THE BOOK OF BOOKS
THE Bible, what a book! Large and wide as the world, based on the abysses of creation, and towering aloft into the blue secrets of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and death—the whole drama of humanity—are contained in this one book. It is the Book of Books. The Jews may readily be consoled at the loss of Jerusalem, and the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant, and all the crown jewels of King Solomon. Such forfeiture is as naught when weighed against the Bible, the imperishable treasure that they have saved. If I do not err, it was Mahomet who named the Jews the ‘People of the Book’, a name which in Eastern countries has remained theirs to the present day, and is deeply significant. That one book is to the Jews their country. Within the well-fenced boundaries of that book they live and have their being; they enjoy their inalienable citizenship, are strong to admiration; thence none can dislodge them. Absorbed in the perusal of their sacred book they little heeded the changes that were wrought in the real world around them. Nations rose and vanished, States flourished and decayed, revolutions raged throughout the earth—but they, the Jews, sat poring over this book, unconscious of the wild chase of time that rushed on above their heads.
H. HEINE, 1830.
THE BIBLE[15]
AS to an ancient temple
Whose vast proportions tower
With summit inaccessible
Among the stars of heaven;
While the resistless ocean
Of peoples and of cities
Breaks at its feet in foam,
Work that a hundred ages
Hallow: I bow to thee.
From out thy mighty bosom
Rise hymns sublime, and melodies
Like to the heavens singing
Praises to their Creator;
While at the sound, an ecstasy,
A trance, fills all my being
With terror and with awe—
I feel my proud heart thrilling
With throbs of holy pride.
Oh! come, thou high beneficent
Heritage of my fathers;
Our country, altar, prophet,
Our life, our all, art thou!
In doubt, in woe, in outrage,
In pangs of dissolution
That wring our tortured hearts,
Come, ope the rosy portals
Of Hope to us once more.
Ah me! what countless miseries,
What tears all unregarded.
Hast thou consoled and softened
With gentle voice and holy!
How many hearts that struggle
With doubt, remorse, anxiety,
With all the woes of ages,
Dost thou, on ample pinions,
Lift purified to Heaven!
Listen! the world is rising,
Seeking, unquiet, thrilling,
Awakens the new century
To new hopes and new visions.
Men hear upon the mountains
Strange and life-giving voices;
Every soul seems to wait,
And from that Book the signal
For the new day shall come.
DAVID LEVI, 1846.
(Trans. Mary A. Craig.)
FROM century to century, even unto this day, through the fairest regions of civilization, the Bible dominates existence. Its vision of life moulds states and societies. Its Psalms are more popular in every country than the poems of the nation’s own poets. Beside this one book with its infinite editions ... all other literatures seem ‘trifles light as air’.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL, 1895.
A JEWISH VERSION OF THE BIBLE
I
OUR great claim to the gratitude of mankind is that we gave to the world the word of God, the Bible.We have stormed heaven to snatch down this heavenly gift, as the Paitan[16] puts it. We threw ourselves into the breach, and covered it with our bodies against every attack. We allowed ourselves to be slain in hundreds and thousands rather than become unfaithful to it, and we bore witness to its truth, and watched over its purity, in the face of a hostile world. The Bible is our sole raison d’être; and it is just this which the Higher Anti-Semitism, both within and without our ranks, is seeking to destroy, denying all our claims for the past and leaving us without hope for the future. This intellectual persecution can only be fought with intellectual weapons, and unless we make an effort to recover our Bible we are irrevocably lost from both worlds.
S. SCHECHTER, 1903.
II
THERE is an old tradition that the day on which, for the first time, the Pentateuch was translated into a foreign language—into Greek—was considered by Jews as a day of great national calamity. It was feared that the translation, being incorrect, might become the source of error instead of being thefountain of divine truths. The fear felt and expressed about two thousand years ago has been fully justified by the history of the several versions that have since been undertaken, and by the large number of false doctrines, supposed to be founded on the authority of Holy Writ, whilst really originating in mistakes made by translators.
M. FRIEDLÄNDER, 1886.
NEW translations of the Bible have appeared and are appearing in various languages; but none of them has made, or intends to make, a complete and exhaustive use of Jewish contributions to the subject. Great university professors who know much, very much, but who do not know Jewish literature, unconsciously assume that they do not know it because it is not worth knowing—a judgement that no man has a right to pronounce until he has studied it—and this they have not done.
M. SULZBERGER, 1898.
THE book, commonly known as the Authorized, or King James’s Version, has been so long looked upon with a deep veneration almost bordering on superstitious dread, that, to most persons, the very thought of furnishing an improved translation of the Divine records will be viewed as an impious assumption and a contempt of the wisdom of former ages. Since the time of King James, however, the world hasprogressed in biblical knowledge no less than in all other branches of science; and giant minds have laboured to make clear what formerly was obscure.
ISAAC LEESER, 1855.
I FULLY admit the great merits of the Revised Version of the Bible. It corrects many faults, amends many mistranslations of the so-called King James’s Version, without impairing the antique charm of the English Bible, without putting out of tune the music so dear to our ears. Yet even that great work, compiled by the most eminent scholars and learned theologians in the land, is disfigured by errors due to dogmatic preconceptions.
HERMANN ADLER, 1896.
III
THE present translation[17] has a character of its own. It aims to combine the spirit of Jewish tradition with the results of biblical scholarship, ancient, mediaeval, and modern. It gives to the Jewish world a translation of the Scriptures done by men imbued with the Jewish consciousness, while the non-Jewish world, it is hoped, will welcome a translationthat presents many passages from the Jewish traditional point of view.
The Jew cannot afford to have his own Bible translation prepared for him by others. He cannot have it as a gift, even as he cannot borrow his soul from others. If a new country and a new language metamorphose him into a new man, the duty of this new man is to prepare a new garb and a new method of expression for what is most sacred and most dear to him.
From TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE,
Jewish Version of the Bible, 1916.
IV
SCRIPTURE must be interpreted according to its plain, natural sense, each word according to the context. Traditional exposition, however, may also be taken to heart, as it is said: ‘Is not My word like as fire?’—consisting of many sparks—‘and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?’—and therefore capable of various explanations.
RASHI, 1080.
V
THERE is none that hath ever made an end of learning it, and there is none that will ever find out all its mysteries. For its wisdom is richer than any sea, and its word deeper than any abyss.
ECCLESIASTICUS 24. 28, 29.