Джеймс Миченер - The Source

At this point Eliav appeared with a book under his arm and took away the King James Version. “John, I wish you’d do your next two readings from this new English translation done by a group of Jewish scholars in Philadelphia.”

“Why Jewish?”

Eliav hesitated, then said, “It’s a ticklish point. But Deuteronomy is particularly Jewish in nature. It’s our holy book and it means double to us what it could possibly mean to a Catholic or a Baptist. Yet everybody reads it in Protestant or Catholic translations …”

“To me a translation’s a translation,” Cullinane protested.

“Not so,” Eliav retorted. “Even when the King James Version was made, it was purposefully old-fashioned. Something beautiful and poetic. Today it’s positively archaic, and for young people to study their religion from it can only mean they’ll think of that religion as archaic—clothed in dust and not to be taken as contemporary.”

“Perhaps, but why a Jewish translation?”

“The other thing that’s wrong with the King James Version is that it’s purely Protestant in its choice of words. You Catholics discovered that early, so you held to your Douay Version, which was just as lopsided on the Catholic side. And all the time, the book you’re wrestling over is a Jewish book, written by Jews for the instruction of Jews in a very Jewish religion. We can be forgiven if we feel that we ought to have a translation which takes these things into account … especially with Deuteronomy.”

“So now you’ve slanted everything into a Jewish bias.”

“We didn’t, but that’s not the point. Do you know Isaiah 7:14?” Cullinane was always impressed with the way Jews could cite the Bible, and now Eliav repeated the Old Testament words that lay at the heart of New Testament Christianity: “‘Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’”

Cullinane consulted his Protestant Bible and satisfied himself that Eliav had quoted accurately. But then the Jew said, “Now look it up in the Jewish translation,” and there Cullinane found the word virgin translated as young woman.

“On what authority did they make that change?” he asked in some surprise.

“Look at the original Hebrew,” Eliav suggested, handing him a third version, and in the original language of the Bible the word virgin was not mentioned. It had been introduced by Christian scholars as a device for proving that the Old Testament prophesied the New and that the New should therefore supersede the Old. “Throughout the centuries,” Eliav explained, “hundreds of thousands of Jews were burned to death or massacred because their own Bible was misused against them. I think we’re entitled to an accurate Jewish version.”

When Eliav left, Cullinane began what was to be a startling experience. The new Jewish translation, by divesting Deuteronomy of its Shakespearean poetry, offered the reader a blunt and often awkward statement. The old and the new compared in this manner:Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.Hear, O Israel, the laws and norms that I proclaim to you this day! Study them and observe them faithfully!

He checked the modern translation against the original Hebrew and discovered the Jewish translation to be literal and the King James Version not. He tested half a dozen additional passages and satisfied himself that the Jewish translators had at least tried to render their version faithfully if not poetically.

But gradually his critical judgment receded and he found himself reading for the pure pleasure of contemporaneous expression; and on his second run he came upon that verse which has always had such a powerful hold upon the Jewish reader: “It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, the living, every one of us who is here today.” And the point Eliav had been trying to get across was burned into Cullinane’s consciousness: Deuteronomy was a living book and to the living Jew it had contemporary force. When he came to the scene in which the Jews, having received the Ten Commandments, urged Moses to go back to God for further instructions, the simple idiom of the new translation gave him the sensation of being actually with the Jews at Horeb as the commandments were being delivered: “You go closer and hear all that the Lord our God says; then you tell us everything that the Lord our God tells you, and we will willingly do it.”

When he was finished with his fourth reading he told Eliav, “I see what you mean. It has a sense of actuality. You can almost touch the Jews.”

“Now for the last one, this time in Hebrew. Just as it was written down.”

“My Hebrew’s too rusty,” Cullinane protested. “I’ll take your word that it’s a fair translation.”

“I want to prove quite a different point,” Eliav said. “And for it your Hebrew’s adequate. Skip the words you don’t know.”

It took Cullinane about a day to make his way through the Hebrew text, and it was one of the best days he was to spend at Makor, for as he dug his way into the powerful Hebrew, in almost the same way as he had to dig through the soil hiding Makor, he came upon that quiet yet singing declaration of faith that is the core of Judaism, the passage which expresses the essence of Jewish history: “My father was a fugitive Aramaean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us: they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

At dinner Eliav said, “The point I wanted to make is this. The Hebrew used in writing Deuteronomy sometime in the seventh century B.C.E. is the same Hebrew that we’ve revived in Israel after it had been a dead language for a thousand years. Call over one of the kibbutzniks. Son!” A youth of fifteen ambled over, sloppy, happy, his sleeves rolled up for the job of cleaning the dining hall. Eliav asked, “Can you find me someone who speaks English,” and the boy said that he did, so Eliav handed him the Hebrew Torah, pointed to a passage in Deuteronomy and asked, “Can you read this?”

“Sure.”

“Go ahead.” The boy studied the words, some of the oldest written in Hebrew, and said tentatively, “‘My father was an Aramaean with no home. He went to Egypt. Not many. There he became a nation.’”

“Good,” Eliav said, and the pleased kibbutznik returned to his work.

Cullinane was impressed. “You mean … any educated Israeli today can read the Bible exactly as it was written?”

“Of course. For us this is a living book. Not necessarily a religious book, you understand. That boy, for example. Son!” The youth came back, smiling. “You ever go to synagogue?”

“No!”

“Your parents religious?”

“No!”

“But you know the Torah? The Prophets?”

“Sure,” and he left.

“That’s what you must remember, Cullinane. Every Jew you see on this dig can read the original Bible better than you can read Chaucer.”

“You’ve proved your point,” the Irishman admitted.

“I haven’t got to the point yet,” Eliav corrected. “We Jews persisted in history … where are the Babylonians, the Edomites, the Moabites with their multitudes of gods? They’re all gone, but our tenacious little group of Jews lives on. And we do so because what you’ve been reading in Deuteronomy is to us a real thing. One crucial passage you must have noticed. It has an historic actuality, whether you Gentiles and we Jews like it or not.”