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An Annotated Bibliography Of Translations And Commentaries
On The Torah And Bible.
© 2006, Rabbi Ari Mark Cartun
Congregation Etz Chayim, Palo Alto, CA
Jewish Bibles are based on the "Masoretic Text." This Hebrew text was standardized by a group of "Traditionalist" scholars ("Masorete" means "Traditionalist") who, from the 7th to the 10th century CE, who took all the extant variant texts and made one text with an agreed-upon spelling, reading (sometimes the text is read differently than it is spelled!), musical notation, vowel notation, and order of books. The Masoretes left footnotes as to what they changed, and how the text is to be understood.
Originally there were no chapter and verse numbers in the TaNaKh. The Hebrew text contains two kinds of paragraphs, designated by the way the space at the end is either open to the edge of the column of text, or enclosed within the column of text. Only the Kaplan version of the Living Torah accentuates these in the English text. All others only reveal them on the Hebrew side, with the letters p (P) for Patuach, open, and s (S) for Satoom, closed (you can see that the Hebrew letters themselves are also open and closed). There is no agreed-upon explanation of why some are open and why others are closed.
Chapters and verses in Jewish Bibles are, actually, a take-off on those used in Christian Bibles. In order for there to be some way of common reference to the text, the Catholic authorities ordered the Jewish communities to adopt their numbering system of chapters and verses. Jews complied, but there are a few differences in what Jews ended up using, and what Christians use.
Jewish Hebrew/English Torahs also contain designations of the seven Shabbat Torah readings (plus maftir, or "concluding" reading) as done in synagogue. Additionally, most, but not all, contain the Haftarot (like maftir, the word haftarah means "conclusion," and is a reading from the Nevi'im/Prophetic texts usually on the them of a major section of the Sabbath Torah portion) for all the regular and special Sabbaths, as well as for the Holydays.
The Jewish Bible is called, in Hebrew, a TaNaKh, which is an acronym of it's three sections: Torah, Prophets (Nevi'im), and Writings (Ketuvim). These three sections are differentiated by the level of prophecy by which our tradition understood them to have been inspired.
Torah
Torah means the "Teaching" of Moses, and is Moses's unique "face to face" prophecy. Another name for the Torah is the Five Fifths of the Torah, or, simply, Chumash ("chumash" is the Hebrew word for a "fifth."). The five books of the Torah are:
- Genesis/B'reishit which starts with the creation of the world, then chronicles the lives of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs (from Abraham and Sarah through Joseph and his 11 brothers and one sister), to the descent to Egypt by Jacob and his family;
- Exodus/Sh'mot begins with the Egyptian slavery, leads to the Exodus, the revelation of Torah on Mount Sinai, and ends with the building of the Mishkan, the portable Sanctuary;
- Leviticus/vaYiqra outlines the laws of sacrifice, kosher animals, purity and impurity, sexual propriety, festivals, sabbatical years, and ethics based on holiness;
- Numbers/baMidbar starts with a census—hence the name "Numbers"—following the setting up of the Mishkan, through the rebellious early two years of the wandering in the wilderness when the decree to wander 40 years was pronounced, then to the end of the 40th year of wandering as Israel fights its way up the east side of the Jordan river to just across from Jericho; and
- Deuteronomy/D'varim is Moses' recapitulation, in the last 5 weeks of his life, of what Israel needs to know—ethics, laws and rituals—before they cross into the Promised Land.
Prophets/Nevi'im
The prophets saw things less clearly than Moses, "in riddles and visions," according to Numbers 12:6-8. In addition to books of prophecy, Nevi'im begins with the Prophetic Historical Books. Tradition supposed these books to have been written by prophets during the reign of King Hezekiah. They are:
- Joshua about Joshua's leadership during the conquest of Canaan;
- Judges the story of the 12 judges during tribal times before there was a king over Israel;
- Samuel I&II detailing the rise and the exploits of the first two kings, Saul and David; and
- Kings I&II which is the history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, from Solomon through the splitting off of the Kingdom of Israel from the Kingdom of Judah, through the destruction of Israel by Assyria, to the Babylonian exile of Judah).
The Historical Books are followed by the major literary prophets (prophets with large books) in chronological order:
- Isaiah (pre-exilic)
- Jeremiah (at the time of the exile)
- Ezekiel (in exile).
They are followed by "The 12," the smaller prophetic books, also in chronological order:
- Hosea
- Joel
- Amos
- Obadiah
- Jonah
- Micah
- Nahum
- Habakkuk
- Zephaniah
- Haggai
- Zechariah
- Malachi
Malachi (which means, "my messenger,") is considered to be another name for Ezra, who brought the people back from exile.
This level of prophecy ended with him.
Writings/Ketuvim (or, "Scripture")
Revealed by the Holy Spirit (Ruach haKodesh), a minor form of prophecy that, traditionally, persists to this day. However, the rabbis at the council of Yavneh, in 90 CE, decided that only books written before the end of prophecy would be allowed into the canon (the approved list of authoritative books). This is why some books, actually written later than the return from Babylon, but attributed to authors who lived beforehand (e.g.: Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Daniel) are in the Bible, while some others that are of the same period (e.g.: Maccabees, Wisdom of Sirach) but attributed accurately to their time, only appear in non-canonical collections, such as the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
(The Apocrypha, which means "hidden books" in Greek, survived only in Greek. They can be found in Catholic Bibles between the Old and New Testaments (Martin Luther removed them from the Protestant Canon). The Pseudepigrapha, which means "falsely attributed books" other Jewish origin books in Greek, were never a part of the canon, but survive nonetheless as interesting records of Jewish literary activity in the last few centuries BCE.)
There is one collection of small books in the Ketuvim which are not arranged chronologically by "authorship", but by the time of year at which they are read in the synagogue. They are called the Five Megillot, or "Scrolls:"Song of Songs (read on the Sabbath in Passover because of springtime allusions); Ruth (read on Shavuot because of the barley harvest in the book which occurs in Israel at the same time as Shavuot and also because Ruth, the quintessential convert to Judaism, accepts the Torah, just as Israel accepted Torah at Sinai, which Shavuot celebrates); Lamentations (which is an account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, read on the anniversary of that destruction, the 9th of Av); Ecclesiastes (read on the Shabbat in Sukkot, possibly because it is the wisdom of an old man, and Sukkot is at the end of the harvest season); and Esther, read on Purim, because it is the origin of that holiday.
The other books of Ketuvim are: Psalms (King David's five-fold book), Proverbs (his son, Solomon's collection of sayings), Job (which shows five people's and G0d's answer to why bad things happen to good people), the Five Megillot, Daniel (how Jews fare in non-Jewish society of the Babylonian exile), Ezra and Nehemiah (accounts of the return from Babylon. These were originally one book), Chronicles I&II (the priestly history of Israel, as opposed to the prophetic history in the first books of Nevi'im. It covers most of the same material, but has a few important differences. It also records the Levites and Kohanim of each era).
Christian Bibles are called the "Old Testament" (Old Covenant) because Christians believed its Covenant and Laws to have been superseded by the New Testament (New Covenant). Christian Bibles use the order of books of the Septuagint, the Bible of the Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt, that was translated into Greek under the commission of King Ptolemy, by 70 ("Septuagint" means "70") scholars, in approximately 200 BCE. Not only are its chapters and verses, slightly different from the Hebrew Bible in many places, but the books are in a different order, and translations of it are based on the Greek, (or, in the case of Catholics, the Latin Vulgate translation of Jerome), whereas translations of the Hebrew Bible are based on the Hebrew.
Notes about translations
- All translations are commentaries.
- Of the 8,000 or so different root-words used in the Bible, a quarter of them are used only once, and most of those are names of objects no longer exactly identifiable.
- Translators make the best of bewildering choices all the time, and that is why no two translations are the same.
- Additionally, each translator is biased: e.g., having pious, Talmudic, scientific, and/or literary outlooks.
- And each tries to find an English style, with few exceptions, that is not as repetitious as the Hebrew.
- This therefore covers up the Hebrew text's use of multiple standard repetitions for emphasis, and as glue to hold sections together.
- Therefore, HAVE AT LEAST TWO TRANSLATIONS to keep each one honest! And rely on commentaries to point out textual issues.
About Commentaries
- There are two major literary styles of commentary.
- One is the running commentary, or verse by verse commentary on the text.
- Another is the essay, whether as an introduction, or as an excursus.
- Running commentaries are usually short and to the point, beginning by quoting the verse, phrase, or word in question.Most then begin to explain something about the text in question. Some others, however, use the verse as a jumping-off point for a sermon.
- The most useful commentaries for the beginner are those which stick to explaining the text.
- Every commentary has a point to make, an ax to grind, and a worldview/outlook/context.
Texts based on the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) 1917 translation:
Note: Though these books contain valuable commentary, it is difficult for moderns to relate positively to this translation, which is in "Biblical English" (goeth, cometh, thee, Thou, etc.).
- J. H. Hertz, Pentateuch and Haftorahs
This was the standard Torah in every English-speaking congregation until Gunther Plaut's version replaced it in Reform congregations, and Hirsch's replaced it in many orthodox congregations. The commentary is very good and basic, giving the meanings of the Hebrew names, references to other places in the Bible where the issues on the page are dealt, and much background material. The commentary titles each new topic or literary unit in the text.
The Hertz contains a full commentary on the Haftarot. It is still the best commentary on the Haftarot of any Torah commentary, including biographies of the prophets, and the connections between the Torah and Haftarah, as well as running commentary to the text itself.
Quirks: In order to make his case that "everybody feels this way," Hertz extensively quotes non-Jewish British scholars (he was the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire in the 1930's) to justify a Divine origin of the Torah. Weakness: no maps or charts. A very good beginner's commentary.
- The Soncino Publishing Co. Chumash and Bible
The Chumash is an anthology of the classical commentators: Rashi (or, RaSHY—Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki—the "father of commentary", 11th cent. France), Gersonides (or, RaLBaG—Rabbi Levi ben Gershon—14th cent. France), Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain, 11th-12th cent), Nachmanides, (or, RaMBaN—Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, 12th-13th cent. Spain), Ovadia ben Ya'aqov Sforno—(Italy, 15th-16th cent), RaDaK (Rabbi David Kimchi, 12th-13th cent. France), RaShBaM (Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir—Rashi's grandson, 12th cent. France).
Their words have been selected, translated, and edited down. A great introduction to the classical commentators.
The Bible series is not an anthology of classical commentators, but a serviceable book by book commentary on the rest of the Bible. Each is by a different modern scholar, so they vary in emphasis and style. All have extensive historical, literary, and biographical introductions, along with a clear running commentary.
Texts based on the Revised Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation:
Torah (1962); Prophets/Nevi'im (1978); Writings/Ketuvim (1982):
- Jewish Study Bible , Oxford Press (English only), 2004.
This book has wonderful commentaries and introductions to all the books of the Bible. It is part of the Oxford Bible series, but uses the 1960-82 Jewish Publication Society translation. (Note: the Hebrew is not included. If you buy this one, get the Hebrew text, with English, inexpensively, by either purchasing the Jerusalem Bible, or the JPS Hebrew/English.
- JPS Commentary (by different scholars on each book of the Torah)
A book by book in-depth literary, archaeological, historical, and legal commentary. It also contains many "Excurses" longer expositions on scholarly topics, placed at the end of the book. The scholarship is all extensively footnoted, also at the end of the book. Traditional midrashic commentary is only referred to when it is useful to understand the meaning of a word or the development of an idea. This is the best modern commentary available, but it is very pricey. For serious beginners as well as advanced students.
- Gunther Plaut's The Torah, A Modern Commentary and The Haftarah Commentary
A Reform Movement Commentary, which divides into two sections: general introductions, a running commentary, and an end section of lovely ethical and/or otherwise insightful selections from traditional sources ("Gleanings") on the Torah that are designed to resonate with modern scientific Jews. It is available in right- (Hebrew, blue cover) and left- (English, red cover) opening versions. It also includes the Haftarot .
Plaut's Reform commentary explicitly accepts the Documentary Hypothesis of the Torah's human origins, and does not spend time on the more "fairy-tale" aspect of traditional Jewish Bible commentary.
Quirks: Plaut often mentions that "Reform Jews do not observe this practice," without saying why or how Reform Jews developed that way. G0d's Name in this book is "The Eternal."
- Gunther Plaut and Chaim Stern's The Haftarah Commentary
Much like The Torah, A Modern Commentary, this volume gives a modern approach to the Haftarot. However, a lot changed in the years between the volumes, and so this book also gives the trope with the Hebrew, and has a literary as well as scholarly commentary. As is Reform practice in a segment of the movement, this book presents a set of alternative readings from Ketuvim that are on the topics of the Torah portions that are appropriate as Haftarot.
Texts with their own unique translation:
- Everett Fox's The Five Books of Moses
A hyper-literal translation (that preserves the sound and syntax of the Hebrew in English) with a concise literary commentary. Fox also transliterates all the names of people and places, giving the meaning of the names and not just the Greco-Roman-English transliteration of the names (e.g.: Isaac is Yitzchak/"He laughs"). The best Torah for those who wish to hear the Hebrew in English. This book does not break the text into the cycle of Torah Portions.
- The Jerusalem Bible (Jewish version, not the Catholic version of the same name)
This Bible has no commentary, and has a Biblical English translation of the old style, but its main value is that it transliterates all the names of people and places, like Everett Fox does, for the entire Bible, but without the meanings of the names. There is no commentary.
- Judaica Press Bible Commentary
A book by book commentary on the Prophets and Writings, with maps and charts,butusing traditional explanations of events, not archaeological/scientific/critical explanations. A very good compendium of what traditional Jews think the Bible is all about.
- UAHC Press A Torah Commentary for our Times, edited by Harvey Fields
This is not a complete text of the Torah—only those Torah selections commented upon are quoted, but I include it here because it is, perhaps, the single best way for a modern Liberal Jew to see the fullness of opinions on the Torah. Harvey Fields is a mainstream Reform rabbi in LA who has put together commentators from medieval to modern times, from the most traditional to the most innovative, and each comment is accompanied by a portrait of the commentator (or, in the case of more ancient commentators without any picture, a graphic avatar) to personalize their words. The selections are chosen to seem as if these individuals were in conversation with each other.
Additionally, each Torah text commentated upon is introduced in a modern English periphrastic "Targum" (the standard Aramaic word for a translation) that skips the Hebraisms and English formalisms of most translations.
Texts withTalmudic Translations
(translations based on the Talmud's understanding of the Text)
Quirks of all Talmudic translations: They do not translate the "simple" meaning of the text if the tradition understands it differently. However, it does, honestly, put the simple meaning in the commentary. For example, the Song of Songs' translation is the allegorical one, depicting a historical love song between G0d and Israel, instead of the simple translation which speaks of the physical love between a man and a woman. The simple translation of each verse is, however, included as the first line of the commentary.
- The ArtScroll Torah and Bible Series
An in-process series, Genesis and Leviticus are complete, as are the "Five Megillot" ("Scrolls": Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), and several other books of the Bible. The translation is done by different scholars from a Talmudic perspective. The translation is very modern and well-done, from the traditional perspective (like Hirsch and Kaplan). YHWH is translated as "HaShem," meaning, "The (Divine) Name," as opposed to the classical English "The L0rd."
Greatest Strength: the encyclopedic nature of its commentary. There is also a modern commentary on the traditional commentary! For serious beginners and up.
- Aryeh Kaplan's The Living Torah
The translation attempts to be very contemporary while very true to the Talmudic interpretation. This yields some very strange translations, but he usually notes his idiosyncratic version in his commentary, so be sure to read the commentary. It is best to read this with at least one other translation/commentary before using his translation to base your interpretation of a verse.
The commentary is brief and excellent, with many charts and maps and pictures. Perhaps the best thing about this version, and this is unique to Kaplan, is that he divides the English text into its Masoretic paragraphs, in addition to its Torah portions, chapters, and verses. He also numbers them, titles them according to their content, and gives a listing of all of these in the table of contents, which makes his TOC the most useful of all versions for finding stories and laws.
Quirks: Only Kaplan translates YHWH as "G0d," and ELHYM as "The L0rd." All other versions render YHWH as "Adonai", "Hashem" or "L0rd", and ELHYM as "G0d".
Weaknesses: The Hebrew-English text does not have chapter references on every page (the English-only version does). This makes it hard to find one's way at times. Additionally, there are a number of typos in the translation, the chapter numbers, and even in the commentary references, which have not been fixed in the years since the first edition came out. Last, there are absolute mistakes, both in the transliteration of the names of some of the Torah portions (e.g.: Lekh Lekhe instead of Lekh Lekha) and in the Hebrew spelling of the word Haftarah ( hr:f;p]h' ), which is transliterated out of the English/Yiddish as Haftorah ( hr:/fp]h' , using the wrong Hebrew "o").
- Aryeh Kaplan's The Torah Anthology—Yalkut Me'am Lo'ez
19 volumes of Torah, plus 5 volumes of the Megillot.
In addition to his Living Torah, Aryeh Kaplan began a translation of Rabbi Yaakov Culi's Me'am Lo'ez, a Turkish/Sfardic commentary on the Bible. Yalkut is the Hebrew word for "anthology", and Me'am Lo'ez means "from a people who speak a foreign language." It is both a reference to Psalm 114:1 about Israel leaving Egypt (where an alien language was spoken), as well as to the fact that Culi was writing for Jews who did not speak Hebrew as their native language.
The best thing about this book is its encyclopedic commentary. The first time a subject comes up in the text, absolutely everything, from halachah (Jewish law) to minhagim (Jewish customs) to the wealth of folklore, is introduced from a Sfardic perspective.
Culi's death left it to his disciples to finish his work, and Kaplan's death left the translation to his disciples to complete it as well. This text uses Kaplan's Living Torah translation. However, due to the extensive commentary, usually there is only one verse per page, if that!
- Yaakov Elman's The Living Nach
NaCh is Hebrew acronym for Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Scriptures), the last two sections of the Hebrew Bible. This is laid out like Aryeh Kaplan's Living Torah, but was done after Kaplan's death in his style. There is not nearly as much commentary here as in the Torah volume, but there are many maps which help to identify where all the history is happening.
- Samson Raphael Hirsch The Pentateuch (in one or in five volumes)
Hirsch was the founder of modern Orthodoxy, and was one of the first orthodox rabbis to earn a Ph.D. in a secular university, thus setting an example for combining Torah scholarship with other studies. His commentary focuses on ethical issues, as well as a defense of orthodoxy against the Reform heresy of the 19th century. The five volume version has infinitely more commentary, but it is inaccessible to a non-Hebrew speaker because of the extensive use of untranslated Hebrew quotations used.
Quirk: The English translation of Hirsch's 19th century German translation of the Hebrew sometimes sounds like Germanic English.
- The Stone Chumash (and TaNaKh)
This one-volume edition is by ArtScroll, and edited by the same people as the series above.
There are two versions: Torah and TaNaKh. The Torah version also contains the Megillot.
The difference between this volume and the ArtScroll Torah is that this version is not as in-depth a commentary (good for beginners and more casual readers) but does many maps, charts, and pictures that bring the text to life. The translation uses Hashem for YHWH. The translation is very modern, readable, and sensible. Headings on the side of the text announce each new topic, which is very helpful.
There are Talmudic idiosyncracies in the translation from time to time (according to traditional understandings, which are quite frequently at odds with the simple meaning) For example, Stone's version of the Song of Songs is the allegorical one, depicting a historical love song between G0d and Israel, instead of the simple translation which speaks of the physical love between a man and a woman. The simple translation of each verse is included in the commentary.
Especially useful are the bibliography of commentators, and the Subject Index, which makes this a very good reference Torah/Bible.
Quirk: In accordance with the ultra-Orthodox value of keeping Yiddish alive, the Stone employs an Ashkenazic transliteration of terms and names, whereas all other versions, even earlier orthodox/Talmudic ones, use modern Israeli Sfardi transliteration.
Weakness: the Hebrew verse numbers are in Hebrew letters-as-numbers.
Children's Bibles
Having taught bar/t mitzvah students, I can attest that there are no adolescent-oriented Jewish translations of the Bible (meaning translations with a minimum of formal English terms). Perhaps the easiest of all the adult versions for an adolescent is Everett Fox's version, because of its simplicity in rendering the Hebrew. All commentaries mentioned above are geared to adults.
There are, however, some versions designed to be read to and by younger children that can be an aid to understanding the Torah for adolescents, as well as for adults. The best things about these books for adults is that they highlight central themes in the Torah, and thus give a quick overview to an adult of what to look for in the full text.
- Being Torah, by Joel Lurie Grishaver
This is commentary by kids for kids, orchestrated by an adult. It is illustrated with black and white pictures of kids acting out the Torah narratives, and can be used to inspire kids to do the same.
Being Torah only covers child-understandable Torah narratives (not legal or genealogical sections, nor all the narratives) up through the middle of the Book of Exodus (with the end of the Torah in Deuteronomy, too). But what it covers it does better than any other translation. And, unlike other Bible books for kids, this is an exact translation, done in simple English (and very large print) that renders the simplicity of the Hebrew.
Additionally, like Everett Fox, the translation is hyper-literal, and uses the same word in English to render the same words in Hebrew.
By using differing type styles and fonts, Grishaver's text best displays how the Torah's repetitions in symbolic numbers—3, 5, 7, 10, and 12 times—emphasizes its points. (The JPS commentary and Everett Fox are the only other two that routinely point out these repetitions.)
The commentary comes in two forms: the first is a series of kids (with their picture) telling what they see in the story. Second, each selection contains an exercise for the kids to discover how the Torah is revealing its messages.
Grishaver has a tendency to write children's books that are, actually, for adults. And this is no exception. It can be used for kids, about 4th grade and up, but is even better for their parents!
- Illustrated Jewish Bible for Children
Even though this book is called a "Bible," it is, in actuality, a collection of "Bible Stories" drawn from the entirety of the Bible, but not including everything. It is well done, with good illustrations, and can both be read to younger children, or read well by third/fourth graders and up.
- My Weekly Sidrah, by Melanie Berman and Joel Lurie Grishaver
For early readers and pre-readers. This graphically and whimsically illustrated text gives the gist of some issues in each week's Torah portion ("Sidrah) by means of activities for kids to do. It is good as a weekly as coloring/activity book, containing matching, sequencing, figure-sound discriminations, sentence completion, and puzzles.
- The(Pitspoppany Press) Children's Bible , Sheryl Prenzlau
This is, actually, a Torah in 5 volumes, that includes 2 of the Megillot—Esther in Exodus (in non-leap years Purim occurs during the reading of Exodus), Ruth in Numbers (Shavuot always occurs while reading Numbers)—and Jonah in Deuteronomy (Jonah is the Haftarah for Yom Kippur afternoon, and the High Holy Days interrupt the weekly reading of Deuteronomy).
A good traditional excerpting, with well-done illustrations, of the main themes of each week's Torah portion, done as a retelling rather than as a translation.
Weaknesses: The book only announces at the beginning of a section that a new Torah portion has begun, and even then only in unvocalized Hebrew. It could use superscriptions on each page, transliterated into English, to let you know what Torah portion you are (still) in.
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