New Testament Translations into Hebrew

Many years ago, I wanted to read the words of Jesus in a Semitic language (since I suspected that there would be wordplay, which proved to be the case). There was no Internet at the time, nor any abebooks dot com. I had to be patient for a few years, but eventually a very nice hardcover New Testament in Hebrew came into my hands. It was the masterful, if somewhat stiff translation of Franz Delitzsch, which is still my favorite. A few years later, another Hebrew New Testament came into my hands, that of Salkinson and Ginsburg. Unfortunately, I let that one slip out of my hands in the recent move from one continent to another, and I regret it.

At this point, let me give you a link that will tell you more than I can tell you, though not in as personal a manner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Hebrew#New_Testament

There have been quite a few partial or complete NT translations into Hebrew since the seventeenth century. Some older texts, especially of the Gospel of Matthew, were published by the rabbis for polemical purposes, but I don't want to get into that here.

Among the more recent translations, the two nineteenth-century ones that I mentioned are by far the best known. That of Delitzsch comes in two forms: His Tenth Edition, of 1889, was the last that he revised himself. Beginning in 1892, we have editions of Delitzsch as revised by Gustaf Dalman, which are based on older and better NT manuscripts. Delitzsch's first edition, of 1877, had been based on the Sinaïticus, a wonderful ms that had only been discovered twenty-some years earlier. But the British and Foreign Bible Society refused to publish his translation unless he made it conform to the Received Text. But Delitzsch, although the English on the facing pages conforms to the Received Text, allowed some of the superior readings to remain in the Hebrew. This is so, at least, in my copy, which is consistent with his Tenth Edition, of 1889. Delitzsch no doubt knew that the gentlemen of the Society were unlikely to take the trouble of reading his Hebrew. Thus, some very interesting readings that strongly suggest that the original language of the Gospel of Matthew was Hebrew, were preserved in his translation.

I have not used the Delitzsch-Dalman version enough to know how those interesting readings fared under Dalman's hand, but supposedly his revisions were based on earlier and better texts than the Received Text. This is fortunate, because most printed editions of Delitzsch's translation now reflect Dalman's revisions.

 Anyway, to make a long story a bit shorter, I have now found online and pdf versions of the Salkinson-Ginsburg translation at the hebrewnet website, another online version of Salkinson-Ginsburg, which is very clear and easy on the eyes, at the Sar Shalom website, Delitzsch-Dalman (1937) online at the website of iclnet dot org, and Delitzsch-Dalman (1901) in pdf form at archive dot org.

One of the nice things about the Wikipedia article that I linked at the beginning of this blog post is a table of comparison in section 3.4, which compares twelve translations by giving their versions of John 3:16. That table allowed me to quickly identify the Sar Shalom text, which was otherwise unidentified.

The table in the article ends with a couple of translations into Modern Hebrew, which are quite nice, especially that of the Bible Society in Israel (1977). A more recent revision (but not the most recent) of that translation is available online.

I also found and downloaded a pdf version of the New World Translation into Hebrew (Jehovah's Witnesses), which I found to be somewhat periphrastic and divergent from the others.

Please feel free to comment directly on this blog post, or to communicate with me by email (exolinguist at gmail dot com).

You May Have / ᏂᎯ ᏰᎵᏆᏎ ᎤᎯ

You may have big houses,
with many rooms,
but the world
that we all live in
is falling apart.

ᏂᎯ ᏰᎵᏆᏎ ᎤᎯ ᎡᏆ ᎦᎵᏦᏗᏁ,
ᎤᎪᏗᏗ kᏅᏑᎸ ᎬᏙᏗ,
ᎠᏎᏃ ᎡᏆ-ᎡᎶᎯ
Ꮎ ᎭᏫᎾ ᏂᎦᏛ ᎢᏧᎳ ᎠᎴᏂᏙᎭᏎ
ᎠᏲᎱᎯᏍᏓᏎ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.

The Sons of Obstruction / ᎤᏪᏥᏗ ᎢᎬᏯᏗᏠ

The sons of obstruction
are rude and uncouth,
but let us be offspring
of beauty and truth.

ᎤᏪᏥᏗ ᎢᎬᏯᏗᏠ
ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎬᏍᎦᏍᏓᎩ ᎠᎴ ᎤᏲᎢ-ᏂᏚᏍᏛᎢᎯ,
ᎠᏎᏃ ᎢᏧᎳ ᎨᏒᎤ ᎠᏲᏟᏗ
ᎤᏬᏚ ᎠᎴ ᏚᏳᎪᏛ.

Text and image © 2019 by Donald C. Traxler ꮨᏺꭽꮅ.