Jesus there; the name Jesus isn't there; they added it. In the Nearly Inspired Version…

Michael: Because now we've got to have our theology, that you can eat dogs, pigs, cats, and rats all of a sudden!

Nehemia: You know what this reminds me of, Michael? In Israel, you have all these Christian denominations; you've got the Greek Orthodox and the Catholics, and they come to these different historical sites. One of the sites is Capernaum, where - a lot of people don't realize this – Yeshua, according to the Gospels, was born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, but he lived as an adult in Capernaum.

Michael: That's right, that was his ministry headquarters.

Nehemia: Yeah. So, I've met Christians in Capernaum. They've got these statues there, and I've heard this story from some of the tour guides there, the official tour guides of these churches, and they explain, "Well, when the Canaanite woman was healed by Jesus, she asked permission. She said, 'In my culture, the Canaanite culture, we worship God through an idol. May I please worship you through an idol?' And he gave her permission." And because of that, now all Christians are allowed to worship Jesus with an idol. And they actually tell this story to justify why they have all these idols!

Michael: Incredible.

Nehemia: It reminds me of this - they've got to put it in his mouth. Now that we've said we can eat pork and we can eat shellfish, we've got to put it in the mouth of Jesus, and let's just add the word "Jesus" to the translation.

Michael: And what the Greek says is that what goes into the body, goes through you, and you flush the toilet, and it purges it, it's gone.

Nehemia: Right!

Michael: And that's all he's saying!

Nehemia: Right, well, in the context there he's talking about the Rabbinical laws having to do with eating non-sacrificial meat in a state of ritual purity. He's dealing with that issue - that's probably a whole different study, maybe we'll get to - but he's not talking about a pig there; he's talking about steak from a cow that has become ritually unclean. Maybe it was touched by a woman during her period, for example. The Pharisees come along and say, "You're not allowed to eat that," and he's like, "No, that doesn't make you unclean, you guys are just making that up." Now they've misunderstood that, and then to make sure everybody understands that you're allowed to worship the idols, and you're allowed to eat the pork, they add the word "Jesus" here.

So here there's a clearly… look scholars like to use this big fancy word - they would say this is a tendentious translation. Meaning these guys have an agenda, and their agenda is quite clear when you look, and here's what you've got to do, you've got to compare the translations if you don't know Greek. I read it in the Greek, I have 'no problem, but if you're comparing the translations, you're like, "Wait a minute! That word 'Jesus', that's not in the King James, it's not in the NRSV, is that in there? What does it really say?" And that should lead you down the path of then studying further and finding out what it really says.

Michael: Okay, I'm going to throw you something just out of the blue - King James. Now, on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Where is it that you would have us prepare the Passover?"

Nehemia: Okay.

Michael: Do we have a problem? The first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, "Where do you want us to prepare the Passover?"

Nehemia: That's like saying, "They came to me on Yom Kippur afternoon, the Day of Atonement, in the afternoon, and said, 'When should we begin to fast?'” No, you already started fasting last night, what are you talking about?

Michael: That's right! So it's because the translators do not recognize the biblical reckoning of time, don't understand the feast, that they added all those words in, "the first day of the feast of", it's not there. It's "the beginning," the protos, the beginning, or, "the preparation for unleavened bread they came and said, "Where do you want us to prepare the Passover?"

Nehemia: You know what it reminds me of? In Genesis 2, when it says, "vayachulu ha'shamayim," it talks about God. It says, "He finished working on the seventh day," or it's translated that way. You could read it in a certain way or translate it as if God was still working at the beginning of Shabbat, and only on Shabbat did He finish the work. And it's clear when you read in Hebrew that's not the case.

Michael: And in the King James you can make that mistake.

Nehemia: Right, right! And it's interesting, the Samaritans, in their Bible, they actually change it. They change that from the seventh to the sixth day, because when they were reading it, and they were translating it as well, they said, "Woah, we don't want this to be misunderstood, coming from our Gentile perspective," so they changed it, and they have there "sixth day", when really, no, it's "by the seventh day He was done and then He rested". That's very clear when you read it in the Hebrew context.

Michael: Excellent! Well, I brought that up to Nehemia, and just threw that at him, because these are the kind of things that you see in the Gospels, where you have Gentiles translating things, which were written by Jews, to Jews, for Jews, about Jews. And even though we have most of the New Testament in Greek, it's still speaking about a Jewish culture, a Jewish culture that is completely familiar with the Torah, and I think next time we're together we're going to ask you a question - what is the Torah? What is the Torah, exactly?

Nehemia: That's exciting!

Michael: But before that, we've got a whole week to go before we have Nehemia back, and right now, we need you to stand with us. Thank you for being with us. We have a message for our sponsors, and our sponsors are not Pfizer pharmaceuticals or GlaxoSmithKline! Don't ask your doctor if this is right for you, because this is right for you!

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