The eternal Bible – vav ha hefuc

The 6^th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, vav, is also a prefix which would normally mean ‘and’ or ‘with’, but in the unique style of the Hebrew Pentateuch or Torah, the five books scribed by Moses, and other texts in the Tanach or Hebrew scriptures, it is used in a special time-twisting manner. If  vav prefixes a verb in future tense, it means past tense, and vice versa.  (See wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefixes_in_Hebrew second chart.)

This unique conversion of future to past and past to future is unnecessary grammatically, as  Biblical Hebrew clearly had already developed proper verb forms for past and future tenses.

So why the use of this unusual way of presenting ‘past’ and ‘future’ intensions and actions?

 

I suggest that it reflects the unique nature of the Hebrew Bible as the words of an eternal God -- whose words and actions transcend time. 

 

The Tradition  of Mistranslating Vav Ha Hefuch

From the Latin Vulgate translation through that of King James’s (Medieval, poetic English) to translations by  even Jewish scholars (See Hertz edition, the Soncino ed.) the error of translating the vav ha hefuch as “and” + inverted verb tense has been part of western Biblical consciousness for some 2000 years. 
 

Even the earlier, 3^rd century BCE Greek Septuagint made this mistake.  The Greek conjunction καὶ,  meaning “and/also”,  is used at the start of every sentence where Vav Ha Hefuch appears.  (See Genesis ch 1, Greek and modern English translation at http://en.katabiblon.com/us/index.php?text=LXX&book=Gn&ch=1&interlin=on.)

To my knowledge, only the recent Art Scroll, Stone edition, The Chumash (1993), corrects this error and the above cited online Septuagint modern English translation.

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 The Vulgate, as a loose translation with a sense of flair and Latin style, does not simply (and boringly) use the equivalent of ‘and’ each time.  It uses a variety of alternatives consistent with Latin grammar and style.

 

The opening lines of the Vulgate’s Genesis are indicative.

Sentence 2:   Terra autem (BUT/HOWEVER/MOREOVER/ALSO) erat inanis et vacua ...

Sentence 3:   Dixitque (AND – as a standard Latin suffix to a verb) ... Et (AND) facta est lux.

Sentence 4:    Et (AND) vidit Deus ...

Sentence 5:    Appellavitque (AND  -- as a verb suffix) ...

It is the King James Version that made the repetitive AND the norm, used at the start of almost every sentence.  The pattern serves to link the sentences and ideas, and creates a poetic rhythm.

 

Unfortunately, the Vulgate’s ‘upgrading’ of  vav ha hefuch to polished Latin alternatives  -- for variety -- or the repetitive pattern of ANDs set by the Greek Septuagint and the King James English translation, distort the original Hebrew text’s real message.   The eternal nature of God’s words, actions and commands is lost.

 

What, then, would be a better translation of the vav ha hefuch?

Unfortunately, I have no easy, answer. One would have to add to each such verb the qualifier – “in His timeless and eternal voice”.

This is not very poetic, and may make the text seem overly wordy and repetitive as vav ha hefuchit shows up so often.  But it is the most accurate reflection of the Bible’s Hebrew and the divine intension.

 

 

 

 

The God of the Bible

 

In the Bible, God is presented with various names and references, but the actual divine name in the original Hebrew consists of 4 consonants and their implied vowels:  Yad-Hay-Vav-Hay.

 

When I was in grade 4, starting to study Hebrew grammar, it struck me that the actual,  4 letter name of God is a combination of the Hebrew verb ‘to be’ in  its 3^rd person singular (male) in what should be [1] its past, present and future forms.  

 

God’s most holy and accurate name is, therefore, best translated as “The Eternal”.   It encompasses the roles of creator of the universe (past), active agent in current events (present), and controller of the future.

 

(This etymology is also given in the Art Scroll Series, Stone Edition, The Chumash, p.304 footnote to verse 13.]

 

God’s secret sign “I AM” or “I Shall Be”    (Exodus, ch 3)

 

It is interesting to note in this connection, the passage in Exodus were Moses asks God what ‘secret word’ will convince the Children of Israel that Moses is sent by their true God.

 

Here it makes vividly clear the link between God’s proper name and the verb ‘to be’ and its tenses.

The King James Version, following the Vulgate’s Latin – including the use of all capitals at two key points -- reads:

 13. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, “What is his name? What shall I say unto them?”

14. And God said unto Moses, “I AM THAT I AM” [Vulgate: “EGO SUM QUI SUM”] and he said, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM [Vulgate “QUI EST] hath sent me unto you.”

15. And God said moreover unto Moses, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.”

 

Exodus: Ch 3 :13 – 15  (King James version)     www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bible/ [July 20, 2011]

 

 

The passage, however, incorrectly translates the ALL CAPITALS parts in the present tense, but as the Art Scroll Series, Stone Edition, The Chumash points out, the Hebrew ‘secret sign’ is in the future tense. 

Hashem answered Moses, “I Shall Be As I Shall Be.” And He said, “So shall you say to the Children of Israel, ‘I Shall Be has sent me to you.’”  

                  Art Scroll, The Chumash, p.305, verse 14 [red is my highlighting].

 

In conclusion, whether mistranslated as the present or correctly as the future, the ‘secret sign’ attests that God’s name and the verb ‘to be’ are clearly one and the same.

 

 

             [1] No present tense of ‘to be’

 

It may be that this link to God is why in Hebrew there is no present tense for the verb ‘to be’.  

 

For example, the English:  “I am happy.”  becomes in Hebrew “ I happy.” -- with the verb ‘am’  implied.  Similarly English’s “He is powerful” becomes in Hebrew “He powerful.”

 

Otherwise, at least 3 of the letters in God’s true name would be written or spoken, in contravention of Biblical law and Jewish tradition.

 

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Understanding Biblical criticism

The various schools of Biblical Criticism, also called Historical Criticism, are based on a number of assumptions:

 

1.       There is no God, gods or goddesses. 

2.        Consequently, there is no possibility of any divine communication with mankind.

3.       There is no such thing as divine prophecy of future events.  Any text accurately predicting a future event was written after the event.

 

4.       Biblical ‘facts’ are not to be trusted unless corroborated by outside sources and archaeology.

 

5.       Outside of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the rest of the Fertile Crescent, the lands between these two cornerstones of Ancient World civilization, were backwaters with primitive and uneducated peoples – incapable of conceiving monotheism or alphabet writing.

 

6.        The Chumash is a compilation of four (or more) separate themes combined into a ‘single text’ by a Great Redactor sometime in the Second Temple era.  The separate pieces cover: myths and folklore about the creation of the world and early human history; a history of the Jews from Abraham to crossing the Jordan; priestly sacrifice rules and regulations; and a synoptic, last  volume, Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew)which recaps the time from the Enslavement in Egypt and Exodus to Moses last days.

 

7.       The Chumash melds together traditions from two different religions as evidenced by the use of two distinctly different names for the divine  --  Elohim (a plural) and the 4 letter name YHVH.

 

While points #1 and #2 are often not explicitly stated, the rest are well attested.

And put simply, any text referring to “the word of God” (or gods) are seen as human documents and pious frauds.

 

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See for example Wikipedia on Julius Wellhausen (1844 –1918) and biblical criticism

First principles

The following principles underlie my views, this blog, its commentary and insights:

1. The Chumash (also called the Torah in Hebrew and, in English, the Five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch) and the other books of the Hebrew Bible (the Tanach) are exactly what they purport themselves to be and not ‘later’ compilations or pious frauds.

2. The Chumash is a single entity, scribed by Moses and given to the children of Israel at God’s dictation during the 40 years in the Sinai peninsula.

 3. God’s written text to Moses was accompanied by Oral explanations of details, called the Oral Law. Many commandments are so terse in the written text as to be impossible to apply in real life.  E.g., separate cooking and eating of dairy from meat is only given through the verse: ” Do not cook a kid in the milk of its mother.”  And how to manufacture the required door post mezuzot,  tephillin, and tzitzit – required in the 3 paragraphs of the daily Shema prayer -are never explained at all. 

4. I follow, in general,  Maimonides, Rabbi Mose ben Maimon of whom it has long be said “From Moses (of the Exodus)  to this Moses there has not arise so great another Moses (“Me Moshe ud  Moshe lo cum keMoshe.”)   Maimonides combined his vast  knowledge of al Torah and ensuing Rabbinic teachings and the Talmud with expertise in Greek and Arabic philosophy and rationalism, and, as a doctor, an appreciation of scientific progress to the point where he warned against the hazards of following Talmudic medical remedies.

His 13 Principles of Faith encompass the core ideas of Judaism that distinguish it from both Islam and Christianity.

5. The Bible is written “bilshon benai Adum”, i.e.,  in the language of mankind.  This principal, expounded by Maimonides,  has three (3) applications to be discussed later on.

6. To correctly understand the Chumash and later Bible texts, one must realize that our forefathers did not live in a vacuum, but in societies and environments with cultures, legal systems and traditions that affected them, and what we read and see in the Bible.

7. Biblical Criticism, also called Historical Criticism, has tenets that seem logical but start from premises that any religious person cannot accept.  (They will be discussed later on.)

8. The Argument from Silence – that is, to argue that a biblical reference must be wrong -- because we have no independent text or archaeological corroborative evidence --  is a fundamental mistake that every historian is warned against in History 101.  Yet it is rampant among the ‘scholars’ -- Bible critics, archaeologists and revisionist historians -- of the Bible and Holy Land.

9. Wording or events given in the Chumash that seem 'odd', contradictory or go against Israel is a Holy Land unique in the world and subject to Bible commandments that no human would ever consider instituting. These commandments defy normal logic and human practices, and reaffirm the divine nature of the Chumash.

Overview and Personal Slant   

This blog is intended to share various observations and insights, to allow for a better understanding and appreciate the Hebrew Bible or Tanach – especially the first five books that are variously called the Chumash or Torah in Hebrew, and the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses in English.

The blog has various subsections or headings which reflect its diversity, such as Misconceptions; The Psychology of the Bible; History, Archaeology and Biblical criticism; The Other Side; and Social and Cultural Context.

The focus is on the ‘plain meaning of the text’ and not mystical interpretations, and has a strong anthropological bent. It often asks: What would an objective observer have seen if present when the various stories and experiences described in the Bible took place?

Finally, everyone has personal views based on their education and life experiences. Readers should always know what these are when judging a source and the reliability of information and ideas.

So here are my cornerstones:

› Jewish and left wing Orthodox – yes, there is a left wing to Jewish Orthodoxy

› believer in the Divine nature of the Chumash and the authenticity of the other works of the Tanach

› educated in a Hebrew Day School system but not a Yeshiva

› trained as a historian

› rationalist in approach, generally following Maimonides

 

 

The Still Small Voice

3 Key Quotes

 The title of this blog is taken from 1 Kings 19: 11-13, which describes Elijah’s meeting with God at Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai):  

¹¹ The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still small voice ( or a gentle whisper). ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.

So, God can be spectacular as in the sudden storm, earthquake or fire, but He is even more visible in the smallest of things, a gentle whisper or still small voice.

 

Two famous quotes by Albert Einstein also underlie this blog:

       ·         God does not play dice with the universe

 ·         Science without religion is lame.  Religion without science is blind.