Hebrew Voices #128 – Why Study Hebrew

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

David: This is a new verse in the Bible that’s not in the King James, it’s not in the Hebrew. So, where did this come from? Why is the NRSV and others adding this verse into the Tanakh?

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. This is Nehemia Gordon, and I'm here once again with Rabbi Dr. David Moster, and we are going to be discussing the difference between the Bible in English and the Bible in Hebrew. Shalom, Rabbi Dr. David Moster. It's great to have you on the program.

David: Yeah, thank you. I think this is our fourth time together.

Nehemia: Fourth time, and I want to encourage people to go back and watch the other episodes. We did an episode called “Chinese Origin of the Sukkot Etrog,” “Toilets in Ancient Israel,” and “The Mishnah and the New Testament,” which just from that, it shows that you have quite an eclectic array of things that you teach about. You have the Institute of Biblical Culture, you have a YouTube channel called “Biblical Culture,” and your website is biblicalculture.org.

And you told me something which I was really excited about, that you're actually going to start doing a course where you teach people biblical Hebrew. I get people all the time who ask me, “Where can I study biblical Hebrew?” I don't know if you know this, I taught biblical Hebrew to a Christian Pastor and later taught it to a well-known football player, Reggie White. And so, people come to me all the time and say, “We heard you taught Reggie White Hebrew, would you teach us Hebrew?” And I'll be honest, right now, I don't have time to do it.

But you've made time out of your day and out of your week to do it. What a blessing to people. I want to give them your background, so they understand what a big deal this is to come study Hebrew from you. You have an ordination, meaning semikhah, a rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University. You have three Master's degrees. I only have one Master's degree, albeit it’s from Hebrew University. You have an MA in Jewish education from Yeshiva University. You have an MA in Biblical Studies, or Tanakh, from Yeshiva University. And you have another master’s degree from NYU, New York University, in Ancient Israel. You also have a Bachelor's in Jewish philosophy from Yeshiva University, and maybe most important of all, from my perspective, is you have a PhD, you actually have a doctorate from Bar Ilan University in Biblical Studies. That's quite the education you have there, so I think you really do have the ability to teach people biblical Hebrew, or certainly the background. Why do you want to teach people biblical Hebrew? Tell us about that.

David: This is an excellent question. What is the difference between studying the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the Tanakh, in Hebrew. What is the difference between studying this in Hebrew and reading your translation in English, no matter what translation it is? So, there's a group called "Academic Biblical" on Reddit, and what I asked here was a question. And it said, “If you read biblical Hebrew, what is something you notice or appreciate that gets lost in translation? What's something that gets lost between the Hebrew language and the English language?” 175 people uploaded it.

Nehemia: Wow, tell us what "uploaded" means. By the way, the first thing I saw was an upvote, or an ad for somebody doing something on Mother's Day, and I just realized, this is an ad that has nothing to do with your question.

David: Yeah. And so, an upvote, Nehemia, is basically like a "like" on any platform. So, that means 175 people thought this was pretty cool. And there was a nice debate with about 100 comments about this question, which is our question. So, what I'd like to do is basically go through some of these answers, and at the end, maybe today, maybe on another day, for a different session, what I'd also like to do is add my own. Let's get started. The most popular comment came from someone named "Testate Amoeba.”

Nehemia: Is that the real name, or that’s just a screen name?

David: You don't use your real name, you use your make-up name. And what we have here is, he pointed to this verse, it's Genesis 32:25. In this story, Jacob, in Hebrew, “Yaakov,” is fleeing from his brother, Esav, Esau, it's not entirely clear what's gonna happen. And then, he was crossing his family over the Jabbok River, in Hebrew, the “Yabok.” And then, there's this weird phrase, which I'll read out loud. It says, “Vayivater Ya'akov levado,” “And Jacob was left all by himself on the other side of the Jabbok River,” “Va'ye'avek ish imo,” “And a man avekt with him.” This phrase is really odd, we're not entirely sure what it means. It might come from the word “dust,” so we think it's like someone wrestled him. And this was like the angel of God wrestling Jacob until the morning came, and eventually Jacob would be renamed “Israel.”

Nehemia: And the connection with dust is when you wrestle someone, you end up rolling around in the dust.

David: Right. So, what this Redditor pointed out is that there's this really odd phrase here of “vaye'avek,” and this root, which Nehemia kind of mentioned, “dusting and wrestling.” That word is very odd. It's not a normal word. It doesn't appear often, it's just a very odd thing. So, what the readers pointed out was that it's a pun. And it's basically, “Va'ye'avek Ya'akov beYabok.” Something like, “Jacob jabbed at the Jabbok.” And so, what you basically have is this pun, this idea that we're using special language to kind of mirror the story going on. It’s something that gets completely lost in the English. So, for example, here we have the King James Version, “And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” It's kind of plain. It's not like, “The Thriller of Manila,” or you know, like “Hakeem the Dream,” something like that. You don't get these kinds of puns in the English. But in the Hebrew, you get something like, “Jacob jabbed at the Jabbok,” something like that.

Nehemia: And if nothing else, you can say Yabok, we call it a “midrash shem,” a name derivation here, that Yabok is being tied into the place of wrestling…

David: There you go, yeah.

Nehemia: …at the very least. And the example I love of that is the story of Gideon. Gidon, the root of that is the verb in Deuteronomy where it's used to cut down an ashera tree, that's the sacred pole of the pagans, of the Canaanites. And what does Gidon do? He cuts down the ashera tree. And so, it's like woven into the very fabric of the story, these word puns. And here's an example where it's woven, and I didn't even notice this one. So, it's woven into the fabric of the story. Certainly, ye'avek and Yabok, there's a word pun there, it’s beautiful.

David: This is actually in Genesis, Bereshit. And what I tried to do for the viewers is bring a lot from Genesis, because when people start Hebrew, they start with Genesis. The thing is, is that it's all over this book. So, for example, the name of Adam is also the name of “man,” like mankind is “Adam.” Adam, is “adam,” man. And we read in Genesis 2:7 that God created the man, “vayitzer Adonay Elohim et ha'adam afar min ha'adama.” “God created the adam, the man, dust from the adama, the earth.” It's a clear pun in Hebrew, that the name man, “Adam” comes from the earth, “adama.”

Nehemia: So, we have these word puns all over. And people who have heard me teach for years have heard... I've actually brought that example many, many times. I never brought the Yabok and ye'avek example, I’ve never noticed that, it's great. There was a professor at your alma mater, at Bar Ilan University, Moshe Garsiel, who wrote a really groundbreaking book called “Biblical Names,” that’s what it was called. And he shows many examples. He didn't come up with this idea, but he showed how it was not just individual word puns in individual verses, but that it was woven into the very fabric of the story.

David: And the great thing is that when you learn biblical Hebrew, all these names don't reveal themselves to you at once. As you learn more and more biblical Hebrew, you start noticing more and more, and more, and more. Like, for example, still in Genesis, it took me a while to realize that the name of the first person who was killed, whose life was cut short, is “Abel” or “Hevel” in Hebrew. And “Hevel,” as we know from the book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, means... It can mean lots of things, but one of the things it means is "cut short” like a breath in the wind.

Nehemia: Or it means “emptiness,” “vanity.”

David: All these different things. That's what happened to Abel, his life was empty and cut off and short. So you kind of see these. And when I say that it takes time, it wasn't until last year that I actually heard an idea. Nehemia, maybe you've heard this. The name Shimshon, what's the derivation of Shimshon?

Nehemia: Sun, shemesh.

David: The shemesh is the sun, right? And so, who does he fall for? He falls for the Delila. And Delila convinces him at night, and what is in the name, “Delila?”

Nehemia: Layla.

David: “Layla,” “night.”

Nehemia: Okay, that's interesting. What jumps out of that more for me is the geography. It takes place between Tzor'ah and Eshta'ol, and what's exactly in the spot where his story takes place? Beit Shemesh, which is a place where people worshipped the sun, originally.

David: Right, the house of the sun.

Nehemia: Right, house of the sun, temple of the sun. And here, you’ve got a guy named “Shimshon,” who is kind of a sketchy character in some ways, right? He's worshipping the true God, but he's doing all kinds of things, like, this is our hero, who's called actually a savior, a savior of Israel who's going to prostitutes, and he's having trouble with all kinds of women. And so, there is some connection, a subtle implication there that maybe he's not completely in the camp of God, maybe he's in the camp of sun worship, or maybe the people around him are. And Delilah from layla, that's interesting, I hadn't noticed that. I always took that to be a Philistine name, and therefore, probably not related to Hebrew although I guess we don't know for sure what the Philistines spoke. One of the early Philistine inscriptions we have actually is in Hebrew, so what are we gonna do about that?

David: Well, Nehemia, it doesn't matter if we know for sure, we'll never know for sure. But if you know the Hebrew, you can now look for these types of puns and connections, especially with names. I'll just give one more example. The verb “tzakhak,” “to laugh,” appears 13 times in the Tanakh. Eleven of them are in Genesis, most having to do with one person.

Nehemia: Isaac.

David: Isaac, because Isaac in Hebrew is “Yitzkhak,” “He will laugh.” So, Abraham, who at that time was Abram, Avram, and Sarai, Sarah, they were laughing about this idea of having a kid in old age. And then, even Yitzkhak himself makes Rebecca, Rivka laugh. So, there's all this laughing around this person, Isaac, that if you're reading in the English, you just have no idea that that's part of the text.

Nehemia: Let's summarize. The question was, why do you wanna teach Hebrew? And you're saying that you can convey to people that there is this level of reading in Hebrew, a level in the story, that's completely missed in translation. And sometimes they try to convey it, but usually it's very difficult to translate a pun.

David: Right.

Nehemia: And so, sometimes they'll use a word that does sound similar, I've seen that. But 98 percent of the time, they can't do it. And so, that's lost, and that's kind of a level of understanding that people can't have unless they see the original.

David: Exactly. If you ask somebody, why did the King James use this word, "to wrestle" with Jacob? There's no reason, it was just a good translation. But when it comes to Sefer Bereshit, the Book of Genesis, it's a good chance it was used to kind of tie everything together in the story.

Nehemia: Here I want to bring up something which I've noticed in my own research, I've shared this with people. There are two types of name derivations, I guess Garsiel talks about it as well. There are the name derivations that are explicit. It says, “And therefore, she was called Khava because she was the mother of all that khaya, of all that lived.” So, that's an explicit name derivation. We also have ones that I call implicit. An example is the implicit you brought. It doesn't say, “God made Adam out of the adama, and therefore, he was called Adam,” but that's implied by the use of the language.

And the example of Jacob, “Vaye'avek, and he entered into the dust,” it's the nif'al, which sometimes has the meaning of to enter into something, into a dual relationship. He entered into the dust with him is related to the word “Yabok,” and that's an implicit name derivation. Sometimes you have both, which is the ones I love. So why are Esav’s descendants called “Edom?” We're told explicitly, because he sold his birthright for the red lentil soup. But then why tell us that when he came out, he was “admoni,” he was all red?

David: It's both.

Nehemia: So, it's both. One is explicit, one’s implicit. Maybe you could say this is an example of polysemy, meaning that there could be more than one reason for something, more than one truth about why something is something in the Tanakh. In our western thought there's two plus two equals four. Well, it's true that two plus two equals four. I guess, in spiritual matters, you could say well, there could be multiple reasons for something. Why do we keep the Shabbat according to Exodus, and Deuteronomy, and the 10 Commandments? One is because God created the world and He rested on the seventh day, and the other reason is because God took us out of Egypt, and we should have our servants rest just like we want to rest. And both are true, they're not contradictory. They’re both true.

David: Yes, all of these can get lost. Not necessarily, like you pointed out. Some they point out, but sometimes, if it's not pointed out explicitly, the English doesn't pick up on that.

Nehemia: Even when it's pointed out it's completely confusing. He was called “such and such.” It says something, and therefore he was called such and such, and you're like, “What on earth?”

David: Right, like Moses, “From the waters I dragged him out.”

Nehemia: One of my favorite examples for those who are looking from a New Testament perspective is… You know, the angel says, “He will save his people from their sins,” or something, “And therefore, he will be called Jesus.” What? What's the connection? But every person reading in Hebrew notices that the name “Jesus” comes from “Yeshua” which is short for “Yehoshua.” And what does Yehoshua mean, Rabbi, Dr. David Moster?

David: The idea of salvation, God will save, God has saved. Or Yeshua by itself would be more of, "Has been saved.”

Nehemia: I understand, because Yeshua appears in the Book of Nehemiah as a short form of the name “Yehoshua.” It says in the Book of Nehemiah, “Yeshua Bin Nun,” and then there's a High Priest, I believe it's in Ezra, who's called “Yeshua Ben Yehotzadak,” and in Zekharia he's called “Yehoshua Ben Yehotzadak,” so Yeshua is, from my perspective, just short for “Yehoshua.” And what does Yehoshua mean? Give us a breakdown of “Yehoshua.”

David: Well, it would be a hypocoristicon, which is a fancy word of saying that it's a sentence that becomes a name.

Nehemia: Oh, I like that word, “hypocoristicon,” okay.

David: Yeah, it's only in biblical studies, because Semitic languages do this. Other languages don't do this. And Nehemia, I know you have a lot on this, so I'll just kind of...

Nehemia: I wanted to hear it from someone who was raised Orthodox... Well, I was raised Orthodox too, but I don't have an ordination from YU, Rabbi Dr. David Moster. And that term, “hypocoristicon” it's a good term, I haven't used that. I mean, I know they talk about theophoric names, right?

David: Yes.

Nehemia: And you do have theophoric names in other languages. A “theophoric name” is where you give devotion to a deity in a name. “Martin” means a “Servant of Mars,” and they say “Christopher,” “Servant of Christ.” Look, we have this in Canaanite languages, like in Punic, which is a sister language of Hebrew. We have “Hannibal,” which is “Khanibaal” which is the same as “Khananyahu,” “Hananiah,” except that instead of “yahu” it's “Ba'al.” So, it's “Beloved of Ba'al” or “Ba'al has grace,” or something like that. So, these are hypocoristicons. What is the hypocoristicon of Yehoshua?

David: Well, you have the name, “Yah.” These two might have been aligned, so it could have been “Yaho,” that could have been part of it. And then, the vav could also be the yud for “Yesha,” to save. So, from that, what you wanna do is to try and make a sentence out of those two words. They don't have to be perfect, it's not like a normal sentence. So, you could think that God has saved, God will save. You can even say, “God save!” Something like that. Is that how you understand it, Nehemia?

Nehemia: First of all, yes, but I would understand it maybe more specifically. You're right, here is where it's easier to do it. When the verb is in the beginning and you have the yud as the "He will,” then it's much easier to know that it's the imperfect, that there's this, maybe, repeated accent or however you understand the imperfect, right? When it's the other way around, it's a little bit more difficult. Is it past, is it present? Maybe it's a combination of the different forms. So, you're right, in other words, “Yeshayahu,” which is essentially the same name as “Yehoshua,” Yeshayahu, we can say more confidently means, “Yud-hey-vav-hey,” “Will save.”

David: Exactly.

Nehemia: Even there, the yud is part of the root, so maybe it's a bit complicated. But my name, Nekhemyah, you would say is past tense, “Yah has comforted,” otherwise it would have been “Yenakhem-Yah,” or something like that, presumably. But you're right, they're not normal sentences, and it's kind of a mistake to treat them as normal sentences. And then, sometimes the function within this hypocoristicon of the name of the deity isn't always the same. Like “Avi'ad” means "Eternal Father,” so there it's not even a verb, "ad.” I’m not sure if it would be an adverb there. So, you have the verbal root, or some kind of a root, or some kind of a word combined with the name of a deity, and their relationship isn’t always the same there. I mean, I guess hypothetically, you could translate “Yehoshua” as "He saves Yah,” or even Isaiah as "He saves Yah,” but that seems a bit unlikely in the context of the Tanakh.

David: Right, so this whole discussion, it's great. I guess, the one message I have to the people listening today is, you don't have to get the answer, but just the discussion. The Tanakh has a lot of fruitful puns in them. There's a lot there that you can glean if you know what to look for.

Nehemia: I wanna stop you there, because that's a profound concept that I've found, that is a given to Jews and to many non-Jews, it's an alien concept. In other words, the Jewish approach is to say, not everyone's identical, but by and large, I think the Jewish approach is to say that the question could be more important than the answer; that there might be 1,000 answers, and we don't know which one is correct. But if you don't even know what the question is, you can't even look for the answer.

And so, defining the questions are, in a sense, more important than what the specific answer is, because I get a lot of people who will say to me, “Just give me the answer, Nehemia. I don't want to hear this whole discussion, if it’s four options. Just tell me the answer.” Well, I don't have a crystal ball, and I'm neither a Prophet nor the son of a Prophet. I might be the son of a Rabbi, but I'm not the son of a Prophet. And so, I don't know what the answer is.

I know there are three possibilities, or eight possibilities, or maybe there's one possibility, but knowing what the question is, that at least puts you on the path where you could try to figure out the answer for yourself. If you don't even know what the question is, well then, you can't even begin. There's a famous commentary, a very voluminous commentary by a man named Abarbanel. He puts out dozens of questions on every section of the Bible that he discusses. It's just boom, boom, boom, he gives you all these questions. And it's quite clear from Abarbanel's perspective, the questions are more important than the answers.

David: But he tries to give an answer too.

Nehemia: Of course, he gives an answer too, and he gives a discussion, but some of the questions are more important. And that's one of the things I want to bring for people. You could learn Hebrew all over the place, right? There's a lot of different sources to learn Hebrew. One of the things that I love about the opportunity for people to study Hebrew with you, as a Rabbi and a Doctor, you know, having a PhD, is you bring this Jewish approach to it, which is you weren't suggesting that it was a given, that the question is more important than the answer. But that's not a given for many people, and I think that itself conveys so much value that people can benefit from.

David: Nice. So, how’s about I tell you what "Super Broiler" suggested on Reddit?

Nehemia: That's somebody's name, okay.

David: It’s somebody’s name. What I'd like to do is just show Psalm 145 here. Psalm 145, we’ll look at it here. For those who are watching on a screen, what we have on the left-hand side is the Hebrew, and on the right-hand side is the King James.

Nehemia: And what Bible program are you using here?

David: I'm using an Accordance Bible.

Nehemia: My friend Keith calls it the "Tap-Tap.” This is the one I use, yes.

David: Accordance, I love it. If you come to our Institute, we have our own special discount with Accordance for anything you buy.

Nehemia: Really?

David: Yeah. We're Accordance people, but a lot of people do Logos.

Nehemia: “BibleWorks, alav hashalom,” as they say, “BibleWorks, may it rest in peace.”

David: Right. So, what we have here, it starts with, “Tehila leDavid,” “A song of praise of David.” And then, what we have is just the entire Psalm. We could read through the whole thing, and when you read through the English, you kind of... I'm not gonna read it for you, but it's basically a lot of praise for God, but there's no real order to it, no real order to it. And what "Super Broiler" pointed out is that in the Tanakh, at least between 10 and 20 times, we have these passages that are all ordered according to the alef bet, the alphabet. For example, what we have here is…

Nehemia: Can I explain what I think you mean by "There's no order to it?”

David: Yes.

Nehemia: What I think you want to say is, you have these individual verses, each of which is unconnected to the next verse.

David: Right, they’re individual…

Nehemia: They're standalone sentences, which is unusual. Normally, you have a passage and verse two is a continuation of verse one, and verse three is a continuation of verse two. And here, I could read verse two, and it has nothing to do with verse three, except that there’s a common theme, right? “Every day will I bless thee, and I will praise thy name forever and ever.” Verse three, “Great is the Lord and great to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.” Verse three doesn't follow from verse two.

David: Right. To be fair, there are a lot of Psalms that are just lovely praise...

Nehemia: True.

David: ...but a lot of them are also ordered, and the order only comes in the Hebrew. So, while you were just speaking, I highlighted the first letter of each verse. And what we have is the alef, the bet, the gimel, the dalet, so it’s A,B,C,D,E,F,G. And so, basically in the Tanakh, it often presents itself as having this kind of literary characteristic. And a lot of times you could say, “Oh, it's okay, it's in the English that we forgot about it, so who cares? You know, why do I need to know that these are the ABCs?” A lot of times these are pretty mind blowing. For example, most of us consider Psalm 9 and 10, we consider it to be two Psalms. But when you look at the acrostic, it actually goes from 9 through 10.

Nehemia: Wait, so tell people what an acrostic is, I don’t think people…

David: An acrostic is this idea of having a text ordered according to the alphabet.

Nehemia: I would define it a little bit differently. I would say that there is a… I'm going to use a fancy word, there's a metatext here. In other words, we have the words themselves and what they mean, but we also have a message that's being conveyed by the initial letters spread out across the verses, in this case. We have alef, bet, gimel, dalet, hey spelled out in the Psalm, which is a second layer of meaning that you wouldn't get from just reading it in the English.

David: Right, and the thing is, why was the Psalm written this way? Why are there so many of these in the Tanakh? And actually, if you know the Hebrew, you can actually memorize them pretty easily.

Nehemia: It's a memorization device, right? Every child in ancient Israel knew the alef bet, and he might not have remembered what verse came next, but he remembered, “Oh, it's the one that starts with bet, and after that it's the one that starts with gimel,” so it's a memory device, exactly.

David: Exactly. Psalm 145 is part of the Ashrey said at least two times a day. And so, you know it by heart. You know “ratzon” is the resh, “shomer” is the shin. And then, every Shabbat, every Friday night dinner, me and my family, we sing this out loud from Proverbs 31. And it's another acrostic, “Eshet khayil mi yimtza,” “Who can find the virtuous woman?”

Nehemia: “Eshet khayil.” You know, when I got engaged, I said, “I’ve finally found my eshet khayil,” and there were people on Facebook who thought that my fiancé’s last name was “Khayil” and her first name was “Eshet.” They didn't realize I was referring to Proverbs 31.

David: So, that was the Hebrew of saying Eshet Khayil is like...

Nehemia: “A woman of valor is a virtuous woman,” or something.

David: “A woman who is to be praised.” And then it goes on with the alef is the first verse, and then the bet, “Batakh.” So, if I ever get lost, I'm singing, you know, we have wine in my hands. If you ever get like a little lost, you're like, “Oh, dalet, “Darsha tzemer ufishtim.”

Nehemia: And I think it's important to remember that in ancient times not everybody had books…

David: You would remember it, yeah.

Nehemia: So, it was very important for them to remember things by heart. And so, I think that kind of gives us a glimpse that any of these acrostic Psalms or Lamentations, or in this case, the Song of the Valorous Woman, was probably something that was intended for the common man to memorize.

David: Right. And so, once you know the Hebrew and you can look for these things, you can see some very interesting studies. For example, what I wanted to point out to you is that in the acrostic which we first mentioned, Psalm 145, which every verse starts with the letter, alef, bet, gimel, going through the whole thing, you get one of these interesting things in your Bibles. So, maybe for everyone listening today, obviously, if you're on the road, don't do this now, but check your…

Nehemia: No, pull over to the side of the road, as long as it's safe, right now. I'm just kidding.

David: Check Psalm 145:13 because a lot of the translations, for example, I have here the NRSV, add a verse into the Bible. This is a verse that doesn't appear, for example, in the King James. So, let's do the King James. Nehemia, could you kindly do verse 13 in the King James?

Nehemia: King James 145:13. It says, “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”

David: All right, and if you could, one more reading, is if you could do it now in the NRSV, the New Revised Standard Version.

Nehemia: The NRSV begins the same. “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations.” Then it continues in the same verse, “The Lord is faithful in all His words, and gracious in all His deeds.”

David: This is a new verse in the Bible that's not in the King James, it's not in the Hebrew. So, where did this come from? Why is the NRSV and others adding this verse into the Tanakh?

Nehemia: Without checking, I'm gonna assume it comes from the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Tanakh.

David: I don't know if it's the Septuagint, but it's definitely in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Nehemia: So, the Septuagint does have it.

David: Right, because the idea, Nehemia, is that every single verse in this Psalm begins with a letter of the alphabet, but there's no letter nun, which for us would be the N. There's no N verse, what happened to it?

Nehemia: So, it's missing a letter, okay.

David: It's missing a letter, and because it's in the Dead Sea Scrolls, because it's in the Septuagint, the NRSV editors felt strong enough that this could be added to our Bibles, so that you now have in this verse…

Nehemia: Well, and they would have said "restored" to our Bibles, but okay.

David: Well, they would have said "restored,” yeah. And so, that's a decision or at least presented. It's a tough call what to do, but compared to the King James, it was definitely added, no questions. But compared to the Hebrew of the Masoretic text, it was added, no questions.

Nehemia: Okay, so it’s “Neeman Elohim.” You're gonna read it, all right, go ahead.

David: I don't have it in front of me.

Nehemia: Okay, I have a module in Accordance where it has the Hebrew, and this is very interesting. So, it's 11Q5, the 11th cave at Qumran, manuscript number 5. It says, “Barukh,” then it has “Yud-hey-vav-hey,” in Paleo-Hebrew, I love that, “Ubarukh shemo le'olam va'ed.” “Blessed is Yud-hey-vav-hey, and blessed is His name forever.” So, here's the Hebrew of what's called the “Masoretic Text,” which has the mem and the samekh, and in-between there's no nun. And then here, you have the New Revised Standard Version, and the extra verse I read is here, “The Lord is faithful in all His words.” Oh, this is very cool. I can do this thing where I highlight the word in Accordance, “Faithful,” and you see, nothing shows up in the...

David: In our Bibles, right. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, it does…

Nehemia: In the Dead Sea Scrolls, “Ne'eman Elohim bidvarav, vekhasid bekhol ma'asav.” “Faithful is God in His deeds, His actions, or His words, and He is khasid, He is khesed, He is faithfulness or loving kindness,” “bekhol ma'asav,” “in all His deeds, all His actions.” What's interesting to me on another level, is that… So, here's the Greek. The Greek has “pistos kurios en tois logois autou,” which is the same thing, except it has, instead of “Elohim,” it has “kurios” which is a translation of either “Adonay” or “Yud-hey-vav-hey” and not “Elohim.” Here, we have the missing verse, you could say, restored from the Masoretic Text, meaning, missing in the Masoretic Text, restored in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But then, we have a textual variant between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Greek, which is also very interesting.

David: And then people, to be fair, they say, “Well, maybe this wasn't even the missing verse, because it's actually a piecemeal from different parts of the Psalm.” This is why I'm always hesitant to say we've restored the original. I like to say, we are restoring the Dead Sea Scrolls version.

Nehemia: So, this is a classic problem in textual criticism. The classic problem is the principle “Difficilior Lectio,” which is a fancy way of saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, maybe it's too good to be true.” So, you have a difficult text, as it jumps from mem to nun. That sounds like something's wrong, and so, maybe it's because a verse is missing. And then, the other possibility is whether that verse was missing or not, people 2,000 years ago had the same question. They said, “We're missing a verse. Let's make one up to fill in the gap,” right? So, we don't know if they filled in the gap based on taking pieces from other parts of the verse, like you said, or if this is the original. It could go both ways.

David: Everybody should check in their Bibles, Psalm 145:13, and see if they have that half-verse that's added, “The Lord is faithful in all His words.”

Nehemia: In the Septuagint they call it verse 13A.

David: This whole idea is that if you know the Hebrew, you know the idea of an acrostic, an A,B,C,D,E,F,G Psalm, and once you know that, you can actually look for cool things like the missing verse here in Psalm 145:13.

Nehemia: Did you follow the story of where acrostics showed up in mainstream American culture last year?

David: No, tell me, Nehemia.

Nehemia: There's this great incident, let's see... I Googled it here, just to remind myself, I couldn't remember this guy's name. Representative Paul A. Gosar of Arizona put out a series of like 20 or 30 tweets. And someone noticed that if you took the first letter of each of these tweets and put them together, it spelled out the sentence, "Epstein didn't kill himself.” Now, does he believe Epstein didn't kill himself? I don't know if he does or doesn't, but he had hoped that someone would notice this, and it would get national press.

And it not only got national press, it got international press. Some House representative from Arizona, who outside of Arizona no one's heard of this guy, he's not in the national attention, he intentionally did this so that people would hear his message by putting out something controversial. And then, he put out another single tweet where the first letters spelled out "Area 51.” And it said, “All the tweets pertaining to today's hearing, rest assured, they are substantive.” Every one of them, all of them, five were brilliant, one was okay. And he put it out where it spelled out "Area 51.” And why did he do that? Because he wanted people to pay attention to his tweets.

And my takeaway from this is there's obviously somebody Jewish who knows Hebrew on his staff, because where does anybody in western culture know about an acrostic? There must have been someone on the staff who said, “I have an idea.” And I'm sure he said, “What do you want to put in my tweets?” But it worked. It got him international attention for his message.

David: I don't know the history of English acrostics, but the idea is that person, you're gonna pay more attention, right?

Nehemia: It may exist in other cultures and languages, but as far as I know, Hebrew invented this idea of acrostics. And look, in the Tankah we have very basic acrostics, where it's alef, bet, gimel, dalet, hey. As you well know, in the Middle Ages, we have acrostics where somebody wrote a whole poem that spelled out their name. Or another thing they did is in some manuscripts that have nothing to do with the Tanakh or anything, it will be a manuscript of the commentary of the Talmud or something, and then they would put a little symbol. It wasn't necessarily the first letter of each sentence, but they’d put a little symbol and another symbol and another symbol until it spelled out the name of the scribe. And they'd do that on a single page where you'd find it. They wanted people to find it.

David: And these are very helpful for memorization, very helpful. This is something that in the Hebrew, or if you're careful on the Internet with tweets, you can find. The idea is that this is something that gets completely lost in the translation. Even if the translator says, “Oh, by the way, this is an acrostic,” it doesn't really mean anything.

Nehemia: And they do that. For example, in a lot of the translations of Psalm 119, where you have the entire alphabet spell about 8 times, 8 alefs, 8 bets, 8 gimels.

David: The longest chapter in the Tanakh.

Nehemia: What does verse three have to do with verse four? Nothing, except they both start with alef. That's actually important to know, it gives you some insight into what you're reading. So, you have that, so it was for memorization, for sure. And so, many translations have that, it will say, “Aleph” and then in verse nine it'll say, “Bet,” and in the next one it'll say, “Gimel,” and some people wouldn't even know what that is, or if you explain it to them, okay, but it doesn't help them memorize it, which is what the purpose was in ancient Israel. What's beautiful to me is it gives us an idea of not just what the text means, but in some respect how it was consumed, which we don't always know. It gives us the “sitz im leben,” what they call, the “context” in which this text was used. I love that.

David: None of the Israelites had a Bible in their house. They heard it and they needed to walk with it, and keep it. And so, an acrostic is a good way to do that.

Nehemia: It's so rare, a Bible in ancient Israel, or the Torah, even let's say, that it's a commandment for the King to write for himself a copy, otherwise he won't have one.

David: All right, should we go on to what "House Dorf Dim" suggested as one of the great things about Hebrew that is lost in translation?

Nehemia: Oh, that's somebody's name on Reddit?

David: On Reddit.

Nehemia: On Reddit, okay. Let's do one more from Reddit, and then I'm going to ask to shift gears and maybe save the rest for the bonus episode. Is there one more that's just crucial, that you want to get for the public episode?

David: Okay, so this is the last one from Reddit that I actually found to be really, really special.

Nehemia: Beautiful, but then in the bonus episode we're gonna share some really special stuff, but maybe not from Reddit.

David: Right. And so, there are a lot of words in Hebrew that have two meanings, and it depends on each context how you want to translate them. And one of the more obvious ones is the word “El” or “Elohim.” “El” could mean “God,” “elohim” could mean "gods.” Or it could just mean, “the God,” meaning “the God of Israel,” the “God of the world.”

Nehemia: Or it could even mean “Judges” in one passage, right, or in a number of passages?

David: Right. Yes, exactly.

Nehemia: Like when they talk about drilling the guy's ear, it says to bring them to the “elohim,” that seems that's the Judges.

David: Right, and about Aharon it says, “You are going to be Moshe's, Moses’ speaker,” like he's going to be your Elohim, your God, your path.

Nehemia: So, maybe that elohim is meant metaphorically. But when it says, "You will do as the elohim convict" and it's yarshi'un, plural, there it obviously doesn't refer to God with a capital G, but to presumably, the Judges or something like that.

David: Right. Let me change this to JPS, one second. What I'm showing you is Psalm 29:1 in the Hebrew, and in the King James, and in the Jewish Publication Society, two translations in one text. It says, “Mizmor leDavid,” a “mizmor,” a “Psalm of David,” “Havu l'Adonay beney elim.” “Give to God the sons of the elim,” “Havu l'Adonay kavod va'oz,” “Give to God the glory and the strength.” What we have here is this word “Elim.” The “beney elim,” “the sons of elim.” And so, what does that mean? Let's take a look at these two translations. Nehemia, can you take for example the King James here?

Nehemia: I’m just reading on your screen. It says, “Give unto the Lord, oh ye mighty.” So “beney elim” was translated as “mighty ones.”

David: Right, okay. And let's do the Jewish Publication Society.

Nehemia: “Ascribe to the Lord, O divine beings.” So, it's “divine beings.”

David: And so, basically, words like “el” and “elohim” in each context... and they could also mean foreign gods. Does it mean foreign god, the God, or does it mean just some strength, some mighty person? And these can mean different things, and each time you read this in your English, you're like, “Okay,” not noticing that the translator made a big decision. They made a big decision, okay?

Let's also look at Genesis 3:5 here for the same concept. In this story here, we’re in this story of Genesis the snake is trying to convince Khava, Eve, he’s trying to convince her to eat the fruit. We'll just start in the English. “For God knows that on the day that you eat from it, that your eyes will be opened,” “venifkekhu eynekhem vihiytem,” “And y'all shall be ke'elohim.”

Nehemia: Tell us why you said "y'all.” I love the word “y'all,” but tell us why.

David: For Southerners out there, you should know that "y'all" is very biblical, because there's a difference between you, masculine, you, feminine, and y'all, masculine, and y'all, feminine.

Nehemia: So, now I'm going to edumacate you on southern English because I live in Texas now. In Texas, there's a distinction between "y'all" and "all y'all.” "Y'all" is singular, although it can be used to refer to two, and "all y'all" is plural. And it may differ in different parts of the South, but basically, you're trying to show there's a difference between singular you and plural you, and vihyitem is you, plural, all y'all, will become elohim, or like elohim.

David: Right. And so, what that basically means is that all y'all are going to become like elohim, which we just saw could either mean God with a capital G, God with a small g, like the god of Moab, the gods of Greece, and it could also mean just a mighty person. And so, what is the snake saying? “You are becoming like Elohim.” Why don't we take a look, in this case I want to show you the difference between the King James and the New King James.

Nehemia: Oh wow, which are supposed to be identical, except one is supposed to have more modern language, but in fact, they're not identical even in content.

David: Right. So, Nehemia, could you kindly just read for me the King James, this last phrase here?

Nehemia: “Then your eyes will be open and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

David: “You shall be as gods.” So, “Elohim” means gods. And you read that, you're like, “Okay, fine.” Let's read the New King James.

Nehemia: “You will be like God,” capital G, “knowing good and evil.” Wow.

David: And so, if you don't know Hebrew, you don't know that every time the name God is mentioned or gods is mentioned, the translator is doing their best to try and figure this out, this ambiguity. Is it gods, or is it the God? According to the King James, Adam and Eve are gonna be like these gods that kind of exist around God, what we might think of as angels, or something like that, not necessarily a direct equation, but that idea. But according to New King James, it’s no, you're gonna be like God Himself.

Nehemia: So, there's two ways of looking at that, David when you say like angels, meaning what we would call “angels.” One is to diminish what Genesis 3:5 means by the meaning of “God” or “gods,” and to say, “No, no, no, it's not God.” Let's say, the ancient Israelites who heard this understood he doesn't mean “Elohim” capital G, he means elohim with a small g, gods, and small g, gods is angels like in the Book of Job and in some other places. The other way of looking at it is, I once had a professor at Hebrew University who said, “Judaism isn't monotheistic. Judaism has many deities. Just we take this pill that we swallow that makes us feel good. And that pill is to say, ‘Oh, no, we just have angels.”

David: “Mi khamokha ba'Elim, Adonay.”

Nehemia: “Who is like You among…” Hold that thought, because that's actually something a little bit different, although maybe not. Here was his argument. And here, he was talking about Judaism in the broadest sense, meaning if you’d go to a Kabbalist 700 years ago who was formulating certain prayers, and he's praying to angels for them to intercede on God's behalf, what difference is there between an angel and god with a small g? Meaning, that form of Judaism maybe does have many gods, except that it convinces itself it doesn't by calling those gods “angels.” But from an outside, purely objective perspective, that maybe is polytheistic. There's one God who's most powerful, and then there's these little gods who you interact with.

David: People like to bounce around the word “monolatry.”

Nehemia: Tell us what monolatry is. But it's not even monolatry. They're praying to these angels, right?

David: Monolatry, so it means that there's lots of gods, but God is the greatest God. And that comes from reading the Tanakh, the Bible in Hebrew, when you see these ambiguities here.

Nehemia: Well, my understanding of monolatry is there's many gods, but you only worship one of them. In other words, you say Chemosh is a god, and Ba'al is a God, but I'm not supposed to worship Chemosh or Ba'al, I'm only supposed to worship Yud-hey-vav-hey.

David: It's not like sports, where you have your team even if they're bad. The idea is that you have the best God.

Nehemia: For sure. But in medieval Judaism, and let's say certain forms of Kabbalah, at the very least, you have people who are praying to different powers that aren't the infinite God, the “ein sof,” and they'll say, “Oh, no, those are just emanations from God.” I've argued that medieval Kabbalah, specifically the Zohar, isn't monotheistic. Christianity sometimes will talk about the “Triune Deity,” and medieval or Zohar Kabbalah at least had a “Decaune deity.” Deca would mean 10 that are one. There is actually an explicit statement in the Zohar that says, “The one is 10, and the 10 are one.” Maybe that's way off-topic, but you really have a good point here.

Go back to “Mi khamokha ba'elohim, Yud-hey-vav-hey.” That's actually a much more powerful statement, or example, in a way. Exodus 15:11, it's in the song of the sea. Based on the internal biblical chronology, at least, you take it at face value, this was written before the 10 Commandments. It takes place before the 10 Commandments. “Who is like you among the elim, O Yud-hey-vav-hey?” So, who are these elim, who are these gods?

David: So, who are these “elim?” There's a cool thing on Accordance called "text browser,” where you can see every text that you have all at once.

Nehemia: I don't think I've ever used this feature.

David: The question is, “Mi khamokha ba'elim, Adonay? “Who is like you amongst the gods, O Lord?” Here, we have gods…

Nehemia: The celestials of the JPS.

David: When you see this in your English, you say, “Among the celestials,” you're like, okay, I'm just reading in English. But when you see it in the Hebrew, you're like, “Oh.”

Nehemia: Wait, mouse over the D, what's in the D? It's gonna be the note that tells us, “Who is like you among the mighty?”

David: It’s still talking about the obvious one, of gods. They left out…

Nehemia: So, this is a theologically corrected translation.

David: Right. That was one case, but really, these happen on every page. Every single translation is making decisions like this, where the words could have one of two meanings. Maybe we don't have to go into it exactly for the sake of time, but I'll just point out another one that...

Nehemia: I want you to save that for the bonus episode, and I want to end with this statement, and have you talk about this idea. Here's what I love about knowing Hebrew myself, and why I think people should learn Hebrew.

You made the statement that on every page, the translator is making this decision for you. And the power of being able to know Hebrew yourself and read it yourself is, I still have to make the decision, but I'm making the decision myself, based on information where I can weigh the pros and cons of how do I know. I'm doing the best I can, instead of just blindly following what somebody else says. Or the other thing that people do is, they'll take the 20 translations, and they'll go with the one they like the best, but then, it's not based on any actual information. Maybe it's wrong, how do you know? You're just blindly following what somebody else says. That's why I think it's so important to learn Hebrew. I mean, this is why I studied Hebrew, why I went to Hebrew University and moved to Israel, was that growing up I would read the Bible, I could read the Torah. And I was told, “Well, yeah, you can translate these verses, but you don't know enough. You don't know what your great-grandfather, this great Rabbi, knew. And you don't know what these other ancestors you had knew. Why do you think you're right, and all these other Rabbis are wrong? Because they have the power of the translation. Even if you can translate a specific verse, you don't know as much as they knew.”

So, I made the decision, I need to know as much as they knew and more. And that's why I went and studied biblical Hebrew, did my Master’s in Biblical Hebrew at Hebrew University, and continue to study the Bible every day, so that I could know. And look, one of the things I discovered is that I know things I didn't know. I didn't know how much I didn't know until I started to actually know things.

David: Exactly.

Nehemia: You know, it's called the “Dunning-Kruger effect.” People can Google Dunning-Kruger effect. I lived on Mount Stupid for many years. And then I came into, I forgot what it's called, the “valley of knowledge,” or something like that, where you realize, “Wow, there is a lot I don't know, but at least I know what I don't know. And I know how to find it out, or if it can't be found out I know that, too.” This, to me, is the power of being able to read the language yourself. You cut out the intermediary, and you're able to interact with God's word, with the ancient Hebrew text, directly for yourself.

David: Yes, and maybe as a last thing I'd say, kind of segue, Nehemia, what you're talking about is learning Hebrew, that for those who are watching on the screen, I just have all the information for our Hebrew summer course. We're recording this in 2021, towards the end of the pandemic, and I'm teaching this on Zoom in the summer. But it's not only then. If you're listening to this years down the road, also come back and just try and get a course if you're interested, and study all the biblical texts in Hebrew.

Nehemia: So, it's biblicalculture.org, and you could find him on YouTube Biblical Culture, and you do all kinds of teachings and studies. And you have all kinds of courses where people can take courses in the Bible, in the Tanakh, what Christians call the Old Testament. You actually have courses taught by, I think it was a course taught about the New Testament as well, right?

David: Yeah, we have New Testament scholars who do anything ranging from Philippians to just basic Gospel...

Nehemia: And those aren't necessarily taught by Orthodox Jews, but those are taught by people coming from a Christian perspective, but also an academic perspective, right?

David: Yeah, the truth is, I often tell my Jewish friends that early Christian texts are fascinating to read, just like any early Jewish texts. There's so much interpretation there. There are so much rich, new ideas there, so it's open to anyone and everyone, no questions.

Nehemia: Beautiful, excellent. David, would you end with a prayer? I love ending programs with a prayer, when we can.

David: Yes, I would love to. And we mentioned Psalm 145 a lot in our discussion. That was the acrostic, the alef bet, A,B,C,D,E Psalm. And so, I thought that I would try and pick a verse from that Psalm that was related to the fascinating time we find ourselves in. We're coming to the end of a pandemic. The world is healing. And so, I thought in that Psalm verse number 9, we have, “Tov Adonay lakol, verakhamav al kol ma'asav.” “God is good to all and His mercy is on all His creation, on all His works,” this idea of having mercy and healing a world that has just been through a lot. And so, that's whether our readers have themselves gotten sick, or know someone who's gotten sick, or even if they didn't and it's just been really tough with all the new restrictions and whatnot. Some mercy is very much looked for, and hoped for.

Nehemia: Amen.

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